Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Dear Mr. President,

I read in the paper today where the different factions of insurgents in Afghanistan are forming “syndicates” (an ominous word to describe them, like they’re the Mafia or something), sharing fighters and coordinating attacks against us, a “worrisome new trend.” Well, there goes the significant progress you saw just a few weeks ago. Funny how every rosy assessment by the generals is followed a week or so later by a new troubling trend or worrisome report or flurry of renewed fighting by the insurgents. As I said in my letter of December 19, you may see significant progress but I sure don’t. Afghanistan is a replay of Vietnam in the 60s and 70s; same rosy predictions by the generals, same waste of lives and treasure. Not much is changed except the location, the players and the technology. I think your generals are leading you down the rosy path, Mr. President, giving you a snowjob. I think they’d like to keep this war going as long as they can. It’s a great career path for them, what they were trained for and know how to do - kill, blow stuff up, and create mayhem. The rest of us, however, would like to see that ten billion dollars a month used for something else, like helping people along in these tough economic times or rebuilding America’s infrastructure or even paying down the national debt. And while you’re at it, you might ask one more time, Why are we there? and what are we trying to accomplish? Or why is it they hate us? Could it be that we’ve done something in the past that’s turned all these fanatic insurgents against us? I don’t think that’s a natural human proclivity, Mr. President, to go around blowing yourself up in order to kill the enemy. Maybe it’s time to find a different approach to resolving the problem. I guess it goes back to the old saw about how the carpenter solves every problem with a hammer and the surgeon with a scalpel. With generals, every problem’s solved with a gun or a bomb. But I think these simplistic and narrow-minded approaches get us nowhere except in a whole lot of trouble. I think you need to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan and Yemen and pay attention to your own country. We are not an Empire no matter how much the neocons and other right wing nuts would like to pretend we are. Let’s just all try to get along the best we can and stop killing one another. That’s my plea for the day. Along with releasing Pfc. Bradley Manning from solitary confinement.

Aloha, Mr. President