Tuesday, March 30th, 1999
Dear Mr. President
Before you read on, I should let you know that I am a concerned Canadian
high school student who has written similar letters to The Prime Minister
Jean Chretien, Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps, and Minister of Foreign
Affairs Lloyd Axworthy.
I have a problem, and perhaps you can help me come to terms with it.
As you know, there is an ongoing problem in the middle east involving the
clashes between the Albanians and the Serbs, and like most humanitarians
I would like to see these clashes stopped immediately. But here's where
my problem lays. Since you've started the air strikes in Kosovo, I've had
some severe mixed feelings, and I could never figure out why. But I think
I've figured it out. Though I agree that something needs to be done, I
also believe that you owe it to your country to look at your priorities.
First off, your country does not have a medicare system, yet you recently
increased your defence budget and you haven't even defended your country
in one hundred years! You seem quite keen to hold press conferences about
the fact that you are intervening (once again) in someone else's war, but
you don't seem to worry about the fact that someone out there can't get
major heart surgery because it isn't offered through his HMO. For that
matter, I can't seem to remember the last time you held a national press
conference to announce that there is a single mother who can't afford insulin
for her diabetic daughter so you are sending her urgent financial aid.
If you were to use the thirty million dollars that built that fighter jet
that was shot down recently, you could build a large, fully staffed hospital.
American schools are falling behind that of other countries. If you want to propel
The United States into the new millennium, you are need to create new
leaders. And if you do not give more money to public schools, especially
in poorer areas of the nation, there will be no new leaders for you to
fall back on. Also, if you used twenty-five percent of the budget you used
for military, you could afford to have tuition fees lowered by fifty percent!
If you had the choice of sending your daughter to college and fighting
yet another war, wouldn't your rather send her to college? Wouldn't you
rather send everyone to college? Wouldn't you rather put more funding into
fighting illiteracy rather than fighting the Serbs? Wouldn't you rather
start more programs to help mentally challenged students than spawn another
war from a war that's been ongoing for over six hundred years?
On top of this there is a civil war going on in your very own country,
which isn't gaining a fraction of the amount of attention that Kosovo is
receiving. The battle for gay rights. As I am sure you are very aware,
gay people across The United States are being denied or fired from jobs
because they are gay. They are being denied the right to marry like other
couples who are truly in love. They are being discriminated against not
unlike the blacks were earlier this century. (And in some cases still are.)
Matthew Sheppard was brutally murdered last year, and violent acts like
this against gays are occurring this very day on the street and in schools.
And as if this wasn't enough, some congressmen are trying to push legislation
that would make homosexuality a crime, which by the way would make them
political prisoners of conscience under The United Nations Declaration
of Human Rights.
Once again, don't get me wrong. I sincerely believe that the situation
in the middle east must be stopped, and I am involved with groups which
work to come up with pacifist solutions to stop it. I also realize the
comparison many people are making between this crisis and the holocaust,
and as a Jewish person it hits close to home. But I've always believed
violence isn't always the answer, and there are usually alternate ways
to deal with these things. So the next time you think something like bombing
the nation of mostly innocent people, think of the other problems that
also must get attention. And finally, please remember that you are not
George Bush, you are President Bill Clinton. The same President Bill Clinton
who did not fight in Vietnam, and the same President Bill Clinton who beat
(then President) George Bush in the 1992 presidential election because
the American people were sick of fighting wars that were not their own.
Yours truly,
Dave Shorr
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