Bush Has Earned Our Distrust

NATIONAL ISSUES: BUSH IS BEHAVING IRRESPONSIBLY

This is a letter of mine that was published in 'The Trend Midweek', 9/24/03, Collegeville, PA

To the editor:

I enjoyed reading the pair of well-written essays on dissent in the September 3, 2003 Trend Midweek Forum. Katie Wright is correct to point out that, in the end, anti-war protesters must recognize that they don't have the President's sobering responsibility and burden of maintaining American security. It is always easier to destroy than to build (as Bush himself should note). Ms. Wright places her trust that President Bush's decisions are made with our security and freedom as his primary goals, and she admires the strength of his resolve. However, I do not share her trust in Bush's motives, nor her admiration for what looks to me like recklessness and greed masquerading as strength and resolve.

When a President asks us to go to war, or to send our children into war, he is demanding that we place a very high degree of trust in him that he has weighed the available options, considered all of the intelligence available to him, and is not using our military forces in an irresponsible manner. It concerns me that this President knowingly lied about and exaggerated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda to garner support for waging war. Bush must not have believed that the truth alone would be convincing enough to persuade the American people, Congress, and the UN to support war. It is despicable that this President purposely ignored his own CIA's intelligence reports that challenged his justifications for the first unprovoked 'pre-emptive' war in our nation's history, Instead, President Bush deliberately presented false and unreliable information to the American people, Congress, and the world, to try and justify his war plans. When the world proved rightly skeptical of his case for war, he went ahead with war anyway, rather than continuing the revived weapons inspections which were achieving successes in weakening Saddam Hussein and neutralizing any threat. Yes, I am enormously grateful to those soldiers, including my father, who have fought to protect us and defend our freedoms. However, I do not want to see any of our brave soldiers sacrificed by our leaders under false pretenses. Bush's actions so far have resulted in the deaths of almost 300 American soldiers and their families, almost 50 British soldiers, at least 8,000 Iraqi civilians (some knowledgeable independent estimates say this number may actually be as high as 40,000), and uncounted Iraqi soldiers (estimated at 80,000 by some sources), not to mention the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure.

While I respect the awesome responsibility shouldered by any President, President Bush has not earned our trust. In addition to misleading the world regarding his knowledge (or lack thereof) of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the beginning of the war, this President has repeatedly lied to the American people to further his misguided policies of rewarding his campaign contributors. He lied to us when he erased sound scientific studies of global warming from a recent comprehensive EPA report, and instead replaced it with a weak industry-sponsored study against the objections of our own EPA scientists. He lied when he touted his education reforms, but then refused to fund them. He lied when he claimed he would rein in spending, instead handing dozens of no-bid, overpriced contracts to corrupt campaign supporters like WorldCom (a bankrupt company guilty of the largest accounting fraud in US history) to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars. He lied when he said he would not raid Iraqi resources after the war, instead taking full and immediate control of Iraqi's oil and handing the revenues to those same American campaign contributors like Halliburton for highly profitable, no-bid 'rebuilding' contracts. Now that his lies regarding his pre-war knowledge of weapons of mass destruction have been revealed, Bush claims that the war was justified on humanitarian grounds, to free the Iraqi people. Although I don't have the mind-reading powers of Katie Wright to divine Bush's true motives, I don't believe that we invaded Iraq out of the goodness of our hearts and our concerns for Iraqi freedom. If we had, then we would have had more of a post-war plan ready to establish Iraqi independence and democracy. No, such concerns were obviously an afterthought for this administration. I may not be able to read Bush's mind, but I definitely see patterns in his work. While his actions regarding responding to nuclear threats, environmental pollution, health care reform, social security, education, energy, veterans' benefits, corporate crime, fire prevention, etc., seem inconsistent or lackluster at first glance, virtually all of his actions to date seem focused like a laser on lining the pockets of his buddies and campaign contributors.

Based on her essay, Katie Wright would probably label my criticism of Bush's approach anti-American or even 'treasonous'. I see it as my American patriotic duty to do what little I can as a citizen to prevent the abuse of executive power that I see today. That is what our American forefathers fought for, from George Washington through the present day.

To Katie and others that say 'love it or leave it', I wonder if they would also have said that to George Washington, or to Martin Luther King, Jr. It is odd that the same people who call today's dissenters traitors are the ones who refused to heed President Clinton's call to arms against Osama bin Laden in his state of the Union addresses of 1998 and 1999, accusing Clinton of trying to distract the nation from Zippergate. It is remarkable to me that the same people who claimed that Bill Clinton's lying to his friends about his sex life was an impeachable 'Abuse of Power', seem unconcerned with lies by Bush to the world which have resulted in massive injury, death and destruction, to the profit of Bush's corporate campaign contributors. To me it would be treasonous to remain silent in the face of such corruption, injustice and immorality.

