3/9/2026
My Dear Friend & POTUS, DJT,
Do you remember what WINTA stands for? I’ll give you a refresher, just in case you’ve forgotten why I use that acronym so much.
War is not the Answer! WINTA - As a Quaker, this is fundamental to my theory about how to make the world a better place. As FCNL tells us, “research shows that the use of military force has not only been costly & ineffective, but deeply counterproductive, perpetuating cycles of violence while neglecting the root causes of conflict.”
Friends picked up on WINTA from MLK who in a speech at the Riverside Church in 1967 pointed out that the war was as an enemy of the poor. “America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men, skills & money like some demonic destructive suction tube.” Replace “Vietnam” with “Operation Epic Fury” & that sentence still makes sense. WINTA!
WINTA not only relates to the situations in the Middle East, Sudan, Ukraine & Burma, but also to our hemisphere, where the problem in need of an answer is the increase in drug cartels. At least that seems to be what the crew at the Shield of Americas believe to be our biggest problem.
SoW, did your people not realize that Rodrigo Chaves Robles is no longer the President of Costa Rica? He was replaced by his buddy, Laura Fernández, in February. She’d fit right in to the crew you invited to the Shield of America Summit on Saturday, who build mega-prisons to incarcerate people without proper trials during unilaterally declared states of emergency. While that may slow drug trafficking, it also promotes corruption, stifles democracy & does not address the core cause of gang affiliation, namely poverty.
Back to WINTA, if the Donroe Doctrine is about preventing outside influences from taking hold in the Western Hemisphere, rather than using force to control people, you might be better off using the Chinese tactic of developing infrastructure projects rather than encouraging leaders to imprison 10% of their population. Better yet, would be to restore USAID projects that did things like support farmers to stop growing coca by funding alternative crops like coffee & cocoa.
Speaking of Chinese influence, according to today’s Irrawaddy, Burma is on its way to becoming their “client state” & MAH is no longer trying to pretend otherwise. I’m not sure what we can do about that, but the continued civil unrest in Burma demonstrates the limitations of the might-makes-right strategies you are encouraging in the Shield of America project. Best to change tactics!
BYBS,
