5/01/2007

A teen's touching letter

From The New York Times, 29 April 2007 (LINK):

Young Voters and Bush

To the Editor:

Re. “Those Young People, They’re So Unpredictable” (Week in Review,
April 22):

I am 18 years old, and I find some of the results of your poll of
young Americans troubling. Nevertheless, I can think of a possible
reason why many young people approve of the president and the Iraq war.

No young American wants to believe that his or her leader and role
model would fabricate an entire war for political gain and then
invoke it to further policies that not only fail to address reality
but also repress people who are different, or who just disagree with
him.

How can this be true?

The answer is that we are in denial. It is very difficult to face the
fact that the people responsible for our nation’s welfare have made
wrong decisions on our behalf. Our generation has yet to confront the
fact that George W. Bush has been a terrible father to our nation.

Now we need to become real men and women and stand up to him.

Ben Smail
Madison, Wisconsin

April 22, 2007

2 comments:

airth10 said...

A good articulate letter by a young person who has not become cynical but who seems to have become engaged in the political process, despite the negativity.

One would think that the lies and antics of Bush&Co would have turned young people off politics, but in fact it has engaged them.

The irony also is that Bush&Co has revitalized the political process generally and not, as one would think, diminished it because of all the political garbage and slush it has generated.

Anonymous said...

There was an excellent article about a 42-year-old National Guardsman from Atlanta called back to active duty in Iraq (Atlanta Journal & Constitution). He stands among a plethora of 18 and 19 year-olds all of whom believe they are fighting in Iraq to keep al-Qaeda from attacking America. The National Guardsman reports, without any particular reference, that none of them have ever read a book cover-to-cover.
That, dear friends, is why Ben Smail wrote that letter. That also is why Harry Reid is right.