Matthew Gordon



			NATIONAL ISSUES: BUSH IS BEHAVING IRRESPONSIBLY This is a letter of mine that was published in 'The Trend Midweek', 9/24/03, Collegeville, PA To the editor: I enjoyed reading the pair of well-written essays on dissent in the September 3, 2003 Trend Midweek Forum. Katie Wright is correct to point out that, in the end, anti-war protesters must recognize that they don't have the President's sobering responsibility and burden of maintaining American security. It is always easier to destroy than to build (as Bush himself should note). Ms. Wright places her trust that President Bush's decisions are made with our security and freedom as his primary goals, and she admires the strength of his resolve. However, I do not share her trust in Bush's motives, nor her admiration for what looks to me like recklessness and greed masquerading as strength and resolve. When a President asks us to go to war, or to send our children into war, he is demanding that we place a very high degree of trust in him that he has weighed the available options, considered all of the intelligence available to him, and is not using our military forces in an irresponsible manner. It concerns me that this President knowingly lied about and exaggerated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda to garner support for waging war. Bush must not have believed that the truth alone would be convincing enough to persuade the American people, Congress, and the UN to support war. It is despicable that this President purposely ignored his own CIA's intelligence reports that challenged his justifications for the first unprovoked 'pre-emptive' war in our nation's history, Instead, President Bush deliberately presented false and unreliable information to the American people, Congress, and the world, to try and justify his war plans. When the world proved rightly skeptical of his case for war, he went ahead with war anyway, rather than continuing the revived weapons inspections which were achieving successes in weakening Saddam Hussein and neutralizing any threat. Yes, I am enormously grateful to those soldiers, including my father, who have fought to protect us and defend our freedoms. However, I do not want to see any of our brave soldiers sacrificed by our leaders under false pretenses. Bush's actions so far have resulted in the deaths of almost 300 American soldiers and their families, almost 50 British soldiers, at least 8,000 Iraqi civilians (some knowledgeable independent estimates say this number may actually be as high as 40,000), and uncounted Iraqi soldiers (estimated at 80,000 by some sources), not to mention the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure. While I respect the awesome responsibility shouldered by any President, President Bush has not earned our trust. In addition to misleading the world regarding his knowledge (or lack thereof) of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the beginning of the war, this President has repeatedly lied to the American people to further his misguided policies of rewarding his campaign contributors. He lied to us when he erased sound scientific studies of global warming from a recent comprehensive EPA report, and instead replaced it with a weak industry-sponsored study against the objections of our own EPA scientists. He lied when he touted his education reforms, but then refused to fund them. He lied when he claimed he would rein in spending, instead handing dozens of no-bid, overpriced contracts to corrupt campaign supporters like WorldCom (a bankrupt company guilty of the largest accounting fraud in US history) to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars. He lied when he said he would not raid Iraqi resources after the war, instead taking full and immediate control of Iraqi's oil and handing the revenues to those same American campaign contributors like Halliburton for highly profitable, no-bid 'rebuilding' contracts. Now that his lies regarding his pre-war knowledge of weapons of mass destruction have been revealed, Bush claims that the war was justified on humanitarian grounds, to free the Iraqi people. Although I don't have the mind-reading powers of Katie Wright to divine Bush's true motives, I don't believe that we invaded Iraq out of the goodness of our hearts and our concerns for Iraqi freedom. If we had, then we would have had more of a post-war plan ready to establish Iraqi independence and democracy. No, such concerns were obviously an afterthought for this administration. I may not be able to read Bush's mind, but I definitely see patterns in his work. While his actions regarding responding to nuclear threats, environmental pollution, health care reform, social security, education, energy, veterans' benefits, corporate crime, fire prevention, etc., seem inconsistent or lackluster at first glance, virtually all of his actions to date seem focused like a laser on lining the pockets of his buddies and campaign contributors. Based on her essay, Katie Wright would probably label my criticism of Bush's approach anti-American or even 'treasonous'. I see it as my American patriotic duty to do what little I can as a citizen to prevent the abuse of executive power that I see today. That is what our American forefathers fought for, from George Washington through the present day. To Katie and others that say 'love it or leave it', I wonder if they would also have said that to George Washington, or to Martin Luther King, Jr. It is odd that the same people who call today's dissenters traitors are the ones who refused to heed President Clinton's call to arms against Osama bin Laden in his state of the Union addresses of 1998 and 1999, accusing Clinton of trying to distract the nation from Zippergate. It is remarkable to me that the same people who claimed that Bill Clinton's lying to his friends about his sex life was an impeachable 'Abuse of Power', seem unconcerned with lies by Bush to the world which have resulted in massive injury, death and destruction, to the profit of Bush's corporate campaign contributors. To me it would be treasonous to remain silent in the face of such corruption, injustice and immorality. Matthew Gordon
















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