A Limited War

 

East Hampton

April 4, 2011

To the Editor,

Years ago in my father’s effort to educate his simple son, he advised me that life was not black and white, pure and impure. He stated life was 10 percent black, 10 percent white, and the remaining 80 gray. In that large area I would be compelled to think and make a decision.

President Obama’s decision to seek Arab assistance, allied assistance prior to venturing into Libya, sits in that area of gray where he had to make a decision. He watched as Qaddafi started a massacre and decided on a use of force that would even the playing field between the people of Libya and the drug-addicted maniac in power for over 40 years.

Recently some have criticized Mr. Obama harshly for his choice. Some of the critics are the same people who gave the great incompetent, George W. Bush, and his draft-dodging militaristic Vice President Richard Cheney a free pass on Iraq. When Mr. Bush’s time to serve came he was essentially a shirker lost in the sauce, as are his military records. While failing to complete the mission in Afghanistan he led us to a costly war in Iraq based on falsity and ambition. he squandered and shattered the worldwide good will the United States had garnered from the bodies of the executed civilians of Sept. 11, 2001.

Here Mr. Obama has chosen a limited war to enable the people of Libya to have a chance. In a little over two years President Obama has made great strides in bringing the nation out of the great recession. He has kept the promise to draw down the soldiers in Iraq and stepped up the fight against the killers of Sept. 11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has worked seriously on each crisis. Science is no longer from the Bible or corporate headquarters. There is an effort to restore a simple quality of life to the common man.

The Bush tax policies have left his nation broke; the Bush war policy, all instinct and sloganistic lies, was morally broke. The great incompetent almost took this nation down. His supporters who attack Mr. Obama should remember that Mr. Bush’s thorough incompetence, his fake, man-of-the-people sloganeering, failed. Give the new guy a break while he moves to clean the dirty dishes left to him.

Very truly yours,

WILLIAM J. FLEMING