www.easthamptonstar.com/20040909/col5.htm
GUESTWORDS: By EL Doctorow The Unfeeling President I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death wa s Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a w ar of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear. He hasn't the mind for i t You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the w eapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallie s strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the careful ly screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He is sati sfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate s acrifice for their country. But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emot ion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1, 000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wive s and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of a borted life . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their c offins from Iraq. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he kne w, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled pl an for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disas ter. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his wa r in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He had not the mind to perceive the c osts of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not und erstand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but whe n it is the only option; Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of t hemselves and their friends. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the chur ch with the grieving parents and wives and children. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does no t feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-hal f to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this countr y this president does not feel. He will say in all sincerity he is reliev ing the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is deprivi ng workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional c lass. And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our de mocracy is choking the life out of it. But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember t he millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he world most of the time. But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of peo ple that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was mor phing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and s tanding not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderth als, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival b y no other means than pre-emptive war. With each president the nati on is conformed spiritually. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness th at govern our lives and invoke our responses. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble. Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a fi gure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
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