It's Crunch Time Mr. President--Are You Ready to Listen to Reason Yet?

(Another in a series of open letters to President George W. Bush)

Good morning Mr. President,  I am sorry to see that you are so needlessly provoking confrontation with the Congress over appropriating another huge increment of money to fund your war in Iraq. The money you need to fulfill your duty to the troops for whom you are responsible as Commander-in-Chief is on the table. The ball is in your court. It’s time for you to take a good hard look at where we are and how we got there, and consider doing the right thing--compromise.

You need to get it through your thick head, George, that the American people had spoken on this issue—last election day, when they wrested control of the Congress from your party. The message we were sending, in large part, was that we strongly oppose your misguided and mismanaged war. Your childish recalcitrance in refusing to acknowledge the will of the people, and to consider the reversal of course that they clearly desire has not served you well.

You seemed to experience brief moment of clarity in the aftermath of that humiliating electoral defeat when you finally, tacitly, acknowledged this popular sentiment by giving your erstwhile Secretary of Defense the boot, however belatedly. Your present SECDEF, Mr. Gates, has been a welcome change. He is, from all appearances, a genuinely thoughtful, prudent, and conscientious man. He is clearly eager to do the right thing—including shutting down the disgraceful Guantanamo detention facility. 

Mr. Gates has acknowledged that what we are doing in Iraq boils down to “buying time” for the Iraqi government and security forces to, finally, rise to the occasion and assume responsibility for defending their own country. For four-plus years—four agonizingly long years—we have been buying time for these people, and we still have no reason to believe that the end is anywhere in sight.  The worst part of this deal with the devil is this: the medium of exchange we have been spending so liberally in this apparently futile effort has been the blood, lives and physical and mental integrity of some of our best and bravest young men and women.

They and their families have willingly answered your call to duty, and they have done everything you have asked of them, regardless how unreasonable. No one can fault them. The cause of our appalling succession of failures in Iraq lies elsewhere. 

Our troops have been betrayed by their leaders, starting with you, sir. This egregious failure of leadership, at every level, is almost perfectly analogous to what occurred during the Viet Nam War. In appointing Mr. Gates and General Petraeus to their present positions you have taken two small steps in the direction of remediating this failure, but, regrettably, just like your vaunted “surge strategy” it is too little and too late.  

May I remind you, sir, that there is more at stake here than your own personal legacy—which is, it would appear, unsalvageable at this point. The future fortunes of your party stand in the balance. I don’t think that your fellow Republicans will take kindly to being relegated to powerlessness for the next decade as a result of having your Iraq war albatross hung around their necks. You should consider the prospect of spending the rest of your days as  the same kind of pariah as your predecessor Richard Nixon.  

The bottom line is this: We, the American people have completely exhausted our patience with your bungled mismanagement of a war that was ill-conceived, fraudulently-predicated, and illigitimate from the outset. We are sick to death of the endless parade of flag draped coffins, containing the mortal remains of some of our finest young men and women, whose futures have been stolen from their grieving families.  

Quite simply, we want it ended. The timeframes for withdrawal provided in the Congressional proposals are more than reasonable. It is time for you, sir, to start listening to reason for a change.