To the editor:

In your July 13 article “Regents president ‘thankful’ to see flag artwork removed at KU,” you reported that Steve Watkins, a combat veteran, found the artwork “disrespectful to military members.”

I, too, am a military veteran who served during the Vietnam era. I served for an idea not a symbol. What I find “disrespectful” is a government that lied about that war, resulting in the needless deaths of many. What I find “disrespectful” is a government that committed genocide on our Native Americans, a government that had to go through a civil war to grant people of color the freedom that our Constitution was supposed to grant, our current mendacious and misogynistic president, a president that had a political enemies list, a Republican Party that refuses to act as a check on our executive branch. I trust you get the point. It is actions that are consistent with the ideas on which we were founded, not symbols, that should define our country and one that is inconsistent with our value of freedom of speech is disrespectful to those members of the armed forces who gave their lives to protect it.

Robert D. Wittman,

Lawrence