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I fault this president for not knowing what death
> > is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty one
> > year olds who wanted to be what they could be.
> >
> > On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower
> > prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he
> > knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even
> > in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of
> > necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost
> > more than Eisenhower could bear.
> >
> > But this president does not know what death is. He
> > hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the
> > press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't
> > seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to
> > the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the
> > carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving,
> > triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why
> > he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech
> > written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave
> > young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for
> > their country. But you study him, you look into his
> > eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does
> > not feel in the depths of his being because he has
> > no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal
> > responsibility for the thousand dead young men and
> > women who wanted be what they could be. They come to
> > his desk not as youngsters with mothers and father
> > or wives and children who will suffer to the end of
> > their days a terribly torn fabric of familial
> > relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of
>
> > aborted life.... they come to his desk as a political liability
> > which is why the press is no permitted to photograph the arrival of
> > their coffins from Iraq. How then can he mourn? To mourn is to
> > express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his
> > reason for going to war was, as he knew,
> > unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret
> > that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has
> > made of his "mission-accomplished", a disaster. He does
> > not regret that rather than controlling terrorism
> > his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns
> > for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought
> > this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and
> > he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of
> > war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He
> > did not understand that you do not go to war when it
> > is one of the options but when it is the only
> > option; you go not because you want to but because
> > you have to.
> >
> > Yet this president knew it would be difficult for
> > Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign
> > dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would
> > seem to have a mind for only one thing --- to take power, to remain
> > in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their
> > friends. A war will do that as well as anything.
> > You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind
> > you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does
> > not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does
> > not sit in the church with the grieving parents and
> > wives and children. He is the President who does
> > not feel. He does not feel for the families of the
> > dead, he does not feel for the thirty five million
> > of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the
> > forty percent who cannot afford health insurance, he
> > does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning
> > black or for the working people he has deprived of
> > the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay
> > their bills --- it is amazing for how many people
> > in this country this President does not feel. But he
> > will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity
> > he is relieving the wealthiest one percent of the
> > population of their tax burden for the sake of the
> > rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we
> > breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is
> > decreasing the safety regulations for coal mines to
> > save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving
> > workers of their time-and-a- half benefits for
> > overtime because this is actually a way to honor
> > them by raising them into the professional class.
> > And this litany of lies he will versify with
> > reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when
> > just what he and his party are doing to our
> > democracy is choking the life out of it.
> >
> > But there is one more terribly sad thing about all
> > of this. I remember the millions of people here
> > and around the world who marched against the war. It
> > was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul
> > of alarm and protest that transcended national
> > borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not
> > the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are
> > little wars all over the world most of the time. But
> > the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of
> > people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of
> > humankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of
> > democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest
> > democratic republic in history was turning its back
> > on the future, using its extraordinary power and
> > standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance
> > of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal
> > combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a
> > people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring
> > their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.
> >
> > The president we get is the country we get. With
> > each president the nation is conformed spiritually.
> > He is the artificer of our malleable national soul.
> > He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of
> > lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our
> > responses. The people he appoints are cast in his
> > image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is
> > his characteristic trouble. Finally the media
> > amplify his character into our moral weather report.
> > He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that
> > prevail: How can we sustain ourselves as the United
> > States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the
> > constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics
> > of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such
> > moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
> >
> >
> > E.L. Doctorow
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