We do not want your SUVs (although your highly paid NGO officials here tool around in them), shopping malls, palatial houses, nuclear weapons and colour TVs. We would consider ourselves very blessed to have enough goat milk, rice and lentils to keep us alive, an open air school so our children could learn essential skills, a doctor to deliver and immunise our babies and a well to provide clean water in our village. Compared with your need to exploit any oil we might have to fuel your petrol-guzzling behemoths and massive homes, do the lives of our humble people count at all in your geopolitical and economic calculus? Did you learn anything in Vietnam about trying to force an undemocratic, elitist government on an unwilling populace? Are the ideals of liberty so stirringly enunciated in your Declaration of Independence for you only, or for all of God's children? Do the words of your Jesus mean anything at all? If so, and if you are unwilling to help us, at least leave us alone and let us govern ourselves as we see fit. We do not want your military advisors and CIA agents and M-16 rifles and night vision goggles; we would rather have doctors and teachers and medicines and books. What would George Washington and Jesus do?

If you want to help, write letters to the editor in your publications , let your elected officials know that you are concerned about the disappearance of democracy in Nepal, and spread the word that the Nepalese people want to leave the middle ages and join the world of the free.