A Letter to the Editor

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

HENRY A. BUCHANAN

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© 2012 Henry A. Buchanan. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/20/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2551-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2549-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2550-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012911475

Cover photograph by Lonnie Bennett

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Introduction: A Letter to the Editor

Chapter 1: The Kuwait War

Chapter 2: Bill Clinton

Chapter 3: George W. Bush

Chapter 4: The Vice President, Dick Cheney

Chapter 5: All About The Damned War

Chapter 6: Aftermath Of War

Chapter 7: The Economic Collapse

Chapter 8: Barack Obama

Chapter 9: Religion And Sex

Chapter 10: Favorites

Chapter 11: Pakistan

Chapter 12: This ‘N That

Chapter 13: Readers Respond

Chapter 14: The Arab Spring

In Conclusion of ‘A Letter to the Editor’

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to my wife, Anne.

She gave me the courage to start it.

Her help at the computer enabled me to finish it.

Thank you, my Darling Anne

INTRODUCTION:

A Letter to the Editor

People who write letters to the editor of a newspaper are a special breed of people. They, we, are highly opinionated and want other people to know what our opinions are. On just about everything that comes up.

I admit that writing letters to newspaper editors represents breaking parental training. When I was a boy my father was very strict about the matter. I was to be seen, available upon call but not heard unless I was asked to speak. Even then speaking did not mean voicing an opinion opposite to what the paternal voice had said.

I grew up to face a world that seemed to me to require some adjustments. Just about everything that was accepted by my social order as the way to think and the thing to do seemed to me to be a bit out of kilter if not entirely opposite to the way I thought things ought to be. Then I discovered that the local newspaper has an opinion page on which the reader can express that contrary opinion: can get his own point of view in print for all the other readers to consider. I had found my element!

Both race and war are societal issues but both issues arise out of man’s sexual nature. Man’s sexual nature gives rise to the issues of religion and politics and consequently, economic, educational and health issues. Most people have a keen interest in the sexual practices of others; few people welcome meddling in their own sex lives. I am confident that I am right in refraining from meddling here while insisting that people assume responsibility for the results of their sexual activities.

In matters religious I have favored the teachings of Jesus and insisted on the application of these teachings to the issues that arise in our political and societal areas involving the economy, education and health. In the final analysis it all comes down to a concern for life, and I have opposed the abuses of life at every level. I have opposed abortion as vehemently as I have opposed war. I have opposed torture and all hurtful practices that accompany war.

It must be admitted that since what I have written, if often controversial, it follows that there must be discussion in which my views are challenged and my harshest critic in this area is a nameless one who signs his letters with a flourishing ‘R’ but has never given me his full identity. My correspondence with Presidents and public servants at a lower level has been an experiment in Democracy, but most of the replies I have received from them have been disappointing. They seem to be more a restatement of positions already made public than a new examination of the issues. They thank me for my letters but do not follow my advice.

Now I thank the editors who have the courage to print my letters. I thank the readers who read them. Most of all I thank ‘R’ for making the experience of writing these letters more exciting. Without ‘R’ to tell me I was wrong, I might never have known how right I was.

Given a few more years, a few more crises threatening the human race, and an occasional outstanding folly to remind us that we are human, the practice of writing ‘A Letter to the Editor’ could catch on and be a benefit to mankind.

My first ‘letter to the editor’ got me hanged. I survived because it was in effigy, but I got the message: there is power in the written word. Its power can move nations; it can also get the writer hurt. That first letter was to the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It was May 1954 and the Supreme Court of the United States had handed down the decision Brown v. Board of Education. It made racial segregation in the public schools illegal.

That decision upset a lot of people in my native state of Georgia. Why did I have to get hanged over it? I was pastor of the Baptist Church in Shellman, Georgia. When my letter to the editor appeared in print over my name, the people of Shellman did not like what I had written. Not only did they dislike what I said; they feared that they would be associated with what I said because I was their pastor. Isn’t the pastor the church’s spokesman? Here’s the letter:

The Editors:

Your coverage of Georgia’s reaction to the recent decision of the Supreme Court on segregation in public schools certainly reflects the feeling of the majority of Georgia’s people and their leaders. There is, however, a minority voice.

The unpleasant truth is that the Supreme Court has rendered a just decision, and we must accept it simply because it is right. It is not the Supreme Court that is playing politics in this case, but the political leaders of Georgia.

Scanning the political scene one sees not a single candidate for governor who proposes to face the reality that an abominable tradition has come to an end.

We stand in danger of losing our public school system, but what is worse, of losing the respect of decent-minded men throughout the world.

Why should the true teacher, who loves to teach above all else, object to sharing what he knows with students of another race?

For that matter, is there any reason (prejudices aside) why white children and colored children cannot learn together in the same classroom? They are going to have to live in the same world. (Signed: Henry A. Buchanan, Shellman, Georgia, May 1954)

They hanged me in effigy at the town hall, buried me in the town square, fired me from the office of pastor of the church and I had to leave town. I had discovered the power of the written word. If a letter to the editor could cause so much furor in a little Southern town, what might happen if I took up writing as a serious enterprise!

