December 19, 1998
Boston, MA

Dear Congress,

I had a surreal and unsettling experience the other night from which I've not quite recovered. As I sat in my office trying to tie up the day's loose ends, a voice from CNN on the television in the next room announced that Sen. Trent Lott had issued a statement that he "could not support air strikes on Iraq at this time."

As I was just begining to contemplate what seemed like a new escalation in the culture wars currently being waged in Washington, my thoughts were drowned out almost instantaneously by the clatter of televised anti-aircraft fire announcing that the bombardment had, in fact, begun. In the days since, news has seemed to come at me with the speed, frequency and ferocity of cruise missiles and I haven't felt I've had time to sort out what I really think of it all.

I should backtrack and say that I'm against impeachment. I consider myself a political independent of liberal leaning and Bill Clinton is the first presidential candidate I have ever voted for who actually won. I am disappointed by the President in the same way I've been disappointed by friends who have behaved in immature, dishonest and hurtful ways when I thought they had their lives together. But my disappointment with Mr. Clinton is tempered by my visceral recoiling from an extremist community that seems to have taken hold of this nation's political and civic agenda. This is an element from the fringe of the Republican party where political pragmatism yields to moral fundamentalism. My gut feeling is that they are seeking to impose their values on me by whatever means necessary.

Perhaps what was so unsettling to me the other night was the sense that the Republicans, who seem bent on settling old scores from Watergate to Iran/Contra, now also seem to be taking their crusade a step further and are trying to exact revenge for the bruised national pride and generational strife that came out of Vietnam.

Most disquieting of all is that I, who protested the Gulf War in 1991, now find myself inclined to defend this Commander-in-Chief's virtually unilateral act of war in the face of criticism from the traditional hawks. All of this is polarizing me to an extreme where I'm not at all comfortable and I don't think it bodes well for the civic health of this nation in years ahead.