On Wednesday, 10 February, Pfc. Adriana Alvarez of San Benito died of a gunshot wound in Baghdad, Iraq.

The exact circumstances of her death remain unclear, so we do not know whether her death is combat related. Pfc. Alvarez enlisted in the military at age 18, shortly after graduating from high school. She wanted a career in law enforcement and believed military service would be helpful in that pursuit. She received military police training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, and was deployed to Iraq with a military police unit in August, 2009. She had completed about half her tour when her life was cut short.

Her family, understandably, is immensely proud of her, but also completely distraught. Reportedly, they did not want her to enlist, but she was determined to gain the experience she wanted and proud to serve her country. While she undoubtedly served her country well, our government, and the American people, obviously served her very poorly.

Mr. President. It is past time to end these wars. Neither one of them serves any purpose beyond spreading and intensifying the world’s hatred of the United States. Whatever goals we needed to achieve in Afghanistan were achieved long ago. Now, we just slaughter people and cultivate a new generation of resistance fighters willing to die to drive us from their country; and, in some instances, cooperate with international terrorist organizations dedicated to attacking the United States.

With respect to Iraq, where you, Mr. President, ordered Adriana to sacrifice her life, there never was any legitimate, justifiable reason to invade and ignite a slaughter of Iraqis that also have cost thousands of American lives, plus many more thousands severely wounded, many debilitated for life with the physical and psychological scars of war. We are looking at a flood of service men and women, repeatedly deployed to combat zones, who are coming home with numerous psychological disorders, including Post Traumatic Stress. There are so many the military and Veterans Administration are overwhelmed. Now, we are seeing treatment of our military personnel being contracted out to various state agencies whose employees are beginning to take crash courses in how to counsel and treat psychologically wounded veterans.

Mr. President, we have lost too many, and the ones we will continue to lose–even if you end these God forsaken wars and withdraw all troops immediately without another new casualty in either Iraq or Afghanistan–are far more than can be justified in any decent, honorable, honest way. The Rio Grande Valley is one of those regions to bear the highest costs of loved ones lost. In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a total of 5,365 U.S. military personnel have lost their lives (as of 13 Feb 2010). Of those, 37 are from the Valley, representing 0.69 percent of the total lost. While that is a small number, less than one percent, we have lost servicemen and now a service woman, at a rate of 1.97 times higher than the Valley’s proportion of the nation’s population.

Few areas in the U.S. have been forced to pay a higher price in loved ones lost than have we here in the Valley. With Valley units being deployed to Afghanistan, where you are intensifying the war, the senseless slaughter, the needless deaths, the Valley must brace for even more of our own coming home in a box–not thanks to George Bush, but thanks to you, President Barack Obama.

Adriana was a daughter, sister, grandchild, niece, friend. She is lost to those who loved her and cared for her. There is disbelief they never will see her smile and hear the warmth of her laughter again. Who would she have been had she not been murdered in this unconscionable war? A wife, a mother? A happy, successful, fulfilled person who made worthwhile contributions to her community and nation? Certainly that is what everyone in the Valley would have hoped for her. Whom she might have become, what contributions she might have made now have been robbed from us forever by a president who does not have the guts, does not have the spine to do what, somewhere in that great intellect of his, he knows he should do.

Mr. President, we had a belly full of cowards in the White House with Deserter Bush. We had enough war criminals in the White House with War Criminal Bush and his henchman War Criminal Cheney. The continuing war crimes being racked up in Iraq and Afghanistan now are your crimes. The blood of Pfc. Alvarez is on the hands of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the other brigand war criminals of the Bush administration. But we say to you Mr. President, the blood of Pfc. Alvarez is on your hands also. Have you no decency, Sir? Have you no conscience?

If you need a refresher course in recent history, we urge you to remember you won the Democratic nomination over Hillary Clinton because you took a stronger position on peace and ending these God forsaken wars than she did. Those of us opposed to these wars are the ones who propelled you into the Presidency. Admittedly, you never pledged to end either the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. But you promised an honesty to the American people you have not kept. Indeed, as you give your pathetic speeches on why we must escalate the Afghanistan war while we also must perpetuate the Iraq war, and, in the process, continue to sacrifice on the alter of the God of War the lives and the blood of the very best we have, you lie to the American people. You lie repeatedly and at every turn.

You lie by omission, Sir, because you refuse to tell the American people continuation of these wars is not making us more secure but less secure. You lie when you say we must fight these wars to protect our national security. Yet the only real threat to our national security are our imperialist foreign policies and the wars of imperial conquest they dictate.

