Too Much To Dream

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

John Hains Jr.

Saint Louis, MO
636-357-8437
jhains@usa.net
www.pandemonium.net

RESPONSE TO MICHAEL MOORE’S LETTER TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

Lake Saint Louis, MO March 21, 2003

Michael Moore, author of “Stupid White Men” and writer/director of “Bowling for Columbine” wrote a letter to the President of the United States, dated March 17, 2003. Mr. Moore’s letter to the President is located on his website: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php

Here is my response to Mr. Moore. Please note that each numbered paragraph that follows is verbatim from Mr. Moore’s letter, and is contained in this response for the sole reason of simplifying the debate process, and should not be construed as an attempt to take credit for his writing.

Friday, March 21, 2003

A reply from John Hains, Jr. to Michael Moore
on behalf of President George W. Bush

Michael Moore
Hollywood, CA
mike@michaelmoore.com

Dear Mr. Moore:

In this response, I will attempt to show you more respect than you cared to show the to the legally elected President of the United States of America.

To begin with, you addressed the acknowledged “leader of the free world” as Governor Bush, when his proper title is either President Bush, or Mr. President. If you didn’t care for the verdict of a judge, and you continually addressed them by anything other than “your Honor” or “Judge” in court, you would be held in contempt. Behaving in a childish fashion only detracts from your position in a debate. It is vitally important that you treat your opponent with the respect due to their position, whether you agree with how they got there or not.

Next, you accused the President of “lying and conniving” and then proceed to justify your charge with your own version of warped facts and half-truths. I will answer each of these accordingly; each allegation followed by my response. I personally hope that you have enough self worth to engage me in a debate on these topics. I am confident in my statements, but I am certain that you are also. Perhaps, through dialogue, you and I can find some common ground and possibly bring one another closer to the truth, whether that be your version or mine.

1. There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND THEM! Why? 'Cause NO Iraqis have ever come here and killed any of us! No Iraqi has even threatened to do that. You see, this is how we average Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill him! Funny how that works!

To say that “NO ONE in America” is gung-ho about war is essentially correct. No right thinking person would happily decide engage in violence of any type. However, your statement is misleading in that you are seeking persons who would be emphatic about the death of Iraqis. Polls by Zogby, Gallup and major news organizations (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/iraq_poll030321.html) show clearly that a majority of Americans agree that Saddam Hussein and his regime should not be in control in Iraq. Even the UN agrees on that point. The disagreement is on how to achieve that end. One should not make the mistake of assuming that a war against a regime is an attack on the people it governs. The United States Government is making every possible attempt to avoid unnecessary death in Iraq, and not limiting that to just the non-combatants, but also to the Iraqi military as well as ours. This is clearly evidenced by the attack of opportunity on Thursday morning in Iraq, that may have wounded or killed Saddam Hussein. If Hussein is surgically removed from power, then his regime will fall with minimal effort and loss of life. In addition, the precise attacks that are focused only on military targets, rather than World War Two style carpet bombing demonstrates the care and concern the coalition military force is using to preserve human life. One should clearly be able to see that no one in the alliance attacking Iraq is there to kill everything that moves. The alliance is there to liberate those Iraqi citizens who have been subjugate, oppressed, tortured and killed for the past thirty years by Saddam Hussein and his leadership. See http://www.indict.org.uk for further evidence to this point, but to save time the summation is that Saddam Hussein is personally responsible for the violent deaths of close to 500,000 Iraqi citizens.

2. The majority of Americans -- the ones who never elected you -- are not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction. We know what the real issues are that affect our daily lives -- and none of them begin with I or end in Q. Here's what threatens us: two and a half million jobs lost since you took office, the stock market having become a cruel joke, no one knowing if their retirement funds are going to be there, gas now costs almost two dollars -- the list goes on and on. Bombing Iraq will not make any of this go away. Only you need to go away for things to improve.

