Dear Mister President...

[capri0mni]

In my last post, here, I urged people to write their representatives and senators, asking them to reprimand the President for his lack of leadership during the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. It turns out, Congress was already doing so. So I decided to write a letter President Bush, himself. After all, he's the one I'm pissed at. I am under no illusion that it will make any difference; Bush won't even admit to a spelling mistake. But I feel it's my duty as a citizen to raise my voice -- use it, or lose it. Certainly more effective (or at least, no less effective) than complaining to my f'list about him.

Anyway, here it is.


President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mister President:

I am deeply grateful to the brave men and women in our armed forces for their work in aiding the victims of Hurricane Katrina. These people are the pride of our nation. The Federal response to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, once coordinated, has been inspiring.

But I am also very angry. Mister President, on August 28, Katrina became a Force 5 hurricane - the strongest and most deadly hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. And you were on vacation. On August 29, Katrina hit, destroying property and flooding land across the coasts of three states. Levees around Lake Pontchartrain (only engineered to withstand a category 3 hurricane) broke. And you were on vacation.

No president, no matter how powerful, can stop a hurricane. But when danger threatens American citizens, it is the president's responsibility to be at his post, ready to respond at the earliest opportunity. And you were on vacation.

Mister President, you owe the citizens of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and all of the United States, an apology.

Sincerely,

I'm going to stick a hardcopy in the post early tomorrow. Hardcopy letters get more attention, simply because it takes more energy to get rid of them than hitting the delete key. If you want to use it as a model for your own letter, or just boilerplate the whole damned thing, please be my guest.

Comments

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

Considering I'm sure the response you get will be a PR-worded document that will be the same thing sent to everyone.... Copy/pasting your letter and sending thousands of copies would be nice. hrm.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Copy/pasting your letter and sending thousands of copies would be nice. hrm.

Precisely the reason I'm pimping it here.

[Shameless Agitator]

[rob-t-firefly.livejournal.com]

Well done.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

:::Takes a bow:::

Educated guess, here: is that icon an audience clip from "you bet your life!"?

[rob-t-firefly.livejournal.com]

Good guess, but it's actually a stock footage clip from a "Women's Institute" event. Monty Pyton's Flying Circus used it as a standard applause gag in every episode, inserting it wherever an actual applauding audience would be shown were the show less loony.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Ah!! I knew it looked familiar...