Yearning for Mr. Smith

Email this morning to the office of Senator Lindsey O. Graham, R-South Carolina:

I am an American and despite the hurdles found in Senator Graham’s statements at the top of his Web site today, I still have the right to express my opinion on the willingness or unwillingness of U.S. senators to intervene in an Iraq policy that has gone so egregiously wrong “victory” is impossible to define.

I read Senator Graham’s statements. Any reasonable input I might have on the issue of the Iraq war is blocked by his statement, “I will do everything in my power to ensure the House resolution dies an inglorious death in the Senate.”

Graham is not interested in my opinion on the Iraq war.

I will single out his claim that Democrats are pandering to the anti-war left and take issue with that.

I am a 65-year-old retired newspaper editor who from earliest recollection has loved her country.

I was born five months after Pearl Harbor. During WWII, while I was experiencing the joys of childhood safe in my parents’ care, my older brother was in the United States Navy, stateside, training pilots and requesting to be sent into combat. One brother-in-law served in combat aboard the aircraft carriers the Hornet and the Wasp and on the destroyer O’Hare. Another brother-in-law was a paratrooper in the Rainbow Division, 101st Airborne, and lost an eye when shot with a wooden bullet by a German as those brave Americans pushed into Germany on the Western Front just prior to the fall of Adolph Hitler.

I grew up with pride in the military. I am not anti-war. I am anti-this misbegotten war in Iraq.

Why do Graham and other Republicans continue to couch this war as part of “the war on terror” and attempt to link this failed effort to 9/11?

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, in debate on the floor of that body, said, “We didn’t start this war; they did.” They? Clearly, he meant al Qaeda, once more linking, erroneously, 9/11 and Iraq.

I have been impressed with Lindsey Graham’s willingness to work across the aisle on certain issues and had hopes he might have the makings of a great American leader.

In this the greatest issue before Graham in his tenure in the U.S. Senate, he has shown himself to be merely a follower.

I support any resolution that will bring our troops safely home and leave the business of government in Iraq to Iraqis. If blood is shed there, let it no longer be that of this country’s young men and women.

Sincerely,

Ms. B.J. Trotter

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A snail mail went out last week to my congressman, J. Gresham Barrett, and a similar email this morning to lesser light Senator Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, none of whom are remotely interested in Democratic constituents.

Talk about taxation without representation.