French Fries Protester Regrets War Jibe
By Jamie Wilson
the Guardian
May 25th, 2005

It was a culinary rebuke that echoed around the world, heightening the sense of tension between Washington and Paris in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. But now the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of french fries to “freedom fries” has turned against the war. Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war “with no justification”.

Read the full article here…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1491463,00.html

Operation American Repression?
By Eric Boehlert
Salon.com
Setpember 29th, 2004

An Army officer in Iraq who wrote a highly critical article on the administration’s conduct of the war is being investigated for disloyalty - if charged and convicted, he could get 20 years.

An Army Reserve staff sergeant who last week wrote a critical analysis of the United States’ prospects in Iraq now faces possible disciplinary action for disloyalty and insubordination. If charges are bought and the officer is found guilty, he could face 20 years in prison. It would be the first such disloyalty prosecution since the Vietnam War.
The essay that sparked the military investigation is titled “Why We Cannot Win” and was posted Sept. 20 on the conservative antiwar Web site LewRockwell.com. Written by Al Lorentz, a non-commissioned officer from Texas with nearly 20 years in the Army who is serving in Iraq, the essay offers a bleak assessment of America’s chances for success in Iraq.

“I have come to the conclusion that we cannot win here for a number of reasons. Ideology and idealism will never trump history and reality,” wrote Lorentz, who gives four key reasons for the likely failure: a refusal to deal with reality, not understanding what motivates the enemy, an overabundance of guerrilla fighters, and the enemy’s shorter line of supplies and communication.

Lorentz’s essay contains no classified information but does include a starkly critical evaluation of how the Bush administration has conducted the war. “Instead of addressing the reasons why the locals are becoming angry and discontented, we allow politicians in Washington DC to give us pat and convenient reasons that are devoid of any semblance of reality,” Lorentz wrote. “It is tragic, indeed criminal, that our elected public servants would so willingly sacrifice our nation’s prestige and honor as well as the blood and treasure to pursue an agenda that is ahistoric and un-Constitutional.”

The essay prompted a swift response from Lorentz’s commanders. In an e-mail this week to Salon, Lorentz, declining to comment further on his piece, noted, “Because of my article, I am under investigation at this time for very serious charges which carry up to a 20-year prison sentence.” According to Lorentz, the investigation is looking into whether his writing constituted a disloyalty crime under both federal statute (Title 18, Section 2388, of the U.S. Code) and Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

According to the UCMJ, examples of punishable statements by military personnel “include praising the enemy, attacking the war aims of the United States, or denouncing our form of government with the intent to promote disloyalty or disaffection among members of the armed services. A declaration of personal belief can amount to a disloyal statement if it disavows allegiance owed to the United States by the declarant. The disloyalty involved for this offense must be to the United States as a political entity and not merely to a department or other agency that is a part of its administration.”

Under UCMJ guidelines, the maximum punishment in the event of a conviction would be a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for three years.

Prosecutions are rare, however, says Grant Lattin, a military lawyer and retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, because members of the military “have the constitutional right to express their opinions pertaining to the issues before the public. Short of there being classified material and security issues, people can write letters about military subjects. If you look at the Army Times, you’ll see letters from people on active duty complaining about this and that.”

For instance, in September 2003, Tim Predmore, an active-duty soldier with the 101st Airborne Division, based in northern Iraq, wrote a scathing letter to his hometown newspaper, the Peoria Journal Star in Illinois. “For the past six months, I have been participating in what I believe to be the great modern lie: Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Predmore’s letter began. “From the moment the first shot was fired in this so-called war of liberation and freedom, hypocrisy reigned,” he continued, labeling the war “the ultimate atrocity” before concluding, “I can no longer justify my service on the basis of what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.”

Going beyond the UCMJ and prosecuting disloyalty as a federal crime is “extraordinarily rare,” Lattin says, noting that the last published case was in 1970, in U.S. vs. William Harvey. Under Title 18, Section 2388, it’s a crime, punishable up to 20 years in prison, “when the United States is at war, [and a person] willfully causes or attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or willfully obstructs the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or the United States.”

In the Harvey case, a Vietnam-era soldier was accused of making disloyal statements by urging a fellow soldier not to fight in Vietnam. “Why should the black man go to Vietnam and fight the white man’s war and then come back and have to fight the white man,” Harvey told the soldier, adding that he “was not going to fight in Vietnam and neither should [you].” The case was brought before the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, which noted “the language of the comments were on the line between rhetoric and disloyalty,” as well as the fact that “disagreement with, or objection to, a policy of the Government is not necessarily indicative of disloyalty to the United States.” The court alternately upheld and reversed portions of Harvey’s conviction for disloyalty.

As for Lorentz’s case, Lattin, who served as a Marine judge advocate, says it’s not uncommon for commanders to threaten soldiers with legal action in order to make a point: “If they know there’s an offense for a disloyal statement, I wouldn’t be surprised if he said, ‘Knock it off.’” Lattin doubts that in the end Lorentz will face prosecution for his writings. “After this gets to lawyers and prosecutors who think about the consequences and the First Amendment, I don’t think this will go anywhere.”

