National Day of Mourning

Today, Mr. Bush has chosen to close down all federal offices to pay tribute to Ronald Reagan. Strange, in a way, that he chose to do this today when fed employees based in or near Washington DC will already be too late - should they choose - to pay respects at the Rotunda.

But I don't think Mr. Bush was looking for anything substantive here.

I don't happen to feel that Mr. Reagan requires a day of mourning. He lived a long, good life filled with privilege.

So today, I'll mourn those who have died on both sides of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, those who became accidental war victims like Daniel Pearl and Nicholas (Nick) Berg, and other unwitting victims of some of the policies both Mr. Reagan and especially Mr. Bush put in place during their presidencies.

For example, I'll mourn too for those who died because Mr. Reagan would not admit the AIDS epidemic and those who died because of his policies in Central and South America. I'll mourn for those who died in the anthrax scare while our leaders ran from Washington and hid.

And I'll mourn for those who were not chosen to benefit from the administrations of these two privileged men and those who might have been saved by the stem cell research Mr. Bush quashed in 2001.

Finally, I'll mourn for the ideals America had that have been so badly abused especially in the last four years. Who would have thought that America would sign off on torture, on more unjustified wars, and on allowing our civil liberties to be so curtailed. And I'll mourn for the Democrats who became too afraid to speak up, speak out when partisan politics began to reduce the values of this country. And I'll mourn for God in whose name such shameful actions have been perpetrated. I doubt God, after all, would want much to do with American politics.