Monday, July 18, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Just a hint of the future costs of warmongering in today’s paper. The plight of Staff Sgt. Brad Eifert, a soldier who cannot leave war behind, who was trained to kill and did, sometimes innocent women and children, and who will live with that for the rest of his life. Several times he pleaded for help but none was forthcoming. One Army psychiatrist told him, “You’ll get over it.” So much for taking care of our own. The only concern of politicians, Democrats, Republicans and Republicrats alike, is to stay in power, help those who can keep them there and to hell with the rest of us, the throwaway society. Lies, empty promises and secret deals, the stuff of political life in this day of polarizing paralysis and hidden agendas. More than $427 million a day for war while 100,000 people are being cut from Medicaid in Arizona, $30 billion given to Libyan rebels to fight Qadaffi while you propose cuts to Social Security. $700 billion bailouts for banks and no one held responsible for the blind greed, fraud and incompetence that got us there while four million Americans have already lost their homes to foreclosure, many illegally seized by the same banks and bankers your boys at Treasury bailed out. On every important issue you’ve caved in to the Republicans, to Wall Street and the big corporations, chipped away at what’s left of the social contract and turned your back on those who put you in office. Your administration prosecutes and persecutes with full force and fury government whistle blowers, those you once declared so important for democracy to thrive, while the Staff Sgt. Eiferts fight their demons on their own without help from the same government who sent them to kill in Iraq and Afghanistan. War has brought the U.S. to the edge of bankruptcy and yet you continue to expand the wars, six by my count: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. (Is Iran next?) Maybe you think the drones and Special Ops teams operating undercover and under the control of the CIA will be cheaper than sending American troops to invade other countries but you’re mistaken, Mr. President. Wars are long term investments in human misery. Wars guarantee atrocities. War IS an atrocity. War corrupts the very soul of a nation. The evidence is right here, right now, in Staff Sgt. Eifert. Your record on war is an abomination. The only way to restore this nation fiscally, morally and psychically is to stop the wars. All of them. It is your duty to do that.