Boos for Obama on WWI.

• Author: Chandu, G.M.
• Position: WE HEAR YOU - Letter to the editor

Matthew Rothschild's column in the May issue was rather on the unfair side. Can you imagine the firestorm if the President, at the gravesite, had said that the war was a colossal waste of human lives? Unfortunately, this praising of soldiers has become a rite of passage for all our leaders. But Rothschild, and Howard Zinn, whom he quoted, were right that our wars have not been in defense of our freedoms but in defense of our capitalist system. And, like Rothschild, I hope that the next U.S. President will be honest enough to speak about the real and underlying reasons for future warfare.

G. M. Chandu

Flushing, New York

Thanks for Matthew Rothschild's column in the May issue, "Obama Whitewashes World War I." It reminded me of what Senator Robert La Follette, the first editor of The Progressive, said when he vigorously opposed our nation's entry into World War I.

Here is La Follette, in a speech before Congress, addressing Woodrow Wilson: "The poor, sir, who are the ones called upon to rot in the trenches, have no organized power, have no press to voice their will upon this question of peace or war. But oh, Mr. President, at some time they will be heard."

What a pity that President Obama chose not to hear the voices of the poor who died in the trenches too years ago!

But Rothschild heard them, and, with peerless eloquence, deplored the sordid reasons for which they died.

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