Friday, March 07, 2003

I write an opinion column almost every week for my school newspaper, The DePaulia (I currently attend DePaul University’s College of Law in Chicago; yes political junkies, I am a first year law student), pretty regularly and sent in the essay below last week. It pretty much sums up how I feel about Bush and his administration:

Open Letter to President Bush


Dear Mr. Bush,

What are you doing? Try as I might, I cannot sign onto the direction you are taking the nation! Your Presidency thus far, has been predictably short-sighted, while displaying an overabundance of empty rhetoric, and stupefying arrogance. I often sit perplexed, numb, and just a bit depressed whenever I read, or hear about a new Bush Administration policy decision. I can’t help but feel as though you and your Party are ruining not only our nation with your unimaginative, self-serving, edicts. Worse still, you (if opinion polls are to be believed) are increasingly sullying America’s reputation among the worlds’ peoples with your unilateral and haughty approach to foreign policy!

The religious right heralded your ascension (a “God Fearing” man) to the Presidency as a return to moral righteousness and principled behavior in the White House. But, being a God Fearing man has not endowed you with wisdom and vision enough to see the folly of your present course. I strongly dislike what you and your Party are doing to my country, my society, and my fellow Americans in the name of “compassionate conservatism.”

Our country was founded on the Principles of equality and justice for all, Mr. Bush, not just the moneyed few. While the religious right pays unabashed homage to your accidental Presidency, I feel our country continues to devolve into a society of obscene private wealth and stupefying, public poverty!

I, for one, do not want my children to inherit a country where the rich have become the new aristocracy, and the poor the new serfs confined to the blighted inner-cities of our nation, while the middle-class hangs on by its finger nails, clawing forward, or slipping back at the whim of the corporate elite. Is that the kind of future you see for America, Mr. Bush? Do you care enough to pay attention?

Principles, real principles, mean something to me, Mr. Bush, not hollow homage to God, devoid of real compassion or empathy. In your policy decisions to date I see little principle and little compassion for the average struggling American. But I do see an almost un-relentless pursuit of personal wealth for yourself and those fortunate enough to be born with a silver spoon, and a seasoned pedigree. I was shocked to learn that you made more in dividend income last year then most Americans make in a year! And yet you seek to cut the tax on dividends, while seniors have to travel to Canada to find affordable prescription drugs!

And are you aware Mr. Bush that while you dream up new ways to fatten the already bloated and morally bankrupt coffers of the obscenely wealthy, two million American have lost their jobs since March of last year? And that most have not found new employment? What help for them Mr. Bush? They without golden parachutes, and fat severance packages totaling in the millions of dollars; they without health care benefits or prescription drug coverage (myself included); they who are losing not only their American Dream of today, but its promise for the future.

Have you no concern for them Mr. Bush? Seems not, because their plight, my plight, will not be your family’s to suffer. Is that why you give us such sallow disregard? Would a day, a week, a month spent with an average American family, plant the seeds of empathy and understanding in your bosom?

And why are you taking us to war Mr. Bush? Our nation, founded on the principles of the rule of law, has never launched a war against another sovereign country without being provoked in the most repugnant of terms. And without good reason, we should not insert ourselves into the affairs of other nations unless a gross violation of human principles and morality dictate our military response! By going to war with Iraq I would argue that you seek to violate the very principles that cement the foundation of our nations founding. And in so doing you lessen America’s standing in the eyes of the world community.

Is oil at the heart of your un-relentless march towards carnage and human suffering? If it is, shame on you Mr. Bush, and shame on all of those who would take the nation to war for profit and because you lack the vision, wisdom, and leadership to craft an energy policy that boldly moves the nation away from it dependence on foreign oil! Nobel laureate and former President Jimmy Carter has stated that: “In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions…[W]ar may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good.”

So, Mr. Bush, Mr. Accidental President, I am tired. Tired of the short-sighted legislation that seeks to enrich the few at the expense of the many; tired of your conservative agenda cast deceptively in the guise of compassion that threatens to hold hostage the tide of social progression, at the hands of the religious right; tired of the unimaginative, self-serving, mean spirited nature of your policies that again benefit the moneyed few at the expense of all. I am tired too of war, and threats of war. And I am not alone, I am not alone in my weariness, the nation feels it too, if only you cared enough to listen!



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