Letters to the Editor
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First, A Thank You to Sidney
This is a first-rate article on our President's recent travel abroad. Thanks, Sidney!
We are interested in the impressions of the world's leaders as 72% of Americans disapprove of President Bush's job performance. Do they see as we do that many of his appointments to office are based much more on loyalty than competence? Do they question, as we do, the logic of his statements?
Mr. Blumenthal offers an explanation to the disarray of our foreign policy. He writes that Bush's foreign policy (and therefore ours) "has descended into a fugue state". Blumenthal continues "In a fugue state, a trauma creates a kind of amnesia in which the sufferer is incapable of connecting to his past."
A psychiatrist wrote a book relating how he measured the mental health of his patients. He used something called the "Rappaport Time Line". We all have a 'time line'. It is the continuum of our past, present, and future. For solid mental health we should be comfortable moving without distress from our past, to our present, and looking into our future. Do we see events realistically?
To help us see things realistically we need an honest and an engaged free press. This free press is helpful to the President as well. We cannot allow the President nor his associates to distort actual events. An example is the choice to "surge" our troop strength in Iraq.
The President searched and searched for a general who would tell him what he wanted to hear. But there were a number of prominent generals, both active and retired, who thought otherwise. Generals against the "surge" were: Abizaid, Batiste, Casey, Odom, Eaton, Clark, Hoar, McCafferty. The President allowed his slander machine, the right wing press, to label these men 'surrender monkeys'. These generals made valid arguments opposing the 'surge'and they are being proven right according to present events in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So to folks who are unhappy with the performance of their opposition party, I say "get involved". Your local Democratic or Independent Committee needs your help. As one 91 year old activist woman said last night on a Bill Moyers program, "You are the leader that you have been looking for."