Endless criminal war is our only job stimulus program

It was wonderful that President Obama fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, America's top general in Afghanistan, for all the damage he has done to our country.

The general should have been summarily fired for his role in the cover up of the Pat Tillman friendly-fire death six years ago, as part of the despicable campaign to turn football-hero-turned-war-volunteer Tillman into a war party's propaganda dream. McChrystal and other reprehensible military leaders trashed the truth that U.S. slugs killed Tillman. McChrystal knew the truth within 24 hours, but five days later approved his Silver Star, earned not by blocking friendly fire, but "in the line of withering enemy fire"

Sadly, President Obama, foolishly pretending that our Afghan war is both legal and winnable, replaced McChrystal with General David Petraeus, the same general who enabled the endless continuation of our equally illegal Iraq war by paying off the insurgents to stop fighting with cold hard cash. Never mind that over 4 million Iraqis are dead, injured, tortured, imprisoned or refugees from our thirst for empire in the Middle East.

Petraeus has never met a criminal war of choice he didn't love for another opportunity to be hailed as a military genius. Just recently he said the Afghan war can be won, somehow forgetting his military education about the "graveyard of empires."

It's long past time to fire McChrystal, Petraeus and every general who makes such delusional boasts, and bring every last soldier home from the pitiful lands we have devastated to promote American exceptionalism.

Wait, we can't do that. Endless criminal war is the only job stimulus program the war party, both Republican and Democratic, will approve to save our dying homeland.

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn