Where were protesters then?

3-25
To the editor:
In December of 1998, Secretary of State Madeline Albright declared that Baghdad's opportunity to build and hide more chemical and biological weapons in secret during the four months that had passed without U.N. inspectors in Iraq was dangerously intolerable. Soon thereafter Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a three-day around-the-clock campaign of air strikes including cruise missiles targeting Baghdad.
Desert Fox was followed by a low-level air war over the next 12 months that became so routine that it barely garnered any media attention at all. Totaling 77 days of fighting, this campaign was nearly twice as long as Desert Storm and, incidentally, Clinton never sought U.N. approval for this and more than a dozen other military campaigns during his eight years in office.
Under Clinton, the U.S. initiated major military actions against Iraq in 1994, 1996, 1998, and in 1999. So why did no one pressure Ojai's City Council to adopt a "stop the war" resolution in 1994, 1996, 1998, or 1999?
Why no war protests and no media outrage? Where were the militant doves? Where were the volunteer human shields and where were Hollywood's sloganeering luminaries?
I am curious as to where the People In Black were hiding during the 12 months of routine bombing in 1999. Where was the outrage over unilateralism? Where were the "No Blood for Oil" signs? Wasn't Clinton bombing Iraq because of America's oil interests in the Middle East or is this slanderous criticism only appropriate when dumped on the head of a Republican president?
Clinton relied on the arguments that: a) the Gulf War never really ended due to Iraq's refusals to cooperate with any U.N. cease-fire agreements and; b) the United States has the sovereign right, and indeed our president has the sworn duty, to protect U.S. security and vital interests.
I agree, but how does one explain the utter silence of the anti-war groups then as compared to their current seething outrage? The only qualitative difference is that we now have a Republican president who is determined to take effective and conclusive action.
Now, with Bush in office, suddenly the world media refers to any military action against Hussein as an unprecedented pre-emptive strike as if there were absolutely no history of Iraqi aggression and defiance of international law or justified American and coalition enforcement, only U.S. aggression. How is it that these issues have been turned upside down in so many people's heads?
Here is a small piece of what Secretary Albright had to say on the subject just hours into Clinton's massive 1998 air assault on Iraq:
"Saddam Hussein is entirely responsible for the military strike now under way, due to his refusal to take advantage of the final chance offered him in November to begin full and unconditional cooperation with the United Nations weapons inspectors. We have given diplomacy every possible chance to work. We have resorted to this action because Saddam Hussein has left us no other choice. Like us, they (Arab nations) are concerned for the welfare of the Iraqi people. They know that we are exercising every effort to avoid civilian casualties in this operation.
"Among members of the Security Council, we have encountered some expressions of regret that a peaceful solution couldn't be found, despite all our best efforts. There is also a general sense that the behavior of Saddam Hussein has brought us to this pass. This is the French position. The Russians and Chinese are critical, of course, but over the past year they have failed to provide any viable alternative.
"We are now dealing with a threat, I think, that is probably harder for some to understand because it is a threat of the future rather than a present threat or a present act, such as a border crossing, a border aggression. Here, as the president described in his statement recently, we are concerned about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's ability to have, develop, deploy weapons of mass destruction and the threat that that poses to the neighbors, to the stability of the Middle East and, therefore, ultimately to ourselves."

Richard Keit
Ojai

Best things come from the heart

3-25
To the editor:
I have a letter from Elton Gallegly that I shall cherish all my life.
Do I deserve the praise and thanks for my poem? Maybe more so because the poem he liked was written by me because I simply wanted to give thanks to our great firemen who have been needed so much lately. I did not know when I wrote it that Mr. Gallegly has proposed a bill to give more aid to these "Unsung Heroes," title of my poem. I was also remembering a visit I had once with the fire captain of Scottsdale, Ariz.'s firemen. And it was written also becuase of the terrible nightclub fire and our forest fires. How we need these men with all our fires going on. I mailed my poem to another friend I'm proud to have, our Sheriff Bob Brooks.
A great letter from Elton, he and his lovely wife, Janice, read my poem on his birthday dinner night. I did not know his birthday date or that he would receive my poem that day.
Maybe the best things we do are devoid of all reasons and planning and dates, just straight from our hearts and minds.
This fine congressman and his wife - and they never lost the human touch. How lucky we all are to have them.

Anne Youngdale
Oak View

Many share fear of loss of liberties

3-27
To the editor:
I compliment Carol Grier on her editorial piece called "Taking Liberties" in the March 26 issue of the OVN. Many loyal and patriotic Americans share Carol's concerns for the safety of our liberties in this country today and a deep concern about this war on Iraq.
Information and dissent to the war is being quashed nationally and locally. In my opinion, that in itself is un-American. Thank you, Carol.

