Reaction to President Bush's State of the Union Address

By: Charles B. Rangel

The President intended his address to calm a jittery nation. But the fears and doubts of millions of Americans who are hurting, concerned about losing their jobs and health insurance, struggling to pay for prescription drugs, and nervous about going into war without the support of our allies - those jitters will not go away because of the President's rhetoric.

I had hoped that the President would have given us more confidence that the young men and women would not be placed in harm's way unless absolutely necessary to protect this great land of ours. The start of war should be accompanied by a sense there is a patriotic need to fight for the security and protection of America and the world. However, President bush failed to demonstrate that there is an immediate threat from Iraq to us or our allies.

The President asserted in his speech that military action in Iraq will likely be needed. This belief does not appear to be shared by many members of the international community in the best position to determine how to deal with the threat of Saddam Hussein. It seems to me that the nations around Iraq, who are the most likely to be threatened, would be leading the charge if they were truly in imminent danger.

The President says we are friends to the Iraqi people. If we want to get Saddam Hussein, why would we attack the Iraqi people? If Saddam Hussein has broken international law, why not allow the same international mechanisms to work that helped bring Nazi war criminals and war criminals from the Balkan wars to justice? Why does the United States need to go to war without the support of the community of civilized nations if the threat is really from one man?

No one denies that Saddam Hussein is a dictator and has repressed his own people. But so have dictators in other nations, including North Korea, that we have not decided to go to war against. If President Bush has evidence that Saddam Hussein or the Iraqi government was involved in the September 11^th attacks, he has not shared it with the representatives of the American people. On the other hand, we have seen evidence that Osama bin Laden was directly involved in the attack on the United States. Yet, forces that could be directed to the effort to find bin Laden and fight the war on terrorism are deployed to the Iraq front. Instead of guarding America's borders against attack, we have troops guarding Iraqi oil fields.

I have proposed reinstating mandatory service so that Americans of all different backgrounds and economic circumstances would share in the sacrifices needed to defend the nation. But the President does not even call for sharing the financial sacrifice by having people pay an equitable contribution to the costs incurred by war. Instead, we're paying for this war by enlarging the deficit, cutting back on health care, cutting back on education, jeopardizing the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. At the same time, President Bush wants to give massive tax break to the wealthy. As a result of these policies, the economic sacrifice is disproportionately borne by seniors, working Americans, and future generations who will have to deal with our debts.

To get the nation back to peace and prosperity, the President will have to reconsider his Administration's priorities, and there was no evidence in his address that he is willing to do that.