To say that the majority of Americans never elected President Bush is true. In fact, it could be said that a majority of Americans never elected anyone to office in the past century. The reality of the situation is, and one could say I’m being nitpicky about it, that only 51.3% (105,586,274) of REGISTERED voters showed up at the polls for the presidential election. Of that number, Al Gore received 50,996,064 and George W. Bush received 50,456,167, with the remaining 4,134,043 votes split among the other candidates. Al Gore won the popular vote by 539,897 votes. So while 50.27% of the total votes for Gore and Bush went to Gore, that number barely accounts for 24.78% of the 205,821,197 registered voters let alone a “majority of Americans.” Your quip implies that a group, comprised of slightly less than one quarter of Americans, somehow represents the opinions and beliefs of the whole. Obviously, this is not the case. As to your accounts of the economic state of the union, you can hardly hold President Bush’s Administration accountable for that. The deterioration of the economy began toward the end of 1999 when the “dot com bubble” on the stock market started to deflate. It is a very popular political maneuver to blame the current administration for the failures of the previous one, and the same thing is happening today. A prime example is that President Bush’s tax cut is being blamed for the state of the economy, when his budget that includes the tax cut has not been approved and enacted. If the tax cuts haven’t happened they cannot be responsible for anything. The price of oil, as of this writing, is continuing to decline, just as it did after the invasion of Iraq in 1991. The stock market is climbing, again, as of this writing, just as it did after the invasion of Iraq in 1991. The reason behind these to phenomenon is that people are cautious in the time leading up to a war, especially when that time is filled with confusion and inaction. When the action is started, and the decisions are made, confidence is restored and people are willing to invest. The price of oil is similarly affected; we can definitively say there is not a shortage, nor is there any risk of a shortage of oil that could be attributed to this conflict. So in response to your final two statements, bombing Iraq will not only make those problems go away, it already has.

3. As Bill Maher said last week, how bad do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein? The whole world is against you, Mr. Bush. Count your fellow Americans among them.

Bill Maher is a political satirist who has repeatedly ventured outside the realm of acceptable satire. It is highly unlikely that President Bush, or anyone in the government, is concerned with what he says or thinks. But, for the record, the only “popularity contest” President Bush has lost against Saddam Hussein was held by the UN Security Council, and three or four of the voters have financial interests in and with Saddam Hussein, so their opinion shouldn’t be counted. To say “the whole world is against” President Bush is a fallacy, just as your previous statement about the Presidential election. See my response above and apply the numbers to a global level.

4. The Pope has said this war is wrong, that it is a SIN. The Pope! But even worse, the Dixie Chicks have now come out against you! How bad does it have to get before you realize that you are an army of one on this war? Of course, this is a war you personally won't have to fight. Just like when you went AWOL while the poor were shipped to Vietnam in your place.

I would like to point out first and foremost that President Bush is not a Catholic, and so far as I am aware is under no obligation to take direction from the Pope. That said, the Pope is certainly a wise man, and usually has valuable input which the President has taken and often followed. The Pope did not, at any point that I can find, declare that war is wrong or a sin. What the Pope’s emissary did say was that any war without U.N. approval "is illegal, it is unjust." According to international law, that statement is 100% correct. However, what some have chosen to ignore is that UN Resolution 1441 already approved, with a unanimous vote, war in Iraq. Read the resolution and then say this is illegal. While you’re at it, try reading all of the other UN Resolutions and sanctions that permit the use of force that can be cited as approval for this conflict. As to the comment by Natalie Maines, she is obviously under the same impressions you are, so her opinion neither holds weight for your argument, nor does it detract from it. I would submit that the reaction by the general public to her comment does take away from some of your other statements in your letter, simply by demonstrating that a significant portion of Dixie Chicks fans do not agree with her, or your view on the war. Finally, to chastise President Bush for not personally participating in the war makes as much sense as chastising the hospital administrator for not personally performing brain surgery. The President is an administrator and does not possess all knowledge and skills necessary to perform every job that falls under his responsibility. To suggest that he is avoiding harm for reasons of cowardice which are based on hearsay, is simply name-calling and has no place in a proper debate. The fact of the matter is that the President is in just as dangerous a situation every day as our front line military. He is constantly under threat of harm from extremists who feel the only way to voice their opinion is to take physical action against him. Look up statistics at the FBI on how many threats the President receives each day, regardless of how popular he is. A good example is John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular presidents in history, who was assassinated by an extremist during a parade. Just becoming president takes extreme courage, let alone remaining one.

