Unable to Mourn, Unable to Care

Unable to Mourn, Unable to Care

Now that more than two thousand of our side, and who knows, really, how many thousands of the other side (the ones who start counting seem to end up dead fairly often), it’s a good time to review a basic lack in the President, who was put into office through the judicial activism he claims to deplore. This President, simply, doesn’t care.

Bush stole the 2004 election – E L Doctorow’s statement

Ringing even more truthfully today than it did then, these words from the political novelist’s statement pinpoint the character of this President. As he enjoys his record-breaking vacation, avoiding all funerals and other such unpleasantries, it is clear that the families of the fallen will get no comfort from him. Of the ones not counted – the ones who died on the way to a hospital elsewhere, or who died after their return, or who had psychological breakdowns – there is still not a word. You have to die in Iraq to be counted.

“He does not suffer the death of our twenty one year olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and father or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life…. they come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq. How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war’s aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.


How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.”

4 thoughts on “Unable to Mourn, Unable to Care

  1. Right now Cindy Sheehan is standing up to him, in the heat and dust, with his henchmen pushing her around and telling her she must stay in the ditch. She has reported that they may be arresting her on Thursday, that she received a warning to the effect. There are some others down there inCrawford with her, but, I don’t have the money for a plane ticket or even money to donate to the cause for the moment. But, I am blogging and trying to get others to blog, trying to push the topic as high as possible on Technorati and the other search engines, so that she will not be ignored. There is much dialogue going on at Kos and all over the net. Why not join in? I will be linking to you, if that is ok.

  2. Are you still on this ridiculous “bush stole the election” thing?(gee-somehow he stole it TWICE, but he’s still an idiot. Got it.

    You shouldn’t be allowed to teach third grade, let alone at a university.

  3. IP 64.60.63.246 noted for repeated spam of hundreds of cut and pasted pages including work of others, forums, blogrolls, etc under the names Margaret Gray, Jay Santos, marc and Atkinson. Previous spam and harassment from author/architect “marc” and “atkinson” at http://epluribusreluctor.blogspot.com/

    IP banned and blacklisted.

    Use of company network – Spectrum Land Planning Inc in Simi Valley CA

    TelePacific Communication TELEPACIFIC-BLK-1 (NET-64-60-0-0-1)
    64.60.0.0 – 64.60.255.255
    Spectrum Land Planning Inc SPECTRUM-LAND-PLANNING-INC (NET-64-60-63-240-1)
    64.60.63.240 – 64.60.63.247

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