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Mr. President,
Yesterday you flew over the devastation in the South to survey the damage from Air Force One. Fresh from your fundraiser, your celebratory cake, and your guitar lesson, you doubtless saw the miles of broken homes, broken businesses, and broken lives. Perhaps, (though I know it's unlikely), you saw our fellow Americans waving desperately from the chaos below.
Sir, they were not waving, but drowning in a sea of incompetence and ineptitude. Below you, thousands of people were trapped on rooftops, freeways, clinging to debris, begging for help that still has not come. Under the shadow of your jet were untold numbers of dead and missing citizens swept away by unfeeling arrogance.
While the cause, weather, was not your fault, the lack of leadership in Katrina's aftermath falls squarely on you, Mr. Bush. By now you must know that at the very least you "misunderestimated" the damage this storm could do. You must know that you were mistaken when you cut funding to FEMA. You must know our trapped citizens need more help than our fine men and women in the National Guard are able to give them, (and of course you must know why).
Maybe it has even occurred to you that this nation is drowning--suffocating in the vacuum of leadership you leave in your wake. Your platitudes will not reassure me. No musing about the "folks," or empty "I understand (insert bad thing here) is bad, but I am confident American (insert 'democracy', 'freedom', or 'liberty' here) will solve it," statements will assuage my grief.
All I ask of you--all a lot of ask of you--is that you give a damn about what happens to us. That you treat this nation and all of us in it with respect. That when a national tragedy like this happens, you love this country enough to stop money-grubbing and mugging for cameras long enough to lead it out of peril.
After seeing our people beg for rescue from rooftops, plead for food and clean water, and cry out for an ounce of compassion for days on end, I know that I ask too much.
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