2/15/06
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to let you know that we, the American people, are
awakening to what you have been doing to our great country. We now see
with shame that all of your agenda, as you lead us to our material and
moral destruction, is profoundly un-American. Now, with your arrogant
drive to secure our permission for your unchecked total power, you have
gone too far, and we will no longer accept your misguided rule. Mr.
President, it is time for you to step down, and to take your whole gang
of zealots with you.
Yes, 9-11 was a traumatic event for us all, but how can you use this
tragedy to call for the abandonment of the fundamental values we in
America have fought and died to protect for over two centuries? You
have immersed us in an illegal preemptive war on the basis of false
information. You have called for us to embrace torture as an acceptable
policy of our government. You have asked us to permit the detainment
without charges of those you designate a threat to us. You have secured
the passage of laws that reduce our freedoms in the hope of stopping
future attacks on our “homeland.” Now you seek our assent to continue
invading the sanctity of our private communications with no
justification other than that you have the unfettered right to order
this intrusion as our “commander-in-chief,” regardless of established
law.
Mr.
President, we say to you, these things are un-American, and we do not
now, nor ever will, embrace these actions as necessary in our desire
for a secure existence. No, we will stand with Benjamin Franklin, who
called us to understand that “those who would sacrifice our freedom for
some small sense of security deserve neither freedom nor security.” We
stand with Franklin Rooseveldt when he reminded us that, when faced
with great challenge in America, we must unite to face it squarely,
that “the only thing we must fear is fear itself.”
You, Mr. President, instead chose to make fear itself your ally in
driving us to accept the unacceptable in America. You, who promised us
you would be a uniter rather than a divider, took a tragic attack upon
us that promised to unite the world in an effort to defeat the forces
that committed that atrocity, and used it to stoke our fears and to
promote an imperialistic agenda that has made America hated and feared
all around the world. You have used that event to realize a narrow
partisan agenda that benefits the wealthy few at the expense of our
poor and middle classes.
Mr. President, look around you today at what you have wrought. You have
taken us into a disastrous and costly war, killing tens of thousands of
innocents, and making us the target of the world’s anger. You are
bankrupting our nation while the few wallow in unimagined riches. You
have abandoned caring for our environment when all reasonable science
calls for a planetary stewardship that might save our species from
untold calamity. You have increased our dependence on foreign oil when
we are approaching a massive energy crisis that could devastate our
global economy and destroy modern society, when our priority should be
on promoting conservation and developing new sources of reliable
energy. You have sought to remove many of our important personal
freedoms in the hope of an impossible promise of absolute security.
But, most importantly, Mr. President, you seek to undermine the most
important element of what has made us all proud to be Americans. You
are attempting to drive us in our fear to give up the values that we
hold most important, that give us hope that we might as a nation become
better as we move forward together in building a better future. You ask
us to sacrifice the rule of law for a dubious expediency in our fight
against ‘terrorism.” You ask us to condone torture and concentration
camps in the hope of an impossible dream of invulnerability. You tell
us no sacrifice is needed, only blind trust that you and the cronies
you appoint to key governmental positions will keep us safe. You ask us
to turn away from the lies and misdirection you employ to launch
illegal preemptive war to satisfy your lust for power. You seek the
powers of a monarch, and expect us to embrace a despotic rule that we
threw off at our founding.
No more! No more of this will we take, Mr. President. We have shirked
the obligation to be vigilant in defense of our great nation long
enough, and now we have awakened. Now we are demanding that you, the
most un-American President, cease and desist in your arrogant grab for
unaccountable power, to stop the lies that seek to take us further into
even more insane wars, to stop the fear-mongering that has allowed you
to perpetrate this travesty upon our country. We call upon you now to
step down, to take with you those who carry out your heinous agenda,
and make room for those who might seek to focus our government on
solving the really important issues of our time.
Yes, we admit that America has often failed to live up to the dream
that was brought forward at our country’s birth, but we Americans will
not abandon that dream now. We have faced greater challenges together
in our journey without succumbing to fear or despotism, and we will do
so again. For, despite our many past and present failures as a country,
we aspire always to be better, to find the ways to admit to our
shortcomings and move towards a better day for all.
Abandon your effort, Mr. President, to demean us all in your appeal to
our selfish and fearful nature, and let us raise up leaders who can
again call upon the best in us to face our future with courage and
determination. Step down, now, and let Americans who embrace the
promise made in our founding once again find their way through the
challenges we will dare to face together in our freedom. Step down now,
Mr. President, and give us back our opportunity to together forge a
better future for all.
Jim Oberg is a retired Engineer who lives in Wilsonville, OR, with
his wife and two cats, and is volunteering with the World Can’t Wait
movement to help mobilize a public response to the terrible abuses of
this regime. He can be reached at worldcantwait2005@yahoo.com.