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Obama Comforts Bush

Dear Former President Bush,

Please accept my sincere apologies for the discomfort you must feel in having been invited to speak at the recent Young Presidents’ Organization conference in Denver, Colorado. It is my understanding that you were invited long before for initial release of classified State Department documents by the Wikileaks organization — documents which compromised our  confidential thoughts about and dealings with other countries around the world.

As the principled man you are, your decision not to attend the same conference at which Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was also scheduled to speak by video feed was the only honorable course of action available to you. I have instructed my Attorney General  to investigate the possibility of issuing charges against Assange, whose organization, as you know, received the leaked State Department documents from an anonymous source, and after reviewing them, released a small portion.

The fact that Wikileaks is not an American organization, that none of the released documents have posed a more serious threat to American interests than embarrassment in some cases, but in all cases revealed work product paid for in whole by the American people on behalf of the American people, to which the American people therefore have full and exclusive right of ownership, is irrelevant to our response.

These were classified documents — documents that I determined were not the business of the American people, who merely paid for the documents and for all of the efforts that went into the development of the documents, and without whose consent there would be no government to commission the creation of the documents. In my judgment, the American people are not entitled to this information which they, exclusively, own. And therefore, Wikileaks’ decision to release it seems clearly to represent criminal conduct.

I applaud the comments of your spokesman, David Sherzer, in the statement regarding your decision to cancel your appearance at the Young Presidents’ Organization: “The former president has no desire to share a forum with a man who has willfully and repeatedly done great harm to the interests of the United States.”

Lest there be any doubt about the harm Mr. Assange has done “willfully and repeatedly” to “the interests of the United States,” let me list only a few of his harmful acts here. In addition to releasing information owned by the American people to the American people, Mr. Assange:

• Lost the popular vote for president, was appointed President of the United States by cronies his father had appointed to the Supreme Court, where he inherited a budget surplus which he converted into multi-trillion-dollar debt, made more catastrophic by the worst economic meltdown in 70 years.
• Ignored warnings of imminent terrorist attack, responded to the attack that followed by initiating a war against the nation in which the attack was planned, allowed the mastermind of the attack to escape imminent capture, and when victory in that war was otherwise near, shifted the focus of American military forces to the initiation of another war, against a country that did not attack us, based on justifications later proven to be lies, but in fact to settle a grudge involving a previous war initiated by his father when his father was president.
• In a profound overreaction to the terrorist act, championed legislation dishonestly named the “Patriot Act,” which allowed the government of the United States to spy on its own citizens without permission from existing legal authority, and to hold American citizens in custody without habeas corpus.
• Obliterated George Washington’s 200-year-old policy against the torture of America’s prisoners, also in violation of international treaties signed by the United States.
• Allowed taxpayer-paid members of the Executive Branch to conduct overt political activities on his behalf, including litmus tests for judicial appointments and the firing of judges deemed not sufficiently supportive of his political agenda.

 I could list dozens, hundreds, thousands of additional ways in which Mr. Assange willfully and repeatedly did great harm to the interests of the United States. In fact, I would argue that Mr. Assange has therefore caused greater harm to the United States than any other president in the past 100 years –or perhaps ever.

It is no wonder that Mr. Assange’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, recently told cadets at West Point that “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘Have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

 Appearing at the same function as Mr. Assange could only have tarnished your own record for moral leadership, infallible judgment, and willful and repeated acts that did not do great harm to the United States.

You will be pleased to know that the individual accused of leaking the State Department documents, although he has not been convicted of any crime, is being held in solitary confinement in a military facility 23 hours a day, without clothing or blankets, and without the ability to exercise.  Our justice has been swift and sure against this 23-year-old private. We need not wait for a court of law to validate the lightning of our terrible swift sword.

On a personal note, it was with regret that I read of your decision to cancel another speaking engagement outside the country, in Switzerland. It is difficult to imagine the motives of liberal groups who would threaten to pursue charges of war crimes against you, Former President Bush, when all of the actions at issue were committed not by you, but by Julian Assange during his Presidency.

May I suggest skiing in Vail instead? Michelle and the girls recently enjoyed the slopes there, and the local district attorney is well known for his “perpetrator friendly” pursuit of justice. I think you would find Vail to be a hospitable safe haven.

In the meantime, please let me know if I can do anything more to rationalize, validate, and preserve your legacy.

Yours in humble respect,

Barack Obama