Dear Mr. President,
At the moment of your election, on a unseasonably warm November evening in 2008, I along with 1000s of fellow Americans took to the streets of New York City to cheer a moment in history -- a moment when a strong majority of put behind us our shameful history of prejudice enough to elect a leader regardless of the appearance of his skin or the sound of his name. I will never forget that moment of intense pride and optimism -- that we had been able to come together and with mutual force and change the direction of history from the downward spiral into obliteration that our previous leaders had set us on. There was an enormous feeling of positivity -- Yes We Can, Yes We Did.
In the wake of the attacks of September 11th, in the midst of what I could only describe then as the feeling that a giant gash had opened up in the Universe and swallowed 3000 souls, through our sorrow and our pain we managed to find a common sense of Humanity with which to support each other in our grief. At that moment, we were united by our sense of being Americans. The flag that I had always seen with a sense of cynicism, with a critical eye to the base emptiness of "nationalism," became a symbol that connected us across differences of race, class, and politics. It was a symbol of our common Humanity; that sense that despite the immensity of our loss and our fear that we were connected to each other by deep threads of which we are not always aware. It felt good to be American then, to wave the flag, to display it proudly despite any previous associations we may have made with that symbol.
But your predecessor, the man who occupied your office as the freely elected leader of our country, robbed us of that feeling when he seized upon the energy of Patriotism to wage a war for political and economic purposes. He invented rationalizations for this war, and misused the position of his office to justify those actions in the name of those who had died. The symbol of the flag became one laced with Shame, and as that war to which he lead us grew darker and darker, that shame became greater and greater. I often wonder what we could have achieved together if that Energy of positive, connected Patriotism had been harnessed by someone much wiser for the service of the greater good.
You owe your success and advancement largely to your outspoken criticism of that "dumb" war. You owe your success and advancement largely to your ability to inspire people like myself, who had never before voted for a President, to register and pull the lever as a vote for a brighter future, one of greater unity, less burdened by prejudice and shame at the actions of our ancestors and the lingering prejudices of race and partisanship.
Last night the thread of history that connected the aftermath of 911 with your election in 2008 emerged once more with the announcement of a successful action to kill the man responsible for ripping that hole in the Universe; the man who laid the ground on which our previous leader used to lead us down a path of destruction -- taking a nation from a time of prosperity to a time of war and economic hardship. Once more myself and 1000s of my fellow Americans came together to cheer and sing songs awash in the positive potential of Patriotic energy. Far from blind allegiance, we sought again to dip into that sense of shared Humanity, of a common sense of the potential for greatness in ourselves and our Species.
For a brief, fleeting moment last night Patriotism again felt good, after many long years of shame at the actions of our leaders and sadness at the needless deaths of our countrymen and citizes on Iraq and Afghanistan who's only crime was the circumstances of their births. As we came together, we again felt the realization of that dream -- that despite whatever race or creed or class to which we belonged we could feel a common Humanity with each other.
Mr President, the war in Afghanistan must end, and it must end soon. For what now do we shed our blood? For what now do we ask our men and women, our sons and daughters, fathers, lovers, brothers and sisters to perish for? For what do we pay the price of life, the price of sacrifice, if not for the opportunity to advance of our people towards the positive potential of our Human race?
Mr President, you say we must win the future -- win your future now. Seize upon the mantle of leadership that we have given you, that great power in which no one else rests. Recognize in yourself what that so many of us have recognized in you -- that potential to be a leader that builds upon the positive potential of our shared Patriotism to build a greater world for us to live in. A leader who can see through the veil, past the layers of difference to the common core of our people.
Never again will you have in your hands such opportunity to make the case for our men and women to come home; to right the wrongs of our previous leaders and end, once and for all, these wars that, if ever they were necessary, have now dragged on well past any foreseeable purpose. You have given us justice for the man responsible for great crimes upon all of us, and now it is time to close this chapter once and for all.
I hope that you will recognize this historical moment and will not fail to harness this Thread of History, this powerful force of optimism on which you rode to power, to serve the interests our country, our Species, and our greatest dreams for our shared future.