A Concerned Citizen

president bush:

i don't watch television. i gave that up ten years ago. these days make me ever more thankful for that decision. otherwise, i'd probably have been subjected to your inappropriate humor about the missing weapons of mass destruction. i did read about it online though. i thought that i had become numb to outrage. i don't know what you were thinking. i suspect that you weren't thinking at all. you certainly weren't thinking about all the young people you sent halfway across the world to experience the terror of war.

oddly enough, i can't even say that i am outraged or angry. when i heard about your peculiar sense of humor, the first image that sprang to my mind were the anguished expressions, captured in a grainy photograph in the boston globe, of the parents of an only child who died in iraq this year. and that sir, is no laughing matter. the missing weapons of mass destruction are likewise no laughing matter. some of the darkest hours of my recent days have been given to thoughts about where they might be should they indeed exist.

you claim to be a religious man. you say that you are pro-life. nevertheless, your actions do not demonstrate any such belief. no one who is pro-life would make a laughing matter out of so much death. and we aren't even talking about ordinary deaths. we're talking about people whose final moments were experienced in terror, fire, and pain. it doesn't seem that you are capable of weighing the consequences of actions taken, especially those that involve other people getting killed to achieve your objectives. so, sir, exactly how do you measure the losses accounted in children and grandchildren not born and laughter that will never sound again? all the memories, both good and bad, that will never be made?

9/11 is barely two years old, but it has irrevocably changed our country. curiously, it doesn't appear to have changed *you* however. you still exhibit the same callous regard for taking human life that you did as governor of texas. does the phrase "Please don't kill me" ring a bell? i had some hope that you would be one of those men who became a great leader because circumstances demanded it. in the days after the terrorist attacks, it seemed that you had some grasp of the complex and deadly problem that had befallen your administration. most of the country felt the same way, judging from your 90+ percent approval ratings in those days.

since then, i have come to believe that you simply do not understand how to wield power well. for one born to power, you are remarkably clumsy in using it. it is the only explanation for your inability to develop a strong coalition for the war in iraq. the result is that we are now over-extended militarily and soundly distrusted around the globe just as the war on terror is beginning. taking saddam hussein out of power was a great accomplishment. despite my strong objections to this war, i am sincerely glad that man is no longer in power. but, let's face it, he wasn't involved in 9/11. neither was freeing iraq from his tyranny the real goal behind this war, no matter how many times you claim that it was.

lately, i've gotten the impression that you're getting desperate. the reek of an ugly secret is on you. the dogs of war are not so easily controlled, no? neither are all the people who share in that secret. nothing cleanses a private sin like some good old-fashioned truth. i don't harbor any illusions that personal honor will bring you to a state of confession. it's more likely to happen when your comrades come to care more about covering their own asses than they do about saving yours.

doesn't it bother you in the least that you have willingly allowed yourself to be the pawn of men more clever and vastly more cynical than you? or is it all a fun, life-sized game you enjoy playing out on a global stage? shits and giggles and all that? perhaps you are afraid, and that fear drives you to dig yourself and the rest of the country into a deeper quagmire than we are already in. if a few more thousand american civilians are killed in another attack, will you make that into a comedy routine as well?

so, i ask you at last, sir -- have you no shame?