Letter to the United States Congress Warning Against Military Action Against Iran

I drafted the following letter,thinking at first of Representative Dennis Moore of Kansas. Then I decided that it would apply to a majority of elected officials, to the majority of Congress which has basically not acted as a separate branch of government and which has merely endorsed the crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes of the executive branch.

Dear elected official,

I hope you will skeptically scrutinize the rhetoric coming from the Bush administration about the so-called crisis with Iran. I remember how you parroted the lies propagated by the President and other government officials leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Back in 2003 you insisted that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When I and numerous others informed you that the facts were otherwise you ignored us and refused to investigate for yourself. You didn’t do your homework.

You also went along with the administration assertion that the 9-11 terrorists had something to do with Saddam Hussein. Of course, all the terrorists were Saudi Arabian. Now you recognize these previous views were erroneous, but we need a person in office who can make rational decisions about the real world in real time. Elected officials who are not competent students of current affairs and history simply facilitate the blunders of others, in this case the invasion and occupation of Iraq orchestrated by the executive branch.

After this administration made countless lies about Iraq it doesn’t make any sense to trust so-called intelligence and allegations coming from the White House, the Vice President’s Office, or the State Department. I think the Defense Department is the only sane one of the four and it’s ironic how this administration, that is constantly bantering about its respect for the military, has ignored the DOD which reportedly opposes an air war on Iran.

It isn’t much help for elected officials to inform us years after damaging decisions are made that they were simply misinformed. There is no excuse for it. Certainly the work of the legislative branch is as weighty as that of the physician. No one would tolerate a surgeon who told an amputation patient, “Gee whiz! Sorry things are such a mess but just I just didn’t know which leg to cut off!” Of course no one would go back to such an uninformed physician and they would end up with a malpractice lawsuit.
We can’t sue politicians for malpractice so we write them letters.

Many elected officials seem to relish being uninformed, out of the loop, unaware or this or that, and otherwise out to lunch. They want the opportunity of being thought of as “misinformed” so their constituents will give them a free pass for not voting in an informed manner Of course such pretenses are more in the vein of political maneuvers than the actions of competent elected officials. It sounds like the royal road to incompetence to me, and the evidence shows that is precisely what we have, incompetent elected officials and catastrophic results to show for it!

The first responsibility of an elected official is to be informed !

Give me a member of Congress who isn’t an easily misled ignoramus at the time a decision actually has to be made.

I am fed up with elected officials who ignore the facts of this very real world and substitute for facts and reason a gullible belief in provocative lies.
Provocative lies that lead to war are, of course, reprehensible.

This administration is also suspected of having religious views that motivate them to initiate wars in what they regard as an area where they believe Biblical prophecy is being fulfilled today so the administration is suspect both in terms of its motives and the stories it tells to justify their next military objective.


Tragically, Iraq has become a laboratory for war against the United States and will probably be so as long as United States troops are there to fight. As a result of the occupation an entirely new way of fighting otherwise invincible United States military forces has developed in the crucible of Iraq. A remarkably effective resistance strategy includes the use of Improvised Explosive Devices, car bombs, suicide bombers and methods that destroy the heaviest United States armor. Of course there are also forms of bombardment and small unit actions. Now it is too late to prevent the dissemination of these methods and I suppose we mayl be cursed to see them elsewhere in the future. Without invading Iraq I doubt that such a situation would have come about. We would be considerably safer and could have diverted the military to real world security concerns.

While the White House likes to talk about the relatively tiny Al Qaeda in Iraq the fundamental struggle south of the Kurdish region involves a host of indigenous actors who are united by one common objective, the goal of driving out the American invaders. Somehow we are not getting that over here. Rarely do I hear politicians or televised commentators discuss the war as a national liberation struggle which is what it is. Maybe we can’t see that because the era of national liberation struggles is supposedly over but history refuses to comply with that notion. Just as in Vietnam the United States has overlooked that it has invaded a nation and engaged an enemy which is basically nationalistic in character. Nationalism is certainly the fundamental interest that binds otherwise diverse and divergent parties in a common struggle against a common enemy, the occupiers.

