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Gratitude for courageous vote 

The Daily Planet received a copy of this letter to Rep. Barbara Lee: 

I am writing to express my deepest and most sincere gratitude to you for your courageous and principled vote concerning the course of action that our country should take in the wake of the tragedy our nation suffered on September 11, 2001.  

Your vote may have been the only one registered against ceding the authority of Congress to influence the country’s course of actions and keep in check the activity of the president in regards to his apparent march toward war. But I know that many, many citizens agree with your vote, and would have voted with you, given the chance.  

I am the mother of a five-month-old son, and the events of last Tuesday will forever be seared into my memory. I sat on my living room floor holding my son and crying as I watched with sheer horror the World Trade Centers and Pentagon being engulfed in flames. I looked at my son and said, “I wish you had been born into a world where things like this never happened.” I know I’ll have to explain to him eventually the things that happened that day. I fervently hope that I don’t have to explain how our President chose to ignore the cries and pleading of so many people from his own country and others around the world to avoid starting a war that can only harm more civilians, even though they may not be American. I thought of all the children born on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Each year that they celebrate a birthday the world will remember the day the world changed in some fundamental way. I think of the children that will be born on the day that President Bush starts a war. The anniversary of that day will be even harder to explain; “This was the day that retribution was sought, that peace was overlooked.” 

Please know that you have the support of so many people in voting your conscience. My husband and I are not California natives, but we are thankful that we lived in a district where our representative voted with her heart and represented all those who chose peace. I also encourage you to pursue the course of action that will bring those responsible for this tragedy to justice in the eyes of the world, according to international law. I will be writing to President Bush to encourage him to do the same.  

I thank you again for your courage on behalf of myself and especially my son.  

Laura Bartels Goldsborough 

Albany