Christmas Letter - 2007 -
Rejecting the War Agenda & Standing Up for Peace

After six years, we should realize that we can not wait for the media, the churches, or our government leaders to stop the war agenda.  They are clearly not at all inclined to do so.  These institutions are obviously supporting the "War on Terror."  Therefore, as individual citizens, we must decide that we will stand for peace and do everything we can to resist the war agenda. 

When the independent journalist Dahr Jamail, who has spent a great deal of time in Iraq, was interviewed recently, he was asked what life was like "for ordinary people in Iraq?"

Jamail responded:

There is no ordinary life. On all levels the basic infrastructure in Iraq is far worse than before the invasion.

Unemployment is between 60 to 70 percent, the average home has only up to five hours of electricity a day, there are ongoing gas shortages, and 70 percent of Iraqis do not have access to drinkable water.

Over half the medical workers have fled the country, and the situation in the hospitals is worse today than it was than during the punitive United Nations sanctions following the first Gulf War in 1991.

The occupation of Iraq is a complete catastrophe, and one could easily argue that is the result of a genocidal policy conducted by the current Bush administration, the former Clinton administrations, and the Bush senior administration before that.

This is a bipartisan war against Iraq by successive US administrations that has spanned decades and resulted in the destruction of the country.

By now it should be abundantly clear that the "War on Terror" is a huge criminal fraud.  The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were based on lies, false premises, and the intentional deception of the public.  Furthermore, the war agenda is bankrupting our national treasury and destroying our way of life. 

If we had a feud with a neighbor because we suspected that neighbor had stolen or damaged our property, but then learned that someone else had committed the crime, what should our response be? 

We would naturally want to apologize and make amends.  A gift to compensate for the hard feelings would be appropriate.  Why has something similar not happened with the United States vis-à-vis Iraq or Afghanistan?  Why have the Democrats, the opposition party in the United States, not demanded an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from these disastrous and costly conflicts that were started on false pretenses and lies?  Why has the media not called for an end to the fighting?  Why are the leaders of the largest religious denominations absolutely silent on these highly illegal and unjust conflicts?

There is only one explanation for the compliance of these institutions with these illegal wars of aggression – they are all either supporting the "War on Terror" or are afraid of opposing it.

Rejecting the false and evil logic of the fraudulent "War on Terror," however, is a moral obligation we owe to our children, our nations, and our civilization.

We should try to see ourselves as the rest of the world sees us.  Imagine that the United States and Canada were independent peaceful republics that minded their own business, like Switzerland.  Imagine that instead of our nations, the great Russian Bear were engaged in global adventures and war-mongering. 

Imagine Russia's President Vladimir Putin were sending tens of thousands of troops into conflicts around the world and that Russian forces were supporting the occupation regimes in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq while Russian companies stole their most precious resources.  Imagine that Russia were supporting an ethnic civil war in North America and providing troops and military equipment for an illegal drug-running militia bringing narcotics into the United States. 

How would peace-loving Americans and Canadians feel about President Putin and Russia if he were doing what we are?  Russia is not the war-mongering beast committing war crimes and aggression around the world – we are.  We have met the beast and it is us.  

ISLAM IS PEACE