Dear President McCain:
You have proven to be the true ‘war’ president, despite the bloody legacy of your predecessor. You have not only continued the war mongering and saber rattling of the Bush/Cheney administration, but you have escalated and prolonged indefinitely the American occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Pure and simple. You have certainly vindicated the hopes and dreams, of continuous warfare, of a permanently destabilized Middle East, of the neocon chickenhawks and fear merchants that scared 50.1% of the country into voting for you. As for the other 49.9 %, you have taught them that ideological purity and simple minded sloganeering are more important than reasonable and pragmatic solutions to extremely complex problems.
It’s not your job to pursue peace and victory over the terrorists at the same time? True, we are a fear motivated nation. That’s the way George Bush and Dick Cheney insisted it must be. You have fired all the generals that questioned the immediate necessity of bombing and invasion of Iran. You have been ‘surging the surge’ in Iraq, and building up troops in both eastern Iraq and Western Afghanistan. Your administration has been blunt: war is the answer, f*#& peace.
So now you have backed Iran into a corner. Lebanon is in civil war, yet again, and Syria is arming and on alert. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is on the razor’s edge of falling to the fundamental Islamists. You had a cool idea, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb-bomb Iran." Well that may turn out to be the final nail in OUR coffin.
There’s a reason our few remaining allies in Iraq and Afghanistan pulled out after your election. Naked aggression has brought the entire Middle East to the brink of war. You have alienated even our greatest friends to abandon all efforts to contain Iran and stabilize Pakistan. With oil at over $300 a barrel and our economy still in complete collapse, our precious young men and women are being sacrificed on the alter of greed and arrogance. Ironically, with unemployment skyrocketing past 25%, and the whole world in an unprecedented depression, our young really have no choice but to enlist in America’s military. This great civilization we call America is heading full throttle into oblivion under a true ‘war’ president. The end is near.
Choose carefully, President McCain. The invasion of Iran that you will announce tonight will lead inevitably to a third world war. It didn’t have to be this way. After your election you could have eased the occupation in Iraq, gradually drawing down troops as the Iraqis became capable of providing their own security. You could have re-directed the strategy in Afghanistan, with a targeted build up of troops to conduct anti-insurgency operations, rather than trying to remake a country so radically different into something it could never become. Most importantly, you could have opened a dialogue with Iran, utilized diplomacy to present a united front, and coaxed Iran into acting rationally rather than announcing at the United Nations that after Iran fell North Korea would be next.
The radical neocon pundits and the billionaires behind the military-industrial complex still love you. We the people have only one sliver of hope. But the hair-thin Democratic majority in Congress cannot effectively counter the incessant fear mongering that you and Vice-President Palin engage in. The conservatives in the party and the Blue Dogs are worried only about the next election. They have divorced themselves from reality, afraid of appearing ‘weak on terrorism,’ and with their collusion you will not stop until the entire world is torn asunder and every last dollar extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. But you have sent a million troops over there, and still the crazy Right is not happy. So you must do more.
Before the election we wondered, even though you told us, what would a President McCain do? What would a Vice-President Palin do? Send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what you’re doing. Spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines, that’s what you’re doing.
All of us that voted and prayed for Barack Obama, and cried out on the night of his defeat have endured a truly Orwellian nightmare of four more years of hell, four more years of torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, and now a looming declaration of the invasion of Iran, of permanent war, and of military law in the United States. When you were elected we didn’t expect anything less. We knew you would not stop the madness, stop the killing, but we hoped at least you would not make it this much worse.
If only Obama had become president. For the sake of the lives of young Americans, if only. For the future of our nation and the world, if only. For God’s sake, if only.
Tonight there is no hope.
Tomorrow there is no future.
Yours,
The World