An Open Letter to George W. Bush

Dear Mr. President:

Over the weekend, an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at you.

When you were running for office, you let everyone know that you employed the Cliff’s Notes version of policy. That is, you depend on experts to tell you what is happening. Having studied your administration for eight long years, I think I’m something of an expert, so I’d like to take a minute to explain to you what is going on.

Mr. Muntader al Zaidi was being disrespectful, it’s true, when he threw his shoes at you, but he, like millions of other people have been trying to get your attention for a very long time. Eight years, in fact. Sadly, you haven’t been the great listener, just the great decider.

Muntader was angry because your invasion killed thousands of Iraqis, destabilized his country, and reduced a good deal of it to rubble. I guess you might call him a sore loser. Nevertheless, when you tried to make light of his gesture, you made things worse.

I think a couple of other people might like to add their shoes to the cause.

Here are the combat boots of the 4,029 American soldiers who have died in your misguided war of conquest, and for their parents and children. Here are another 30,852 pairs of combat boots for soldiers injured there. If we bought shoes that cost $50 a pair, we could buy 12,239,700,000 pair to throw for all the money you have wasted on Iraq. For ignoring your own Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, when he told you that we should withdraw from Iraq, one more pair. For hoodwinking Congress into funding the invasion, 535 pair, and for making those legislators who tried to use the power of the purse to control your escapades into political scapegoats, 535 more. No one will ever know how much you and your war profiteer buddies made from Iraq, but let’s throw in a couple of hundred pair for good measure. For telling us all “mission accomplished” five years ago, but still keeping us in Iraq, one more pair.

For trampling on the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we have to add a few pair. For the USA PATRIOT Act, one pair. For Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay, two pair. For silencing Americans who disagreed with your policy, having them arrested when they refused to go where you would not see them, and for making it an arrestable offense to wear a T-shirt that voiced objections to your policies in your presence, three more pair of shoes. For refusing to listen to Americans who objected to your policies and for browbeating Congress to go along with your plans, two more pairs of shoes are coming your way. For spying on Americans without warrants and for shielding telecom companies from lawsuits for helping you spy on Americans without warrants, we’re sending two pair. For getting an Attorney General to legalize torture and for claiming that the United States should not be subject to international law or the Geneva Convention, three more pair.

For spending our hard-earned tax dollars on war instead of health care reform, passing an incomprehensible prescription drug plan that caused seniors of this country even more headaches, and preventing people from importing their drugs from Canada, three pair. For passing No Child Left Behind, which makes more work for teachers and gives them less time to educate our children, 54.3 million pair of children’s shoes. For allowing junk science like “intelligent design” to invade our schools, one more pair.

For bailing out Wall Street bankers, but refusing to help the big three automakers because you don’t like labor unions, when 30 per cent of all American jobs depend on the automobile, here are 500,000 pair of shoes on behalf of the members of the United Auto Workers.

For cutting family planning funding here, and to the United Nations World Population Fund that helps women in third-world countries, two pair of shoes. These both belong to me, because third-world women are too poor to have shoes, thanks to your idea that poor people need more children, perhaps because they are not poor enough to suit you. For the people of New Orleans and the gulf coast, 1838 pair, one for each person who died in Hurricane Katrina.

For lying about global warming, treating our national parklands like a free concession for logging, herding, and mining, and for gutting the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, here are three more pair of shoes.

And finally, Mr. President, for making the United States universally hated in the Arab world and a laughingstock in the rest of the world, two more pair of shoes go onto the pile.

Mr. President, I know you don’t like to be shown disrespect. No one does. I just need to remind you that none of these 12,294,538,014 (that’s 12 billion, 294.5 million) pair of shoes shows you any disrespect you did not first show to our country, our people, and the world.