Letter to the Editor

A letter to the editor in today's Boston Globe:

June 6, 2006

WHEN IRAQIS (or, previously, Vietnamese, Somalis, or Panamanians) respond to a US military invasion with whatever weapons they have at hand, they are labeled terrorists, butchers, savages, extremists.

When US soldiers, participating in an invasion of someone else's territory, massacre women and children, elderly and the disabled, out come the psychologists and psychotherapists to find out how otherwise fine boys could have become so "stressed out" ("Killing of civilians in Iraq highlights stress on troops," Page A1, June 4).

It is no doubt "stressful" to invade a sovereign country, not know why you're doing it, blanket bomb residential neighborhoods, level cities, destroy the ecology of the country, and render the population refugees in their own land. However stressful, it's still murder.

CONRAD ERNST
Roxbury, Mass.