Killing Bin Laden Continues Disastrous Bush Policies President-elect Obama stated on his recent 60 Minutes appearance that he was committed to “capturing or killing Bin Laden”. I agree that Bin Laden, and his second in command Al Zawahiri, should be captured, but they should not be killed. Killing them would be a continuation of the disastrous policies of the War on Terror which so isolated us from the rest of the world. It is a dangerous policy and one which the Obama administration should carefully re-examine. Victims of Terrorism Not Just American I have been studying the terrorism issue since 1998 when the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Al Qaeda. The victims of those bombings were overwhelmingly African citizens.  Although the target was the U.S., the reaction of the U.S.

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 Book Review: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.  Jane Mayer. Doubleday: New York, 2008. Prepare to be shattered. This is a difficult book to read. Mysteries of Bush Administration Response Post 9/11 Revealed Jane Mayer’s meticulous dissection of the actions of the Bush administration post 9/11 is an extraordinary service to Americans and to the world. Many of us have been trying to understand how this presidency went so wrong.

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 Summer Inquiry  As the days of the Bush presidency wane and as we in the US prepare to elect a new President, I have been thinking about what lies ahead for the world.  I have been looking at my own failures of committed action over the past eight years when I saw the present administration act in ways  I knew were bound for disaster.  Will the next administration repeat the same errors and wreak more havoc on the globe? Why Were We So Ineffective? Reports now coming out reveal the sheer cruelty which the present administration became committed to in its response to 9/11. Why did we let this happen? How did it come to pass that the US  is now practicing torture? Why did the US Senate and House of Representatives vote for the Iraq War despite the fact that so many Americans were opposed to it?

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(Editor’s Note: While I take a little summer vacation, I thought some of you might enjoy reading this letter I found in my files recently. It is dated 9/22/02 and it is the text of a letter I wrote, but did not send to President Bush in the early days of the build-up to the Iraq War. This blog is much longer than my usual blogs, so read it at your leisure! Headings have been added to make reading a bit easier.  Questions at the end for those who stick around! )                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Dear President Bush; I know you are a man who loves his family, and his country.

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War Is A Force Which Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.  Public Affairs: New York, 2002. Chris Hedges, a foreign correspondent for 15 years, many of them for the New York Times, has written a passionate, exciting and disturbing book in which he tries to understand the enduring attraction of war. Hedges, in his long career covering wars and conflicts from the Balkans to Central America to the Middle East, has directly witnessed war at its worst. His reflections make for absorbing and disquieting reading. This book cuts through much posturing and folly and goes directly to the heart. An extraordinary writer, Hedges weaves in the stories of people and events he personally witnessed in conflicts he reported on and he mixes these with quotes from the Odyssey and the Illiad and from Shakespeare.

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An article in the NYTimes titled, “Grannies Charged in Peace Protest Are Acquitted” which appeared on April 27 aroused a number of feelings in me from admiration to anger. The article described the trial of a number of elderly women in New York City who, last October, entered a military recruiting station and said they wanted to enlist; some of them had canes or used walkers. This was a protest against the Iraq War and they were arrested and charged with blocking access to the station. In the trial last week, all were acquitted because they were willing to step aside and let anyone else in who wanted to enlist. The writer of the article made many parallels of the trial of these women to the classic Hollywood movie Miracle on 34th Street and suggested that grannyhood was on trial, similar to putting Kris Kringle in the docket. Definitely a no-win situation and surprise, surprise, the grandmothers were all acquitted.

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