5. Of the 535 members of Congress, only ONE (Sen. Johnson of South Dakota) has an enlisted son or daughter in the armed forces! If you really want to stand up for America, please send your twin daughters over to Kuwait right now and let them don their chemical warfare suits. And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also sacrifice their kids for this war effort. What's that you say? You don't THINK so? Well, hey, guess what – we don't think so either!

Of the 535 members of Congress only 0.2% has an enlisted child. I didn’t check, but I suspect that some of those 535 members have siblings or grandchildren in the military as well. Of the 283,000,000 American Citizens, less than 0.8% (~2.5 million) are in the military. Now that amount includes all branches of the service (e.g. Coast Guard, Air Force), all functions of the service (e.g. national guard, reserve), as well as officer and enlisted. I was unable to locate an accurate count of just enlisted personnel, but I suspect its approximately half to two-thirds of the total number. So in accurate comparison to the one enlisted child of a congressman, between 0.4% and 0.6% are enlisted in the military. To take that one step further, there are only about 300,000 troops, or .1%, involved in this conflict, and we can probably figure that two-thirds of those are enlisted, leaving 0.07% so actually Congress is ahead of the curve meaning your numerical comparison is not a good basis for your argument. Your suggestion that Congress should force their children to sacrifice their lives is ludicrous. Every member of the United States Military is there by choice. We do not have a conscript army like Saddam Hussein. We allow our children to decide what path they want to take. Your argument actually detracts from the magnitude of the sacrifice our military men and women are making by suggesting they did not choose to be there.

6. Finally, we love France. Yes, they have pulled some royal screw-ups. Yes, some of them can be pretty damn annoying. But have you forgotten we wouldn't even have this country known as America if it weren't for the French? That it was their help in the Revolutionary War that won it for us? That our greatest thinkers and founding fathers -- Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, etc. – spent many years in Paris where they refined the concepts that lead to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution? That it was France who gave us our Statue of Liberty, a Frenchman who built the Chevrolet, and a pair of French brothers who invented the movies? And now they are doing what only a good friend can do -- tell you the truth about yourself, straight, no b.s. Quit pissing on the French and thank them for getting it right for once. You know, you really should have traveled more (like once) before you took over. Your ignorance of the world has not only made you look stupid, it has painted you into a corner you can't get out of.

The French, in the past, have provided great inspiration and direction for the United States, and other countries in the world. However, their stance on this subject is simply incorrect. I will qualify that the position that France is taking in this conflict appears to be limited to a small number of French citizens, mostly government officials and certain businesses that have been linked to financial dealings with Saddam Hussein. I do not believe that the majority of France agrees with their government on this issue, and that seems to be validated this week by their recent agreement to assist with the cleanup of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, after the war. Once again, however, you have resorted to name-calling. Your implication that President

Bush is implementing a poor foreign policy is flawed, because it is based on the opinions of too few people, and too short a time frame. President Bush may not be the most traveled individual on the planet, but he has people working for him who are. He does not make these choices on his own, or from an uninformed position. Every decision the President makes has been passed through dozens of specialized advisors who examine possible outcomes and ramifications. That’s not to suggest that mistakes will not be made, but generally choices made in the White House are not spontaneous.

With regard to your predictions for the economy, I would again point you in the direction of history. After the Iraq war in 1991, the economy picked up rather quickly, and gas prices dropped substantially.

Thank you for the opportunity to present the other side of these extremely popular arguments. I look forward to your response, and your counter-points.

Respectfully yours,

John Hains, Jr.
jhains@usa.net

cc: The Honorable George W. Bush, President

Posted by: John at March 24, 2003 at 03:03 PM