Senator Lieberman, I'd like you to meet my teenage son, Christopher.

liberalhistorian

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Wed Apr-19-06 08:04 PM
Original message

Senator Lieberman, I'd like you to meet my teenage son, Christopher.

Edited on Wed Apr-19-06 08:56 PM by liberalhistorian

Dear Senator Lieberman:

I have long been dismayed at your increasingly rightward tilt in recent years, and was, frankly, not all that enthusiastic when Al Gore chose you as his running mate in 2000 (a huge mistake, as it turned out, and a mistake that likely cost us plenty of votes). But I thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and give you a fair chance.

When you stabbed Gore, your own running mate and fellow Democrat, in the back by urging that he concede the Florida vote when there was more than enough evidence that it had been seriously tampered with, and urging that the recount be stopped, you began to seriously damage your credibility and worthiness as a Democrat.

When you decided it was your prerogative to usurp the individual judgment of parents to become America's "morality nanny" by attempting to pass laws restricting or banning certain forms of video games and music, using YOUR "morality" standards, and by constantly scolding those who didn't live up to your perfect standards of morality, I began to see what you were truly about.

When you became the enthusiastic cheerleader for the misguided Iraq war, despite all evidence showing that the pretext for invading was nothing but a huge, fabricated, deliberate lie designed to terrify America into submissive support of the invasion, and despite the fact that this great country has never, even under the most war-mongering presidents, invaded a country without pretext to do so, and when you continued to plant your mouth firmly on Bush's ass and appeared to almost get your jollies off on what was happening in Iraq, continuing to insist that things were just peachy-keen in Iraq despite all evidence to the contrary, I became completely disillusioned as to your true political ambitions and beliefs.

When you actually had the nerve to say that "It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to realize that he will be the commander-in-chief for three more critical years, and that in times of war we undermine presidential credibility at our own peril", thus reinforcing the ridiculously un-American "if you criticize Bush, you're supporting the terrorists" meme, meaning that anyone disagreeing with the president is unpatriotic and anti-American, despite the fact that you only had to say that you "respectfully" disagreed with Democrats on this issue, and despite the fact that it is not his critics, but Bush and company who have completely and totally lost all credibility with their deliberate lies fabricated in order to get us into Iraq, I lost what little remaining respect I had for you entirely.

But now you've really and truly done it. Now you've really gone totally over the edge and beyond all boundaries. Today, you said you would support a military air strike on Iran if diplomatic efforts failed (and without giving any criteria as to what, exactly, would constitute "diplomatic efforts" under the present mis-administration. You appeared to be completely taken in by the fear-mongering propaganda that Iran was very close to developing a nuclear bomb, when it should be obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells and a second-grade education that such propaganda was nothing more than the same manipulative fearmongering used to wrongfully get us into Iraq, when you said it would be necessary to stop Iran's development of nuclear weapons, with complete disregard for the fact that it will be years before Iran will have the capability to develop even one nuclear bomb.

You said that a strike would ensure that such rapid development would be stopped and, by the time they were able to catch up, there would be a different government, a "regime change" if you will, in Iran that we wouldn't have to worry about.

You, as a Democrat, should have been screaming to the sky against even the consideration of this crazy, suicidal idea. Yet you are, to your everlasting shame, the first Democrat to not only support it, but encourage it.

Your ignorance in regards to not recognizing the complete and total craziness of such a strike, and your complete disregard and indifference to the horrendous damage it would cause, both to Iran and the Iranian people and to what little remains of our country's credibility, integrity and international standing and reputation, is nothing short of breathtaking. I realize you reside in Alice in Wonderland-world, but the rest of us must live in reality. I simply cannot believe that even you could even consider such a horrendous, crazy, idea. Tremendous structural and infrastructural damage, terrible loss of life, and the suffering of survivors on an unbelievable scale, yet you appear to have no problem with that.

You have a problem with teenagers playing certain "violent" video games, but you have no problem with REAL blood, gore, violence and suffering in the real world, both in what our soldiers and the Iraqis are enduring in the Iraq war, and in what any sort of strike, let alone nuclear, on Iran would cause. You appear to have no problem at all with this country being at perpetual war.

So, I would like you to meet my son, Christopher. He will be fifteen one week from today. He is my only child and the only child I will ever have. He is incredibly bright with a very high IQ, a funny, charming, caring, compassionate, sensitive, loving, child, well-versed in current events and politics and concerned about what is happening in the world. A child who's a very talented drummer and pianist, who is one of those rare musicians with perfect pitch, able to tell you what key a song is in just by listening to a few bars and able to tell you what note you're playing without looking; he also loves to compose music.

He is in honors science and math and above-average history and social studies and is capable of getting straight-A's in everything when he sets his mind to it. He already has several ideas for inventions, and has often stumped his science teachers with unusually prescient questions and stunned them with his own theories.

He is the light of my life and that of my family. Yet, you would have him be sucked into the maw of perpetual war that you, by your enthusiastic and unqualified support of those who are the architect of such warmongering policies, have helped to create. You would have him be just another number in your statistics of those who've "sacrificed to bring light to the Middle East" (when you really mean those who've been sacrificed on the altar of American imperialistic ambitions).

You would not have him play any video games, or listen to any music you consider "vulgar and violent", yet you would have no problem with him being a part of the "vulgar violence" and blood and guts and gore that is the disaster of our involvement in Iraq and that will be ten times worse should we be crazy enough to strike Iran.

Mr. Lieberman, know this. I will NOT have him be, in any way, a part of that, and I will NOT sacrifice him to yours and your republican friends' imperialistic, political ambitions. It is time for you to admit that you need to formally change parties and become a republican, for that is what you are. I no longer consider you, in any way, to be a Democrat, and neither should any other Democrat. You are a disgrace to our party and to our country.