Dear Mr. Bush,
I want to personally thank-you for the job you've done turning my once full-of-life son into a defeated stepford drone. This has all happened quite recently, in fact it's only been a month or so, since he was sent by you to Kuwait.
Before he left he told me he felt he was being sent over to fight your war, that he didn't feel it was the right thing to do. A lot of his friends in the navy told me they felt the same way.
He's always been a smart kid, a good kid really. Most people think of him as lovable. I had very little trouble with him. There were no drugs or violence or even school problems. But he just made average grades, so he joined the navy during the relatively peaceful 90s, when many kids were recruited into the armed forces with promises of college tuition, jobs, and benefits. He wanted to help people. So after boot camp he spent years training as a medic, so he could be a civilian paramedic upon his discharge. He looked forward to buying a house with a VA loan back in his beloved Washington State.
When he first got the call to deploy I admit he freaked. He drove out into the desert at dawn and called me, said he was going AWOL. It was hard for me to persuade my son to go fight a war I didn't believe in, for a commander-in-chief I am deeply distrustful of. But it was the right thing to do. It didn't matter that things had changed drastically since he and his friends signed up. The fact was they always knew a day like this might come, and my son had to face it like a man.
It took two days to calm him down, during which time he drove back to the base and continued to work, on the phone with me constantly. I implored him to not ruin his life, that even though we both felt this war was wrong, he had to go. Imagine that. Those were days I will never forget as a father. Perhaps I was sending my own son to die, for he was looking to me for the answer. In a different time I might have suggested going to Canada or wherever ... what do dissenters do these days? Are we at that point yet?
In any case, this handsome 21 year old kid flew to Kuwait the day after our last talk, leaving a sad pile of stuff at my house, including his stereo, DVD player, and photo albums. He made me promise I wouldn't look at the pictures, because maybe he got crazy on his 21st birthday and maybe there were some naked pictures of girls in there.
I haven't peeked yet. I'm keeping my promise.
Yesterday I received first word from him. He was living in a tent city near the Iraq border. There was a phone station about 60 miles away, and he was only allowed an hour to talk. So he had to try and fit in me and his girlfriend.
He sounded very different. Distant. At first I thought he was lonely. I asked what was wrong. He said nothing. I asked how he was dealing with it. He said okay. Then he peppered some of his talk with anti-Iraq expletives. I had never heard that from him. These were not just anti-Saddam but anti-Iraq. He started talking about how there were no women for miles and how they were going to take their frustrations out on Iraq.
I asked what happened to his thoughts on Bush and the war he didn't believe in, and I could hear him shrug. He said they taught him how to not think about it.
I felt a palpable relief. They were winning him over. My son was being successfully brainwashed, and I was grateful. This would make it easier on him. There is no room for reason or intellect in a war like this. One must be blindly convinced of one's righteousness. One must be sure one is good and the enemy is evil. There is no room for questioning.
So I thank-you sincerely Mr. Bush. I do not mean this facetiously. What you are doing is the equivalent of easing the pain. What a good and noble man you are.
I see you on TV stirring up the troops. The papers give you front page coverage of these photo-ops. I appreciate that you and your men are trying to make it easier for boys like mine to fight and kill and maybe die in your horrible war

SELECTED RESPONSES:

And the Bush Administration and our lovely congress have given permission for the military recruiters to start pursuing your kids in high school. they exploit any financial or academic insecurities- and once they have your kid - you may have lost him/her forever.

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Dear Peter,
I am so sorry.
Your boy is there in my name.
I detest Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield/Powell/Rice. They are shameful warpigs. I really resent their sending our youth to fight for their interests. I will remember your child in prayer. I work as a obstetric nurse and lately I have looked into the eyes of the babies that I attended to in their births and think.."What will their lives be like?" "How will they die?" I grieve for the babies, both grown up and new.
Maybe your son has learned to talk the talk of aggression for his safety. Hopefully the lessons learned in his childhood will prevent him from taking in this behavior .
Bless you and your family,
mydwyfe
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Dear Peter:

My heart aches for you and your family.

Like you, I do not support this administration nor do I believe the reasons this administration gives for justifying a war with Iraq. My husband has even stronger feelings than I, but that is because he served with the U.S. Army in Iraq and Kuwait twelve years ago.

Please try to have faith that your son's intelligence and training will see him through any conflict. If you have faith in nothing else, please try to have faith in this. You will drive yourself crazy with worry if you don't, and that won't help you or your son.

You and your family will be in my thoughts.

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Men do evil in the dark because others cannot see them; they think evil in the dark because they cannot see themselves. -- Charles Major (1902)
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YES! I GET HATEMAIL TOO! I HAVE FINALLY ARRIVED!

I speak only for myself, but please don't email this type of self-serving diatribe by a highly selfish unpatriotic person .  Reading about a father talk about his son who have their hand out for everything they can get free and at the expense of the tax payor without any thought to what they can give back to this great country and its people and its many freedoms is repugnant to me.  Perhaps if that "Debaucher of young girls" Clinton had done his job as President (he had 8 years!!!!) Bush and the American people would now not be living with the aftermath of his "do-nothing" policies inherited by the current administration. In my mind, Clinton and his administration are more to blame for 9/11 than anyone else and the image I have of him is that of Nero "fiddling" while Rome burned.

Shame of Peter Hansen for such a letter!!!!

Steve