President’s Policies Carry a Cruel Price

Re “Bush Sending the Wrong Message as Chaos Smolders in Iraq,” column by Ronald Brownstein, Dec. 27: As usual, Brownstein hits the nail right on the head. The problem is that, as Brownstein suggests at the end of his column, the Bush administration does not want to hear any of it. This is an administration that by its very structure will not tolerate any dissension and therefore cannot admit any mistakes. For the president to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld now would be an admission that mistakes have been made, which might bring down the hollow house of cards he has built around this war. It would open the door to the possibility of having to admit that this war never had anything to do with Sept. 11 terrorism, weapons of mass destruction or freeing the Iraqi people.

Editors, columnists and even private citizens such as myself may decry the loss of life or our standing on the world stage, but the plain fact is that President Bush simply does not care how many of our soldiers die or what the rest of the world thinks. Their deaths are a sacrifice he’s more than happy to make. And as for the rest of the world? Rest assured, he’ll get around to it all sooner or later. After all, he is (as he proudly proclaims) a “war president,” and he’s only just begun to fight.

R. Donald Snyder

Los Angeles

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Brownstein is mistaken when he states that no one apart from the soldiers in Iraq and their families are paying the price for the war while for the rest of us it is business as usual, more so in the case of those who have gotten big tax cuts and who stand to have those cuts made permanent in the new term.

The war and the tax cuts are designed to make it politically possible to cut a great number of programs that are useful or necessary for many of Americans. Medicare, Medicaid, education funding, Section 8 housing, environmental protections, science and technology research and many other programs that provide a safety net to Americans and to the environment, and give us a leg up when it comes to competing in the world, will all feel the ax. The president will say that this is all in the interest of reducing the deficit, which he knowingly enlarged to give tax cuts to those he favors.

The whole idea is to shrink that part of government that is useful to the majority of Americans, all according to neocon plan. And 51% of Americans will approve Bush’s wisdom and strength while the walls come tumbling down.

Beatrice Steward

Long Beach