Bush State of the “Onion”
January 29, 2002
Dear Mr. President,
As you rehearse your speech to a joint session of our current leaders, I will be addressing joint sessions of our future leaders at schools across our Great American land. As your speechwriters are hammering out what they think we need to hear, I will be professing to our youngsters what our country is all about.
I will be teaching them what it is that makes us proud to be Americans. I will be telling them stories about freedom, liberty, dignity and all the things that make us American. As an American, I will brag to them how freedom is based on the sovereignty of our constitution and principles of justice, how we are all equal under God and how we are all bound by law. I will tell them that it is only American that we are all innocent until proven guilty, and that “Live Free or Die” is only American. I will preach “thou shall not steal nor shall take what is not rightfully yours.”
I will boast about our American justice – that no man should be condemned without due process of law, and that liberty is what our country is all about, and I will be happy to do just that.
But I am afraid, Mr. President, if they start asking questions. What am I supposed to say?
Where was our due process of law when we waged a war across the Globe that we do not know if it will ever end?
Where is our American justice when we confine people from across the Globe into a concentration camp without any regard to international laws let alone our own?
How can we claim a “war on terrorism” when all we do is blindly support and protect an atrocious entity that stands as thorn in the throat of world peace – the so called terrorist “Israel?”
Where is the liberty for all the freedom loving people whose fight for freedom you have labeled as terrorism?
And where are our values when our allies in the so-called “war on terrorism” are none but thugs, drug czars, oil barons, and the outlawed?
I am afraid, Mr. President, this time I just cannot ask them to join me along in your prayers. Instead, I am inviting you along to join us in revisiting the words of our Lord in the Holy Bible:
“So then, you will know them by their fruits…Many will say to me on the day of Judgment, ‘Lord, Lord,’ did we not prophesy in Your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles?’ ..And then I will tell them, ‘I never knew; Depart From Me, You Evil Doer. (Matthew 7:20-23)
And as beautifully stated in the Holy Qur’an:
“Say, Shall We tell you the greatest losers in respect of (their Deeds)? Those whose efforts have been wasted in this life while they thought that they are acquiring good by their deeds.” (Surah 18, Ayah 103-104)
Finally, I pray for you and for all of us, Mr. President:
“May the Lord guide us to see and do what is right, and may His Almighty grant us Wisdom not to turn away from it. More importantly, may we all not be among those whom the Holy Books are describing.”
Truly Yours,
Nidal Sakr
Miami, Florida
