Letter to Mom

This is a letter I wrote to my mom the other day. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Since I think it’s my best writing I’ve done about the election, I asked her if I could post it here. (She said yes.)

Mom,

Yesterday, you asked me why I didn’t think the President had “moral strength.” I had a hard time putting it into words – I find him outrageous on so many levels that I often don’t know where to begin.

But I’ve found it. Looking back, it’s the moment when it crystallized for me that GWB was not simply a bad president, but a disastrous one, one who, despite his easygoing manner, is actually undermining everything that makes America great.

That moment was Abu Ghraib.

Mom, seeing those pictures turned my stomach. I couldn’t believe that Americans were doing these things. When I was younger, I didn’t have a very high opinion of soldiers, but that’s changed in the last few years. I’m sure there are plenty of soldiers I wouldn’t like personally (although probably just as many that, like Mark G., I would like a whole lot), but I’ve grown to respect what they do and the peace they keep a great deal. They’re often called on to dirty their hands in a way that I don’t think I could ever do. They do it to keep me safe, and you safe, and people in other countries safe. Often, it’s in high-stress environments, keeping an already bad situation from becoming incalculably worse.

These men and women deserve our respect. And in most cases, they earn it.

But then there was Abu Ghraib. There were pictures of naked prisoners, prisoners threatened with dogs. Prisoners forced to stand motionless for 12 hours at a stretch. People, men and women, were raped and sexually humiliated. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything more horrifying to me – because I knew that my own people did this. Not the Germans, not the Japanese, not Osama bin Laden. My people. People who grew up in towns like ours.

It turned my stomach for days. The photos kept coming, and all I could think about was how wrong it was. We’re Americans, I thought. We don’t torture. We’re Americans.

To my mind, there are two people ultimately responsible for this (aside from George Bush himself). One is Donald Rumsfeld, who is in charge of the military, and who let this happen. The Red Cross estimates that 70 to 90 percent of the Iraqis detained were held in error, on his watch. The other is John Ashcroft, whose Justice Department wrote a memo that blurred the line between torture and acceptable interrogation techniques.

Looking at the situation, I have to ask: What would a moral person do, if this happened on his watch? Ask yourself what Dad would have done if he were President when it happened. What would you have done? What do you think Rev. Ev would do, or me, or Tommy, or anyone else who you can think of as moral?

Here’s my answer, for every one of these people: They would get to the bottom of why it happened, and they would make sure it never happened again. In doing this, they would hold the right people accountable – not just the people who got their hands dirty, but the people who encouraged or allowed it to happen. They would replace these people and move forward. And they would take personal responsibility for their own oversight, and assure America and the world that it would never happen again.

That didn’t happen. The administration scrambled to put a lid on the photos, trying to crack down on the people who took and shared the pictures, rather than the torturers themselves. Soon after the story broke, the President stood by Rumsfeld and called him one of the best Secretaries of Defense the country’s ever had. Instead of focusing on the problem, he focused on political damage control, hoping the story would blow over.

And amazingly and sadly, it did.

But whenever the President has been asked about any mistakes he’s made, he never mentions Abu Ghraib. It’s understandable that he doesn’t want to dwell on it during an election. But neither he nor any of his staff have ever taken any sort of responsibility for the horrible treatment prisoners received there. That’s neither moral nor strong.

And that’s why I can’t vote for him.

I know you’re planning to vote for Bush, Mom. I can only ask, please consider his actions, rather than what he says about himself. Does he measure up to your standards of what a good man should be?

I can tell you he doesn’t meet mine. Not by a long shot.

I love you, whatever you decide.

Rob