E-Mail This Article to a Friend Compromising position (continued)
	Related stories Bushed: A diary of year one with our unelected president. By Barry Crimmins.

NO MATTER how anyone tries to spin it, the American people are sick of Bush. The wise among us appreciate that his leadership has brought us to the sorry point where it’s become our patriotic duty as Americans to be ashamed of our nation. The rest are ready to do him in because, as Americans with God-given short attention spans, they’ve had enough of a guy who keeps whining about "freedom-haters." They are ready to reach for the remote and click over to anything but George W. Bush.

Some pundits maintain that Bush is more likable than you, yet all but the pathologically deluded know otherwise. Although you seem like a refined and somewhat inaccessible Ivy Leaguer, it’s obvious that you got into Yale because you are a smart person. Everyone knows that somewhere there is a guy with a degree from Brown because George W. Bush legacyed him out of four years in New Haven. Bush is the kind of rich boy who would get even with you for beating him out for the baseball team by having his father get your father fired as the greenskeeper at the country club. Americans have the innate ability to sniff out that kind of stench on a man, which is why we didn’t elect this latter-day Sonny Drysdale in the first place.

I am endorsing you and voting for you, Senator, because you have done two things a simpering daddy’s boy like George W. Bush never would: you have marched both to and against war. As a result, I have great hope that when your decisions result in life or death, they will not be reached via the swerving, dangerous, and ridiculous path of a drunken frat boy.

I must compliment whoever on your staff came up with the ingenious idea to leak word that you didn’t want to release your military records. Man, did the rubes from Texas ever fall for that slick hunk of Yankee bait, or what? Once you released the documents, the only imaginable reason for your reticence was humility. Not only did you show up Bush with your stellar record, you reminded the country that military records can in fact be produced.

It’s great that the Democratic National Convention is being held in Boston. Despite all the worst efforts of the court-appointed Bush administration, the Hub is still a bastion of free speech — providing, that is, you don’t mind walking your picket sign into town on I-93. I trust you will make some grand and broad gesture to reach out to the protesters to make it clear that you understand that dissent is the lifeblood of democracy.

There would be far fewer protesters if not for the all-consuming issue of the Iraqi quagmire. My view can be articulated in just three words: more is worse. But as you may recall, I have never been a man of few words, so let me add: to continue to waste American, "Coalition," and Iraqi lives and resources in this illegal, horribly planned, and cynical effort to restore a nation that is nothing more than a failed 84-year-old British construct would be a blunder of historic proportion. This war is a failure. The Iraqi people hate America because Americans, attacking from the self-proclaimed moral high ground, have brought violence and degradation to their homelands. The only ones to benefit from not getting out as soon as possible have been the war profiteers and terrorist recruiters. Maintaining Western hegemony over Iraqi oil is not worth the human price that will be exacted so long as one survivor of this conflict lives with its memory.

And I know you know about war memories, John. I know you still live with the horror you saw in Vietnam. To your everlasting credit, you continued your heroic behavior upon returning from duty. Were it not for hero vets like you, the draft would have surely taken me in the early ’70s. And I’d have gone because I was a rural boy who didn’t know any better — so I owe you and the entire anti-war movement for my life. Had I fought, I might have survived physically but I wouldn’t have escaped becoming one of the emotional fatalities. We will have tens of thousands of such cases returning from Iraq (and Afghanistan) — that is, if Bush ever stops exiling them with extended tours of duty.

You understand that the saddest thing that can be said about our nation today is that it would rather create veterans than care for them. In the coming years, we need a president who will guarantee that the vets of our current wars come home to compassionate, top-notch care and support. I can think of no one who would be more dedicated to carrying out that policy than you, Lieutenant Kerry.

There will be plenty of your fellow vets at DNC protests. I know you can never view them as enemies. I also know that at least part of your reluctance to directly advocate an Iraqi pullout is that it could be seen by the troops in the field as undermining their already treacherous circumstances. But I am taking you at your word that you will use the power of the presidency to conscript the rest of the world into bringing peace, order, and justice to Iraq. Perhaps your boldest words have been to suggest that Arab nations be brought into the process. Now there’s an idea.

So here’s the deal, John. We get you in, and you get us out. A little of the old in-and-out never hurt anyone. I guess I do stoop to double entendres on occasion — just another reason to avoid me for the next three months. You’ll do fine without me. If you need me to perform during the inaugural weekend, I’ll be happy to reassess my position.

With best wishes for great success,

Barry Crimmins

Political satirist Barry Crimmins is a writer and commentator for Air America Radio, for which he recently recorded the comedy special Satire for Sanity. His new book, Never Shake Hands with a War Criminal, is due from Seven Stories Press this fall.