Editor’s Note | Tim Predmore is on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq. A version of this essay appeared in the Peoria (Ill.) Star Journal

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Poisoning Patriotism
By Christopher Dickey
September 10, 2004

Newsweek

The dean of American historians, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., fires a broadside at the Bush administration

Sept. 7 - The parking lot in front of the Bi-Lo Supermarket at Pawley’s Island, S.C., is full of cars with decals of Old Glory or twisted ribbons stuck to their sides. The yellow-ribbon decals say SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. Those in red-white-and-blue say FREEDOM ISN’T FREE. Just inside the store there’s a big bulletin board with clips from local newspapers about the men from the South Carolina National Guard who shipped out for Iraq this summer. They’ve always trained as an artillery battalion, but their new assignment will be as military police—cops on the beat on the meanest streets in the world. Six of the Pawleys contingent are related. All are male. Most are black.
Beneath the bulletin board is a big box with a sign that says PLEASE HELP A SOLDIER, and an official list of some 60 kinds of items these men might want you to buy them at the store, from baby wipes, batteries, beef jerky, to flea collars (for ankles) to shoe boxes (for shipping) to washing powders (liquid). This morning when I looked in the bin there were a lot of empty shoe boxes, and there was one toothbrush.

It would be a mistake to read too much into this, of course. But it seems to me there’s a lesson here about the way people support our troops. Some wave the flag and put stickers on their cars. Others really do try to help the soldiers and their families. There are people who fit in both categories, but the first group appears to be a whole lot bigger than the second one.

A couple of doors down from the Bi-Lo is Litchfield Books, one of the shops where I went last week to sign copies of my new thriller, The Sleeper. It’s a fiction built on facts, a novel about the terrifying ways that home towns and global terror, Main Street and Armageddon are tied together in this post-9/11 world. So there’s always a lot to talk about with anyone who’s frustrated and angered by what’s happened these last three years. In bookstores up and down this coast I’ve found a lot of despair, a lot of denial, and, still, a lot of fear.

Most disturbing of all, I’ve come across a lot of men and women who’ve grown afraid of their fellow Americans. It’s as if their patriotism has been poisoned. They say they feel their flag has been appropriated by narrow-minded zealots. Their hopes are being crushed by cynical politicians. Their sons and daughters are being sent to die in wars that seem to have no end, and anyone who questions those politicians or those wars is being branded a traitor. I can’t bear to look at all these flags, a woman told me who has worked for the United States government for several decades. It’s like they all belong to [Attorney General John] Ashcroft. It would be sad if those stickers on cars were put on by some people scared not to show the flag.

Democratic challenger John Kerry hasn’t offered any effective antidote for this poisoned patriotism. Reliving, refighting and re-arguing the Vietnam war won’t do the job, certainly. But among the new releases at Litchfield Books I found a volume by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., War and the American Presidency, that could restore some sanity and perspective to our patriotism. Is this an anti-Bush book? You bet. Schlesinger’s ties to the Kennedy clan go back to the age of Camelot. But this isn’t just another cut-and-paste screed of the kind we’ve seen this political season from Michael Moore. When Schlesinger aims a broadside at the current administration, he brings big guns to bear from the whole range of American history. He tells us what prudent American statesmen thought of preventive war and why. (You don’t ‘prevent’ anything by war except peace, President Harry S Truman wrote in his memoirs. ) He skewers this administration’s zealotry with a barb from the 19th-century satirical character Mr. Dooley, who defined a fanatic as someone who does what he thinks th’Lord wud do if He only knew th’facts in th’case. He defines true patriotism as living up to a nation’s highest ideals. In the famous phrase of 19th-century immigré Carl Schurz, Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.

Schlesinger is especially good when he looks at our innate American resistance to imperialism. As John Quincy Adams said when he was secretary of State—in 1821—the United States should stand for freedom and independence wherever her flag is unfurled, but she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. By launching foreign wars of interest and intrigue, Adams predicted, the fundamental underpinnings of American policy would change from liberty to force. America might become the dictatress of the world: she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit. Foreign adventures and foreign threats are, as often as not, pretexts for curtailing the freedoms Americans believe they should be fighting for.

In modern times, Schlesinger demonstrates, Americans are simply not competent imperialists. There is no colonial service devoted to the task of building and maintaining empire. There is no national commitment to the project. There is in fact no public admission that such a project actually exists, although hundreds of thousands of Americans are asked to risk their lives for it.

Even the list of items for care packages to be sent to those South Carolina artillerymen-policemen testifies to the awkward dangers of the unprepared undertaking in Iraq. A friend of mine, an Army lieutenant colonel who’s been in Baghdad several months, sent me a quick note when I asked him what to purchase for the bin at Bi-Lo.

The first thing I will tell you is NO FLEA COLLARS, he said. That is a huge misinformation item that is actually harmful to the soldier and causes skin rashes, nausea, and potentially nervous disorders. The soldiers here have treated uniforms for insect protection, and we train them on how to stay bug free. The flea collar issue is the remnant of some old time special forces grunt attitude that does not work.”

Baby wipes are good, he went on, especially since we often run out of toilet paper, and some areas the guys can go a week or more without a shower. We all like beef jerky and Peanut M&Ms are a premium item here … very hard to find. Dark socks really suck, they turn your toes black. I only wear white cotton socks. I have about 50 pairs. Just about any non-issue uniform item is not authorized, so scarves, hats, stuff like that—NO GO. Nearly every soldier in the theater is issued Wiley X sunglasses that have ballistic glass lenses, so cheap sunglasses really do nobody any good.

