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AfPak War: Swallowed a Horse? Dead, of Course
Dear Folks,
There is a wonderful song that begins,
"There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly,
I guess she'll die.
"There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
that wiggled and wriggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die."
The song ends: "I know an old lady who swallowed a horse... She's dead of course!"
This is the history of the AfPak War.
But now we can stop the deadly song before we try to swallow the horse. To help stop the war, we invite you to act now by clicking to -
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/602/t/4180/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27923
to send a letter to your Senator (or Vice-President Biden if as a DC resident you have none)
The AfPak war could and should have begun by swallowing only the fly -- tackling Al Qaeda as criminals, not as if they were a country that was at war with the US. The minimum amount of force necessary to apprehend them, including deadly force if necessary. That's it. Capturing cop-killers without burning down the neighborhood.
Yes, the Taliban are disgusting. Oppressive. But there are a myriad ways of encouraging reform in other countries. The one that does NOT work is trying to install democracy at the point of a bayonet. Or, even worse, Predator Drones.
Why a presidential candidate who was smart enough to read about, if not remember, Vietnam did not think that an endless war --- in a country that for centuries has hated all occupations with a burning fury ---- would undermine all plans for social reform at home --- exactly what happened to Lyndon Johnson - I can't imagine.
Anyway, the moment has come to correct the mistake. DO NOT SWALLOW THE HORSE! President Obama has been told that the war way "forward" means 500,000 US troops. Many dead, maimed of body, mind, and soul. Forget about health care. Forget education. Forget healing our wounded, choking planet. And he is --- it seems ---- thinking twice.
But the mindless pressures of military habit are still pressing. The American people --- surveys show a majority oppose this war -- must act to end it.
Even the fly that we could once have caught in Afghanistan is no longer nested there, or in Pakistan either, except insofar as we ourselves breed it by our swoops of violence.
It breeds in swamps of despair, and they can and do exist in many planetary backwaters. The other path --- friendship with Islam; economic aid at the grass-roots, micro-loan level; drawing on the healing of wind and solar energy instead of addiction to oil --- will do far more to protect America.
Again -- we invite you to act now by clicking to -
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/602/t/4180/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27923
to send a letter to your Senator (or Vice-President Biden if as a DC resident you have none)
Thanks and blessings that the effort you bring for peace and healing flows back into peace and healing in your own life.
Shalom, salaam, shantih, peace -- Arthur
(Writing still from Hahnemann Hospital -- probably for the last day before entering a rehab center, inshallah, im yirtzeh hashem, God willing.)
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