Dear Mr. Krieger:

Thanks for the ‘report card’ on President Bush’s first year in office. From the perspective of peace activists, the report exposes America’s apparent failure to advance the cause of peace. It is a report worthy of careful review.

My concern is to seek out the underlying forces/politicians/money that ‘push Bush’ into such an aggressive and warlike posture. It seems that the President is the willing ‘captive’ of tremendously strong and wealthy factions in America, mainly the military-industrial-complex, combined with the oil and energy industries. Those forces have powerful lobbyists working for them full time in Washington.

In the short term, America will appear to be saving the world from terrorism and all kinds of evil. Longer term, America is likely to find itself the international pariah, increasingly isolated, paranoid and financially crippled by its hubris. I’m predicting that America will fall into ruin like the former Soviet Union.

By coincidence, Afghanistan may well prove, again, to be one enormous failure, leading to the downfall of the former Superpowers. Count on it, ‘Evil Empires’ will continue to rise and fall like recurring nightmares. We have a long, long way to go before we can claim to be ‘civilized’.

Fred Brailey. RR4, Orangeville, Ontario, Canada.