I got an online petition named “America Demands Answers” in my e-mail today from John Kerry. The idea was to get as many signiatures as possible from people who wanted Bush to finally give the nation a decent plan for Iraq and come clean about why things have been going so badly, both for current soldiers and for veterans whose benefits are being chiselled away with each stroke of the Presidential pen. After all, Bush was given a perfect opportunity to answer all of this when he spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Utah today .

My reaction was to ask a question of my own: What difference does it make if I sign this petition or not, when I’ve already signed several dozen petitions of this nature and not one of them has gotten the President to change or reconsider a damn thing?

Then I added my name to the petition and sent it in.

The difference made is that with these petitions, Bush knows he is openly defying his own people–the people he purports to be serving. If we shake our heads and acknowledge that Bush doesn’t care what we want and give up on trying to make him reconsider, he will take our silence as permission to continue his mockery of a democratic government. At least when we remind him that he’s doing something wrong, he knows that we know what he’s doing is wrong, and maybe that will keep him from doing something even more flagrant.

It is our duty as Americans to speak out against the injustice of our government, no matter who is committing it. Silence empowers the wrongdoers. All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good women and men to do nothing–it’s often said, but it is always true. Maybe we can’t stop Bush from lying and killing and destroying our country for his own gain, but we can at least curtail his lunacy by letting him know that his inexcusable actions are not going unnoticed. We have to at least try.