Editor:

In response to James Comeford’s letter to the editor (“U.S. is also a human rights violator,” April 18), I just have to say this:

Oh, the hypocrisy! I’ve never read a more skewed opinion in my life.

Sure, the U.S. has had its share of human rights violations in its past, like every other country, such as slavery, killing the American Indians and putting themon reservations and putting our own citizens in concentration camps during WW II, just to name a few.

If he would have referred to those incidents, then he would have made sense.

But calling the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq illegal based on human rights is just too stupid for me to ignore!

Whether or not you believe this war is justified because of WMDs, it’s just as justifiable as WW II, based solely on human rights. I support the Iraq war because the Iraqis now have basic human rights that they didn’t have three years ago. The war gave them the human rights they deserve-that we take for granted-that peace couldn’t get them.

If you call the war against Saddam Hussein, a major human rights violation-illegal-then you must also agree that a war to stop Hitler and his genocide was illegal. Hussein was doing the same thing Hitler did, except on a smaller scale.

If you had lived during the 1940s, I wouldn’t be surprised to see you protesting it [the war] and saying that the United States was bullying poor Hitler because Hitler was no threat to the United States, just like poor Saddam was no threat to the United States.

You say that war rarely promotes human rights. As much as I’d like to agree with you, I have to disagree. History itself tells us you’re wrong. I’m not a warmonger or anything, butlet’s see what war has done that peace could not, relative to human rights.

War stopped Great Britain from violating colonial human rights and resulted in the creation of our nation. War freed the slaves in four years when peace couldn’t do it in a couple hundred. War stopped Hitler and saved the Jews and millions of others in concentration camps when peace could not. War stoppedMilosevic from committing ethnic cleansing.And war rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and gave its citizens basic human rights and democracy.War stopped Hussein’s reign of political genocide and murder when a corrupted peace with the United Nations failed to do so after a decade.

Peace is pathetic when it comes to human rights, and so is your viewpoint that the war in Iraq is illegal based on human rights. Hopefully, you see that now.

Kenneth Pavia

Freshman, History