Letters to the Editor for Thursday, January 27, 2005

European and Mideast editions

(EDITOR’S NOTE: These are the letters that appeared in each edition of Stripes on this publication date. Click here to jump ahead to the Pacific edition letters)

Glad he has something to do

It is kind of nice to have nothing to do when nothing is going on. Just don’t get caught by someone who has nothing better to do than see that everyone is doing something.

Two soldiers were recently caught with nothing to do. Not having anything to do is OK so long as you look like you are busy doing something, which they were not.

So they were tasked to make a troop miserable. I do not believe that was the intent of the task, nor was it the troop’s interpretation of the task. It was simply the result of someone who had something to do standing at the exact location where someone with nothing to do was tasked to do something.

The two soldiers were tasked with removing the mat from the floor of a guard tower. Harmless, right? Wrong. That sorry half-inch piece of foam rubber was the only barrier between the cold, hard, wet, metal floor of the tower and the troop who stood there. Despite the guard’s complaints, the mat was removed.

What could be worse? The soldiers did not know what they were supposed to do with the mat.

Fortunately for the two troops with nothing to do, they again came across the same someone who was looking for troops who had nothing to do, and that someone gave them another task. Can you guess what? Wash the rubber mat and put it back in the tower.

Now that doesn’t seem so bad until you are made aware that it had been raining all morning and was expected to rain throughout the day. Which was one of the reasons why the troop in the tower was miserable in the beginning.

I am just glad to be doing something.

Sgt. Richard Coffland
Camp Patriot, Kuwait

Costume was symbol of evil

The Nazis are indeed part of history (“Reactions to swastika ‘absurd,’” letter, Jan. 21), and their claim to fame, if you will, is the extermination of 6 million Jews during World War II.

Adolf Hitler led them to believe that Jews were to blame for the economic and societal problems in Germany and the unenlightened among them bought it. There is nothing glamorous about the Nazis and there never will be.

No doubt the letter writer is in Iraq working to secure the freedom of the Iraqi people from tyranny. Saddam Hussein’s idea of leadership was to rule with an iron fist and suppress “whiny special-interest groups” such as the Kurds by gassing them.

Every free person has the duty to boldly speak against oppression and anything that romanticizes it. Prince Harry’s “simple costume” was a symbol of the evil of Nazi oppression, and Americans fought and died in World War II with honor and valor for the principle of freedom. America led that fight and the mission continues today.

President Bush said it best in his inaugural speech when he said that America “will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which eternally right.”

Kirsten Derynioski
Rossdorf, Germany

Lawsuit addresses higher-ups

In “Where were prison supervisors?” (Jan. 23), the letter writer questioned how it was possible for a junior enlisted reservist to be solely responsible for crimes committed at Abu Ghraib prison.

He wondered if there would be “any senior-level personnel in positions of responsibility courts-martialed and serving sentences,” or whether the U.S. government would accept the explanation of “I wasn’t aware of these actions under my command.”

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights had the same concern. Last month the center and Berlin’s Republican Lawyers’ Association filed a complaint with the federal German prosecutor’s office against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski and other military officers who served in positions of responsibility in Iraq. The lawsuit accuses them of war crimes and torture in connection with detainee abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

In a public statement, the center explained that because the U.S. Congress had “failed” to seriously investigate the Abu Ghraib abuses, it had chosen Germany to file its complaint because of that country’s Code of Crimes Against International Law. This code grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity. Military or civilian commanders failing to prevent their subordinates from committing such acts can be held liable under this law. The prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe reportedly is examining the 170-page complaint to see if an investigation is warranted.

As a result, Rumsfeld will not be attending the 40th Munich Security Conference next month, and he has informed the German government of his cancellation.

I fully agree when the letter writer said, “You can delegate authority, but you can’t delegate responsibility.”

Those responsible at the highest levels must be punished, also.

Edwin Thornburg
Würzburg, Germany

Pacific edition

Women wouldn’t slack off

I wish I was surprised by “Women don’t belong in infantry” (letter, Dec. 19), but frankly I’m not.

The writer said he would leave his personal opinions aside, then expressed them in a very narrow-minded manner. I agree that women who want to join the infantry should meet the same physical training requirements. However, the reason weight and body fat regulations are different is because women are naturally supposed to carry more body fat than males. Feel free to ask your medic if you’re skeptical.

As for the claims that women would slack off, any woman tough enough to pass the male PT standards and infantry training is probably at least as motivated as the men. While in Iraq, I have seen women carry heavier loads to prove themselves more than I’ve seen them loafing, and several of the females in my unit carry the heavier M249 light machine gun, while the only M4 assault rifle is carried by the tallest man in our unit.

Decency requires that opposite genders have separate places to dress and shower when available. This is not preferential treatment but common sense. Remember in Kuwait where the whole unit shared one tent? The men kept to one side, the women to the other, and people changed their underclothes in the showers.

To prevent accidental pregnancies, infantry females could be required to be on birth control in the field. At other times, do remember that men can have children while in the military and women should be able to as well.

The bottom line is, soldiers who can pass the same training should have the same opportunities, regardless of gender. Period.

Spc. Khai Krumbhaar
Baghdad