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Dear Sir,

I stumbled upon this website by pure chance and also by chance, I am the widow you've been posted your multiple comments and opinions on. You have your opinion, I have mine. I respect yours but you don't seem to respect anyone else's opinion that is different from yours. As I have already written to someone else, when I read things like what you wrote, I can't even feel anger but mere sadness. Now let me fill you in on a couple of issues. You seem to be an educated person but when it comes to making comments on me, education or experience fails you becasue you have known neither me nor my Chris.

1) Birth no longer defines who we are. That was a couple of centuries ago. Blood doesn't either. It is true that by birth, by law, or by blood I am not American. However, dear Sir, my husband having been one, gave me roots here. Being an American or proud of being one (as you see it written on all car stickers) is a "bouquet of ideals" as I call it. Therefore, it is in one's heart and it is not inherited. You've had born Americans who joined the Taliban or bombed Oklahoma City. I am not an American but I surely feel like one. Why did I come to this country? To study and to enjoy the freedom of expression and of thought. Who talked about me not liking it here? I didn't for sure! All I did was, through my painful experience, to ask people to question. This entire wonderful contry was born upon the Cartesian thought, "I doubt, thus I reson; I reason, thus I exist." Even freedom can slowly disappear if what is done in its name is not questioned every once in a while. History will show if I was wrong or you were wrong. Till then, let's respect one another's views.

2) What bothers you most about my comments? That I am a woman speaking up? The wife of a fallen soldier speaking up? A foreigner speaking up? Or maybe all 3? Why do you have to attack ME? Aren't there plenty of Americans who protested the war and spoke against it? Are you going to call them Anti-Americans? Please, do not forget that this is a country that immigrants like me once founded and that your own blood probably comes from all over the world, unless you are 100% Native American.

3) Your generalizations are offensive -- the way you speak about women, about how other soldiers feel about this whole thing... Really offensive. There were quite a few soldiers who wrote back to me from Iraq to thank me for speaking up and to ask me to go on. You know, when I came to the US 4 years ago, I met so many people who believed that Romania was a country in Africa, and the funniest one -- that Africa was a country in Europe. These are just the few things I can come up with right now. Now, I thought to myself, "Lord, how ignorant these people are." Was I right? Hell no! Not everybody is like that. There is a Latin proverb that illustrates this thought really well: "Con una hirunda non facit ver," which means "If you see one swallow, it doesn't mean it's spring already." I learned to love these people becasue they are kind, compassionate and even if at times they become ignorant, I know they mean well. There are plenty of ignorant people everywhere, plenty where I come from, but at least here, people have good intentions and are ready to help. Someone else made a comment about him/her knowing a couple of Romanians here who were all cynical. The same comment goes to him/her. I won't call him ignorant becasue he made a comment about all Romanians when he only got a chance to meet a few here.

4) Now to my husband's situation. Yes, he enlisted and he was part of the NAtional (not international) Guards. This is not regular army. Now, I know you probably could write me 10 pages on this but please, don't bother becasue after I sent this message out, I won't log back in this forum. If he was sent overseas, reason or not reason, he should have done the job he had always done in the guards. During all his drills and annual training he was NOT trained to be a combat soldier. Just like many others, he used his gun once a year to pass the test. When they went training in Fort Drum, a lot of soldiers, including him, failed to aim at a moving target. Yes, they were trained verbally as to what to expect, if you can call that training. TRaining is when being a soldier is your job, when you do that 40 hours a week. On that day of april 20th, my husband was sent as part of a "protective escort" to some firefighters from Carolina. Now, he, who failed his shooting test, was sent with other buddies of his to protect others, when they couldn't protect themselves. And now I, his wife, am supposed to shut up and a be a submissive grieving widow? In all my pain, Sir, I stood up. And yes, my Baby was proud to serve with his unit but I knew it and he silently knew it that more often than not unexperienced kids like him were what I call "cannon flesh," which he literally became on April 20th.

5) Now let's talk about HONOR and about being a HERO. You are saying that I am trampling on my Baby's honor? No Sir! Neither can you or anyone else. His honor lives in my heart and in those who knew him and loved him. Honor, just like being an American, is in one's heart. Honor, just like beauty, is in the eyes and heart of the beholder. Me trying to prevents others from dying a dog's death does not diminish his honor. Nothing and nobody can. Chris has always been a hero, MY hero. He is a hero not becasue he died but becasue he lived and becasue everything he touched flourished, me the most of all. Again, death and war do not make heroes; they make VICTIMS. Chris was only 23, still a baby, becoming a man, and dreaming of some day being a father and sharing a simple life by my side. And when no proof of the righteousness of this war has showed up, I think I have the right to question why my Baby and others like him came back home in a cold casket. You are certainly NOT in my shoes nor will you understand how it feels until you get hit by such tragedy(God forbid!). A month before my Baby died, I put a sticker on my car saying "I love my Chris, my hubby, my Soldier, my HERO." Yes, he will always be my hero.

6) You suggest that if I don't like it here I should go back to Romania as anyway nobody will miss me? First of all, this sttement about me not liking it here is something you came up with. And you are wrong, there are people who would miss me. My Baby would have been 99% of those people... I am free to speak and freedom of speech deosn;t come by the virtue of being an American, but a human being. I am a human being and I have that right. Or maybe some day someone will show up at my door and pull the trigger in my forehead to show me that I have no right to speak becasue I wasn't born here. Yeah, the dead can't speak anymore... Maybe this way, my suffering will end sooner as well.

Respectfully,
LAvinia Gelineau

PS: No offence but for someone who is deployed in the theater of operations, you seem to be on internet all day long judging by the number of messages you posted in only on day and their length. I wonder what your job over there is. Should you decide to talk more about these issues,please do so directly to me. Here is my email address: lavinia_elena@hotmail.com
Have a good day, Sir!

Welcome to America, and welcome to Free Republic. I hope that you will reconsider your decision to not come back to this website. This is a large community, and like everywhere else, has it shares of shouters, cranks, and contrarians, as well as wise, kind, intelligent, and well-reasoned folk.

Being Romanian, I would think you could appreciate the sacrifices necessary to bring freedom to those in repressed countries. Were it not for the spirit and willingness of certain American leaders to push, and where needed fight, for democracy in other countries, you would likely still be behind the iron curtain. Iraqi's deserve a chance at freedom just as much as Romanians.

That alone is righteousness enough for the cause of war.

You do realize that this was a continuation of the was from 1991, after more than a decade of non-compliance by Saddam with the terms of the end of hostilities from the 1st war. 11 years of violating UN agreements and terms. Of multiple and increase provacative acts that fall under the heading of 'acts of war' when we were trying to enforce the no-fly zone, conduct inspections, etc. A 2nd righteous cause.

There was a nexus of terror groups and Iraq, with more and more evidence revealed every day, though there was plenty before the war. Regardless of whether the media and the countries taking bribes from Saddam downplay this. Saddam was paying families of Palestian suicide bombers to encourage more bombings. A 3rd righteous cause.

While no STOCKPILES of WMD have yet been found, Saddam did have active programs to acquire WMD's. If I am building a bomb in my basement, actively seek the missing materials, but don't yet have a completed bomb, are you going to claim that I am not a threat? So the police shouldn't react until I complete the bomb? A 4th righteous cause.

Certainly the loss of a loved one is a horrible pain. But what you are advocating is in effect turning our backs on those oppressed in other countries. You were liberated(by a cold war), but now don't care to liberate others? It may be called the National Guard, but units from such have served in combat oversees in previous wars. Anyone who signs up knows that risk, they aren't stupid. A few sign up for the benefits with no intent of serving if war calls, gambling that major combat will not take place while they are in. I choose to believe that your husband was not one of those freeloaders, but rather a hero, who made the ultimate sacrifice. Iraq is a component in the greater war on terror. President Bush is trying to prevent another World War II and another large scale ideological enslavement of countries. Preempting the next Hitlers before they gain critical mass.

Freedom isn't free, and the costs are rarely evenly distributed. It may not be fair, but it is thus.