Open Letter to the President

Open Letter to the President - President Bush - it's Mitch. I helped get you elected, two years ago. Do me a favor. Please.

You'll be speaking at St.Mere Eglise, overlooking Omaha Beach, sometime later today, Memorial Day. Please, please, drop the dovish tone of the last few days - the one you used at the Bundestag in Berlin last week. The world needs another Winston Churchill. We do not need empty platitudes, calling us to endless wariness and uncertain sacrifice toward an unknowable end.

We need a speech like Churchill or Reagan or FDR would give - one that left our goal so clear even the most myopic tyrant or zealotry-befuddled thug can't help but get the message: We're awash in righteous rage, and we're going to exact a hundred Afghanistans from the next pack of degenerates that doesn't come to the table with its tail between its legs and it nuclear weapons programs lolling about the circular file.

We need a speech that puts Iraq on notice that their current path will lead only to Tomahawks in the dark, shadows in the night disgorging flame and steel and cold-eyed killers in green and sand berets that strike in the dark leaving cut throats and flaming bunkers and numbing chaos. With Turkish tanks rumbling over those who don't have the sense to do what their fathers and older brothers did ten years ago - surrender.

Mr. President; do not let us down.