ANOTHER ELECTION-YEAR PITCH

Here's another election-year pitch.

A LETTER FOR YOUR CONGRESSMEMBER

Dear Congressmember/ Senator ______:

I write to you today to urge your reconsideration of the war in Iraq. It is urgent that you petition your fellow Congressmembers, Senators, and the President to organize an exit strategy that moves US troops out of Iraq as soon as possible.

This is, however, a different plea than the ones you will read from most of your other fellow Americans. I'm not going to make the usual arguments here for getting out of Iraq. I'm not going to exhort you, for instance, to consider the false pretexts of "weapons of mass destruction," in asking that you contribute your efforts toward a speedy end to American involvement in the war. I'm not going to complain that the war is going poorly. Nor am I going to tell you any tough stories of the casualty or death totals suffered by our brave troops. I won't ask you to consider the possible destabilization of the Middle East, nor the potential of civil war in Iraq -- the US can always bribe the aggrieved parties to stop their warmaking should there be anything left of the dollar's value afterward. And, finally, there will be no scary discussions of the "cost to taxpayers" -- we know that Asian bankers are paying for most of this war through their purchases of Treasury bills, so there's no sense in asking who's kidding whom.

What I am going to suggest, here, will have an immediate impact upon your job. It would be the utmost of catastrophes, reflecting upon the hirability of politicians, if the value of the US Dollar were to collapse. The whole global economy could suffer a meltdown, and that would make it quite difficult for you to run on a "prosperity" ticket. And many economic commentators, such as former Fed chair Paul Volcker, are predicting such a thing if the US does not rein in its deficit-spending habits.

The fact of the matter is that, if the US keeps running deficits of the sort that have been typical of the first Bush regime, our Nation will eventually run out of financial agents to prop up the dollar despite continued US spending sprees. And you don't want that. You want to be in office for as many terms as posible before someone claims that you were caught sleeping when the economic chickens of an $8 trillion dollar national debt came home to roost. And so you want to go on record, as soon as possible, as recommending a swift end to America's borrow-and-spend fiscal policies. Everyone knows, as regards this, that the biggest of America's federal spenders is the US military, so what this means, practically, is that the US will have to get out of Iraq so as to keep a lid upon its military costs. Closing a couple of those pricey bases may help, too.

Sure, this may mean that you lose a couple of well-paying campaign contributors. But you don't want to be caught when the economy collapses, do you? So put two and two together, and get the US out of Iraq before it's too late. Remember -- just because Congress has forfeited its constitutional obligation to declare war doesn't mean it can't take that obligation back.

Sincerely,


(your name)

My election-year pitch.