Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

I no longer find deceit and outright lies from you and your administration shocking. On the contrary, I have come to expect it. The latest example of this is the number of combat missions flown by American forces in Libya, combat missions that you and your minions in the Pentagon have tried to hide, dismiss, obfuscate. But there it is in the New York Times this morning, about 60 bombing runs and 30 remotely-controlled drone strikes since April when the U.S. supposedly handed over operations to NATO. No matter that you overruled the Pentagon and Justice Department legal experts and declared we were not engaged in hostilities in Libya, the unleashing of bombs and missiles in a foreign country is a hostile act. What surprises me though, is how you can defend such evil and still live with yourself and how far you have retreated from your promise to end this insanity and bring back the rule of law and justice, restore human rights, and do away with abuses. Or have you always been this way? Were you just playing a role to gain power? Have you always hungered for power at any cost and been willing to do whatever it takes to keep it? In either case it makes me sick that I allowed myself to be conned into voting for you, the man of Hope who gave such fine speeches, a man of lofty ideals and moral integrity who then made mockery of campaign promises and quickly turned into a Republicrat, a defender of the rich and powerful against the poor and powerless, and a warmonger to boot. In pursuing war instead of peace, you abandon the best interests of America for the false glory of a war-president; you squander the nation’s treasure on unjustified wars of choice instead of using it for the good of the nation, the people, the world. At the conclusion of the Conference of Mayors yesterday a resolution was passed calling for an end to these disastrous wars, to bring the money home “to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy and reduce the federal debt.” Those of us who voted for you in 2008, thought that’s what we were voting for, but as in Libya, you lied, dissembled, presented a false face and we are all the poorer for it. Instead of Hope and Change, you have given us more of the same: inequality, injustice and war. We are a nation descending into irrelevance in every way except violence. Welcome to ObamAmerica.