First Letter to Obama

Dear President Obama

I like the ring of that salutation. Millions like the sound of it, in America and around the world. You have inherited a mess, a disaster of historic proportions created by your predecessor and his gang of criminals. We all noticed that you were being gracious to the former president, a gesture that many of us would have foregone.

Meanwhile, as you know, so much hope is riding on your shoulders. An entire nation, even an entire world looks to you to provide inspiring and responsible leadership. We expect your administration to be a 180 degree turn from the Bush years. We will be looking for you to do your best to tun the economy around, provide jobs and help homeowners facing foreclosure. The fat cats on Wall Street got their billions. We will be asking when our bailouts will begin.

We also expect that you will end the Iraq occupation and bring our troops home very soon We notice that you have advertised a widening of the war in Afghanistan. This is a mistake. Afghanistan was a mistake for the British. It was a mistake for the Russians, and there is no reason to expect anything different for us. Get us out of Afghanistan lest it become the hallmark of your presidency as Vietnam was the hallmark for Lyndon Johnson. You wish to do great things for America. Afghanistan is a the graveyard of national ambitions.

We expect you to close Guantanamo and end torture. The Bush administration tortured us all. We expect you to honor the Constitution and our civil rights. We do not expect you to use fear as a weapon against us in order to enact your agenda. Hope is your mantra. We expect hope to prevail.

We expect that you will do much more for the environment. Anything you do will be a great improvement over that of your predecessor, but we expect more than just the bare minimum. We want our parks and natural beauty spots protected. We do not wish them to be turned over to corporate drillers and diggers and road graders, We expect real Clear Skies and Clean Water proposals instead of legislation designed to do the opposite.

We expect you to act like an adult, as opposed to the behavior of your predecessor. We do not expect you to do a stupid stunt like donning a flight suit to land in a jet on an aircraft carrier. Even the thought of you doing something like that makes us realize the difference between you and the frat boy president we have endured for eight long years. We already know that you can use the English language. There's a change. We already know you are a serious man, one we can respect. There's another change.

Finally, millions of us hope and expect that your attorney general will prosecute those who committed war crimes. You know that top level people in the Bush administration flouted our Constitution and the Geneva Convention agreements with their torture, secret prisons and invasion of Iraq, for no good reason. These are war crimes and you must not ignore them. We expect to see Bush and his gang of criminals in the dock, answerable for their crimes. Please do not shrink from doing your duty for the sake of bipartisanship. Your administration needs to face this challenge head on, as a warning to future presidents.

We expect you will preside with the rule of law. We expect that you will uphold our traditions so that we can once more be proud of our country. That will be a change.

Good luck.

--NEWSGUY