msnbc's Chuck Todd tells some funny jokes about our silliest presidential candidate: The guy who promises to end our American wars

The only way I can find to contact msnbc cable TV news host Chuck Todd is via Twitter.

Try as I might, I could not shrink my message to him into 144 ASCII characters or less.

So I'll post my letter here, and hope somehow he stumbles across it.

If he doesn't, but you do, stop watching Chuck Todd's show on msnbc and stop buying all products which advertise on it.

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Chuck Todd
msnbc

On Monday 19 December in a panel discussion about the Republican presidential candidates, you gave dismissive short shrift to Ron Paul despite his surprising poll strength in Iowa. You parotted the "responsible journalist" line that Paul is a marginalized, unrealistic, unimportant candidate.

I will not debate Rep. Paul's chances of winning the presidency.

But while you publicly laugh at and heap ridicule on his candidacy, I must point out that Paul alone has pledged an immediate end to the USA's foreign wars.

Your stance is a prestigious, high-profile cog in the political machine that has killed 4500 of my neighbors' sons and daughters in Iraq, killed 1860 of my neighbors' children in Afghanistan, and has maimed thousands of these young soldiers, Marines, Navy and Air Force personnel, and physically and psychologically destroyed what remains of their lives.

America, as you perceive, accept and report it, kills its children in uniform, and that is the proper and correct way America conducts its foreign policy. You publicly label any presidential candidate who stridently promises to end these deaths and maimings a marginal flake good only for joke value.

I served honorably in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War -- the first of our foot-shooting Asian long wars which left us with military defeat and 52,000 dead American servicemen and servicewomen.

A few of them were my high school friends.

I note from your on-line biography that you have never served in an American military uniform. So like our decision-making political elite, you are highly paid and professionally praised for playing War Poker with other peoples' chips.

By your reckoning, it's okay for other Americans to risk and die in useless overseas wars. No one you know, and no one in your family, is at risk. You explain to a vast television audience why it's a sad but necessary thing for these distant strangers to risk and die, and why any candidate who objects is a silly, dismissable flake.

Republican or Democrat, you help explain to the American people why our next president will keep sending our neighbors' children to overseas wars, and will be their commander-in-chief when their flag-draped coffins return to Dover Air Base.

I do not ask for your support for Ron Paul, nor for your re-assessment of his chances for campaign success.

But I would ask you to consider which candidate clearly stands for the lives and the safety of our troops, and which candidates make foot-shooting "liar's and scoundrel's war" (Congressman Lincoln's description of Polk's Mexican War) the jingo vote-getting centerpiece of their foreign policies.

And in future, clearly tell your audience which is the only candidate who has promised to end these wars the day he assumes office, and commence no more.

With great anger and disgust,

Robert Merkin
Chesterfield, Massachusetts
SP5, U.S. Army, 1969-1971