Letter 110... Dear Mr. President... The American people are an impatient bunch.

Letter 110

Dear Mr. President:

One down and one to go… the war in Iraq is ending and the troops will be home for the Christmas holidays… What a fantastic gift for them and their families!

I know it’s taken longer than you wanted and longer than we imagined, because as a society we’ve come to expect instant results and instant gratification. We want what we want, when we want it, and become irritable when we don’t get it. But lets face it, that’s completely impossible when it comes to difficult situations that require more than just a snap of our fingers.

I know as a nation we’ve become cynical because things don’t happen in the time frame we expect, but we, as a nation, need to learn patience… I’ve heard that patience is supposed to be a virtue, and it’s one I confess to being short on, but I believe you are absolutely correct in taking your time, in order to do it right.

You have shown infinite patience, you’ve proven it over and over in the three years since elected. Patience with hunting down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, patience in Libya while pursuing Qaddafi, patience in dealing with the North Koreans in getting the remains of our soldiers home from that long ago war, patience in bringing the war in Iraq to an end, and of course, infinite patience in dealing with the party of ‘HELL NO’.

It’s like I said in day 66’s letter… you like to take the slow Route 66 to get to the same destination we’re all bound for… while the rest of us want to take the interstate at the highest speed possible. I have to confess… while it’s absolutely maddening trying to figure out where you are on that Route, the fact that you arrive at the final destination is what’s really important.

We’ve all witnessed what happens when we have a ‘shoot from the hip’ President… that’s what got us into this horrible mess in the first place. The only mission your predecessor accomplished was to dig an impossibly deep hole for you to climb out of, and in digging that hole he’s responsible for the loss of hundreds and thousands of lives, and ten times that many injured. While many lives have certainly been lost on ‘your watch’ and at times you’ve ordered even more troops deployed… which I did not agree with at all, I have to believe that you knew what you were doing.

So Mr. President, congratulations and thank you for fulfilling one of your campaign promises to end the war in Iraq… now it’s time to end the war in Afghanistan. The learning curve when you became President was huge, you were left with one hell of

a mess to clean up, but it’s your mess now and I believe you will deal with this one much faster because the American people are still an impatient bunch… including me.

Most Respectfully,

Marcia Reimers

Your Gadfly Granny