Pres. Obama, I have just received your Thanksgiving day message to campaign supporters. We worked for your election because we acutely needed a President whose actions matched his words. I am deeply disappointed that we have not found that in you - as yet.
It is unacceptable for you to tolerate continued policy to make and use land mines, nuclear weapons and other WMD, or to continue the crimes of indefinite imprisonment & torture of those accused, but not convicted of, any crime. We need to be able to distinguish our policy from that of North Korea, Myanmar or Iran.
You cannot claim a commitment to Peace, Justice and the end of Earth abuse while proposing to escalate our most egregious, purely voluntary CO2 emissions and deep environmental destruction in a "war" with no distinct adversary and no defined or achievable goal in Afghanistan, Iraq and through our own terror networks spread across the globe.
You cannot limit your leadership in the vitally needed rapid re-engineering of our life support systems, and merely drop in to Copenhagen with a weak and tentative promise on the way to collect your unearned Nobel. An honest response at this point is to decline, based on the fact that since you were nominated you have chosen to stay on the path of War and have been just as willing, for instance, to approve cowardly killings by drone aircraft as your morally malformed predecessor. We are no better than the Germans with their V2's murdering Londoners.
You cannot come to my city and propose a competition to adequately fund only a select handful of public schools and then talk about providing benefits to all. (The school you visited here has a budget of $3 million/year, equal to sending 3 soldiers to Afghanistan.)
You cannot provide welfare to Wall Street and crumbs to Main Street. You cannot leave people like me who are out of work for months to beg for another year or more and claim you are serving the people. You work for me even if they buy off all of you in Washington.
All of these failures of policy are connected and their correction must be of a piece if we are to have any HOPE of leaving a planet that isn't a curse on our children and that they won't rightly curse us for creating. At your Inauguration you said we needed to push you. That is exactly what we will do. You are capable of far better than you have delivered so far. The time for courage and action is now. We are going ahead without you in creating real change and reclaiming power at the local & regional level. Please follow our lead.
Edward Kuharski, ekuharski@aol.com, 608-255-5816
