Globally Rational

Many of you may have heard that President Bush recently stated that he has stopped playing golf in solidarity for the soldiers in Iraq. His rationale:

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 as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal… I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life. And I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it anymore to do.

So apparently, he can’t play golf anymore because he feels bad for sending our young men to their deaths in Iraq. Is this the way to “be in solidarity as best I can with [the dead soldiers’ families]?” He says that this is the “best” way… well, I can think of plenty of better ways:

• Send your daughters to go fight in Iraq… that’s what the British Royal Family did (with Prince Harry), and they aren’t even the ones who started the war.
• Tell the families what exactly their children are dying for.
• Stop tearing apart your most loyal families with the Stop-Loss program.
• Send some psychiatrists to Iraq to take care of the suicide problem among the troops.
• Try to learn something about the rest of the world… it’s demoralizing to see a President who was planning a war in a country without even knowing the difference between the country’s major factions (and that’s assuming that there was actually some planning for the war).
• And, the biggest one: Don’t lie about giving up golf! Since the day that he claims to have played his last round of golf, he has been out on the course twice. We have also seen plenty of video footage of him fishing, mountain biking, and just hanging out on his ranch. That’s solidarity for you.

I’ve heard plenty of people say “leave him alone… he’s only human” or “he’s not perfect” or “don’t you ever make mistakes?” Well, I’ll admit that I am not the smartest, hardest-working, most capable person in America… but that’s also why I’m not the President. I expect the President to be one of the 100 smartest people in the country and one of the 100 most educated people in the country. Unlike Ron Paul, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, and both Clintons, who all hold advanced degrees, President Bush couldn’t even get into law school (also note: John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 students at the Naval Academy and, obviously, he also didn’t go to grad school).

When you vote in November, I hope that your first consideration is to elect a President who is intelligent and accomplished. We already made the mistake of electing a President who couldn’t name the leaders of Pakistan, India, and Chechnya (which were all political hotspots at the time)… please don’t make the mistake of electing a leader who thinks Iran is training Iraqi al-Qaeda members (which couldn’t be farther from the truth) and doesn’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shias.

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