What I really like is when we get a box full of NEWSWEEK, Time, Sports Illustrated—magazines. That I really like. I get yesterday’s news tomorrow, but at least I can read something that is not in the Stars and Stripes.

My friend ended his note by reminding me that as he wrote, 997 American soldiers had died in Iraq. In the hours afterward, the toll rose to more than 1,000. So, after due consideration, I’m dropping a copy of Schlesinger’s book in the Bi-Lo bin this afternoon. It’s a reminder, in its way, that freedom isn’t free.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Isn’t This a Democracy?
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com
August 19th, 2004

At staged “Ask President Bush” events, audience members have to pledge their allegiance to his reelection to gain admission. Bush has forgotten who’s sovereign in America.

Before attending a rally to hear Vice President Dick Cheney, citizens in New Mexico were required to sign a political loyalty oath approved by the Republican National Committee. “I, (full name) … do herby (sic) endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States.” The form noted: “In signing the above endorsement you are consenting to use and release of your name by Bush-Cheney as an endorser of President Bush.”
Around the country, Bush is campaigning at events billed as “Ask President Bush.” Only supporters are allowed entrance. Talking points are distributed to questioners. In Traverse City, Mich., a 55-year-old social studies teacher who wore a small Kerry sticker on her blouse had her ticket torn up at the door. “How can anyone in the United States deny someone entry?” she asked. “Isn’t this a democracy?”

At every “Ask President Bush” rally, Bush repeats the same speech, touting a “vibrant economy” and his leadership in a war where “you cannot show weakness.” He introduces local entrepreneurs who praise his tax cuts. (More than 1 million jobs have been lost in his term, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.) Then Bush calls on questioners. More than one-fifth of them profess their evangelical faith or denounce gay marriage. In Niceville, Fla., one said: “This is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House.” “Thank you,” replied Bush. Another: “Mr. President, as a child how can I help you get votes?” In Albuquerque, he received this question: “It’s an honor every day when I get to pray for you as president.” And this one: “Thank God we finally have a commander in chief.” Others repeat attack lines on John Kerry’s military record to which Bush responds with an oblique but encouraging “thanks.”

Bush’s overriding strategy is to bolster his credential as a decisive military figure and to impugn his opponent’s manhood. In his latest TV commercial, he says, “We cannot hesitate, we cannot yield, we must do everything in our power to bring an enemy to justice before they hurt us again.” But, according to the Washington Post, for the last two years he has uttered the elusive Osama bin Laden’s name only 10 times, and “on six of those occasions it was because he was asked a direct question … Not once during that period has he talked about bin Laden at any length, or said anything substantive.” At “Ask President Bush” events, he mentions Sept. 11 only to raise the threat of Saddam Hussein.

Vice President Dick Cheney (who had five draft deferments during Vietnam, saying he had “other priorities”) sneered at John Kerry for even using the word “sensitive” with respect to counterterrorism. Not one war was “won by being sensitive,” mocked Cheney. Kerry, in fact, had called for fighting “a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history.” Cheney’s distortion is calculated to attempt to portray Kerry as somehow effeminate.

At the same time, a Republican front group of Vietnam veterans financed by a major Bush contributor is running an ad campaign claiming Kerry’s account of his military record is false. But not one of these veterans served with him on his boat. They remain enraged that he had the temerity to return home decorated with combat medals to become a leader against the war.

During the Vietnam War, of course, Bush famously used his father’s connections to get a posting as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, known as the “Champagne Unit” because it was filled with the sons of privilege. After refusing to submit to a routine drug test, he was suspended and never flew again. He got himself transferred to the Alabama National Guard, but apparently never turned up for his tour of duty. Not one person has stepped forward to claim he served with Bush there. Since then, he has withheld his full military records. Now he encourages smears that claim a genuine war hero, wounded three times, has lied about his service and is a coward. But this is more than a classic case of projection. The more profound issue is not who served in Vietnam and who dodged. It is whether the president is a sovereign.

Since the birth of the American party system, presidential candidates have always gone directly to the sovereign people, who are the only source of legitimacy and power, to make their case. After the Democratic Convention, Kerry traveled from New England to the Pacific Northwest doing just that. Not one of the hundreds of thousands who attended his open-air rallies had to pledge allegiance to him, and he encountered organized Bush hecklers as part of the price. At Bush’s rallies he is the packaged president as pseudo-populist. But these controlled environments reflect his deeper view of the presidency as sovereign, preempting democracy.

Floundering in the polls, without a strategy for Iraq, unwilling to say the name of bin Laden, he is always secure in the knowledge that the cheering multitudes before him have been carefully selected. Strutting and swaggering on the stage as though he has conquered the crowd, he plays to true believers. But a 55-year-old social studies teacher from small-town Michigan who would not bend her knee had her ticket to see her president ripped up. “Ask President Bush” has crystallized the essential underlying question, framed succinctly by the greatest American poet of democracy, Walt Whitman, who wrote, “The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him.”

