SO HELP ME GOD

"So help me God".

Within minutes, if not seconds of saying those words on January 20, 2009, which inaugurate Barack Obama as President of the US and Commander in Chief of the armed forces, some innocent civilian around the world will die by unnecessary US military action. As the life is snatched from some unsuspecting man, woman or child simply trying to live out the Iraqi or the Afghan or the Pakistani or the Syrian or the Iranian dream, President Obama will have exercised the most awesome power that comes with that solomn oath: his License To Kill.

We don't spend six hundred fifty billion dollars a year on weapons of civilian destruction for nothing. The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex demands that they be used, frequently if possible, to maintain need for endless replenishment. These folks will lobby and propagandize and bully and cajole the American public endlessly until the guy at the helm aggressively gives the order to fire or passively allows the overt and covert operations already in place to continue their murder and mayhem.

President Elect Obama campaigned to end the failed Iraq war...so he will have fresh soldiers and resources to funnel into the failed Afghan war; so he can send drones to bomb more wedding parties in Pakistan; so he can order more border incursions in Syria; so he can threaten Iran endlessly. The current Commander In Chief exercised his License To Kill frequently and with little or no hesitation, running his kill count to over a million with sixty-five days yet to go. Mercifully, the Constitution will take away, after two thousand nine hundred twenty-two days, the current President's License To Kill. Had the American people and the Congress lived up to their responsibilities to act morally and courageously, his License To Kill would have been revoked long ago. Irresponsible leaders should not be allowed to play with guns. We can only surmise how the new President will behave with his new power.

His rhetoric and his fealty to the war party, alas, are not encouraging.

CONG. PETER ROSKAM'S OCTOBER, 2008 REPORT CARD ON IRAQ WAR

November 7, 2008

Congressman Peter Roskam
150 S. Bloomingdale Road, Suite 200
Bloomingdale, IL 60108

Dear Congressman Roskam,

October was the twenty-second consecutive month you have earned an “F” for failure on the Iraq War.

It was earned by voting for another ten billion dollars to continue this criminal military enterprise in which another fourteen American soldiers died needless, senseless deaths. It was earned for funneling this enormous amount of borrowed money to continue the most self destructive military venture in American history while our nation’s infrastructure languished from neglect, and our entire economy teetered on collapse. It was earned for refusing to address this war in any meaningful sense in your public pronouncements, your website, your entire first term as Illinois Sixth District Congressman.

That Congressman, is a breathtaking level of failure that should sicken and anger every sensible voter in the Sixth District. Yet, just as breathtaking, is your genius for political survival with such a dreadful record, garnering 59% of the 203,000 votes to gain re-election for another two years. For the political acumen by which you achieved such an overwhelming re-election victory, you receive and “A”.

That means in the 111th Congress you can vote to squander another quarter of a trillion dollars at the rate of ten billion monthly to prosecute, not a war really, but the continued occupation of a once sovereign nation we invaded with lies, deception, fear and intimidation. That means hundreds of American military can die needless, senseless deaths, and twenty-five million Iraqis can continue to suffer under our conquest. That means America’s infrastructure, health care system, educational structure, industrial base will continue to wither and possibly sink us to the level of other , once great nations forever.

Oh, I forgot. George W. Bush, the architect of that criminal military enterprise, and the architect of that immoral, if not criminal dismantling of our financial system, will not be leading your party or the country anymore. Quite possibly, the U Turn our new President will take from the policies you so recklessly supported in your first term will minimize the damage you can do in your second term.

In what was the most hilarious aspect of your re-election campaign, you printed campaign literature and even set up a website linking yourself to our next President to bask in the glow of greatness he radiates so effortlessly. We have names for human beings like President Elect Obama, Congressman. They are called “statesman”; they are called “humanitarians”; they are called “leaders”.

Linking yourself to President Elect Barack Obama is a good start. How about emulating him as well?

Respectfully yours,


Walt Zlotow
IL Sixth District Resident

Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, November 11, 2008
Also published in the Daily Herald, December 5, 2008