I must respond to Bob Mercer’s high praise for war, “America cannot afford to pull out of Iraq conflict” (BDN, June 29). His approval echoes the elder Bush’s glorifying of America’s wars. George Herbert Walker Bush, speaking of the White House, said, “…this old house has been buffeted… and battered by the troubled waters of war. We’ve been favored by calm seas, too. But history tells us a democracy thrives when the gusts and gales of challenge and adversity fill its sails and compel it into action.”

I say that it’s not democracy but war profiteering that thrives during war. And at the expense of our youth.

Mercer describes war as an art, requiring courage and fortitude, and that people dying is the nature of war. He writes of the necessary number of casualties required to win a war. He praises the marines for taking 2,000 casualties in 48 hours once in World War II.

He criticizes the administrations of the president’s father and Clinton for being weak when they didn’t take out Saddam Hussein “when our interests were attacked earlier.”

I am not “influenced by media” but am, instead, attempting to influence media into recognizing that war is not always the solution to every problem, no matter how “glorifying” it might be.

Eliot J. Chandler

Presque Isle