Dear Editors,

The silence in the media is deafening.  For a whole month Sadr City , the largest Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad was bombed and strafed by our C-130 gunships and Predator drones.   A mix of 1000 insurgents and civilians has been killed, 2000 injured.  [listen to detailed coverage on NPR:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90268415]  A related story that made the Detroit News website is a May 5^th entry “U.S. Backs 5 Billion Luxury Project for Baghdad .”  Upscale hotels and a golf course are envisioned by Pentagon planners as a buffer zone {unstated but implied:  to keep out the mortar rockets now being fired from Sadr City }.

  Apparently the strategy of our surge is security by any means necessary.  It’s now-- Bombs over Baghdad .  How can this possibly win their hearts and minds?  Even our allies, the Shiite government itself, will end in asking us to leave.  We are spending 720 million dollars a day there [see AFSC video online: http://www.afsc.org/cost/?gclid=CIDysKPvl5ICFQERPAodKD7K-w ].   And as Senator Carl Levin wrote recently in this paper, the Iraqi government has a now estimated 70 billion dollars oil profit surplus this year, which it is not spending to rebuild Iraq .  Congress this month is poised to vote them another “supplemental” 70 billion.

 Greed and this current war form a fatal partnership.  The bottom lines of this business of war’s indelible effect on our society need to be fully examined.

As we gaze at plummeting Wall Street numbers, what have the seven plus years of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism meant for our world’s economy?  Our dollar vs. the euro devalued 60%, the national debt swells from 5.7 to $9 trillion {a 58% increase}, oil price per barrel skyrockets $28 to $120 {a 429% increase}.  Is the middle class feeling more secure yet?  No, the only benefit is for a certain few of the super-rich.  We’re building the biggest embassy complex ever in Baghdad , the world’s second busiest and most fortified airport near Baghdad , and pay Sunni and Shiite’s $300 per month to form militias fighting other Sunnis and Shiites.  As the war in Iraq surges, our financial system tanks.  The fruits of unjust war are a terrible damage to the body, soul and bank accounts of America . 

While the Fed re-calibrates to protect large private financial institutions, my conservative- balanced fund-socially responsible investments are further gutted by the speculators in greed and war.   Their “Other People’s Money” is my 401k retirement savings.  The callous clever ones swim, while the rest now sink, houses and all, in the shrinking sea of easy money created to float the “feel good” diversion of false prosperity, hiding the bankrupt underpinnings of this wasteful war. 

This White House leadership in seven years, as part of the surge in national debt, has borrowed another one trillion dollars from our future social security reserves to keep the federal government trudging through this time of never-ending war.  [see attached]  Mortgage upon mortgage of people’s homes, employers pension funds, personal and workplace retirement accounts, also all have been leveraged in.   Those with these least liquid financial assets will be the biggest losers in an ongoing collapse.  One could be ultra conservative and keep all money in CD’s and money markets, but when the annual interest rates are 2%, 1% and less, while annual inflation is >4%, and the foreign exchange dropping by 5-10%/yr, your nest egg is broken from the start.

The Wall Street bankers may have a safety net, but the nation’s reliance on an institutionalized war economy will surely leave most of us pancaked on the pavement.

Yours truly,

Michael McCarthy PA-C
Blue Water Pax Christi
2714 Stone St.,  Port Huron , MI  48060
810 982 2870
mccpax@comcast.net