The homemade bombs that exploded in the Chelsea district of NYC and Elisabeth, NJ now appear to have a potential "foreign connection" (according to Governor Andrew Cuomo). The police have identified a suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, a 28 year-old US citizen originally born in Afghanistan.

Let's assume for a moment that Cuomo is correct. Let's assume there is a tie to ISIS in some way, shape or form. Assume, not conclude, just for the sake of argument.

These events, regardless of the motivations of the suspected bombers, and regardless of whether or not foreign nationals played any part in assisting or influencing the bomber or bombers, are crimes.

Let me repeat myself: These bombings were CRIMES. And they should be treated as such.

They should be investigated and treated as any other criminal investigation. If we exploit these criminal incidents, and the ones like the Orlando mass murder earlier this year, as a reason to commit more acts of aggressive war in the Middle East, we will continue to fail our people and risk their lives for the benefit of war profiteers, war crazed ideologists and manipulative politicians.

The second after September 11, 2001 when our government began to treat those mass murders, not as the criminal acts they were, but as the first shot in a "war on terror, which required a military response of unparalleled death and destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and who knows where else CIA and Special Forces operatives have been deployed to kill "terrorists, has been the biggest mistake and/or deliberate and intentional war crime (and the two are not mutually exclusive) in US history.

We have spent trillions of dollars, killed over a million people and displaced millions more, turned the Middle East into a broiling stew of sectarian conflict, and the effect of all that effort, allegedly to enhance our national security and protect our people is worse than nil.

Despite national surveillance of Americans on a unprecedented scale, despite a psy-ops propaganda campaign to drum up support for war crimes such as aggressive wars, torture and the funding of "death squads" and despite all the bombs we dropped on innocent civilians, including people in hospitals and attending weddings and what have you, we now find ourselves worse off than when the two towers fell. We are now more at risk of "terrorist incidents" from foreign and domestic sources than ever before. Our democracy has been stolen out from under us under the cover of that "war."

Unfortunately we have three candidates running for office, who will do nothing to reverse this insane policy (Donald Trump-Republican, Hillary Clinton-Democrat, and Gary Johnson-Libertarian) and only one, Jill Stein who even brings up the issue and argues for a policy of non-intervention overseas. We know that in November, thanks to our system of duopoly control of our government, either Trump or Clinton will be elected and the madness of fighting criminal acts with our massive military industrial complex in wars overseas will continue.

Indeed it may potentially increase to a significant extent if Clinton, the neoconservative flavor of the month, has her way. She supports policies that risk a military confrontation with a nuclear power, Russia, even after opposition to her proposals by our own military commanders, oh by the way.

So, when you hear our two major party candidates blather on about terrorism and who would best defeat the terrorists, just remember that everything they say on how to "defend our freedoms" or "enhance our national security" will be wrong.

Dead wrong.