SALEM, N.H. - Paul Schaefer of Alpine talks softly while standing in front of The Woodbury School, Sunday afternoon. He is not chanting loudly or carrying a sign. Yet this Vietnam veteran is an anti-war protester who has traveled from the Big Bend area of Texas to advocate peace.
Schaefer and Jim Goodnow, also a Vietnam veteran, are part of the Yellow Rose Peace Bus and are members of the Big Bend Chapter of Veterans for Peace. They are volunteering with New Hampshire Peace Action and the American Friends Service Committee, traversing New Hampshire during these days before the Jan. 8 primary - the nation’s first.
“The group has three objectives - get candidates to commit to withdraw from Iraq within one year; use diplomacy with Iran and use funds that would be used in the war back home and in reconstruction of Iraq,” Schaefer said.
As for becoming an activist, Schaefer said it’s been in the past four years that he has gotten more involved.
But, Schaefer, who was in the Navy during Vietnam, said he didn’t support that war, “even when I was in it.”
Since 2003, he said, he’s seen the country go into “an attack mode. Personally, I consider the war in Iraq an illegal war. A criminal war. So … I’m doing my part.”
The Yellow Rose of Texas bus is a traveling billboard, with steer horns in front.
“It’s Texas-style,” Schaefer said. “We’re trying to do it in a big way.”
Inside The Woodbury School, U.S. Sen. John McCain, from Arizona, a Republican candidate in Tuesday’s presidential primary, answers questions posed by citizens in a packed gymnasium.
McCain is thoughtful, humorous and articulate in his answers to questions about manufacturing, the war in Iraq, gun control, health care and the problems in Darfur.
As to the loss of manufacturing jobs, McCain said Americans have to be trained and educated for the new wave of industry - information technology. He said community colleges should be preparing and training workers.
As for his health care plan, McCain would like to see more effort made in keeping down costs. Walk-in clinics, community health care clinics and more innovative approaches to medical care are the solution, he said. “We need to preserve the highest quality of health care in the world. And we have that here.”
In answer to a question raised about the trillion dollars spent on the war in Iraq, McCain said progress has been seen in that region and if that continues, “we’ll see a peaceful Iraq and will be spending less money there than we are now.”
He emphasized his position that if we had not sent troops into Iraq, “we’d have paid a much higher price in American blood.”
McCain was referring to statements made by terrorists calling for the destruction of the United States.
The senator, a veteran of Vietnam who spent five years as a prisoner of war, said that as president, he’d send aid immediately to Darfur.
“I would act and do everything in my power to bring an end to that genocide,” he said.
Back outside the school, veteran Schaefer says he will continue traveling to promote peace.
