Letters to the Editor October 5, 2004 In a recent letter to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, a veteran said that he would vote for Bush in November despite the fact that the president had made some mistakes, because, on the whole, the incumbent has done a good job. I would like to know how many mistakes the man would have to make before he was judged to be incompetent. Bush was mistaken in the assumption that granting tax cuts to billionaires would be good for the economy. Having squandered the surplus he inherited from the Democrats, he has run up a staggering deficit to be paid for by our children and grandchildren. The number of children living in poverty has increased; the length of time the average American has to work before retiring has increased; the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. For Bush, none of this may seem so bad. After all, his friends, the “’haves’ and ‘have-mores’,” those he regards as his “base,” have gotten a lot richer lately, and they have obligingly provided him with a $200 million dollar war chest for his reelection campaign. Then, there is the USA PATRIOT Act, in which the Bill of Rights is amended so as to allow the government to do wiretaps on private citizens, check out your local library to see what you’ve been reading, and so forth. Thus the very government which repeatedly dismissed early warnings about Al-Qaeda in the summer before 9-11 curtails our basic rights so as to get better information with which to protect us. Perhaps they think we will not notice that they did not make good use of the information already available to them when disaster struck on their watch? Most important, Bush led the country into the disastrous war in Iraq on the basis of various mistaken assumptions: first, that Saddam Hussein was connected to al-Qaeda, second, that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and third, that we do not need the support of our traditional allies. These mistakes are particularly troubling because they have cost the lives of over a thousand American soldiers and many thousands of Iraqi civilians. They have also cost piles of money which could have been used on our own health, education, and infrastructure needs, not to mention the actual war on terror. As for the idea of donning a uniform and landing on an aircraft carrier to declare “Mission Accomplished” when the blood in Iraq was just beginning to flow, what can I say? Bush has never served in any war, prides himself on the fact that he does not read books, and seems not to understand what grief it means for soldiers and their families when he blusters: “Bring ‘em on!” His contempt for actual veterans is evident in his refusal to condemn the smear campaign against John Kerry, a fabric of lies described by another distinguished veteran, John McCain, as unfounded and shameful. While men and women are dying in the current war, George W. Bush tries to reduce combat pay for soldiers and cut benefits for veterans. He does not attend the funerals of those who come home in flag-draped coffins. His disregard for those who bear the burden of his policy is astounding. It is very true that anybody can make a mistake, but this president is more than likely to do so because of the bad advice he regularly gets from the members of his neocon team. The question arises—why do none of these guys ever pay for their mistakes? Why, for example, was Rumsfeld not fired over Abu Ghraib? It is true that the president expressed his regrets, yet he insists, in the face of evidence to the contrary, that the abuses were insignificant aberrations. He acts as if the torture of prisoners were a mistake on the order of missing a medical appointment or bankrupting a business, not a violation of international law and an affront to human decency. Why is nobody ever held accountable for anything in this administration? Nobody lost his job over the intelligence failures which led to 9-11; nobody lost his job over the false claim that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And nobody lost his job over Abu Ghraib. I guess the criteria for satisfactory job performance vary from one profession to another. Most people I know would fear for their jobs and also have trouble looking at themselves in the mirror if they made such blunders as our current administrators seem to regard as par for the course. But if a president makes mistakes resulting in the devastation of the economy, the abridgment of our democratic freedoms, the loss of American prestige abroad, the deaths of thousands of people and the impoverishment of millions of others, not to mention the enrichment of his fat-cat buddies, well, I suppose we can just give him another chance. Lillian Corti
October 9, 2004 Thanks to everyone who came to jean lester & co.’s art show at Hartung Hall on October 2nd and helped out. Sincerely,
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