Please President Obama
I post excerpts from Michael Moore's open letter to President Obama and add my voice to those calling for the President to get us out of Afghanistan.
From Michael Moore’s open letter to the President. Say what you will about his tactics as a filmmaker, he is absolutely correct in his assessment:
Dear President Obama,
Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.
and:
Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”
I echo Mr. Moore’s call for the President to end our war in Afghanistan, to end our support of a corrupt government, to end throwing away the lives of our soldiers on the shoals of a country that has broken empire after empire after empire. Please, President Obama, do not show us that change is a futile hope by giving us more of the same.
On this day..
- November 2008 Books - 2008
I could not have said it better, the Progressive also had a great comment for President Obama also. Hopefully, we don’t have to be right like the ones who warned against going into Vietnam with more troops. We certainly do have a hard time learning from history. So sad.
We have been duped by Obama methinks. Sad.
Yeah – I don’t know about duped . . . but certainly disappointed. The problem is that the energy he was able to generate in 2008 will be impossible to achieve after he has failed to keep his promises and has disappointed a great deal of people, especially the young voters who really believed he would bring change. He is certainly better than the alternative . . . but liberals and progressives tend to vote more FOR someone rather than reflexively AGAINST someone like the extreme right-wing does and so he may have lost considerable amount of his support with his actions regarding Afghanistan and his obvious lack of engagement with getting real health care reform and not just health insurance reform.
That’s politics as usual I guess.