The Top Ten Betrayals

Dear Mr. President,

When I hear “Obama can’t do anything with the Republicans blocking his every move” or “Obama doesn’t really have any power to do anything” or “Obama can only do so much,” I want to scream. They are apologists, people still in denial at your betrayal of us, at who and what you are. If you win re-election it will be because of them, because they cling to the fiction that you’re a good man at heart and that given the chance, you’ll do the right thing. They refuse to see the damage you have done or what is to come, for to do so is to acknowledge that you are the destroyer of freedom and democracy in America and around the world. They would have to see that you didn’t have to abandon the single-payer health plan even before negotiations started and that you didn’t have to extend the Bush tax cuts with an additional bonus for the rich of a $5 million exemption per person on estate taxes plus a 35% top tax rate on the rest; something the Republicans never asked for but you gave it to them anyway. And no one asked you to put Medicare and Social Security cuts back on the table after this Republican idea had been soundly defeated; that was your idea. The apologists would also have to see that the inhumane treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning was torture and that you approved it, and they would have to object to your pursuit of other government whistleblowers with false charges of espionage. They would have to see that no one forced you to extend and expand the Patriot Act—a violation of our civil rights—or to sign the NDAA which overtly guts the Constitution, a violation of your oath of office and an impeachable offense. And finally, no one forced you to expand the War on Terror, but you did—into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and now the Philippines, with your unmanned drones and Hellfire missiles and teams of assassins working in the dead of night. No one, Republican or Democrat, forced you to personally approve every name that goes on the weekly Kill List, including 17-year-old girls in the mountains of Waziristan who you deem imminent threats to America, or to authorize secondary strikes on rescuers and mourners. But you do. These are war crimes, Mr. President, crimes against humanity, wars of aggression, acts of terrorism. You have done all these things and more. They are all acts of betrayal to We the People, to democracy, to humanity. You made a Faustian pact with the Devil, Mr. President, and you are leading us all down the road to perdition.