Freedom is free, but the cost of subjugating other peoples is bankrupting the U.S.

The CIA installed Saddam Hussein as a dictator, and the Iraqi people suffered and died as a result. Conservative politicians like Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. provided billions in aid and weapons, including chemical and biological weapons, to prop up Saddam’s dictatorship and the Iraqi, Kurdish and Iranian people paid dearly.

Then Saddam nationalized the Iraqi oil industry and over night Saddam went from being the ÿconservative’s posterboy to the boogie man. So the U.S. military slaughtered thousands of Iraqis and sanctions killed millions more to regain Iraq’s oil wealth for the multi-national oil companies.

The Iraqi people still don’t have freedom — their country is occupied by a foreign military power unable to quell the chaos it has created. Priceless and irreplaceable libraries, archaeological museums, etc. are lost forever. Loved ones have been lost, and there is no way to give back to a little boy or girl their eyes, legs, arms, etc. that were lost to U.S. bombs.

Iraq is just one example of hundreds of cases where the CIA and other secretive government operations have underhandedly installed dictators, armed oppressive regimes, aided and trained terrorists like bin Laden, assassinated leaders and thrown elections (foreign and domestic), infiltrated the media and disseminated lies and false propaganda, etc. In fact, such operations are increasing under Bush, and the U.S. government currently aids about 59 foreign dictatorships. Bush has already added $653 billion in new debt since the beginning of fiscal 2002, much of it spent taking away the freedom of Americans at home and countless peoples overseas.

All this corruption depends on one thing — a mass of ignorant people who will unconditionally support the military and government without regard to the morality or justice of their actions.

They are not being loyal or patriotic — they are mindlessly dragging this country through the mud. They are not defending or protecting this land — they are endangering it and will eventually destroy it — stirring up hatred abroad and undermining democracy and the U.S. Constitution at home.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and the Constitution says citizens have the right to peacefully assemble and speak out. Let’s remember that in the 1920s and 1930s, had a few more protesters joined those outside the Bush’s Union Bank on Wall Street, which was nothing more than a Nazi front which financed the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany, there would never have been a Third Reich, and 50 million lives could have been saved.

Jay Miller

Hills, IA