Kale Starbird
Ojai

Support troops, bring them home

3-28
To the editor:
The Ojai City Council voted to table the resolution to declare Ojai against the war in Iraq. They claim to want to "support the troops."
How sad it is to live in a town in which the city council doesn't realize that our troops are only in danger when they are at war. And the danger is not so much from the Iraqi army as from the dangers of our own weapons - 10,000 troops from the "last" Gulf War are dead now, and not from the "enemy." They are dead because our government is using weapons made from depleted unranium which will kill many of the troops in the Middle East now if we don't get them out of there. Bring the troops home, save their lives and the lives of thousands of Iraqi children. If we can't stop this war maybe we should give some recommended reading to some of the council members who seem to know little about American history.

Arthur Braverman
Ojai

'March to folly' one of many

3-26
To the editor:
Our country is involved in an undeclared war with Iraq. Meanwhile, the present administration fosters the notion that it's unpatriotic to express dissent for this war, and worse, it shows a lack of support for our troops.
No soldier wants to fight a war and come home to be told that he was wrong to have laid his life on the line; that his dead buddies died in vain. No sir! No soldier wants to hear that.
Forty years ago, I emigrated to this country. I got my green card by enlisting in the Air Force. After boot camp and training, I wound up in Vietnam. I remember being interviewed in the middle of a rice paddy, just west of Saigon, by a journalist from Australian Broadcasting Corportion. He asked me why I was there. I replied in no uncertain terms that I was there fighting for freedom - the nerve of that guy questioning my motives! Well, it's only later, after 58,000 dead and 140,000 wounded servicemen, and about 2 million assorted dead "gooks," have we realized that this war was fought in vain. Our leaders had invoked the Domino Theory to go to war in Southeast Asia. What if Vietnam were to fall in step with China? After we left Vietnam, that country promptly went to war with China. If only our leaders had studied history If only the war protesters had prevailed
Now, the present administration has put our troops in harm's way. Yet, in my eyes, it hasn't made its case.
First, the argument was over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. When the U.N. demonstrated that, given time, it would do the job, the focus went to Al Quaeda and its supposed links with the Iraqi government. When that failed, the present administration brushed aside the U.N. and launched Operation Freedom, ostensibly to restore democracy to its beleaguered people - just like we did when we propped up Sukarno, Marcos, Trujillo, Duvallier Sr. and Jr., and the list goes on ad nauseam.
By the way, wasn't Rumsfeld in Baghdad in 1984, representing the Reagan administration, with a list of weapons to sell to Saddam along with loan guarantees?
I want to tell our president to bring our troops home. We must join all the civilized nations so that we resolve our political problems through diplomatic means. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is our real enemy. If we ignore this threat and continue this "march to folly" nothing short of the end of humanity is in sight.

John Vachet
Ojai

City's traffic plan gets harsh grade

3-27
To the editor:
The California Environmental Quality Act suggests that cities should adopt "environmental thresholds of significance," to aid planning staff in the project approval process, and help prevent any public misunderstanding as to what the environmental limits are. Our City Council like many in the state, with the urging of our new planning director, adopted new "environmental thresholds of significance." The newly adopted thresholds include the maximum level of traffic that would be allowed on our most congested street, Ojai Avenue between Bryant Street and the "Y." Currently that street segment carries 23,500 cars per day. The newly adopted "thresholds" establish 27,000 car trips per day as the maximum level, or 3,500 more. The new traffic threshold was adopted during the Los Arboles approval process, ensuring that the City General Plan requirements were now consistent with the project.
Traffic congestion is graded from A through F: A being best, F being gridlock. The 1997 Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the adoption of the new General Plan Circulation Element graded much of Ojai Avenue already at level F. The 1997 EIR set the "threshold" at a maximum of 18,8000 car trips per day. The city found itself in a quandary at the time of the Los Arboles approval as Ojai Avenue was now carrying a little over 23,000 cars per day, 4,200 cars over its capacity. The litigation that ensued was resolved by raising the capacity level of the street to 27,000 by using county, not city, traffic data. There has been no street expansion on Ojai Avenue since 1997.
This mathematical chicanery has not gone unnoticed. Taking advantage of this new found congestion relief, three new projects are proposed a retail commercial (AR 03-01, a zone change for a multi-residential project (GPA -03-01) and a self-storage project (AR 02-02). Although these three projects together will add more than 250 new car trips, all three have been given a "Negative Declaration" (no significant impact) as to traffic impacts. These projects come under the newly adopted "environmental thresholds" that will allow an additional 3,5000 cars that will have "no significant impact." The city should at least adopt a new road congestion grading system for the future traffic; H for Hell would be appropriate.

Ivor F. Benci-Woodward
Ojai

Responding to facile question

4-02
To the editor:
In last Friday's OVN Dick Schneider had a question for anyone protesting the war: "Which American city and how many lives are you willing to lose in the event your judgment is wrong?" How facile. I have a question for Dick Schneider: "Which American city and how many lives are you willing to lose in the event your judgment is wrong?"

John Hannah
Oak View

© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

Return to editorial search

Back to the news