Sen. John F. Kerry
304 Russell Building
Washington, DC 20510
Oct. 23, 2009

Dear Senator Kerry,

I am unsure whether you remember me when I visited you during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on May 21^st of this year. Admiral Mike Mullen was testifying about the current status of our government’s entanglement in Afghanistan.

Last Friday I was found guilty of Disruption of Congress. A nonviolent and victimless crime committed in order to prevent a much greater crime perpetrated every single day in Afghanistan.

I was pleading for you and your colleagues on the committee to realize the futility of this 8-year-old war, which was based on revenge and has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and a thousand honorable American men and women. I believe this war is immoral and unlawful and serves absolutely no interest of the American people. Polls now show a majority of Americans agree with me.

During a pause in the testimony, I rose and directed a question to you. This question ought to be familiar to you, as it was your own in 1971:

“How do you ask someone to be the last American soldier to die for a mistake?”

Indeed, continuing the war and military occupation of Afghanistan is a mistake. It was a mistake for the Persians, it was a mistake for the British, and it was a grave mistake for the Russians. A mistake not unlike our own nation’s mistake in Vietnam. A tragic and immoral war you are intimately familiar with and came to resist in your own way.

The only remaining question is when will the last American soldier die in Afghanistan?

Not unlike your younger self, on May 21^st I was resisting this war, and calling for a change in our nation’s priorities. A change away from funding massive violence and destruction, and instead investing in domestic needs at home and cooperative diplomacy abroad. I was arrested that day for the crime of petitioning our government for a redress of grievances. This is a right I thought was enshrined within the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In the past I have visited your office with a group of Massachusetts residents (at the time I was a DC resident and therefore lacked representation in Congress), more than once, to voice our dissent to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet you continually vote to fund them. People are feeling disconnected and desperate. What happens when a representative government fails to represent the wishes of its own people?

I continue to implore you to work for peace and justice, not destruction and some costly and misdirected attempt at empire. While the national debt grows, the cost of the war in Afghanistan now exceeds $229.8 billion. Death and hatred is what we are gaining from this expenditure. Please help prevent President Obama from following the same destructive course taken by President Johnson.

On December 15^th, Judge Lynn Leibovitz in DC Superior Court will sentence me. I will likely face jail time. I will spend a finite amount of time in the correctional system. However, my call for peace and justice will never end.

In peace and resistance,

Pete Perry