Letter to Randi Rhodes
The following is a letter which I wrote to Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes last week. It details some events regarding a very heartbreaking week for my niece Julianne and her upstate New York classmates:
Dear Goddess Randi,
Paul from New Jersey here, the one you met last Summer at Rocky Sullivans while I was working on a Congressional campaign. Thank you so much for everything you do. I call you from time to time, usually in a more lighthearted mood and take shots at the radical right wing. However, today I am deadly serious. I have to share with you the story of Louis Allen. I have felt for a long time that, as Democrats, we are sometimes too fond of making our point with statistics. The story of Louis Allen puts a very human face on the terrible cost of war and why we must never be eager to start war.
My sister Mary, her husband and two children live in Greenwood Lake, NY. On Wednesday morning, after dropping my 15 year old niece, Julianne, who is one of the top students at her school, off at High School, Mary received a very strange message on her answering machine. It was the voice of a young woman so choked up with hysterical grief that Mary could not understand what she was saying. She thought it must be a wrong number until at the very end she caught the words, "Please call me back Mommy, I love you very much." At that, she reached for her phone and called Julianne's cell phone.
You see, earlier this year Julianne's school hired a new science teacher. His name was Mr. Allen. It didn't take his students long to realize that this was a very special teacher. It is a rare High School teacher indeed who is admired, respected and loved by every single student they teach. I think I only experienced this once or twice in all my years of schooling. He obviously was a very special teacher. As time went on the students learned that, although young, Mr. Allen was married with four wonderful children and that he was a national guardsman who had already served a tour of duty in Iraq.
A couple of weeks ago Mr. Allen informed his class that he had been called back for another tour of duty in Iraq. My niece, not being a fan of our current President (as few in my family are), was devastated and outwardly angry at Bush for taking away the best teacher she's ever known. Who could blame her?
When Julianne arrived at School on Wednesday morning she and her class were informed that 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen of the 901st Cavalry Bravo Unit had been killed in action near Tikrit. It was for this reason that my little niece was hysterical with grief when she called her Mother. Mr. Allen leaves behind a wife and four children, that alone is tragic enough. He also leaves behind a school full of mourning children, who have lost the kind of special teacher that rarely comes along in a child's life.
This is why we hesitate before launching war, even upon a dangerous enemy, let alone an unarmed one. This is the obscenity which has come with every war in human history. This is why war is only a last resort. For every one of those 1700 Americans and those 100,000 plus Iraqis, there is a similar story. I hereby defy any one of those right wing, group-thinking, Bush apologist freepers who seem to love to call your show on Friday afternoons, to acknowledge this story and tell you and I, and more importantly my niece Julianne, that this is just the comfortably acceptable cost of "liberating" Iraq.
With all that we know about the Project for a New American Century, Bush's failure to return to the Congress or the UN having exhausted all diplomacy first, his failure to adhere to sensible war planning and now with the Downing Street Memo proving that the administration never wanted any option but invasion, I defy these right wing drones to continue to defend this President and his horrible foreign policy team. By doing so, they show themselves as what they are, lacking in a human soul.
Sincerely,
Paul Roth, Jr.
River Edge, NJ
Dear Goddess Randi,
Paul from New Jersey here, the one you met last Summer at Rocky Sullivans while I was working on a Congressional campaign. Thank you so much for everything you do. I call you from time to time, usually in a more lighthearted mood and take shots at the radical right wing. However, today I am deadly serious. I have to share with you the story of Louis Allen. I have felt for a long time that, as Democrats, we are sometimes too fond of making our point with statistics. The story of Louis Allen puts a very human face on the terrible cost of war and why we must never be eager to start war.
My sister Mary, her husband and two children live in Greenwood Lake, NY. On Wednesday morning, after dropping my 15 year old niece, Julianne, who is one of the top students at her school, off at High School, Mary received a very strange message on her answering machine. It was the voice of a young woman so choked up with hysterical grief that Mary could not understand what she was saying. She thought it must be a wrong number until at the very end she caught the words, "Please call me back Mommy, I love you very much." At that, she reached for her phone and called Julianne's cell phone.
You see, earlier this year Julianne's school hired a new science teacher. His name was Mr. Allen. It didn't take his students long to realize that this was a very special teacher. It is a rare High School teacher indeed who is admired, respected and loved by every single student they teach. I think I only experienced this once or twice in all my years of schooling. He obviously was a very special teacher. As time went on the students learned that, although young, Mr. Allen was married with four wonderful children and that he was a national guardsman who had already served a tour of duty in Iraq.
A couple of weeks ago Mr. Allen informed his class that he had been called back for another tour of duty in Iraq. My niece, not being a fan of our current President (as few in my family are), was devastated and outwardly angry at Bush for taking away the best teacher she's ever known. Who could blame her?
When Julianne arrived at School on Wednesday morning she and her class were informed that 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen of the 901st Cavalry Bravo Unit had been killed in action near Tikrit. It was for this reason that my little niece was hysterical with grief when she called her Mother. Mr. Allen leaves behind a wife and four children, that alone is tragic enough. He also leaves behind a school full of mourning children, who have lost the kind of special teacher that rarely comes along in a child's life.
This is why we hesitate before launching war, even upon a dangerous enemy, let alone an unarmed one. This is the obscenity which has come with every war in human history. This is why war is only a last resort. For every one of those 1700 Americans and those 100,000 plus Iraqis, there is a similar story. I hereby defy any one of those right wing, group-thinking, Bush apologist freepers who seem to love to call your show on Friday afternoons, to acknowledge this story and tell you and I, and more importantly my niece Julianne, that this is just the comfortably acceptable cost of "liberating" Iraq.
With all that we know about the Project for a New American Century, Bush's failure to return to the Congress or the UN having exhausted all diplomacy first, his failure to adhere to sensible war planning and now with the Downing Street Memo proving that the administration never wanted any option but invasion, I defy these right wing drones to continue to defend this President and his horrible foreign policy team. By doing so, they show themselves as what they are, lacking in a human soul.
Sincerely,
Paul Roth, Jr.
River Edge, NJ
posted by Paul_NJ | 4:56 PM
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