Opinion articles provide independent perspectives on key community issues, separate from our newsroom reporting.

Letters to the Editor

Dale Herman: Fatal folly

In the June 17 news article “Al-Qaida leader’s death stirs debate,” an expert with the American Enterprise Institute said that airstrikes “are not a tactic to defeat an insurgency.”

One would have thought that our military strategists plan to win. So what is the purpose of these ongoing airstrikes on Al-Qaida operatives? Are we using human beings as target practice for a bigger war to come? Are these war games?

Taking human life is serious, and as we destroy the lives of others, we leave scars on our own psyches as well.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, when speaking at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said, “War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly.”

It is time that we end this folly.

Dale Herman

Durham

This story was originally published June 22, 2015 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Dale Herman: Fatal folly."

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