Dear John

Here's a nice letter from Barry Crimmins to John Kerry. I think he handles Kerry's vote to authorize Bush to go to war against Iraq quite nicely.

I understand the political pressure you felt, but still, you’re a brilliant guy and had to know what a load of hooey was being dumped on us. I further estimate that the hard-bitten among your insiders advised, "Look, you know we can always just say they lied to us," and considering who was trumping up this war, that was a pretty safe fall-back position. But please, you did a nice job investigating and exposing much of this crew back when terrorism was a central component of Saint Ronald Reagan’s not-so-secret foreign policy. And so when the same gang of thugs who help facilitate death-squads in Central America came forward as the defenders of innocence and champions of democracy, you should have marched right outside of the Capitol and joined the hundreds of thousands of us who were in the streets screaming, "Noooooo! Don’t do it!"

Well, Senator, we told you so.

Some of my lefty pals won’t forgive you and I can see their point. Nevertheless, I refuse to join their circular firing squad. I know how to face political reality myself, and if ever there were an occasion for compromise, this is it. I don’t value my moral purity more than the lives of countless innocents. My stridence withers when I consider how much suffering would result if the Bush regime extends beyond next January. Someday, George W. Bush’s administration will be labeled for what it brought us to: the "New Low." Under your leadership, even a slight trajectory of improvements in health-care, environmental regulation, civil liberties, and workers’ rights will have to be measured against the all-too-imaginable speed at which of these vital matters would reach even newer lows during a second Bush term...

I especially like the "New Low" for Bush's campaign slogan. I wonder if the people who write the history books are paying attention.