We Thank You President Bush For 20 Years

We thank you President Bush for 20 years of peace and freedom. Here in 2027, as we look back on all that has happened, we salute you for your steadfastness in the face of unstinting vitriol from the left, including books and movies advocating your assassination, in holding fast to your belief that America’s future could only be secured by facing the terrorists on their ground, not ours. Your decisions to go first into Afghanistan and then into Iraq before they could supply nuclear weapons to terrorists and to finish that job has turned out to be as important to America as was Lincoln’s decision to save the Union at all costs.

Our eventual victory in Iraq, which took several years to accomplish, changed the whole equation in the Middle East. True democracy spread to Iran, Kuwait and Egypt. Lebanon restored its delicate balance and eventually gained back its role as the Switzerland of the east. Without the support of Iraq and Iran, Hezbollah influence waned, and Syria became much more accommodating and reached an agreement with Israel, as did the Palestinians.

Another result of the stabilization of a true democracy in Iraq and the defeat and expulsion of Al Qaeda from that area had another snowball effect: it strengthened the resolve of many European countries not to give in to the demands of their Muslim immigrants to live under special laws only for them. These countries also put a stop to the wholesale immigration from Muslim countries that had been taking place.

Your experience of having to deal personally with the most incredible series of personal attacks, wherein you were repeatedly called a liar, a Hitler and a murderer by the scalawags of their time (Senators Reid, Kennedy, Durbin and Kerry to name a few), and had to deal with a hostile press which constantly revealed classified information and published fake photographs and made-up stories of atrocities also reminded us of President Lincoln’s experience. In fact, here are accounts of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address in the newspapers of his time:

“members in the back reaches of the audience had a tendency to wander off. An entire group of convalescent soldiers who had come to listen to the "speechifying" had drifted away down onto the battlefields and observed carcasses of still unburied horses, and looked across the fields, remembering what they had seen and done in them. . . .

One newspaper would write: "We pass over the silly remarks of the President, for the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of."

Another: "Mr. Lincoln did most foully traduce the motives of the men who were slain at Gettysburg. . . . Readers will not have failed to observe the exceeding bad taste which characterized the words of the President. . . ."

The London Times' correspondent would write: "The ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln. . . .
Anything more dull and commonplace it wouldn't be easy to produce."

Lincoln himself would feel his speech was a failure. In a remark regarding his effort he would say it did not "scour." A word used by farmers: if wet soil stuck to the plow it did not "scour."

The correspondent of the Chicago Tribune would be among the first to recognize something special in Lincoln's oration: "The dedicatory remarks by President Lincoln will live among the annals of man. . ."

From the book, “Gettysburg” by Jack McLaughlin, page 195

Mr. Bush, we recently saw a video of your 2007 State of the Union address. The courtesy you always showed, and especially showed during this speech, to your foul-mouthed critics was an inspiration to us all.