Looking Back
05.10.14
I was cleaning files on my computer and found a copy of the one and only letter I have written to a public official. I wrote this on March 19, 2002, when my opinion was clearly in the minority. This was my letter to President G. W. Bush.
I have never before written a personal letter to any public official, and certainly never considered writing on a topic about which I am less knowledgeable. But recent events have frightened me, and in the hopes that even one person’s opinion might carry weight, I have chosen to write. It may well be that you will never see this letter. I’m not so foolish as to believe that the President of the United States has time to read every letter sent to him. But I hope that this will find its way to someone who will pass on my concerns to the policy makers in our government.
I know that these have been difficult times and that even more difficult times lie ahead. I also know that there are many details about the happenings of recent times that are not available to the general public. And this is as it should be in the interests of both public safety and military policy.
Recently there has been talk in Congress and elsewhere of attacking Iraq. I know that Saddam Hussein has committed a number of atrocities. It may well be that our intelligence community has evidence of his complicity in recent events which has not yet been made public. However, it frightens me that our nation might overstep the bounds of decency and justice and become ourselves the aggressors, taking action which is unjustified.
I am, at best, a novice student of history and even less of modern affairs. I have no idea what our best course of action should be. But I am afraid of the passion of desperate men. I am afraid of those who find it easy to suggest military action. I am afraid of how easy it is to justify the wrong thing in the effort to do the right thing.
I firmly believe in the freedoms and concerns on which our country was based. I believe our country was founded on a willingness to sometimes allow a potential wrong in order to avoid a greater wrong. It is this principle that sometimes, regrettably, allows the guilty to go free from our justice system. But the alternative, to act where there is reasonable doubt, was abhorrent to our Founding Fathers and the principles upon which they founded our nation.
In closing, I have never been prouder of an American president than I was while listening to your State of the Union address following the attack on September 11th. I thought you spoke reasonably, compassionately, yet firmly. As our leader, you can restrain those who, in their anger and pain at what has happened, might be tempted to excessive action. If we act without due cause, Osama Bin Laden and those like him have defeated American freedom and American justice more surely than any act of terrorism they could ever commit, and we will have shamed before the world the principles we hold most dear.
© 2002, 2014 Bill Stifler