Subject: Open Letter to Bush from Texan
--text follows this line--

Nobody, including Texans, wants to go to war with Iraq. Look who's
not enlisting.

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH:

Dear President Bush,

Nobody wants to go to war with Iraq.

* This is not just "inside the Beltway." My family actually is from
Texas, where my late father, his brothers, and his (future)
brothers-in-law - good East Texas boys -- all enlisted around the time
of Pearl Harbor. I just got back from two weeks in Houston in August;
in my home state of Texas, enthusiasm for war with Iraq is
nonexistent. Recruitment is an uphill struggle targeting mostly
Mexican-American and African-American youth whose grades are down; and
enlistments are down. In Texas, you are not considered "popular," not
that that matters.

* Same with every other state. Usually, when there's a downturn in the
economy, military enlistments go up; not this time. Given the
unresolved controversy over the unapproved anthrax "vaccine," some
veterans are urging people not to enlist.

* The reason reservists' tours of duty had to be lengthened is that no
one is joining up; the military is so overextended (with armies in
Japan, Korea, and for some reason Germany) that to defeat Iraq it will
have to bomb Iraq's cities - which will make this country look like
the Third Reich; and you're paying for the whole effort basically with
a big credit card.

* One young person in the DC area tried several times last year to get
a military recruiter to visit him; he didn't have any other job
prospects. As luck would have it, when the recruiter got in touch, it
was - you guessed it -- September 12, 2001. The response was along the
lines of "Uh, that's okay," and I don't blame him.

* I neither know nor know of any journalist, among all those reporting
war against Iraq as though it were worthy of considering, whose own
offspring are enlisting or who are being brought up to enlist.

* Rabid warbucks commentators like Michael Kelly, William Kristol,
Charles Krauthammer, and George F. Will are likewise contributing no
family genes to war against Iraq.

* Your few out-and-out war boosters in Congress, including members of
the Armed Services committees, have, among them, a combined total of
zero young relatives enlisting to fight Iraq. Even members of Congress
who have appeared on Sunday morning talk shows to pump up the war talk
are not sending anyone off from their own front porches, not even
those who actually were in the military themselves years ago. This is
not "hypocrisy," by the way. The offspring of educated families know
that Iraq is a third-world country with no nukes.

* Ditto Vice President Cheney.

* Your own combat-age offspring and your grown nephews and nieces are
not dashing out to join up; your second and third cousins in the
extended clan are not enlisting to fight Iraq - none of them. Even
your relatives drawing public money through government work are not
returning the favor by sending their own flesh and blood off to war
with Iraq. They're right not to, of course. Once again, the reason
they're not going is that there is no reason to go.
In fairness, I cannot say that you yourself are not paying a price for
all this. Every time you, Vice President Cheney, a congressman, or any
of those checkbook rightwingers on television call for "regime
change," I flinch. The chickens always come home to roost. These
chickenhawks, all old enough to remember the early 1960s, seem
strangely oblivious to the jeopardy for you.
I may not have voted for you, but I can truthfully say I would not
want to see one hair of your head placed in danger. No number of
military contracts is worth this, no false flattery, no oil fields.
Oil is a finite resource, and when it runs out, we shall learn to do
without it, because we'll have to. If we focus on meeting our needs,
we'll meet them, and by making America an example for the world, we'll
have all the triumph we need.

* Are millions of good Americans not joining up because they lack
patriotism? No. They're not joining up because they know there's no
good reason to go to war with Iraq.

Margie Burns

margie.burns@verizon.net
301-386-5615

http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=203366&group=webcast