An open letter to senator McCain

Dear Sir, today I received a second letter in one week, signed by you, urging me to help in electing you the president of the US, scaring the daylights out of me of the Democrats if they happen to win and of their” liberal” tax and spend policies …..etc, and of course, asking for a contribution of $2300 or less. The interesting thing is a statement written by your campaign and attached for me to “sign” on the dotted line and send it back to them, a statement that is so ridiculous and inaccurate, and could not be further from the truth, that I am suppose to not just agree to its content but also to agree in writing and to bless it with a contribution to your campaign.  

You started your letter with your now well known phrase “my friend ………etc”, and since we are not “really” friends, or acquaintances, or had ever met, that “Cliché” of “friend” is really meaningless. I guess the only reason I got these, and other letters in the past, is because I am a registered Republican.

Mr. McCain, I voted the first time in the US in 1980 for Ronald Reagan, and voted in every election following that for Republicans up to and until the 2000 election, but following that, and as a result of the misguided, misinformed and just plain stupid policies of this president and his so-called new Cons, I did not and probably never will vote again for a Republican to any office.   And by the way, the term “new Cons” is really indicative of how they managed in “conning” the entire nation including the mainstream news media in believing all their lies and deceptions regarding the imminent threat from Iraq, a threat that proved now beyond any shred of doubt to be unreal, unfounded and untrue and just plain outright lies!!

Everyone including yourself Sir, are brushing away that fiasco that lead to the invasion of Iraq as bad “intelligence”, from the US, Britain, and of course Israel, everybody including yourself, claim that we thought they have WMD, everybody changed their story for the reasons to invade and get ourselves into this quagmire from WMD, to bad dictator, to involvement with 9/11 and terrorism to spreading Democracy in the middle east ………etc etc etc , which one is it Sir, did you make up your mind yet!! And by the way, how could they call it bad “intelligence” where is the intelligence there!!!, should you not call it bad “stupidity”!!

Senator McCain, You say and imply – not in these very words - in your commercials that you are and were a (war hero); we may disagree about the definition of war hero. I do agree that you served your country, that you followed orders and never questioned the morality or righteousness of that war, but a war hero!!!

A war hero,” my friend” in my humble opinion is someone who perform an act of heroism in a war defending his country.

Let’s put this to the test, and examine yours and your supporter’s claim.

To start from the end of that statement, defending his country, your record Sir is about your fighting in Vietnam, was the Vietnam War a war to defend the US, that is what you and all the right wing supporters say. The truth of the matter, after more than 40  years is simply, Vietnam never attacked the US main land, they never fire a shot at a city or a citizen of the US in a known US territory, and never threatened the security of America, Vietnam, Sir,  was a divided country who aspire to re-unite it’s people, how was that an attack on the US!!!, how was that a threat to the US!!!, how was attacking them with all your might to prevent their unification is some kind of defense of the US and its people and its security??? So you say it was part of a communist plot or strategy, it was a war against communism, it was a war of ideology between those who believed in communism and those who believed in Capitalism, and who claimed that if they lose in Vietnam, this will end the free world, that they will take over Europe and then the rest of the world including the US. Well was all this true or just another big lie and or exaggeration !!, they won in Vietnam, you lost in Vietnam, how come after your loss none of what you claimed and predicted to happen ever happened, Europe never felt to communism, and the communism never took over the world, does this sound familiar Sir to you, or you have such a short memory, or perhaps you believe that people have  short memories ,your claims against communism then and your claims today against so-called Terrorism, and the scare tactics that you used to sell the Vietnam war to the American people, and the one you are using now are identical, the history is repeating its self, but does anyone learn from it.

I strongly believe that if somehow you won tomorrow the war against the so-called terrorism, and you end it by whatever standards set forth by you, you ,in a month or two, a year or two, will have another thing, come up with another word and attach to it (ism) as your new threat that you must fight or it will be the end of democracy and the free world and America as we know it, you will never run out of words or enemies, and you accused anyone who do not subscribe to this policy of fear as “naïve” I do wonder about who is really naïve!! By the way, you must know by now the reasons you lost in Vietnam, it was not the lack of weapons or the money to finance that war, it was the lack of support from the American people, it was when they discovered that they were mislead and deceived, it was when they stop supporting it, just exactly as is happening now with the Iraq war, yes history is repeating itself.

To continue to examine the statement above, and to put your record to the test, you have failed the first part of “defending his country” how about performing a Heroic act, let’s see how Heroic your act was, you Sir were flying and Bombing the Hell out of those “Commies !!” as you called them then, from the air, have it ever occurred to you that you may have KILLED innocent people, or the thought never crossed  your mind, yes Sir, All indications is you bombed many innocent Vietnamese, Men , Women and children, you Sir, personally pulled the trigger and have the blood of those innocent people on your hands, but then you were shot down, you were captured, you say you were tortured, I beg your pardon, you were there in the first place, in their country, in their skies, in their territories, bombing and killing them, should they have put you in a five star hotel and thank you for destroying their homes and fields and factories and killing them!!!! But then after all of that, you were released, wounded, but alive, it can’t be said about the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands who were killed, or severely  wounded, tens of thousands of Americans as well were killed and wounded, those who paid the ultimate price with their lives paid a lot more than you did, and tens of thousands of Americans paid more than you paid with their injuries, some remains till this day cannot even walk, much less run for the office of the president,  but none of them made it in front of  the TV cameras, none of them were as known as you Sir, was the fact that your Dad was a high ranking officer had anything to do with it!!.  You may have suffered Sir, but many more people suffered a whole lot more than you did.

