San Francisco Atheists - Essays: The Way Backward

The Way Backward

By Don Havis

Published in the San Mateo Daily Journal, January 2, 2007

Dear Editor,

It is looking more and more like “the way forward,” spoken of by the Iraq Study Group, is being interpreted by our fearless leader as a path backward towards more troops and more war to pursue our original goals in the Middle East, which were pretty much to gain control—preferably via a proxy government; an “ally in the war against terror”—of that strategically important and oil rich region. Oblivious to the unanimous recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Colin Powell, we are clearly being prepared for the January announcement that a “troop surge” of perhaps 30,000 soldiers will be needed to “quell the violence” in Iraq, or at least in Baghdad.

“They can’t run us out of the Middle East,” Bush recently declared, as if we have a perfectly legitimate right to control that area of the world, as opposed to the notion that the Middle Eastern countries themselves might have some right to control their own lands and the massive oil resources that lie under them.

We are now sending another carrier group into the Persian Gulf, right next to Iran, whom we all know is part of the “axis of evil.” Preparing for a possible quick bombing run?

I agree that it is a very bad idea to allow religious fanatics to develop nuclear weapons. After all, the U.S. and Israel have done so, and I’m not sure the world is any safer. However, I doubt very much that continuing to try to expand the American empire, bombing and/or economically threatening one country at a time into submission is a better “way forward.”

Don Havis

The author can be emailed at dhavis@sbcglobal.net.