Leaders Bear Responsibility, Not Soldiers

Dear Editor,
    A comment about James Crabtree's letter in the Oct. 10 edition of The Austin Chronicle ["Postmarks"]. If it is true, and insofar as this country attacked Iraq for oil, how can it not be morally responsible for that country's destruction including the deaths of innocent civilians? That makes Larry Joe Doherty's statement [“The Man in the White Hat,” News, Oct. 3] true up to the point that oil was any motivation. I am sure that he did not mean that most American soldiers would purposefully kill innocent civilians, but there is no way that one can divorce the cause of the war or its tactics from responsibility for its results. But that responsibility does not rest specifically on most of the troops themselves, and "baby killer" is a terrible and unjust epithet against them. One cannot fault most individual soldiers who are there because they are committed to a unit called up by the president for reasons they might not even support and who are doing their part to help rebuild the country. So as a vet during another controversial war (Vietnam), I applaud the efforts of James and his fellow Marines and thank them for their service.