I wrote for some big magazines. The first to pay me was the Saturday Evening Post. That was when it was a popular magazine and had a ‘Speaking Out’ column facing the back page. I wrote, together with Bob Brown (a pastor in Lexington, Kentucky) that the ecumenical movement in the churches would not work. This upset the ecumenists. We wrote for Ebony about ‘Why the Churches Don’t Integrate.’ I wrote for other magazines too; almost always about some controversial issue. It was heady wine.

Then I wrote a book; a collection of tales. It led to writing more books – twenty-five to date. And I continued to write ‘letters to the editor’ because the issues kept coming up, and sometimes I would get immediate feedback.

The war is the big issue now. I was opposed to it from the beginning. I am opposed to it now. I wrote and still write ‘letters to the editor’ to voice my opposition. I made up a list of forty big newspapers, all over the nation and I started sending letters to them. Some printed my letters. Most of them did not. I still send them to the big papers and they still ignore them. I had, and still have, some old faithfuls. Such as Murray Ledger and Times, The Paducah Sun and Lexington Herald-Leader; all in Kentucky.

I told you that several people in the little western Kentucky town of Murray suggested that if I didn’t like the way things were being done I should move. Early in the year 2010 I did move. Not to accommodate my critics but because I married. Anne Ellis had been one of seventeen people who voted for me when I was voted out of the Baptist Church in Shellman, Georgia over the racial issue. Fifty-four years later she read my book The Shellman Story, Hanging the Preacher. She had found me. She came to me in Murray, Kentucky. We married and moved to her home in Texas.

We are two native Georgians in a little Texan town called Gorman; about three hours drive west from Dallas. I started looking for editors of newspapers. Eastland (the seat of Eastland County) has a newspaper, Abilene (a larger town) has a daily paper and Gorman has a four-page weekly paper. I set my goals: get into all three of them via the opinion page. The Gorman paper prints my opinion each week. The Abilene paper monthly and the Eastland paper when my views don’t threaten the paper’s advertisers.

I am controversial and my critics are harsh, but I write my ‘letters to the editors,’ and here are some of them.

CHAPTER 1:

The Kuwait War

The war started in 1990. The first George Bush was President. It was over Kuwait and it set the stage for everything that has occurred in the Middle East in the last twenty-two years. I thought the war was wrong. I wrote a little book I called ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’. I wrote it before, during and immediately following this war. I wrote letters to editors of several newspapers expressing my view.

My opposition to the Persian Gulf War did not endear me to the people in the little town of Murray, Kentucky where I lived. I was told that if I didn’t like it there are two roads out of town. You can take either one of them. I didn’t take either road out of town but I continued to write letters to the editors of several newspapers. And I didn’t get hanged this time. I even lived to write about George W. Bush’s war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Here we have a sampling of those letters I wrote and sent to editors of leading newspapers all over the country about the war in Kuwait. You’ll find more about it in ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’. None of them listened to me. We fought and defeated Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, threatened Baghdad, then stopped and came home. Saddam claimed victory.

Bill Clinton defeated George H. W. Bush for the presidency in 1992 and for eight years we settled for a ‘no fly zone’ over Iraq. At this time I had some correspondence with the President, a congressman and a senator. I expressed my views in letters to the editor.

HOLY TOILET PAPER!

(TO: MURRAY LEDGER AND TIMES, IN KENTUCKY)

The Saudis are making it difficult for us to save them from Saddam Hussein’s brutality and naked aggression. We do not understand niceties of Muslim theology because we are infidels. First there was the matter of our female troops driving cars. We admit to having told jokes about women drivers in the past ourselves so we won’t let this stand in the way of King Faud picking up his windfall oil profits.

But then there was Thanksgiving, and the President having to eat turkey in the sand with the troops. Quietly. And Christmas. No Santa Claus for our boys and girls there. They did let Bob Hope entertain the troops but he wasn’t allowed to bring the girls, so it wasn’t very entertaining.

Now surfaces the issue of colored toilet tissue. White is sacred to the Saudis so we can’t use white toilet tissue because that would defile the color white in an unprintable manner. Maybe Faud has been so busy counting his windfall profits he hasn’t noticed the color of our troops. And the way we make up for past injustices.

This issue of white toilet paper and colored toilet paper could put a terrible strain on our Alliance. On the other hand it might just be giving me a handle on how to support the troops without compromising my opposition to this Bush War. For there are just some things in this life that take precedence over the great issues of war. Even oil must take a lower place on the agenda before the imperative call of nature. For when a man has got to go he has got to go. And color be damned! (Signed: Henry A. Buchanan)

TO: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, IN MISSOURI

I have been learning some surprising things about war since George Bush has lined up the world’s most powerful nations behind him to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The most important thing I have learned is that the most bellicose people in this country are the ones who are past the normally accepted age for fighting wars. These old geezers really want to give Saddam a drubbing.

This discovery made me rethink our practice of sending young men to war. Here we have all these old men, most of them retired and with all their achievements behind them, while the young men have jobs to do and families to raise. So why don’t we open up the armed services to these feisty old fellows? Let them go over there and do Saddam in. They may be a bit unsteady on their legs, but Shoot! Man, the wheel is the great equalizer. They can ride into battle.

