Get A Second Opinion
 

If you ever go to a doctor with heartburn and all you get is a prescription for antacids, go get a second opinion. Just treating the symptom is not going to cure anything. The doctor should have gotten to the source of the problem. Why are you getting heartburn? Once you discover the source, perhaps eating too much spicy food, a change of diet will stop the heartburn.

To declare a war on terror and attack countries, when terrorists can be anywhere in the world and don't have their own government or military, is an exercise in futility. Logic should confirm that. The more we attack, the more people will join organizations who use terror as their tactic. No other country even comes close to the US in military strength to go head to head with us, so the only tactic at their disposal to intimidate us and instill fear to try to coerce us to meet their demands is terrorism. A war on terror is just treating the symptom. We have to identify the source and change those situations that incite people to use terror. If we remove the source by remedying the underlying cause, we also remove the recruitment incentive.

There are several areas that need to be addressed. First, the long standing Israel-Palestine problem needs to be resolved and the US needs to use its leadership to help bring this about. Our billions of dollars in aid to Israel should be used as an incentive to urge cooperation. Secondly, we need to remove our military bases from Saudi Arabia where the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, are located. It is a contentious point to Muslims making a pilgrimage to Mecca to have us in their holy land. We need to help the nations in the Middle East to develop economically so there is employment and a future to look forward to for young Muslims. One of the main reasons that Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorists and those who recruit for those organizations is because before the Gulf War Iraq had a large, comfortable middle class that was on a par with the middle class lifestyle in European countries.

To pursue a policy of invasion, bombing and killing innocent Muslims in pursuit of terrorists will only create a never-ending cycle of attack, retaliate, attack, retaliate. While the Neo Con political philosophy advocates perpetual war, such as that which is being created by their current policy, as one of its tenets, Americans will not tolerate the continual sacrificing of our sons and daughters as cannon fodder to further the stranglehold the military-industrial complex has on our country.

In his last speech as president, five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1961, "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

This administration is especially vulnerable to the unwarranted influence of misplaced power with the vice president's connection to Halliburton and the president's father's connection with the Carlyle Group. Perpetual war will mean perpetual profits for those companies, profits paid for with our tax dollars and our children's blood.

We must stop treating the symptom. It's time to get a second opinion.

1-11-04