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About the writer: Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of “The Clinton Wars,” is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London. Join Sid Blumethal along with Ann Richards, David Talbot and others on the Salon Cruise.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

A Time To Weep
New School Commencement Address
By Ted Sorenson

In a commencement address to the New School University on May 21, former Kennedy advisor Theodore Sorensen laments “the loss of this country’s goodness and therefore its greatness.”

As a Nebraskamig, I am proud to be made an honorary doctor of laws by another Nebraskamig, President Kerrey … at an institution founded by still another, Alvin Johnson.

Considering the unhealthy state of our laws today, they probably could use another doctor.

My reciprocal obligation is to make a speech.

This is not a speech. Two weeks ago I set aside the speech I prepared. This is a cry from the heart, a lamentation for the loss of this country’s goodness and therefore its greatness.

Future historians studying the decline and fall of America will mark this as the time the tide began to turn — toward a mean-spirited mediocrity in place of a noble beacon.

For me the final blow was American guards laughing over the naked, helpless bodies of abused prisoners in Iraq. “There is a time to laugh,” the Bible tells us, “and a time to weep.” Today I weep for the country I love, the country I proudly served, the country to which my four grandparents sailed over a century ago with hopes for a new land of peace and freedom. I cannot remain silent when that country is in the deepest trouble of my lifetime.

I am not talking only about the prison abuse scandal — that stench will someday subside. Nor am I referring only to the Iraq war — that too will pass — nor to any one political leader or party. This is no time for politics as usual, in which no one responsible admits responsibility, no one genuinely apologizes, no one resigns, and everyone else is blamed.

The damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon us.

The stain on our credibility, our reputation for decency and integrity, will not quickly wash away.

Last week, a family friend of an accused American guard in Iraq recited the atrocities inflicted by our enemies on Americans, and asked: “Must we be held to a different standard?” My answer is yes. Not only because others expect it. We must hold ourselves to a different standard. Not only because God demands it, but because it serves our security.

Our greatest strength has long been not merely our military might but our moral authority. Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values.

We were world leaders once — helping found the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and programs like Food for Peace, international human rights and international environmental standards. The world admired not only the bravery of our Marine Corps but also the idealism of our Peace Corps.

Our word was as good as our gold. At the start of the Cuban missile crisis, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, President Kennedy’s special envoy to brief French President de Gaulle, offered to document our case by having the actual pictures of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba brought in. “No,” shrugged the usually difficult de Gaulle: “The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me.”

Eight months later, President Kennedy could say at American University: “The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate … we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.”

Our founding fathers believed this country could be a beacon of light to the world, a model of democratic and humanitarian progress. We were. We prevailed in the Cold War because we inspired millions struggling for freedom in far corners of the Soviet empire. I have been in countries where children and avenues were named for Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. We were respected, not reviled, because we respected man’s aspirations for peace and justice. This was the country to which foreign leaders sent not only their goods to be sold but their sons and daughters to be educated. In the 1930s, when Jewish and other scholars were driven out of Europe, their preferred destination — even for those on the far left — was not the Communist citadel in Moscow but the New School here in New York.

What has happened to our country? We have been in wars before, without resorting to sexual humiliation as torture, without blocking the Red Cross, without insulting and deceiving our allies and the U.N., without betraying our traditional values, without imitating our adversaries, without blackening our name around the world.

Last year when asked on short notice to speak to a European audience and inquiring what topic I should address, the chairman said: “Tell us about the good America, the America when Kennedy was in the White House.” “It is still a good America,” I replied. “The American people still believe in peace, human rights and justice; they are still a generous, fair-minded, open-minded people.”

Today some political figures argue that merely to report, much less to protest, the crimes against humanity committed by a few of our own inadequately trained forces in the fog of war, is to aid the enemy or excuse its atrocities. But Americans know that such self-censorship does not enhance our security. Attempts to justify or defend our illegal acts as nothing more than pranks or no worse than the crimes of our enemies, only further muddies our moral image. Thirty years ago, America’s war in Vietnam became a hopeless military quagmire; today our war in Iraq has become a senseless moral swamp.

No military victory can endure unless the victor occupies the high moral ground. Surely America, the land of the free, could not lose the high moral ground invading Iraq, a country ruled by terror, torture and tyranny — but we did.

Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein — politically, economically, diplomatically, much as we succeeded in isolating Gadhafi, Marcos, Mobutu and a host of other dictators over the years — we have isolated ourselves. We are increasingly alone in a dangerous world in which millions who once respected us now hate us.

Not only Muslims. Every international survey shows our global standing at an all-time low. Even our transatlantic alliance has not yet recovered from its worst crisis in history. Our friends in Western Europe were willing to accept Uncle Sam as class president, but not as class bully once he forgot JFK’s advice that “civility is not a sign of weakness.”

All this is rationalized as part of the war on terror. But abusing prisoners in Iraq, denying detainees their legal rights in Guannamo — even American citizens — misleading the world at large about Saddam’s ready stockpiles of mass destruction and involvement with al-Qaida at 9/11, did not advance by one millimeter our efforts to end the threat of another terrorist attack upon us. On the contrary, our conduct invites and incites new attacks and new recruits to attack us.

The decline in our reputation adds to the decline in our security. We keep losing old friends and making new enemies — not a formula for success. We have not yet rounded up Osama bin Laden or most of the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders or the anthrax mailer. “The world is large,” wrote John Boyle O’Reilly, in one of President Kennedy’s favorite poems, “when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide, but the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side.” Today our enemies are still loose on the other side of the world, and we are still vulnerable to attack.