You claim that that experience of being a POW taught you a lot, and it should, but frankly speaking, I doubt it very much, if it did, then how is it that in all your countless visits to Iraq following the invasion, you have never once, not once, visited or seriously  inquired about all the POWs there, you of all people should be the one to carry the torch for all POWs and to make absolutely sure that they were well treated, that they never suffer what you claimed to have suffered in Vietnam, you sir should have been  the one and the only one to discover what was happening in Guantanamo and Abu-Ghrieb, to be in the forefront of the fight for those people, because we are the USA and we are the champion of freedom and justice, and we are unlike Vietnam or any other nation, we are the only nation that have a statue of liberty, sadly, your visits to Iraq that were well orchestrated with an Eye on the future, a calculated planes for photo ops, to be  used in your upcoming and planed campaign for the greatest prize of them all, the office of the president of the US. More sad even is your disagreement with the supreme court latest decision on those people in Guantanamo, do you Sir think they do not deserve their day in court, having been held for years without charges, is there a chance in hell that some of them are innocent, like the hundreds they released and were as innocent as can be, have your experience in Vietnam taught you anything!!! I guess not, innocence is not a word in your lexicon particularly when it applies to anyone who is not on the side of your ideology, may be that is why neither you nor did any one of your neo CONs ever express one word of sorrow or empathy for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who paid the ultimate price and the millions of their families who suffered as a result of the most stupid foreign policy decisions an American president  /administration did in the history of this country, not one word of regret that George Bush’s action that murdered and injured for life and changed forever the lives of millions of Iraqis, and Americans alike, that will have a very long implications for the US in that region for decades to come, the policy that either by design or stupidity have elevated Iran to a new high in power and influence in that region, a policy that further deteriorated the status  and creditability of the US worldwide even with its closest allies, and that is the same and exact policy you are advocating and running on, and you really want me to vote for you!!.

Senator McCain, some people raise the issue of your age, for me, Age is not and should not be an issue for I am almost as old, bur Sir, you appeared many times on TV as confused, as absent minded as lacking the needed knowledge to answer questions, as mixed up on the makeup of Iraq and the dominant forces there, as totally ignorant of the differences between the many sects that affect what is happening on the ground. You appear Sir, as old and tired, seeming to pay more attention to the camera angle than to the content and substance of what you say, the smile that seems to be “frozen” on your face, seemed to be fake and not genuine, you seem to give the impression that you would rather be in a different place especially when the questions are not all what you like to answer. Your temper Sir is very obvious in spite of all the cover up and the efforts you put up trying to hide it.

And now senator McCain, to your flip flops on the issues, you seem to have changed your mind on many issues, to mention a few, on Iraq, from advocating staying there 100 years, to pulling the troops but not before victory, however you never defined in clear words what is victory, and I do not expect you to define it, you said the other day ( it was not important how long they stay there), showing your true intentions and your callous attitude towards the families of the troops, then, on energy and drilling off shore, you also flip flopped, you have followed George W Bush and not his father in that, which gives a lot of credit to all who said that you are running for another four years of Bush’s presidency, you seem to do exactly what he said, some maverick !!!, your stand on the economy from giving more tax breaks to your friends and supporters in the oil industry and the likes, to giving more tax to the wealthy ( like yourself) , but denying the middle class any relief, after all, what do you know about the middle class!!, you have never in your life lived a day like them, you have been privileged since you were born, again another example of running to extend Bush’s failed policies for four more years, you even said that you thought that the economy was great, on which planet do you live Sir, did you ever ask the people in those town hall meetings that you seem to love, if they were better off now after eight years  of Bush, would you even dare to ask this question!!! Did you ever think if the two oil men who run the nation, Bush and Cheney, had benefited personally from this oil surge in prices and how much their OWN bank accounts has grown!! And you still want to make Bush’s taxes give away to the rich permanent!!! And you dare ask me to vote for you!!

Senator McCain, I could go on and on and on with all the examples that would let only a fool vote for you, but, I just want to say one thing finally, even if you were really a war hero, a war hero requires one with courage and endurance, which is hardly a qualification for a president, a president Sir requires one with vision and good judgment, and you Sir did not demonstrate that you have either, if you need me to explain, please read the letter one more time from the beginning.

 I wish you the best of luck and heath and wealth, but far away from the white house and the presidency.

Truly

Fawzy Farrag