Open Letter to the President of the United States

An Open Letter to the President of the United States,

Our tired nation is ready for level-headed thinking. Stop. Take a minute to breathe. What you do and say will probably hurt someone. The Afghan people for sure. Therefore whatever decision we make regarding Afghanistan must be our own.

Because the failed occupational policies of Bush went on for too long without a punch line. We zoned out. They got us. Their long, boring, incoherent speeches and mission accomplished banners paralyzed us. No one cared who was killing or dying. No one cared who was winning or loosing, profiteering or what the problem was or how it could be solved. All that mattered was American soldiers occupied a land where people looked like the 9/11 kamikaze pilots.

But now that the high has run its course we see the reality of the destruction we have caused. No longer do we feel the buzz we got from shooting up the poor Afghan women and children in place of what should’ve been the glorious southern style lynching of Osama bin Laden.

No. Now that we are sober again, if we ever were to begin with and if it is possible to drug yourself sober, we can finally taste the guilt and shame that was always hiding behind our hyper violent tendencies. Now we can finally see that our limbs are too entangled in the internal affairs of Afghanistan to leave, and too twisted to stay.

But what’s that? Stanley A. McChrystal, General of the United States Military, says he has the solution: 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. That is without question at least how much it will take to kill the rest of their way and install our own. This is not a rescue mission. This is a calculated slaughter of a culture and enslavement of its people.

But if we did want to actually help the Afghan people, haven’t we learned over the past eight years that bombings, beatings, and lynchings just don’t get our point across. A War in Afghanistan will fail. McChrystal’s proposition is an inherited solution for an inherited problem. Obama was elected because he represented the antithesis of Bush and his enforcers. If the current occupation of Afghanistan continues or escalates then everything he stood for during his campaign was a lie.

We must investigate alternative, peaceful methods to solve the crisis in Afghanistan. Therefore I implore you to support Barbara Lee’s Bill, HR 3699, to prohibit any additional increase of troops in Afghanistan as well as Jim Mcgovern’s Resolution, HR 2904, calling for a defined and clear exit strategy by December 31st.

Sincerely,

Mr. C.R. Lopez

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