True, we have not lost either war we chose or lost too much of our wealth. But we have lost something worse — our good name for truth and justice. To paraphrase Shakespeare: “He who steals our nation’s purse, steals trash. ‘Twas ours, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands. But he that filches our good name … makes us poor indeed.”

No American wants us to lose a war. Among our enemies are those who, if they could, would fundamentally change our way of life, restricting our freedom of religion by exalting one faith over others, ignoring international law and the opinions of mankind, and trampling on the rights of those who are different, deprived or disliked. To the extent that our nation voluntarily treads those same paths in the name of security, the terrorists win and we are the losers.

We are no longer the world’s leaders on matters of international law and peace. After we stopped listening to others, they stopped listening to us. A nation without credibility and moral authority cannot lead, because no one will follow.

Paradoxically, the charges against us in the court of world opinion are contradictory. We are deemed by many to be dangerously aggressive, a threat to world peace. You may regard that as ridiculously unwarranted, no matter how often international surveys show that attitude to be spreading. But remember the old axiom: “No matter how good you feel, if four friends tell you you’re drunk, you’d better lie down.”

Yet we are also charged not so much with intervention as indifference — indifference toward the suffering of millions of our fellow inhabitants of this planet who do not enjoy the freedom, the opportunity, the health and wealth and security that we enjoy; indifference to the countless deaths of children and other civilians in unnecessary wars, countless because we usually do not bother to count them; indifference to the centuries of humiliation endured previously in silence by the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes can be reversed.

When, in 1941, the Japanese Air Force was able to inflict widespread death and destruction on our naval and air forces in Hawaii because they were not on alert, those military officials most responsible for ignoring advance intelligence were summarily dismissed.

When, in the late 1940s, we faced a global Cold War against another system of ideological fanatics certain that their authoritarian values would eventually rule the world, we prevailed in time. We prevailed because we exercised patience as well as vigilance, self-restraint as well as self-defense, and reached out to moderates and modernists, to democrats and dissidents, within that closed system. We can do that again. We can reach out to moderates and modernists in Islam, proud of its long traditions of dialogue, learning, charity and peace.

Some among us scoff that the war on jihadist terror is a war between civilization and chaos. But they forget that there were Islamic universities and observatories long before we had railroads.

So do not despair. In this country, the people are sovereign. If we can but tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness. In particular, you — the class of 2004 — have the wisdom and energy to do it. Start soon.

In the words of the ancient Hebrews:

“The day is short, and the work is great, and the laborers are sluggish, but the reward is much, and the Master is urgent.”

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

A Call To Conscience
By Roger Morris
Salon.com
May 20, 2004

The diplomat who quit over Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia asks Americans on the front lines of foreign service to resign from the “worst regime by far in the history of the republic.”

Dear Trustees:

I am respectfully addressing you by your proper if little-used title. The women and men of our diplomatic corps and intelligence community are genuine trustees. With intellect and sensibility, character and courage, you represent America to the world. Equally important, you show the world to America. You hold in trust our role and reputation among nations, and ultimately our fate. Yours is the gravest, noblest responsibility. Never has the conscience you personify been more important.

A friend asked Secretary of State Dean Acheson how he felt when as a young official in the Treasury Department in the 1930s, he resigned rather than continue to work for a controversial fiscal policy he thought disastrous — an act that seemed at the time to end the public service he cherished. “Oh, I had no choice,” he answered. “It was a matter of national interest as well as personal honor. I might have gotten away with shirking one, but never both.” As the tragedy of American foreign policy unfolded so graphically over the past months, I thought often of Acheson’s words and of your challenge as public servants. No generation of foreign affairs professionals, including my own in the torment of the Vietnam War, has faced such anguishing realities or such a momentous choice.

I need not dwell on the obvious about foreign policy under President Bush — and on what you on the inside, whatever your politics, know to be even worse than imagined by outsiders. The senior among you have seen the disgrace firsthand. In the corridor murmur by which a bureaucracy tells its secrets to itself, all of you have heard the stories.

You know how recklessly a cabal of political appointees and ideological zealots, led by the exceptionally powerful and furtively doctrinaire Vice President Cheney, corrupted intelligence and usurped policy on Iraq and other issues. You know the bitter departmental disputes in which a deeply politicized, parochial Pentagon overpowered or simply ignored any opposition in the State Department or the CIA, rushing us to unilateral aggressive war in Iraq and chaotic, fateful occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

You know well what a willfully uninformed and heedless president you serve in Bush, how chilling are the tales of his ignorance and sectarian fervor, lethal opposites of the erudition and open-mindedness you embody in the arts of diplomacy and intelligence. Some of you know how woefully his national security advisor fails her vital duty to manage some order among Washington’s thrashing interests, and so to protect her president, and the country, from calamity. You know specifics. Many of you are aware, for instance, that the torture at Abu Ghraib was an issue up and down not only the Pentagon but also State, the CIA and the National Security Council staff for nearly a year before the scandalous photos finally leaked.

