Thank you, Mister President.


Thank you, mister president Bush. Take a good long look at the world you have created and ask yourself if it was all worth it.

No, you did not create Al Quaeda. You did not create Saddam Hussein, or Zaquari, or Osama bin Laden. But you sure used them, didn’t you? You used us too. You used their evil deeds and our righteous fury to justify channeling trillions of dollars to your cronies. You pursued a policy of aggressive military intervention against a sovereign state that posed no threat to America, based solely on personal emotional motives and justified by lies and mis-truths. You made deals with dictators to secure their cooperation in exchange for billions of American dollars, and they just took our money, turned around, and used the terrorists as an excuse to pursue their own despotic dreams. You radicalized the Muslim world with policies that created enemies faster than we could kill them. You wasted our anger, our patience, our money, and worst of all, the lives of our youth in wars that have no end and can not have an end, by their very nature. You leave us poorer, more frightened, and less safe than when you took office. You claim to know what is good for us better than we do, but everything you do just seems to make things worse. Have you done anything right in eight years? One single virtuous act? At this rate, I think I would prefer a philandering sax-player. He could not have handled the “war on terror” any worse, and might just have done better.

Don’t get me wrong; Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who needed to go. But the world is full of evil dictators. Why throw away hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives on this particular one? He was marginalized, castrated, hamstrung. He was no longer a threat. And to use outright lies to hoodwink the American public and Congress into going along is unconscionable. Why did you not follow the example of JFK with Cuba, and simply marginalize and trivialize the dictator? Instead, you made him and his country a cause celebre for every would-be mujadeen in the world.

Yes, 9/11 was a horrible, despicable act by a megalomaniac and his cronies. Yes, they needed to be hunted down and executed like dogs. But they were in Afghanistan, not Iraq. By diluting our efforts and committing most of our troops to Iraq, you allowed Al Quaeda to melt away into the mountains of Pakistan, where your buddy Musharraf allowed them to live with impunity. And now they are back, stronger than ever. So strong that our buddy has seen fit to suspend the constitution, indefinitely delay elections, and arrest “activist judges” en masse. Hm, where have I heard that “activist judges” phrase before? Tell me, Mister President, when you see Musharraf filleting the Constitution of his country, don’t you get just a little bit jealous that he can get away with it?

Thank you, mister President. Thanks for creating the world in which I will be attempting to raise children. I will be thinking of you when I explain to them why we can’t afford a nice house, since the government went so far in debt that interest rates skyrocketed. I will be thinking of you when my children want to travel to a far away land, and I have to tell them that we cannot because the dollar is worthless in the global economy. I will be thinking of you when my child asks me why so many people around the world hate America.

The Tyrrany of Charlie Brown

The Tyranny of Charlie Brown


Growing up in 1970’s California, Charlie Brown was everywhere. Every Sunday comics section was headlined by Peanuts; every holiday was highlighted by a Charlie Brown and the Gang cartoon special. Their antics were sweet, endearing, and harmless. But looking back across the sweep of my life, I see strange ties between myself, the round-headed kid, and his creator. A recently published biography of the cartoonist Charles Schultz caused me to re-examine certain aspects of my childhood and personality that I had not considered before.

A shy, insecure child, I never quite fit in with the crowd. In times of frustration, I was sometimes consoled by my parents. They would tell me that I was “Just like Charlie Brown, in that everyone likes him.” They left the second half of that coda unstated, but it was there nevertheless… “but no one respects him.”

Children learn to mimic what they see. They absorb values and attitudes from their environment the way oysters filter plankton from the water around them. After watching Lucy pull that football away from Charlie Brown enough times, I learned to sabotage myself in ways that ensured that I, too, would never quite connect with my goal. Every time I acquired a very cool or highly desirable object, I would somehow manage to lose or destroy it. Eventually, my parents, in frustration, bought me only the most inexpensive and most easily replaceable commodities.

I learned to expect disappointment, mediocrity, insecurity, failure, and rejection. The Great Pumpkin would never make an appearance; the baseball game would never be won; all romantic advances would be rebuffed.

And it all seemed so right. Life was supposed to be painful, frustrating, and humiliating. If you excelled at something, then that must not be valuable; better, then, to focus on your weaknesses, hammer away at them until they are smooth and even. If you enjoy writing, then it is clearly not a goal worth pursuing. Better to pursue math, for which you are only marginally inclined.

In reading Charles Schultz’s biography, it became clear to me that he lived his life by these principles. He was always insecure, never feeling himself to be as good as his fellow cartoonists, to the point of lashing out in a childlike manner against perceived threats. His romantic relationships were difficult, frequently due to his own acts. And even in the waning years of his life, he remained bitter and withdrawn, unable to move beyond his childhood insecurities.

Thankfully, after almost two decades in the realm of the adult, I have acquired enough insight and perspective to see these self-destructive behaviors and begin to wean myself from the self-sabotaging thought patterns that I held. Reading Schultz’ biography brought me to sympathize with this lonely, bitter man, and allowed me to recognize the lonely, bitter person I was, at one point in my life, in danger of becoming.