Being a veteran of World War II, I read with great interest the commentary titled, “Veterans speak out about war in Iraq,” in the April 2 edition of the Bangor Daily News. I find it strange the op-ed submitted by those good veterans is so different from the views I hold. I noted that most of these veterans fought in far different wars than that of my WWII experience, which may explain my quite different views.

I am 78 year old and a combat veteran of the 71st Infantry Division, Third Army in Europe during 1944-45 where I received the Bronze Star twice. I believed fiercely in the war against the tyranny of the Nazi regime. And I still feel that our participation in that war was justified and necessary to cleanse Europe and the world of a dire threat to freedom for the enslaved masses of Europe and all the world at that time. I fought the Germans across France and Germany into Austria.

I saw firsthand the death and destruction of war. And I saw the joy of the liberated Jews of Gunskichen Lager, Dachau and Mauthausen. After the war I participated in the restructuring of Germany and saw a new nation, a good country, rise from the degradation of Nazism. War is not always bad, it is always horrible to make. As a young soldier, fresh out of high school, it could be argued that I was merely grist for the war machine of that era, but we were well trained and totally aware of the responsibilities of the peace if we won and the consequences if we lost.

As a young boy in Milford, I remember sitting with my grandfather in 1933 and listening to his old Crosley radio as Adolf Hitler marched his troop battalions (later to be discovered to be a single battalion that he marched through the city several times) into the Rhineland in defiance of the peace treaty while France and England dawdled in fear too timid to say “no” or “enough” to a man who was clearly a demagogue at the time. Hitler’s “victory” turned him from a demagogic party leader into a dictator with delusions of grandeur and world conquest. He demonstrated his will three years later in the “Anschluss” of Austria. And again no nation said “nay” to him, hoping all the while to bring him around with peaceful negotiations through the League of Nations.

We all know what happened after that. The Munich Pact of “peace in our time” negotiated by Neville Chamberlain was broken before that naive gentleman got back to London. But it is apparent we don’t know or don’t remember that it is impossible to reason with a man and nation that has no respect and regard for the freedom of the individual; one who is bent on the use of power to intimidate and threaten its neighbors with war and the fear of war.

Such is the ilk of the Baath Party of Iraq. Saddam illustrated clearly his contempt for the world when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. To me his rape and destruction wreaked on that tiny land was like that of the Sudetenland and the subsequent rape of Czechoslovakia all over again. It differs only in that George Bush, the elder, said “This action cannot stand,” and sent our troops to the Middle East to halt the Iraqi aggression. We threw Saddam’s armies out of Kuwait, but unfortunately, we were so kind and naive that we believed a negotiated peace would be honored.

After 12 years of horror and brutality in his own country to his own people and broken promise after broken promise to the United Nations and the world, Saddam was still in power and using his power in the gross abuse of human rights. After 9-11 it became clear that Saddam sympathized and most likely encouraged al-Qaida in their terrorism. It is clear that he was trying to reach A-bomb parity of some degree and that he was willing to use chemical and biological warfare weapons on any who displeased him, including citizens of his own country.

Why, then, with such a record, is our country so rent with controversy over the action of removing the regime of such a man? For those who say that Saddam is not threat to us, that he is far away in the Middle East, I remind them of the Rhineland in 1933, of Austria in 1936, of the Czechs in 1938, and the Poles in 1939. Rogue nations that defy the world and deprive freedom of their own peoples are a threat to the world at large. As a nation we cannot hope to be the policemen of the world. We can stand strong and united against the tyranny of the most flagrant violators in the hopes that the folly of tyranny will be undermined by the truth that true democracy in all nations is the only road to a peaceful international community.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 to aid all nations in their quest for a free government. While it has worked well over the years, it now seems rent with indecisions and a return to partisan nationalism by its component nations which weakens its strength in the eyes of rogue countries. So I say to those who cry for peace at any cost, who plead for endless conciliation and forgiveness of evil doers, continue in that manner of thought and you will have ample opportunity to conciliate forever.

For the evil doers will see you as weak and fearsome. They will continue to live on the edge and we will have only conciliation on our part and no conciliation or peace from our enemies. Along with millions of our countrymen, I fought in World War II as a result of failed conciliation and I support our just warfare with my entire being to this day.

Francis J. Pelletier lives in New Harbor.