As you have seen in years of service, every presidency has its arrogance, infighting and blunders in foreign relations. As most of you recognize, too, the Bush administration is like no other. You serve the worst foreign policy regime by far in the history of the republic. The havoc you feel inside government has inflicted unprecedented damage on national interests and security. As never before since the United States stepped onto the world stage, we have flouted treaties and alliances, alienated friends, multiplied enemies, lost respect and credibility on every continent. You see this every day. And again, whatever your politics, those of you who have served other presidents know this is an unparalleled bipartisan disaster. In its militant hubris and folly, the Bush administration has undone the statesmanship of every government before it, and broken faith with every presidency, Democratic and Republican (even that of Bush I), over the past half century.

In Afghanistan, where we once held the promise of a new ideal, we have resumed our old alliance with warlords and drug dealers, waging punitive expeditions and propping up puppets in yet another seamy chapter of the “Great Game,” presuming to conquer the unconquerable. In Iraq — as every cable surely screams at you — we are living a foreign policy nightmare, locked in a cycle of violence and seething, spreading hatred continued at incalculable cost, escaped only with hazardous humiliation abroad and bitter divisions at home. Debacle is complete.

Beyond your discreetly predigested press summaries at the office, words once unthinkable in describing your domain, words once applied only to the most alien and deplored phenomena, have become routine, not just at the radical fringe but across the spectrum of public dialogue: “American empire,” “American gulag.” What must you think? Having read so many of your cables and memorandums as a Foreign Service officer and then on the NSC staff, and so many more later as a historian, I cannot help wondering how you would be reporting on Washington now if you were posted in the U.S. capital as a diplomat or intelligence agent for another nation. What would the many astute observers and analysts among you say of the Bush regime, of its toll or of the courage and independence of the career officialdom that does its bidding?

“Let me begin by stating the obvious,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said at the Abu Ghraib hearing the other day. “For the next 50 years in the Islamic world and many other parts of the world, the image of the United States will be that of an American dragging a prostrate naked Iraqi across the floor on a leash.” The senator was talking about you and your future. Amid the Bush wreckage worldwide, much of the ruin is deeply yours.

It is your dedicated work that has been violated — the flouted treaties you devotedly drew and negotiated, the estranged allies you patiently cultivated, the now thronging enemies you worked so hard to win over. You know what will happen. Sooner or later, the neoconservative cabal will go back to its incestuous think tanks and sinecures, the vice president to his lavish Halliburton retirement, Bush to his Crawford, Texas, ranch — and you will be left in the contemptuous chancelleries and back alleys, the stiflingly guarded compounds and fear-clammy, pulse-racing convoys, to clean up the mess for generations to come.

You know that showcase resignations at the top — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or flag officers fingered for Abu Ghraib — change nothing, are only part of the charade. It is the same with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who may have been your lone relative champion in this perverse company, but who remains the political general he always was, never honoring your loss by giving up his office when he might have stemmed the descent.

No, it is you whose voices are so important now. You alone stand above ambition and partisanship. This administration no longer deserves your allegiance or participation. America deserves the leadership and example, the decisive revelation, of your resignations.

Your resignations alone would speak to America the truth that beyond any politics, this Bush regime is intolerable — and to an increasingly cynical world the truth that there are still Americans who uphold with their lives and honor the highest principles of our foreign policy.

Thirty-four years ago this spring, I faced your choice in resigning from the National Security Council over the invasion of Cambodia. I had been involved in fruitful secret talks between Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese in 1969-1970, and knew at least something of how much the invasion would shatter the chance for peace and prolong the war — though I could never have guessed that thousands of American names would be added to that long black wall in Washington or that holocaust would follow in Cambodia. Leaving was an agony. I was only beginning a career dreamed of since boyhood. But I have never regretted my decision. Nor do I think it any distinction. My friends and I used to remark that the Nixon administration was so unprincipled it took nothing special to resign. It is a mark of the current tragedy that by comparison with the Bush regime, Nixon and Kissinger seem to many model statesmen.

As you consider your choice now, beware the old rationalizations for staying — the arguments for preserving influence or that your resignation will not matter. Your effectiveness will be no more, your subservience no less, under the iron grip of the cabal, especially as the policy disaster and public siege mount. And your act now, no matter your ranks or numbers, will embolden others, hearten those who remain and proclaim your truths to the country and world.

I know from my own experience, of course, that I am not asking all of you to hurl your dissent from the safe seats of pensioners. I know well this is one of the most personal of sacrifices, for you and your families. You are not alone. Three ranking Foreign Service officers — Mary Wright, John Brady Kiesling and John Brown — resigned in protest of the Iraq war last spring. Like them, you should join the great debate that America must now have.

Unless and until you do, however, please be under no illusion: Every cable you write to or from the field, every letter you compose for Congress or the public, every memo you draft or clear, every budget you number, every meeting you attend, every testimony you give extends your share of the common disaster.

The America that you sought to represent in choosing your career, the America that once led the community of nations not by brazen power but by the strength of its universal principles, has never needed you more. Those of us who know you best, who have shared your work and world, know you will not let us down. You are, after all, the trustees.

