Open Letter to John McCain

by Joel S. Hirschhorn / March 22nd, 2008

Every few days I get yet another mailing begging me for money for your campaign. There is always explicit language about my being one of your supporters. But I do not support you for president. You are an abomination, because of your support for President George W. Bush and his unjustified, immoral and illegal Iraq war. Everyone who sees a McCain presidency as a continuation of the Bush administration is totally correct.

Apparently I receive all of your solicitations and phone calls because years ago I contributed a small amount when you were running in the primary against George W. Bush. As an independent, back then I saw you as someone with integrity and honesty. That is no longer true.

Your unabashed support for Bush’s war and your public actions showing admiration for him are an insult to your military and public service career.

It is not, as you assert, that the presidential race “will be won on experience, issues and ideas, because that is what separates me from my Democrat opponents.” What really separates you from the Democratic opponents is you embarrassing, disgraceful and disgusting support of Bush and the Iraq war. You are nothing but a warmonger. You have no valid basis for being president.

Any why are so many lobbyists working for your campaign if you truly are against corporate corruption and the high costs of so much lobbying? It seems that you whole straight-talk pitch has been a clever but deceitful lie.

So stop asking me to “renew” my commitment. I never have made any commitment whatsoever to your current run for the presidency. And I deeply hope that the vast majority of Americans will reject a McBush presidency.

By the way, for every mailing I receive I take all the contents, place them in the postage-paid envelope and send them back to you, so that your campaign loses a little more money.

So perhaps you should keep sending me solicitations so that you waste more money. I especially enjoyed tearing that big photo of you and your wife into little pieces and returning them to you.

You ended your last letter to me with “Please let me hear from you soon.” Consider this my response. And for god sake, stop saying “Joel, you are part of my winning team.” Get the money you want from the idiots that support the Iraq war and think that wasting the lives of thousands of Americans has been justified or ever will be.

Joel S. Hirschhorn was a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association; he has authored five nonfiction books, including Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government. Read other articles by Joel.

This article was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 9:00am and is filed under Antiwar.

8 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. hp said on March 22nd, 2008 at 3:42pm #

    Dear John,
    how is it you came out of that prison camp weighing the same as when you went in?

  2. Max Shields said on March 22nd, 2008 at 4:37pm #

    And what was that John was doing just before they shot him down?

  3. DEM, REP, IND: NeoconsAreNeocons said on March 22nd, 2008 at 5:04pm #

    Joel errantly writes:

    “What really separates you from the Democratic opponents is you embarrassing, disgraceful and disgusting support of Bush and the Iraq war. You are nothing but a warmonger. You have no valid basis for being president.”

    Where’s the separation but in words and party affiliation? Obama and Clinton have been voting for Iraq War funding and renewal of the PATRIOT ACT and other Constitution-raping measures. Neither will take aggressive war with Iran off the table. Neither of them have a “valid basis for being president.” McCain is the worst of the worst, but there’s no real separation as averred by the author.

    Other than that, I thought it was a nice article.

  4. Lloyd Rowsey said on March 23rd, 2008 at 7:17am #

    “your” not “you”. “And” not “Any”. “your” not “you” again.

    Jeez, Joel, I get the same shit from Hilarious, just because I sent her several hundred bucks a year and a half ago (before I stopped taking headmeds). I figure I don’t have time to treat it like you do.

    My suggested addition to your letter: What would you say are the main differences between the perceptions of war by ground grunts and flyboys?

  5. hp said on March 24th, 2008 at 12:52pm #

    Dear John,
    just saw a real nice photo of you wearing your little evil beanie and proclaiming your undying allegiance to the phony baloney democracy. And I don’t mean the USA.

    P.S. The Zionist Star of David in the background was an inspiring touch.

  6. Mulga Mumblebrain said on March 24th, 2008 at 1:21pm #

    McCain should, in my opinion, have been strung up by the Vietnamese peasants he’d been trying to slaughter, and whose friends and relatives he had slaughtered. Fortunately for McCain, the Vietnamese are more civilised and humane than I. My excuse is I’m descended from Europeans, so murder and humbug are in both my genes and memes. The Vietnamese then fed the creep for several years. I do not believe they tortured him-I believe that is a self-serving lie, but what other than self-serving liars does capitalist democracy produce?
    However, I fervently hope for a McCain victory for the same reason I hoped for Bush victories in 2000 and 2004. The reason is that he is the worst contender left, the one who will drag the US Evil Empire deeper into the mire. Perhaps millions will die as McCain and his Zionist puppet-masters attack Iran and God knows who else, but the process of US decline and, one hopes, collapse, will be hastened, saving even greater numbers in the future. Only by the destruction of the US/Israeli Real Axis of Evil can a world emerge characterised by multi-polarity and real action to address the species threatening ecological challenges. As long as various ‘Chosen People’ imagine that they can attack and devastate countries at will, and that their narrow, selfish pecuniary interests are more vital than human survival, we are on the high road to perdition.

  7. Phil said on March 24th, 2008 at 4:42pm #

    What really separates you from the Democratic opponents is you embarrassing, disgraceful and disgusting support of Bush and the Iraq war. You are nothing but a warmonger. You have no valid basis for being president.
    Actually, that doesn’t separate McCain from the Dems – that puts them all together in one neat goose-step line.

  8. Shabnam said on March 26th, 2008 at 12:59am #

    Those irresponsible people who wish McCain’s victory, a warmonger, to speed up the downfall of the American empire must think again. Europeans and their extension, American, are killing and robbing for the last 500 years with the help of their citizen who were and are accomplice in their crimes because they benefited from the massacred of others.. Your logic is similar to those “radicals” in the “third world countries” who believed “hardship” makes the ignorant working class active in politics in order to get rid of their chains. We have seen the opposite. Where are those ignorant working class? Some of them are helping the empire to kill Iraqi, Afghani, Sudanese, …..people. Isn’t it? So, if you whish the downfall of the empire, you have to get out of your comfortable chair and shake your behind and, at least, to demonstrate and demand to bring these mercenaries home, or organize Europeans and others not to work one day per week until these mass murderer leave Iraq and the Middle East. Why don’t you expose the cooperation of Israel and US with the Kurds? Do you know that the Zionist lobby is expanding to include the Kurdish lobby in the US? Israel is giving the Kurds military training to help Bush and McCain, not to speed up the down fall of the empire that you wish, but to kill millions more in Iraq and the neighboring countries to keep the north of Iraq as their MILLITARY BASE, in addition to Green Zone, and your European countryman who have benefited from the massacred of others, are doing the same and supporting the partition of Iraq and the Kurdish terrorists creating another ISREAL to continue the killing and destruction of people of the region to destabilize the neighboring countries to expand Israel, part of the axis of evil besides US and Britain. Who has killed close to 600 professors and scholars in Iraq? Why do “terrorists” want to kill professors who are not even political? It is obvious that the professionals have been killed deliberately by the occupiers and their puppets, the Kurds, to destroy Iraqi human capital as well as their cultural capital by robbing their museums and their libraries to wipe off their contribution to humanity. Your silence helps the “American exceptionalism” and European “civilizing mission” which has one thing in common, destruction of other people and their societies. It is shameful. Shake your behind.