Letter to the Editor: Fundamental flaw exposed

To the Editor,

The president is on the record saying that he knew “from the start” that the coronavirus would be “a pandemic”, and the “start” was in early January.
Why didn’t he act? Why weren’t medical supplies stockpiled? A couple fireside chats on social distancing would have saved thousands of lives and millions of jobs.
By Jan. 1, the president had fired two thirds of the personnel dedicated to pandemic preparation. An ugly civic pattern emerges here, if we dare to remember that GW ignored the social scientists in the State Department when they explained that Iraq would melt down if thousands of MPs were not in Bagdad when Saddam was driven out.
The original Bush plan — to hand off an Iraqi government after a brief, 4-or-5-month occupation — fell by the wayside as the expert predictions proved true. Learning and experience are irrelevant when they conflict with the intuition of Conservative leadership and the caution destroying certainty that Republicans will never hold them accountable, not even when thousands are dying daily.
The president is referring to himself as a “wartime” leader and the analogy is apt. However, none of our nation’s great military leaders — Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower — conscious that brave sons, brothers, and fathers were about to die, ever called the oncoming enemy “a hoax.”

We have witnessed the fundamental flaw of Democracy, a catch recognized by the Greeks over 2,000 years ago. Sometimes the visionary vote getter, the charismatic runner of the political race, is flatfooted and blind when it comes to governing.
When Bush 41 readied this nation for war in 1991, he evoked the lessons of WWII in Europe, which tell us to address threats early- before they gain momentum.
If 41 were with us today, he would remind us that the Commander who approved the D-day invasion was in a wheelchair, 3,000 miles away when the assault began. Offshore and in England, admirals and generals looked on with battle plans held in hands with crossed fingers.
Yet our entangled paratroopers found the key crossroads and bridges. As if drawn by a magnet, the soldiers on the beach pushed forward under withering fire.
That magnet was the American sense of duty. It made for victory on the Sixth of June, 1944, and it will bring about success tomorrow.

Jesse Laurentius
Perryville