Letter to Mtn Express 010910

I am often distressed at how our country and elected officials keep making war, war and more war. It is a failed and unproductive policy that will bankrupt us (financially and spiritually) and has destroyed the lives of millions of innocent people. And there is no end in sight.

Remember ‘shock and awe’? That bombing campaign was supposed to get Saddam and his imaginary WMDs. It only killed innocent people who lived in Iraq. That was well over six years ago, and today the Iraqi people are seeing extraordinary increases in birth defects and cancer rates. Millions of them fled the country of their birth and they are not going to return. It is a hideous, murderous crime we fostered on them.

And now it appears we will be doing the same thing to Afghanistan, under a different president. Afghanistan currently has one of the most corrupt governments in the world. President Karzai was recently “elected” for the next five years in a fraud-filled election. We are fighting over there to preserve a very corrupt government which the native population does not support.

Mr. Obama somehow managed to get a ‘peace prize’ while running two occupations and bombing a third country, Pakistan. Hundreds of civilians have been killed by drone bombings in Pakistan, and in just one year, the Obama administration killed more civilians there than the Bush administration ever did.

Those drone bombings are directed by the CIA, who had a suicide bomber (a double agent) onto their base, with the resulting death of one Jordanian intelligence official, two Blackwater mercenaries, and five CIA operatives. Reportedly this suicide bomber was a double (or triple?) agent and (according to Reuters) was connecting with the Haqqani network in Pakistan. Back in the 1980’s under the Reagan administration, the Haqqani network was still in Afghanistan, and they were our friends. The CIA armed them with stinger missiles, funded and trained them, in order to kick Russia out of Afghanistan. Today, they are in Pakistan and fighting to kick the USA out of Afghanistan.

The Haqqani network is also connected with the Pakistani ISI, and they are reluctant to take action against them – because they have not attacked in Pakistan. I really don’t think the CIA knows what they are doing. They are sure killing people though, and those deaths are inspiring protests in Pakistan, just like the Afghan deaths are inspiring protests in Afghanistan. I would bet they are inspiring more than protests.

Just last month, I heard the US was behind some bombings in Yemen which killed almost two dozen children. If this turns out to be true, we will be occupying two countries and bombing two more. Who knows? Maybe there are even more countries we are bombing.

We are spending more on our military, and our wars and bombings and occupations of foreign countries, than we are spending on infrastructure here at home. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” This is a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., and I agree with him.

This letter was never published. CORRECTION: It was published on 1-27-10.