GOLD STAR FAMILIES TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
HOW DARE YOU COMPARE OUR SACRIFICE
TO GIVING UP GOLF?
Gold Star Families Speak Out, a national organization of military families opposed to the
war in Iraq whose loved ones have died as a result of the war, issued the following statement today in response to an interview in which President Bush said that he gave up playing golf in 2003 as a show of respect for the families of U.S. troops killed in Iraq:
President Bush, showed an appalling lack of respect, understanding, and common decency when he told a reporter this week that he you no longer plays golf because “I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
How dare he equate his decision to give up playing golf with the sacrifice he has demanded from our families and from the 4,077 U.S. troops killed in combat and the many thousands more who have taken their own lives or died because of drugs and alcohol as a result of the horrors they witnessed in Iraq?
What President Bush owes the families of the troops who have died in Iraq is an end to the war that shattered our lives by killing our sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, nieces and nephews, granddaughters and grandsons.
He will never be able to begin to understand the pain of losing someone he loves in an illegal, immoral, and unjust war. We aren't asking for his solidarity or his sympathy -- we are demanding that he bring all our troops home from Iraq now before one more family's life is ruined forever. |
