The following is an open letter I'd written to the President back in early January. In its original form I sent it to WaPo and the NYT without publication. It has since been updated to include gannongate.
An Open Letter to the President of the United States
Mr. President,
I am wondering whether you truly understand the nature of our enemy when you mention Osama bin Laden and other Muslim insurgent groups. You say they are enemies of freedom. You say they are against the values that the United States stands for. You cannot, however, explain why he is such a popular figure throughout the Muslim world.
In Muslim countries he is far more popular than the United States ever was. In footage of the recovery efforts throughout the Indian Ocean, I have seen several people of all ages with Osama t-shirts. Why do they admire him so much even while passing out humanitarian aid from the United States?
Your administration never focuses on the content of his messages, always warning that their context will incite numerous potential attacks against targets you never mention. You never tell the citizens of the United States the words from Osama's own mouth as to why he fights us. Might not he be better able to explain it than you?
Could it be that he is against the United States and other western countries consuming his nation's greatest resource with only the corrupt royal family and their cohorts benefiting? Shouldn't the average Saudi citizen be enjoying a higher standard of living given how much of the world's oil supply comes from their country?
Could it be that he is angry that whenever someone says "terrorist" it is the image of Muslims that come to mind? Aren't there Catholic terrorists in Ireland? Aren't there terrorists through-out South and Central America? Aren't there separatists in France and Spain that could be called terrorists just as easily as Al Qaeda is?
What are you doing to combat terrorism in other countries in our own hemisphere? Have we been targeting insurgent groups in Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Peru? Have we been aiding the Spanish and the French track down financial assets of the Basque separatists? Have we frozen the funds of the Irish Republican Army?
With America's focus on militant interpretations of Islam, or, perhaps more accurately on the more widely waged Jihad, is it any wonder that Osama finds growing support among fellow Muslims around the world, or that the common belief that the west is plundering the holy peninsula of resources given to them by Allah is growing? Ever since the early 1990's, when non-Muslim forces set foot in Saudi Arabia (a move akin to Saladin setting up camp in St. Peter Square), the Muslim world has seen what to them appear to be a decade's worth of consistent attacks against Muslim nations in Somalia, Iraq, the Sudan, and Afghanistan. In these, we never apologize for the innocents killed. We simply state that "collateral damage" is a part of war. But when Islamic insurgencies kill our civilians, it is called a barbarous act of terrorism. Is this not a double standard?
Mr. President, as with everything, there are two sides to every story. You are doing your best so that Americans see only one side, and then distort the other so that we find it inconceivable that they might have a legitimate argument.
I am not a Muslim. I am not currently practicing any faith. I am not a Democrat, nor am I a Republican. I am an American, a student who recognizes that there are always at least two sides to any conflict, and that the wise person would be able to understand more than just his own perspective.
Another highly disturbing development is your seeming non-concern about a male prostitute with fraudulent press credentials a pseudonym, and a history of tax evasion gaining access to the White House. To use your administration's level of scare tactics, what if he had been a terrorist who had voluntarily contracted an infectious disease with the intent of spreading it to the White House? No guns, no `box-cutters,' just a person who didn't need a background check.
This incident along with others such as Armstrong Williams, and the HHS consultants is leading to concern that your administration is systematically engaging in a form of propaganda not seen since the height of Stalin. Intentionally misleading the American people is wrong morally, with regards to leadership, and potentially legally since a propaganda effort could be considered a military act upon U.S. soil and against U.S. Citizens by the United States government, and would constitute a degree of disinformation far greater than `I did not have sexual relations with that woman...Miss Lewinski.'
I wish you would give the American people and the rest of the world the opportunity to prove they are intelligent and perfectly capable of making their own decisions. I also wish you would take a week, or even a day, and just be completely honest with the American people. It's something that would go along way towards re-establishing US credibility.