National Security Addiction

Today I sent this email to President Obama 

President Obama:

 I am writing to you about my opposition to the NSA surveillance program and all of its offshoots.  I served 28 years in the United States Air Force to protect us against authoritarian states which use East German-like security practices.  Today I read that the German Chancellor Merkel had summoned our ambassador to demand a full accounting about her phone being tapped.  Yesterday it was the French...  This is NUTS!

 I cannot imagine a worst impact to our foreign policy than of having us appear as freaked-out East Germans running around the world spying on everyone else, friend as well as foe, and on each other.  It reminds me of Mad Magazine's 'Spy vs. Spy' comic.  Unlike the magazine, however, this is not funny because our foreign relations as well as our domestic trust  have been deeply affected--all to the detriment of the United States as a nation and as our home.

 The sad aspect of all this is that it appears that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda have won the war on terror.  after all.  By making us to adopt the kinds of activities, which violate the spirit, if not the letter of our constitution, we have become like them--zealots. In short they have broken the fabric of who we are and what we stand for.  We are trading our freedoms and our beliefs for a national security addiction. I cannot image a worse result for us. 

 We must not allow ourselves to become prisoners of our own fears.  And we cannot hide under legalisms that some act or other authorizes these activities.  Once there were laws that authorized slaveholders to kill their slaves.  These laws were legal, but there were morally repulsive.  This is what our Stasi-like surveillance program is, legal maybe, but it is morally repulsive to the values for which the United States stands for.

 Get on rehab and cease this madness;  NOW!

 Gonzalo I. Vergara, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.)