We could use some of the older ladies too and leave those pretty young ones home to raise a new crop of replacements. I watched one grandmotherly type on the TV the other night. She was an eager would-be-warrioress. She said We’ve got a lunatic over there! And we have to go in and stop him! Atta Girl! I can’t think of any good reason why you shouldn’t just go right over there and get that lunatic. You could take the place of at least four of my grandsons who still have to get their lessons and compete for a place in the job market.

See there? The wonderful thing about war is that it makes you think up better ways of doing things. (Signed: Henry A. Buchanan, December 11, 1990)

TO: CHARLESTON NEWS AND COURIER, IN SOUTH CAROLINA

Yes, by George, there is a debate. A very warm debate. Going on at the grassroots. I don’t know about the Congress; I know what’s being said in the coffee shops. The people in the coffee shops don’t want war.

The President wants Saddam to believe that there is unanimity in support of his Gulf policy. He wants Saddam to believe we are all willing to die, to sacrifice our sons and daughters, and to complete the wrecking of our economy, in order to restore the Emir’s throne.

The truth is a lot of us don’t know the Emir of Kuwait. Some of us know he is a puppet set up by the British to protect British petroleum interest in the Gulf. A few even know that Kuwait was Iraq’s toe in the Gulf until Britain rearranged the map. And we are not willing to follow George Bush into a disastrous war to put the Emir of Kuwait back on his throne. If the sands of Saudi Arabia are good enough for a half million American troops, the air conditioned palace being provided for His Displaced Highness by the Saudis ought to be adequate for him.

So a lot of us good Americans who wouldn’t nominate Saddam for the Nobel Peace Prize are not buying what George Bush says either. Maybe our kind and gentle President could be satisfied with the news that he is starving Iraqi babies to death by cutting off the food supply. Maybe a thousand points of light all focused on the forty thousand caskets being prepared for anticipated American casualties could open his eyes to the fact that there is even another side to the question. And that’s why there is a debate! (Signed: Henry A. Buchanan, December 18, 1990)

THE DOG THAT BARKED

(TO: PRESS-REGISTER, IN MOBILE, ALABAMA)

I was watching George Bush’s lips to see whether we have to get rid of Saddam Hussein because he is a cruel and naked aggressor or because the legitimate throne of Kuwait floats on a sea of oil, and I happened to remember what my brother Tillman taught me about bird dogs. Tillman lived in Macon, Georgia all of his life and he accumulated a bit of wisdom about noisy dogs which can be applied to noisy dictators like Saddam.

My brother kept a pack of bird dogs in a pen near the window of the guest bedroom where I had just spent a sleepless night because one of his bird dogs howled and barked all night. I mentioned this to Tillman at breakfast and he said Yep. That’s Old Jake. Does it all the time. But he’s the only one that makes much racket at night.

I thought about that and came up with a solution. So why don’t you get rid of Old Jake? Then we could get some peace and quiet.

But my brother just grinned at my naiveté. You don’t know much about dogs, do you? he said. Old Bob is just sitting over there in the corner waiting for me to get rid of Old Jake so he can take over and start barking all night.

What George Bush said about getting rid of Saddam Hussein just started me to thinking about my brother Tillman and his bird dog wisdom. (Signed: Henry A. Buchanan, December 20, 1990)

TO: HOPKINSVILLE NEW ERA, IN KENTUCKY

Hearken now, ye waiting people, to the Christmas message from on High. Angels’ voices do proclaim it. Great things are afoot.

Well, George Bush has proclaimed it and Senator Inouye has confirmed it, the war will last five days! But don’t you believe it.

The last time we were promised a short war the senators drove down with their ladies from Washington to Manassas to watch it, but it turned into the First Battle of Bull Run. The bulls who did the most running were the senators whipping their horses to get back to Washington before the Rebs could overtake them.

It took us three days to locate the medical students on Grenada. More than five days to run Noriega to ground in Panama. Israel won one in Six Days but is staying out of this one. Wisely.

I am making a counter-prediction about the Bush War. There will be a hundred thousand casualties, most of them in the first five days, and not all of them will be Iraqi.

After that the American people will wake up and demand that George Bush be impeached for abuse of power. After several years of bloody fighting we will withdraw with dignity and the Middle East will return to normalcy, that is, to settling their disputes by fighting among themselves.

And if I am wrong? Well. I could be both wrong and happy. If George Bush is wrong, who will be happy? (Signed: Henry A. Buchanan, December 20, 1990)

KIDS FOR OIL?

(TO: DALLAS TIMES HERALD, IN TEXAS)

I am deeply moved by the plight of the Tom and Sue Feeley family of Louisville, Kentucky. Both Sue and Tom are in the Reserves. Sue has already been called up. Tom expects the call soon. Both may wind up in the Middle East. But that is only the stage setting for the Feeley family drama. There are four little Feeleys and the big question is: Who will care for them while Mommy and Daddy are chasing Saddam out of Kuwait?

While we are mulling over that question, you may ask: Why would the parents of four