| This is to you from Scott....Open Letter to George W. Bush
by Ralph Nader
Published on Saturday, July 9, 2005 by
CommonDreams.org
On June 28, 2005 you addressed the nation in prime
time about the situation in Iraq. You called the
casualties, destruction and suffering in that country
"horrifying and real." Then you declared: "I know
Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it?
It is worth it," you asserted and went on to explain
your position.
My question to you is this: "Who is doing the
sacrificing on the US side besides our troops and
their families and other Americans whose dire
necessities and protections cannot be met due to the
diversion of huge spending for the Iraq war and
occupation?"
Let's start with the wealthy. In the midst of the
ravages of war, you gave them a double tax cut,
pushing these enormous windfalls through Congress at
the same time as concentrations of wealth among the
top one percent richest were accelerating.
You also cut taxes for the large corporations that
benefit most from arcane, detailed tax legislation.
Many of these corporations have profited greatly from
the tens of billions of dollars in contracts which you
have handed them.
Companies like Halliburton, from which Vice President
Dick Cheney receives handsome retirement benefits,
keep getting multi-billion contracts even though the
Pentagon auditors and investigations by Rep. Henry
Waxman have shown vast waste, non-performances, and
not a little corruption. Not much corporate sacrifice
there.
You and Mr. Cheney need to be reminded that your
predecessors pressed, during wartime, for surcharges
on corporate profits of the largest corporations. As
Rep. Major R. Owens pointed out recently in
introducing such legislation (H.R. 1804), the
precedents for such an equitable policy, at a time of
growing federal deficits, occurred during World War I,
World II, the Korean and Vietnam wars. Ponder the
difference. Past Presidents increased taxes on the
large companies as a way of spreading out the economic
sacrifice a little. Instead, during record, even
staggering big corporate profits, you reduce their
contributions to the US Treasury and military
expenditures.
Where is the presence of the sons and daughters of the
top political and economic rulers in the Iraq theater,
where they can see the suffering of millions of
innocent Iraqi people? You can count on the fingers of
one hand the number of family members serving over
there among the 535 members of Congress, and the White
House. No specific data is available for the families
of the CEOs of the Fortune 500. But we can guess that
very few are stationed in and around the Sunni
triangle these days. Can't get much tennis, golf or
sailing in, if that were the case. How often have you
extolled the patriotic sacrifice of members of the
armed forces, the Reserves and the National Guard? How
often have you praised their work as the highest form
of service to their nation, its security and future.
Well, what about your daughters' having this sublime
opportunity to be on the receiving end of their
father's encomiums? Remember Major John Eisenhower,
among others.
In an earlier unanswered letter, I urged you and Mr.
Cheney to announce that you would reject the tens of
thousands of dollars in personal tax cuts that passage
of your tax cut legislation for the wealthy would have
accorded both of your fortunes. Recusing yourselves
would have conveyed the message that it is unseemly to
sign your own personal tax reduction. It would also
have furthered the principle of the moral authority to
govern.
Well, you did sign your own tax cut, while tens of
thousands of Americans had to leave their employment
and small businesses and go to Iraq at a reduced pay
and worrying about inadequate protective equipment and
insufficient training.
Those rulers who send young men and women into
undeclared wars on platforms of fabrications,
deceptions, and cover-ups do not have proper
incentives for responsible and effective behavior and
politics. Some degrees of shared sacrifice provide
prudent restraint against the manipulations and
recklessness of politicians and the supporting avarice
of their fellow oligarchs.
Without some measure of sacrifice, programs are
misdesigned to pursue stateless terrorists in ways and
areas that actually produce recruitment opportunities
for more such terrorists. Note your own CIA Director
Porter Goss's testimony before the Senate earlier this
year. But the resulting warmongering, where the
"intelligence and the facts" are fixed to the policy,
became unsavory re-election strategies in 2004.
You have often told us that you want to nominate
federal judges who believe in a strict construction of
the Constitution. How about a President who believes
in the strict constitutional authority of Article One,
Section Eight which gives Congress and Congress alone
the power to declare war? Requiring a declaration of
war, together with legislation requiring, upon such a
declaration, the conscription of all eligible members
of Congressional and White House families would assure
that only "unavoidable and necessary wars" are
declared and fought.
Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader |
