On Wednesday, a law professor was writing speech objecting to a solicitation to send troops in Afghanistan a few care packages.
The professor was actually mad that students were asked if they could send a care package to soldiers that are serving abroad.
Well, Happy Veterans Day…
Michael Avery, who is a Suffolk University Law School professor, unleashed his serious objection after the Suffolk Law staff asked the students for donations to send care packages to the troops in Afghanistan, even though the email also mentioned that a student at the school is serving overseas would be one of the recipients of the care package.
Avery’s email response was recorded on the Natural Truth by Michael Graham. Here is how Michael Avery starts his email:
”I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and woman who have gone overseas to kill other human beings. I understand that there is a residual sympathy for service members, perhaps engendered by support for troops in World War II, or perhaps from when there was a draft and people with few resources to resist were involuntarily sent to battle. That sympathy is not particularly rational in today’s world, however.
The United States may well be the most war prone country in the history of civilization. We have been at war two years out of three since the Cold War ended. We have 700 overseas military bases. What other country has any? In the last ten years we have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary foreign invasions. Those are dollars that could have been used for people who are losing their homes due to the economic collapse, for education, to repair our infrastructure, or for any of a thousand better purposes than making war. And of course those hundreds of billions of dollars have gone for death and destruction.”
You can have your opinion without being rude about it. Just because you do not support the war we are in, does not mean that you have to be heartless, and not support the poor men and woman who have sacrificed their lives for you, and for this country. I don’t think that it is going to kill you to send a few things in a care package to a man or a woman overseas who has fought to keep this country safe and free.
But, the key flaw in Avery’s logic seems to be stated in his next paragraph:
”Perhaps some of my colleagues will consider this to be an inappropriate political statement. But of course the solicitation email was a political statement, although cast as support for the student activities. The politics of that solicitation are that war is legitimate, perhaps inevitable, and that patriotic Americans should get behind our troops.”
Wrong. Sending packages to our troops is not tacit agreement to the legitimacy of the conflict. Its not even particularly patriotic. This guy is a whack-job.