To the Editor:
Your editorial of last week was thought provoking. In the fictional account you describe, President Bush states his opinion to Vice President Cheney that “Brazilian” must be a whole lot, perhaps like a “gazillion” and that losing two of these units of measurement in men was maybe too much. In the story, “two Brazilian men” just put the situation in Iraq over the acceptable limit, and we should pull out.
What surprised me was your take on the story. I first saw it months ago and figured it was one more version of Mr. Bush, the lazy thinker, being led by Mr. Cheney, the ruthless thinker. that, of course, is the intended joke (although it’s not really funny, is it?). You bypassed the joke all together and focused upon the dark side, the loss of life. I think your interpretation of the story is very illustrative of how our country has once again become lost in a costly quagmire.
Good people like you have great difficulty believing that elected officials might intentionally mislead the electorate in order to pursue a narrow, selfish agenda. Think again. These past six years have been a tragedy of loss of life and unfettered greed. I did not and do not understand how thoughtful people could agree with the invasion of Iraq, given the facts that the World Trade Center terrorists were Saudi, that we were making progress in Afghanistan where we knew Bin Laden to be, that no clear evidence existed of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq.
It’s time that people in this country start to think for themselves again. We need to turn off the TV and read. We need to listen critically to leaders. We need to learn something about our leaders. We need to think about our dependence upon oil and the countries that have it to sell . . . Iran, Russia, Venezuela. Why is it that the leaders of these countries are some of the least democratic rulers in the world? Our money supports their regimes. We Americans used to be resourceful and courageous. Can we break the cycle of oil dependence? Surely these qualities may be honed in noncombat situations. We need to change the way we live in order to have a safer, freer world.
We have to face the fact that elected officials of both parties have failed us. We need leadership that understands the new global reality of diminishing resources, and helps us define and obtain new benchmarks for an acceptable quality of life. We need to recognize our common humanity with people of all faiths and people of no faith – “The Russians love their children, too.” that old Cold War mantra still works today.
Yes, Mr. Lanman, too many people have died in Iraq. And, yes, we’ve been lucky that so far none of us have had to claim the dead as our own.
Barbara Wood
Worth Cole Road, Vevay