President Barack Obama:

Nobel Prize for Peace, 2009!

By Fernando Suarez del Solar

ccun.org, December 27, 2009

Dear Mr. President:  I know you may never read these words and even if you did they would not change your decision to send more young Americans to the war in Afghanistan.  But, as the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jesús Alberto Suárez del Solar who died on Marcy 27, 2003, during the invasion of Iraq, I consider it my moral duty to share my thoughts with you today.
As you surely know, 929 brave young Americans have died in Afghanistan as well as thousands of innocent Afghan civilians.  In Iraq, 4367 of our sons and daughters have died together with thousand and thousands of innocent Iraqis.

When Mr. Bush sat in the office you now occupy, I asked how many of our children would have to die before these barbarous wars ended?  What was the magic number?  And so I ask you the same question.  How many more young people must die before you truly work for peace?

When more than 50% of the American people oppose the sending of more troops, are you not ignoring the majority and listening to the few who are eager to send brave young soldiers and Marines to die or kill innocent people for unclear motives?  Don't forget that your predecessor began this war to capture the criminal Osama Bin Laden.  In your speech, you did not mention his name but said we have to "complete the mission."  Your words remind me of those of Bush the criminal.

President Obama, why do you deceive the people by claiming that you will withdraw the troops in 2011?  We know one cannot put a deadline on a war and so your words sound like the lies that presidents have told us in the past.  We have the example of Vietnam (another open-ended war); the example of the English and the Russians who were unable to "win" in Afghanistan; the example of your own inability to end the bloodshed there and in Iraq.

You will send 30,000 more troops and we will pay the price--our elected officials or those who sit in the Pentagon will not pay.  No, we will pay with our taxes, that is, those of us who still have jobs.  Millions are unemployed and our youth have seen their access to higher education reduced.  Would it not be advisable, Mr. President, to invest the billions of war dollars in education so that our youth will learn the values of respect and tolerance for others?  Would that not make us a stronger nation?  Would it not be better to invest those billions of dollars spent on criminal and unjust wars on universal health care for the American people?

President Obama, I regret that you have deceived the majority of citizens who placed our hope for peace in your hands.  We gave you our vote for the good of the country and now you deliver the same old thing.

In the coming year, you can expect demonstrations in which veterans from both past and current wars take to the street to shout "Stop the war!"  Will you, like Bush, play deaf as more young soldiers and Marines return in body bags or missing a limb or mentally exhausted and lost in a bureaucracy that provides them minimal care? 

President Obama, it saddens me that you have been unable to keep your promise to those of us who voted for peace. 

Yes, we can?  I'm not so sure.
Fernando Suarez del Solar, Founder & Director
Guerrero Azteca Peace Project
(760)233-0630 Direct telephone  (858)774-0172 Cell telephone
PO Box 300221,Escondido,CA 92030-0221
www.guerreroazteca.org