Respectfully,

Roger Morris

———————————————————–

Roger Morris served on the senior staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon until resigning over the invasion of Cambodia. An award-winning investigative journalist and historian, he is the author of several books, including “Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.” He is currently completing a history of U.S. policy and covert intervention in Southwest Asia.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Wars That Unify, And Those That Divide
James O. Goldsborough
San Diego Union-Tribune

May 31, 2004

Has there ever been a Memorial Day like this one?

With the dedication this weekend of the World War II monument on the Washington Mall, we have been reminded of our heroic days. World War II was our grandest moment, the time when Americans joined unanimously to defeat evil regimes bent on world conquest.
All Americans joined in that war. The military draft spared few families with young men. Women stepped in to replace men taken by the draft or to join up themselves. On the home front, we endured rationing and paid for the war through income taxes raised tenfold - to a top rate of 91 percent.

If war can be unifying, World War II was the one. The nation elected Franklin Roosevelt four times, and FDR and his vice presidents would run the nation an astonishing 20 years.

We still celebrate World War II Americans as the greatest generation because the war wed the nation’s immense physical and moral resources to a great and noble cause: The destruction of the most evil forces that ever existed on the planet.

Unlike during World War II, the nation is deeply divided on this Memorial Day, as deeply as on the first Memorial Day, proclaimed by Gen. John Logan, commander of the Army of the Republic, in 1868. The states of the old Confederacy did not honor Memorial Day until after World War I, when it became the day to honor Americans who died in all wars, not just in the Civil War.

A nation united after a tough election by the awful events of Sept. 11, 2001 - a day that brought us support from many nations with cries of “we are all Americans” - today finds itself divided and with little foreign support.

Polls show a nation more polarized than ever before. The partisan gap, reported Pew Research in its 2004 American landscape survey, “has never been more pronounced.” Analyzing polling data from the past half century, UCSD political scientist Gary Jacobson says, “we’ve got the most polarized electorate that we’ve ever seen.”

On Memorial Day we seek to forget all that, to remember Americans who have fallen in wars, which should not be partisan affairs. No matter the war, we must honor our dead. Soldiers do not make wars, they are sent into wars by presidents. Presidents get credit for good wars. They must take blame for bad ones.

When war is wrong, we must never fail to make the distinction between the soldiers who fight it and the civilians who ordered it. The reason the Nuremberg trials are so important in modern history is because their verdict was that responsibility for war crimes goes to the top.

When things go wrong, civilians may try to shift blame to the military, as we have seen with the Abu Ghraib atrocities - “a few bad apples,” said President Bush. But look deeper, and you find civilian responsibility, as we are finding with Abu Ghraib, that goes to the top: secret directives to commanders that violate time-honored prisoner-of-war practices.

Anthony Zinni, a former four-star Marine general and commander of the Central Command in the Middle East, opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. Zinni uses an analogy to explain how citizens can oppose a bad war while still supporting the troops who must fight it:

“There’s one statement that bothers me more than anything else,” said Zinni. “And that’s the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result. Well, what’s the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that’s getting just as many troops killed?

Why has no one in the Bush administration stepped forward to take the blame for the terrible situation in which they have put our nation?

We have ample evidence that war was the idea of a cabal of Bush plotters, none of whom has ever worn a uniform; that the nation was deceived about the motives for war; that postwar planning was incompetent; that the treatment of Iraqi prisoners directed by the administration violated international law and American traditions.

We have testimony from people who worked for the administration such as Gen. Zinni, Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson that substantiates the evidence of these abuses and this incompetence.

Why is no one held responsible?

As we honor our war dead today, we honor those fallen in Baghdad just as those that fell at Bull Run, the Marne, Iwo Jima and Normandy. If this war is different from those wars, it is not their doing. They followed orders and made the ultimate sacrifice. We share the grief of their families.

But there is fault for this war which must be placed. Those responsible will be called to account by history. If we are true to ourselves, they must also be called to account by voters.

What is required between now and November is for members of the Bush administration - those responsible for what Zinni calls the “faulty plan and strategy” behind the war, to do the honorable thing.

Lyndon Johnson did it in 1968 after most of his Cabinet was already gone. There is precedent.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Atrocities In Iraq: ‘I Killed Innocent People For Our Government’
By Paul Rockwell
Sacramento Bee

May 16th, 2004

“We forget what war is about, what it does to those who wage it and those who suffer from it. Those who hate war the most, I have often found, are veterans who know it.”
- Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter and author of “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning”

For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.

When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved.

Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq?

A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion.

Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine?

A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn’t see any humanitarian support.

Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?

A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there’s many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That’s the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn’t slow down. So we lit them up.

Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?

A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn’t destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: “Why did you kill my brother? We didn’t do anything wrong.” That hit me like a ton of bricks.

Q: He spoke English?

A: Oh, yeah.

Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right?

A: Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, “Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons.” That’s what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren’t in uniform. We never found any weapons.

Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties?

A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.

Q: Over what period did all this take place?

A: During the invasion of Baghdad.

‘We Lit Him up Pretty Good’

Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint “light-ups”?

A: Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn’t stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn’t really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.

Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case?

A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.

Q: A demonstration? Where?

A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn’t. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: “Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it.”

Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic?

A: Both.

Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out?

A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government.

Q: What kind of firepower was employed?

A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.

Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out?

A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a “mercy” on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, “Don’t shoot.” Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off.

Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident?

A: Probably about one or two hours. This is another thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of this.

Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details.

