Sunday, December 26, 2010

Dear Mr. President,

I’ve been following the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables articles in the New York Times each day now for the past few weeks and frankly I don’t see why people get their knickers all knotted up over it. None of this stuff is exactly news or earth-shaking. It’s not as if we didn’t know that drug cartels have infiltrated the highest levels of many governments. It’s not as though we didn’t know that governments the world over are corrupt or that the market for drugs is a powerful global economic engine - long live capitalism! And it’s not as if it hasn’t been apparent for years that the war on drugs, like the war on terror, cannot be won, or that the whole deal is caused by the insatiable demand for drugs right here in the good old U.S. of A., or that the only way to end it is to legalize drugs and take the profits and criminal elements out of it. The war on drugs is like the old war on booze that resulted in prohibition which didn’t work either. Just think what you could do with all the money that didn’t get sucked up by these crazy “wars.” But now I’m starting to get off track again, so back to WikiLeaks. I guess what all you government folks are so upset about is that they exposed the hypocrisy and lies we’re fed every day and showed what’s really going on, i.e., the truth, and there they are, all those diplomats/spies/enforcers caught in their own words, unable to deny and spin like they usually do. Seems to me if the people in control hadn’t been so secretive and hypocritical in the first place, WikiLeaks would never have come into being. So why not call off your vendetta against WikiLeaks, against Julian Assange, and against Pfc. Bradley Manning? Especially Pfc. Manning. That’s the biggest injustice of all, Mr. President, keeping him in solitary confinement in a Marine brig for seven months. Cruel and unusual punishment for a man who hasn’t been convicted of a crime. How about some Christmas clemency and compassion? Or just common human decency toward your fellow man? Free Bradley Manning! I hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas out there in Hawaii-land, Mr. President.

Till tomorrow.