Dear Mr. Easley,
Your article, "President Perry," did a wonderful job of profiling a politician and presidential hopeful who is just emerging from the shadows of candidates such as the stoic Mitt Romney and the Minnesotan squawk-box, Michelle Bachmann. Having previously read your articles, I knew that a few not-so-veiled shots would be taken at our President and really paid no mind to your disparaging of his work and questioning of his academic successes.
In the third column of the article, though, something caught my eye, already jaded by your smug, cookie-cutter, GOP prose. You wrote on what President Obama has done since his inauguration, and I quote, "letting over a thousand U.S. servicemen die in conflict overseas."
I have a problem with this statement. These wars, started by President Bush a little less than ten years ago, have claimed 4,474 lives in Iraq and 1,350 in Afghanistan. Since Obama's inauguration, 246 have died in Iraq and many more in Afghanistan, but not the "more than a thousand" that you vehemently attribute solely to President Obama.
To say that President Obama "let" these brave men and women die overseas is pure untruth and hypocrisy. Where were these scathing remarks when 4,228 servicemen and servicewomen fell in the line of duty during the Presidency of George W. Bush? Every life lost in these conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is a tragedy, and in my opinion, one that need not have occurred. That is not, however, why I am writing this.
I am writing because you are attributing an incorrect number of fatalities to a man who, from his first days in office, has worked to end our involvement in these countries and bring our brave soldiers home. Your insinuation that President Obama let those men and women die out of some sort of careless negligence is distasteful, slanderous and of poor journalism. I hope that your next piece, which, I'm sure, will criticize our president some more, will at least do so in a way that is both truthful and rational.
Christian Blaum
junior
Morrissey Manor
Aug. 26
