War won't bring peace

I listened to John McCain’s acceptance speech a few weeks ago and I found it frightening.

When I was in high school, I learned that World War I was billed as “The War to End All Wars.” It was believed that if we fought and won World War I, we would have peace and never have fight again.

When World War II came along we no longer believed the illusion, we were fighting because we had been attacked. Where were John McCain and his followers when this lesson was taught?

Have people forgotten the wrong, mistaken disaster Vietnam was? Don’t McCain and his followers remember the My Lai massacre and the napalm? The wise-thinking people who wanted to travel and help the country joined the Peace Corps, not the military.

Even as you as I was (in my early 20s), I knew the war was wrong and protested it. Why didn’t McCain and his followers? If I had any other association with that war I think I would be ashamed to tell anyone about it.

We won nothing and gained nothing; we only lost men and killed innocent people. The way John McCain sounded, it seemed like he wanted to fight World War III and bill it as the fight to have peace as was done during World War I.

Will he and his followers never learn that fighting wars is not the way to peace?

ELAINE TORMEY

Sandpoint