Thursday, March 03, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Nine boys, ages nine to fifteen, died in Afghanistan Tuesday because of “mistaken identity.” NATO helicopter gunship pilots thought they were insurgents and slaughtered them. But the boys were not insurgents, they were gathering firewood and the pilots couldn’t tell the difference so they blew them to pieces with rockets and high-caliber machine guns. The only survivor, an 11-year-old, described how the helicopters hovered over them and “shot the boys one after another.” That is cold-blooded murder, Mr. President, an atrocity so awful General Petraeus felt compelled to apologize. You however, remain silent. While you are “saddened and outraged” over yesterday’s attack on U.S. airmen in Frankfurt, not a word about the deaths of those boys in the Pech Valley. Are their lives of less value? No wonder the people of the Pech want us to leave. To the Afghanis, we are the terrorists and every day we’re there creates more hatred and animosity toward us. More than 200 villagers gathered in Nanglam yesterday to protest this latest outrage, shouting “Death, death, death to America! Death to Obama and his colleagues and associates!” So much for winning hearts and minds. So much for seeing signs of “significant progress.” This war, like all wars, is, in the end, a war against children, a moral evil that only breeds more violence and hatred. Why are we there, Mr. President? Why do we continue to support a corrupt leader who does nothing for his people, whose only interest is to line his pockets and those of his cronies with as much loot as they can carry off? Why can’t we learn how to combat terrorism when the lesson is right in front of us? Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, all those countries in the Middle East where the hunger for democracy and freedom, after decades of Western-sponsored tyranny, is so strong the people themselves rise up and demand it. The War on Terror cannot be won with bombs and bullets. Terrorism ends only when the despots are gone and the people regain their freedom and human dignity. You’ve made Afghanistan your war, Mr. President. You are responsible for the deaths of those nine young boys and all the other deaths since you decided to continue and promote it. When you send killers to Afghanistan to murder people, that makes you a killer too. I hope it troubles you. I hope you have nightmares about those nine young boys who were hunted down and slaughtered by your killers. Stop this evil before it destroys us all.