James Baker’s Statement on Jobs and Iraq

After hearing Baker’s plea for young Americans to be prepared to die for the cause of oil, one cannot help wondering if we have reverted to the days of the “silent generation.” In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, young would-be soldiers were fleeing to Canada and Sweden to avoid getting wasted in Vietnam.

I filled my gas tank today, and it cost me nearly $20. But even though it is the highest price I have ever had to pay for gasoline, I would gladly do so to avoid a war. To paraphrase the words of former Sen. Ernest Gruening when he refused to support President Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, “All (Kuwait) is not worth the life of a single American boy.”

GERALD P. LUNDERVILLE, Long Beach