To “Sir” With Something Other Than Love

Open Letter to George W. Bush: Just Shut Up

Sir:

I take strong exception to your remarks on the recent court decision by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that declared your warrantless wiretap program illegal and unconstitutional. I take particularly strong exception, sir, to your opinion that people who oppose your abuse of the office of President in this (or any other matter)

“…do not understand the nature of the world in which we live."

I think that the people that oppose your regime most avidly understand quite well the nature of the world we live in, and your large and regrettable part in making that world much worse that what it could be. You, sir, understand nothing; you are a liar; a thief; a murderer; and a tyrant, and in all your endeavors ultimately a failure and an incompetent. The truth is not in you, sir. God does not speak to you; or if he does, you’re not listening.

You, sir, have embroiled the United States of America in an undeclared, illegal, and apparently endless war, spent the treasure and the reputation our country, the lives of our soldiers, and the lives of countless innocent civilians on the basis of constantly mutating justifications and in pursuit of ever-shifting goals that recede like the flickering waters of a desert mirage. Virtually every decision you and your advisors have made in prosecuting this war against “ter-rism” has not only been wrong, but wrong-headed and self-deluded as well. You, sir, have condoned, encouraged, incited, and on numerous occasions ordered the commission of war crimes. You, sir, though you have never dirtied yourself with the blood of an enemy—make that “enemy combantant”—are a war criminal, and I dare say, if you were not the President of the United States, you would by now be facing charges in the dock at the Hague.

In the course of waging this so-called “War on Terror,” which is better named the “War to Terrify,” you, sir, have converted the constitutional democracy of which you are the chief steward into a proto-fascist state. For the sake of your war games, you, sir, have mortgaged the future of our children, and bid fair to wreck our country, and perhaps accelerate a world wide collapse of human and natural systems in a planetary disaster.

You, sir, are the one who does not understand the nature of the world we live in.

You, sir, in the words of Sha Zukang, the Chinese Ambassador to the U.N. at Geneva, should “shut up.” Shut up and be quiet.

It is better for you to shut up and keep quiet. It's much, much better.