Dear Hillary
by Joyce Marcel
(snipped)
CEO profits are up, corporate profits are up, salaries are not up. We know that. The middle class is being destroyed. Right. Our jobs are being exported overseas. We don't manufacture anything any more. No kidding?
People started cheering. But hey, wait a minute. Didn't your husband negotiate GATT and NAFTA? Weren't you warned at the time that the result would be a huge loss of jobs? Remember Ross Perot's description - "a giant sucking sound?"
Well, my love, GATT and NAFTA were the death nails in the coffin of American manufacturing. It seems a bit disingenuous for you to come out against them now.
Come to think of it, Bill invented triangulation, and the stealing/co-opting of Republican programs and language. For power he sold out not only progressive but even liberal Democratic ideals. So even though you're standing up there giving us the straight mainstream liberal schtick, how can we trust that you mean a word of it?
Universal health care - well, finally you're for it. You caved in pretty easily when you started on that issue in the White House - one lousy ad from the insurance companies and you were gone. How do we know you'll stand up to them now?
No Child Left Behind, teaching to the test, yadda yadda yadda. We need to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tax the rich. Du'h. The world doesn't respect us any more. Really? When did you notice? Diplomacy good, war bad. It takes a village - by the way, that's not your quote. It's an old saying - did you ever attribute it?
Iraq. Yeah, you voted for it in the fall of 2002. We all know it. Now you say 'No' to escalation and 'Yes' to diplomacy. You complain, "In the beginning, Congress didn't provide oversight." But you were in Congress when the Bush administration started to peddle its lies, and you never spoke out against the war.
And don't try that old "We were lied to" nonsense. A whole lot of us knew that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. We were saying quagmire long before Bush laid down the first bomb and the first American soldier.
Shame no one asks you the right questions, Hil. Here's one: "Did you - and every other senator who was planning a presidential run - vote for the war because you didn't want to seem weak on defense, as the Republicans were sure to paint you? And did you, especially, vote for the war because you're a woman and even more vulnerable to the 'weakness' tag? Are all those people dead and maimed because you wanted too much to be president? And if, back then, you believed in your heart that the war was wrong (read: incredibly venal and stupid), and you didn't have the courage to speak out the way many of us did, why should we think you'll be a courageous president for these difficult and dangerous times?"
More at
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views07/0214-30.htm