A Letter to the Editor
by
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About the $300 and Cost of the War (To: The Paducah Sun, in KY)
The Congress has passed a bill, and the President has signed it, to give me three hundred dollars which I am not willing to accept because I do not think it is the right way to cope with the economic crisis facing the nation. I will not claim that I don’t need three hundred dollars. With it I could fill my gas tank a couple of times and eat out once at the Outback in Paducah. But then my needs would return, and the price of gas and bread would continue to rise, and the nation would continue to go broke.
The problem is that we are spending three trillion dollars to wage a war to control the oil fields of the Middle East, and we are losing that war because our big war machine is no match for the insurgents’ roadside bomb. So I am not going to accept the three hundred dollars, but my grandsons will inherit the three trillion dollars debt of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Besides, the United States government doesn’t even have the three hundred dollars offered to me, but must borrow it from China, and I may as well eat at a Chinese restaurant in Murray, close enough for me to get there on a gallon of gas.
So thank you, Uncle Sam. It was nice of you to think of me, and to offer me the three hundred dollars, but I can’t accept it. Not with four thousand American servicemen and servicewomen lying dead, and ten times that many wounded, and ten times that many bearing the mental and emotional scars of the war. And with three trillion dollars war debt hanging over our heads because America believed a lie and went to war to prove the lie was the truth. And still won’t admit the lie, won’t admit we have lost the war and won’t give it up and let the Iraqis and Afghans rebuild their own houses while we try to save our house from economic and moral collapse. (Signed: Henry A. Buchanan, March 31, 2008)
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About the Book
A Letter to the Editor is a collection of letters written over a period of more than a half century. The first was in May 1954. It was the herald of the racial crisis called the Civil Rights Movement. It got the author hanged – in effigy.
Many of the letters are about the wars in the Middle East, but others are about the issues that have arisen while war raged, and involved people in unusual circumstances.
The letters were written at the time the events were at the top of the news. They are sometimes indignant, bitingly critical, insightful, and even humorous at times, but always honest.
The ‘Three Hundred Dollars’ letter got the most attention. The ‘Jill Carroll’ letters reveal the deepest tragedy of our wars. Letters to and from Presidents reveal the author’s concern for the nation and the President’s growing interest, in his correspondent.
‘The Only Good Woman in Texas’ stirred a hornet’s nest among the female readers.
Overall, A Letter to the Editor is a history of this nation at war, and broke, and torn, and trying to heal itself, but not yet succeeding.
About the Author
Henry A. Buchanan has been writing letters to editors longer than he has been writing books and he has written twenty-five books; history, fiction, tales, war stories and essays.
Doctor Buchanan is a native Georgian; his Alfie books tell of his boyhood adventures. He is an adopted Kentuckian; earned his Doctorate in Theology in Louisville and created the fictional town of Scarrsville, Kentucky, with the Sunrise Café for the meeting of men and minds on the wars that have divided the people of America.
At 90 years of age he made the decision to put the best of his letters to editors of newspapers in Georgia, Kentucky and Texas together to give his readers a sweep of history covering some of the best and most tragic years of American life. He could not resist the temptation to share his correspondence with Presidents of the United States.