Dear Editor:

Congratulations and thanks to the SIUC students who participated in the war protest Tuesday. We should be as proud of these students as we are of our successful student-athletes who have recently earned great accolades.

Marine Major General Smedley Butler (two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner) once wrote: “War is a racket. It always has been.”

In the present war, Bush and his fellow racketeers in the Carlyle Group, the Bechtel Corporation and others have made billions at the expense of the American economy and hundreds of thousands of human lives. They’ve poisoned Afghanistan and Iraq with depleted uranium and other deadly toxins. The supposed “free press” of our country have been willing profiteers.

This enormous and powerful war racket makes the Sicilian Mafia look benign by comparison. And so it takes real courage and a high level of moral development to resist it. The students who do so are real heroes in my book.

Jim Glover associate professor of recreation