You lie by omission, Sir, because you refuse to tell the American people a key reason for these wars is to maintain and expand the American Empire. You lie, Sir, because you refuse to tell the American people the Taliban is not part of some international terrorist organization determined to destroy America, but is just largely disorganized rag tag bands of resistance fighters seeking to drive American invaders from their land and stop the senseless slaughter of their people every time there is a wedding.

You lie, Sir, because you refuse to tell the “geo-political” truth about both Iraq and Afghanistan. You lie, Sir, when you refuse to tell the American people the only reasons we are in Iraq are to control the oil supplies of the Middle East and toady to the dictates of Zionist pariahs who rule over Israel. You lie, Sir, when you refuse to tell the American people the reason we are in Afghanistan is to control the flow of oil out of Central Asia so it does not flow through Iran or Russia, and to restrict Chinese access.

You lie, Sir, when you refuse to tell the American people a key reason for these wars is to serve the “military-industrial complex”, to keep their pockets bulging with money as they are given lucrative military contracts. You lie, Sir, when you say you seek to reduce spending by the Federal government and reduce the budget deficit because you are proposing huge increases in military spending to enable you to continue to prosecute these wars to achieve the purposes of empire, to prostitute the United States to Israel, and to prostitute yourself to the war profiteers in the capitalist class.

You lie, Sir. You lie. You lie. You lie.

Now, a daughter of the Valley has paid for your lies with her life. We shed tears of grief. You continue to lie.

Sir, if you want to reverse your slide in the polls, if you want to restore both the faith and the hopes of many of those who voted for you, if you want to begin to regain the respect of many former supporters who now are beginning to revile you with contempt, end these wars now. Bring our troops home. Stop serving your war monger, blood thirsty, imperial masters and do the job you SAY you were elected to do.

SERVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. FOR A CHANGE, DO WHAT IS RIGHT INSTEAD OF WHAT YOU ARE TOLD TO DO BY YOUR OWNERS. STOP SACRIFICING THE LIVES OF THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THIS GREAT NATION ON TO THE gods OF WAR AND EMPIRE. MAN UP DAMN IT!

Samuel Freeman is a political science professor based in the Rio Grande Valley and a Vietnam War veteran. His weekly Left Is Right column appears exclusively in the Guardian.

Content is republished in full from the Rio Grande Guardian.

President Obama faces a difficult task. He must first win over the anti-war community that once cheered for Obama for opposing the Iraq war have now voiced their discontent about his decision to divert military resources back to Afghanistan.

In an open letter to Obama, filmmaker Michael Moore not only criticized Obama’s decision for escalating the war in Afghanistan, but warned him that his decision could tarnish his legacy. Meanwhile, MoveOn.org urged its members to send messages to the White House voicing their opposition to the troop increase.

To be honest, Obama’s capitulation to the pro-war hawks of both political parties is not surprising. To understand why, it is important to understand former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning of the impending dangers of the military-industrial complex.

The Warning
In his farewell speech to the nation, Eisenhower’s admonishment of the military-industrial complex was a warning against the impending dangers of fraud, distorted priorities, and the entrenched interest of defense contractors.

Eisenhower warned:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Eisenhower worried the complex would alter American domestic order over time, entrenching and expanding a powerful federal state to pursue social and national security. However, by the time he raised concerns, it was already so firmly established.

Crossing the Rubicon
After World War II, America’s foreign policy pendulum started swinging the other way at the start of the Cold War. Instead of reverting back to its traditional isolationist character, our foreign policy shifted to a comprehensive containment strategy.

Of the many numbing qualities of the cold war, desensitizing people to open-endedness could be considered the most significant. The need for a military-industrial complex was not so much for purposes of economic expansion directly, but for maintaining US hegemony “a while longer” throughout the world through direct intervention by American armed forces.

The cold war blurred the difference between wartime and peacetime activities and it obscured the difference between war profits and civilian profits. The origins of this policy can be traced a top secret paper written, National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), issued in April 1950 shortly before the Korean War by the National Security Council and signed by President Harry S. Truman in Sept 1950. Drafted Paul Nitze, the plan laid out the basic public economic policies that the US pursues to the present day.

NSC-68 argued that The Soviet system required “the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition” and “that it has a sufficient atomic capability to make a surprise attack on us.” The paper continues, such an attack would be “swiftly and with stealth” unless the US maximizes its “economic potential” to “develop a level of military readiness which can be maintained as long as necessary.”

From an economic point of view, it concluded that “one of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living.”

With this understanding, a permanent war economy was created – a system which served as a win-win solution for US militarism and the economy. The only problem, defense contractors cannot operate indefinitely if there are no profit to be made. Or can they?

Editor’s Note: This was meant to be posted prior to Obama’s address last night, but I minor emergency came up that required my intimidate attention.