You Da' Man!

Dear Mr. President,

A 7-year-old girl, a 12-year old boy beheaded because family members joined the Afghan police or Army to fight the Taliban. A suicide bomber and a truck bomb kills at least 12 and wounds dozens near a U.S./NATO base in central Afghanistan. An ex-Marine kills 2 co-workers with an assault rifle, then shoots himself with his handgun. A U.S. Army deserter, disillusioned after a tour in Iraq, flees to Canada with her husband and 4 kids and now, after 4 years, the Army wants her extradited so they can prosecute her. A report detailing the security failures at the Y-12 nuclear weapons factory in Oak Ridge after the July break-in by an 82-year old nun and her two male accomplices, 63 and 57, using nothing more than bolt-cutters and hammers, not only shows the incompetence of the outsourced security and management of the plant, but the government’s stupidity and complicity by cutting back funding for security so equipment cannot be replaced and patrols have to be decreased. (And the scapegoat is the guard who used common sense stating the 3 activists were obviously no risk since they had sought him out and surrendered voluntarily and there was no need to cuff them and treat them like militants or saboteurs.) The news from Afghanistan is not good. The fallout from the war is not good. The billions we waste every month on security that secures nothing and no one is not good. Mr. President, it’s time to think about something besides your kill lists and drone strikes and quit pretending the war on terror and the war on drugs and all the other wars are doing good for humanity or democracy or freedom and start earning that Nobel Peace Prize you mistakenly won back in 2009. Not to mention the election you won in 2008 under false pretenses. Time to keep your promises and end the drone strikes, tear up the kill lists, burn the nominee profiles, pack up the troops and bring them home. From everywhere, not just Afghanistan, but Yemen, Somalia and the rest of Africa, Europe, Australia, Asia, everywhere. Eliminate the CIA, Homeland Security, the NSA, the ATF, the DEA and all the other useless agencies that do nothing but promote violence, fear, and injustice, and cause worldwide misery and hatred of bully America. With the peace dividend from a peace agenda, invest in green energy, infrastructure, free healthcare, free education pre-school to graduate school and give us back our country and our freedom. Come on, Mr. President, do the right thing. You da’ man!