This afternoon I am watching “Winter Soldiers” on television. Many Iraqi veterans are giving testimony to the horrible things they had done and seen in Iraq. Some took off their medals and threw them away when they finished speaking.
One mother spoke of her son who had committed suicide a month after he returned from Iraq. He told his family that he had done things so horrible that he could not discuss them. He is not alone: thousands of veterans have committed suicide. I could only conclude that it is time for the people to stop this war as they did the war in Vietnam.
Aside from the moral issue, this war, according to a Nobel Prize winning economist, will end up costing $3 trillion. It is no wonder that our school budgets are being cut by 10 percent. The larger issue is that we have succumbed the “military-industrial complex” that President Eisenhower warned us about.
According to Chalmers Johnson, former advisor to the CIA, counting smaller installations, we have over 700 bases around the world, including Greece, Italy, Germany, etc. All this and no enemy. The “Evil Empire collapsed twenty or so years ago.
Some may say that we do have an enemy: terrorism. I suggest reading Chalmers Johnson”s book, “Blowback,” and see how the CIA directly, or indirectly created much of the terrorist threat that we face. .
Here in Lake County, I see my friends and co-workers in dire straits. The stress of constantly living on the edge financially is devastating the quality of their lives. That is the war we should fight. We need to disassemble the empire and begin to solve our domestic problems and win back the good will of the rest of the world.
Nelson Strasser
Lakeport