Southern Iraq is now controlled by competing armed militias. The British are simply biding time before they completely move out. It looks like the contradictions in the north of Iraq are about to boil over as well and that Turkey will may come into conflict with Iraqi Kurds when it eventually invades Iraq as it has done many times in decades past. Furthermore, the so-called central government in Baghdad may try to impose some sort of policies on the PKK. If so, a civil war between the Kurds and the rest of Iraq may ensue.

The middle of Iraq seems to have been largely ethnically cleansed by various terrorist militias. It is a catastrophe that dwarfs the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans some years ago. Our invasion, ultimately made the ethnic cleansing in Iraq possible on such a large scale. What was anyone thinking when we invaded Iraq? The Congress helped create this cacophony of catastrophes by working with Mr. President Bush, by supporting the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Well, I guess they were gullibly gobbling up administration fairy tales and lies and thinking what they were told to think. They never did their homework to understand the region, or verify the so-called facts.

You know or should know that this administration lied about all sorts of things to try to build support for the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. If you still somehow cling to those lies then I guess I am wasting my time writing you.

I think you know that war with Iran would be more than a little likely to cause hardship and sacrifice here in the United States since world oil supplies are likely to be disrupted for an unknown period of time, possibly for years. Hardships could exceed those seen in several generations.
Would the world economy, or much of it, sputter to a halt as tankers stop arriving at thirsty ports full of Iranian, Iraqi, Persian Gulf or Saudi crude?

Recently I was over the state line in Kansas City, Missouri, and I saw a bus go by almost empty of passengers. My son was in the car with me and I told him that if the United States bombs Iraq it is likely that we will all be taking the bus. But will there be enough buses? Will we be rationing gasoline? Are you preparing for that? I really want to know.

I hate to think that your name and political career could suffer as the people you represent realize that you knew that fuel supplies would dry up and yet you embraced another set of administration concocted lies about another nation and rubber stamped another dysfunctional war.

Furthermore I believe the Bush administration is likely to use nuclear weapons against Iran. You are being told now. If the United States is at the bottom of polls throughout the world as a consequence of the invasion of and continuing effort to conquer Iraq there will be single digit support for this nation after another use of nuclear weapons.

I am hopeful that you will make every effort to look beyond the war propaganda of this administration which is once again matching its so-called intelligence to fit the war-plans. Remember the Downing Street memo and the whole Valerie Plame affair. If you don’t feel compelled to impeach this President then at least don’t become part of his plans to make war on Iran. The President’s duplicity on Iraq should have warned you to be skeptical and incredulous when you hear the him speak about foreign lands. I understand that he had no knowledge of even the differences between the Sh’ia and Sunni branches of Islam when he invaded Iraq! A President should know that! An educated person should know that! Now he is worried about Sh’ia influence!

Americans are a patient and largely apolitical people but even they may eventually rise up against fools in high places the tyrants who use them. I write you because I sincerely hope that the people will not be compelled to take such drastic action. Of course I fear the severe restriction of our civil liberties by this administration if it screws up the world energy flow by bombing Iran.

Please, I beg you to carefully study the facts and do everything in your power to prevent this insane war drive against Iran from becoming an actual war. Just for one thing, you should be fully informed about Iranian diplomatic outreach to the United States since the ‘80’s up to the present.
You could support real diplomacy with Iran. You should be fully informed that it is the Bush administration which refuses to engage in any real negotiations with Iran even though it has recently began posturing as wanting to negotiate. If you are not informed you should look into these
matters yourself because it is the only way to assess things for yourself.

The whole world is watching you and your colleagues. Will Congress once again rubber-stamp an unjust war that simply creates more war, more destruction, more hardship? Will Congress once again sit on its hands as the White House destroys another modern society in the Middle-East? If so people may not be able to drive their cars anymore but you can bet that even if they have to walk they will be walking to your door to ask, “Why did you let this happen, so much worse than Iraq? Why were you uninformed, again?”