Letter: Sometimes conquest is the only way to freedom

Editor,

I wish to respond to Cynthia Winland's letter in Monday's Daily Lobo about this nation's history of bungling the idea of spreading freedom and democracy.

My heart fell to the floor when she stated, "Military conquest has never spread the seeds of freedom. Conquest kills freedom. Conquest kills democracy." These callous and absurd comments, to me, are slaps in the faces of my grandfather's generation, who fought and died to bring down the greatest regimes of genocide and tyranny that the modern world has ever seen.

I believe she should talk to the survivors of the Ohrdruf and Buchenwald concentration camps. She should ask these survivors if the military conquest by General Patton's Third Army did not spread the seeds of freedom when they invaded Germany and liberated these two camps in April 1945. Ask the surviving war residents of Ste. Mere Eglise or St. Laurent in Normandy if they are ashamed that the D-Day invasion ever happened.

I do not think they would deem all American military conquests as never spreading freedom. On the contrary, the Third Army, as well as the rest of the Allied Expeditionary Force, conquered Western Europe from the Third Reich and returned its nations to their existence prior to German occupation.

Conquest did not kill freedom and democracy. This nation's military might have conquered both Germany and Japan, and yet today they are both shinning examples of formerly tyrannical nations that were defeated thoroughly and transformed socially and economically into two of the most democratic and prosperous nations on the planet.

Winland stated, "In a democracy, there is a constant struggle between the rights of the people and the rights of the government. People must be taught to understand this struggle because mistakes are made, people get hurt, but somehow a tenuous balance is achieved."

I agree with all of this. In fact, I see this struggle happening with the people in Iraq and the ratification process of their new constitution.

You would not know it because of poor coverage by the mainstream media, but a few weeks ago, enough Iraqi citizens voted in favor of ratifying the new constitution. This was a tremendous victory, considering all of the factions that fought over it. Furthermore, this fight is probably not over. But hopefully, if the United States stays its course and continues to try to help the Iraqi government, we will help accommodate an environment for learning a "tenuous balance" between the people and government and between factions in the government - exactly what we tried to do with the occupation of Germany and Japan.

We have the possibility of seeing a democratic nation appear in a region where no one said it was possible, and it never would have happened if our military did not conquer Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.

Darren Wood

UNM alumnus