Second Open Letter to President Bush...

Dear Mr. Bush:

While great leaders of the past in the time of crisis have instructed us to be not afraid, that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, you told us to be very, very afraid, you told us to be cowards, and then exploited that fear in launching your assault on our democracy.

You preached fear to stoke the flames of xenophobic nativism and smiled for the cameras as you signed into law a wall to exclude brown-skinned spanish speaking immigrants. You exploited the fear you and your cronies created to repeal the words on the plaque Lady Liberty holds. Now, her cheeks rust with the tears of a broken heart as her lamp which once beaconed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the homeless and the tempest-tost has gone dark and the golden door which it once illuminated slammed in the face of those seeking the promise and hope America once offered.

You preached fear to exploit for support in abandoning mankind’s efforts to limit the scourge of war and launch an aggressive war as an experiment in placing a friendly regime in power over the world’s second largest oil reserves, your plan was to utilize this immoral war as a means to further the interests of your big corporate friends at the likes of KBR (the company that made your family rich), the Carlysle Group (with its historical ties to your family), and Haliburton (with its ties to your friends). Unfortunately for you, America had embraced the notion set forth by Justice Jackson at Nuremberg that no grievances or policies can justify aggressive war, utterly renouncing and condemning it as an instrument of policy. And so you terrorized the American public so they might believe your cause was something other than immoral. We soon learned the fear you planted and exploited had no basis in reality, yet you still preach fear so that we might accept 3,000 American service men and women returning home in flag draped coffins which you refuse to dignify by so much as acknowledging their return to the nation they gave their lives for based on your lying word. You again preach fear so that we might accept the thousands returning home physically and mentally maimed from the occupation which resulted from your lying word. You again preach fear so that we might disregard hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings now horribly disfigured, maimed and slaughtered based upon your lying word as collateral damage.

You preached fear to push through ridiculously large budgets for the military so that you could take money from the American people, from the poor mother working two jobs to support her family, from the children stuck in crumbling schools and without opportunity, from the soldiers who saw their combat pay decreased just as they were being sent into combat without proper protection, from the families of those soldiers who saw their benefits slashed, from the veterans, 45,000 of whom have returned injured from Iraq, who were told they would not receive necessary medical care because the record budgets were just a means to transfer what was owed to them into the pockets of your elite corporate friends. MLK warned us that a nation spending more money on the machinery of death and destruction than on programs of social uplift is a nation approaching spiritual death. Your occupation of Iraq now costs the American people almost $1 billion each week and you use that price tag as an excuse to ask us to sacrifice for the common good by leaving our poor neighbors to fend for themselves, all the while giving trillions of dollars back to your already disgustingly rich contributors. All of this while you boldly claim God’s blessing and endorsement of your despicable war and occupation while Lincoln instructed us not to blindly believe God was on our side, but to sincerely pray that we were on his.

And now you have planted and exploited fear to denigrate our Constitution and its ideals in violation of the very solemn oath you twice uttered. And you exploited the very fear you planted with your lies and your despicable labeling of patriotism as treason to repeal the very law you swore to uphold. You could barely contain your excitement as you signed torture and the death of freedom into law, perhaps remembering that no act of terrorism ever brought down a democracy such as ours, but acts of parliament have managed to close a few.

We cannot defend our freedoms by repealing them. Under your directive the government is spying on your own citizens without establishing probable cause, people are being jailed without charges or due process, and people are being horribly tortured. You tell us it is necessary, trying again to appeal to fear and vengeance. But we are not to be fooled Mr. Bush, for we love our freedom and know that a government willing to treat foreigners unjustly will inevitably treat its own unjustly. We remember Winston Churchill’s words when he declared “the power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government” and we deplore your mocking of the sacrifice of generations past in demanding such power.

When asked what form of Government the Constitution created, in recognition of how frail the grand doctrines of democracy and freedom can be, Benjamin Franklin replied “A republic...if you can keep it.” Well Mr. Bush, despite the efforts of this sham Congress filled with faux representatives in ceding that republic and our freedoms to your whim, the American People will keep it and the freedom, life, liberty, justice, opportunity and hope it offers. We recognize that no act of terror has ever brought down a democracy such as ours, but that acts of parliament have closed a few. You do not represent America Mr. Bush, end your campaign of fear and vengeance which so denigrates her ideals. We will not allow your to terrorize the people into accepting your tyranny any longer.

Finally, I again offer my sincerest hopes for you and your memory...

May your God forgive you for your blasphemous perversion of his teachings in the furtherance of your campaign of destruction...

May true Americans, past, present and future, condemn you for the carnage you have done in their name, both to their nation and their world...

And may history remember you as the architect of a horrendous attack on the best of humanity from it's most base emotions of fear and vengeance, the most disastrous and apocalyptic of results only narrowly averted by the better angels of our nature.

Sincerely,

Paul Linnenburger