A: That’s all right. It’s kind of therapy for me. Because it’s something that I had repressed for a long time.

Q: And the incident?

A: There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don’t know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: “You all just shot a guy with his hands up.” Man, I forgot about this.

Depleted Uranium and Cluster Bombs

Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium?

A: Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It’s basically like leaving plutonium rods around. I’m 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don’t feel like a healthy 32-year-old.

Q: Were you in the vicinity of depleted uranium?

A: Oh, yeah. It’s everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there’s dust.

Q: Did you breath any dust?

A: Yeah.

Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it’s impacting Iraqi civilians.

A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem.

Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU?

A: Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn’t even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring about it, and I said “Holy s—!”

Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs?

A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM.

Q: What’s an ICBM?

A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb.

Q: What happened?

A: He stepped on it. We didn’t get to training about clusters until about a month before I left.

Q: What kind of training?

A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them.

Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped?

A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere.

Q: Dropped from the air?

A: From the air as well as artillery.

Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities?

A: They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct answer. But for an average grunt, they’re everywhere.

Q: Including inside the towns and cities?

A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be ICBMs.

Q: Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are not precise. They don’t injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles are over.

A: Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own. There’s always human error. I’m going to tell you: The armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It’s starting to leak out about the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the raps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies.

Embedded Reporters

Q: How are the embedded reporters responding?

A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon. One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s–less. We had an incident where one of them wanted to go home.

Q: Why?

A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit. It didn’t start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking civilian casualties.

Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it?

A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: “Are you OK?” I said: “No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians.” He goes: “No, today was a good day.” And when he said that, I said “Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?”

Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion?

A: I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing.

Q: What changed you?

A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed.

Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?

A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I’ve had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.

Showdown with Superiors

Q: I understand that all the incidents - killing civilians at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally - weigh on you. What happened with your commanding officers? How did you deal with them?

A: There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there. About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him: “You know, I honestly feel that what we’re doing is wrong over here. We’re committing genocide.”

He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we’re leaving over here, we’re not going to have to worry about terrorists. He didn’t like that. He got up and stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking to my commanding officer.

Q: What happened then?

A: After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn’t talk to other troops. I didn’t want to hurt them. I didn’t want to jeopardize them.

I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the sergeant major. He’s in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. “Sir,” I told him, “I don’t want your money. I don’t want your benefits. What you did was wrong.”

It was just a personal conviction with me. I’ve had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It’s not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Americans Pay Price For Speaking Out
Dissenters Face Job Loss, Arrest, Threats
But Activists Not Stopped By Backlash

Kathleen Kenna
The Toronto Star

He’s a Vietnam War hero from a proud lineage of warriors who served the United States, so he never expected to be called a traitor.
After 39 years in the Marines, including commands in Somalia and Iraq, Gen. Anthony Zinni never imagined he would be tagged “turncoat.” The epithets are not from the uniforms but the suits, “senior officers at the Pentagon,” the now-retired general says from his home in Williamsburg, Va.

“They want to question my patriotism?” he demands testily.

To question the Iraq war in the U.S., and individuals from Main St. merchants to Hollywood stars do, is to be branded un-American.

Dissent, once an ideal cherished in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, now invites media attacks, hate Web sites, threats and job loss.

After Zinni challenged the administration’s rationale for the Iraq war last fall, he lost his job as President George W. Bush’s Middle East peace envoy after 18 months. “I’ve been told I will never be used by the White House again.”

Across the United States, hundreds of Americans have been arrested for protesting the war. The American Civil Liberties Union has documented more than 300 allegations of wrongful arrest and police brutality from demonstrators at anti-war rallies in Washington and New York. Even the silent, peaceful vigils of Women in Black, held regularly in almost every state, have prompted threats of arrest by American police.

Actors and spouses Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon have publicly denounced the backlash against them for their anti-war activism. Robbins said they were called “traitors” and “supporters of Saddam” and their public appearances at a United Way luncheon in Florida and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., this spring were cancelled in reaction to their anti-war stance.

Actor/comedian Janeane Garofalo was stalked and received death threats for opposing the war in high-profile media appearances.

MSNBC hosts asked viewers to urge MCI to fire actor and anti-war activist Danny Glover as a spokesperson, the long-distance telephone giant refused to fire him despite the ensuing hate-mail campaign, and one host, former politician Joe Scarborough, urged that anti-war protesters be arrested and charged with sedition.

“There’s no official blacklisting,” says Kate McArdle, executive director of Artists United, a new group of 120 actors devoted to progressive causes. “This is Hollywood, so there are always rumours starting up. Mostly it was producers saying, `We know your position, do you have to be so vocal?’”

Internet chat rooms have spouted “tons and tons of vitriol aimed at us,” says McArdle, a former network TV executive.

“Things like, `Tell me where Tim Robbins lives and I’ll go bash out his brains,’” she says. “Or, `If you don’t like America, why don’t you move to Iraq? Why don’t you move to Canada?’

“The real backlash comes from the right wing, from America’s talk radio guys, when their ratings are down, not from the industry,” McArdle says. “We get the `You’re either with us or agin’ us.’” Comes with the territory, she adds.

“We’re a nation of dissenters.”

The Dixie Chicks country pop group won worldwide attention for their anti-Bush comments, which were met with widespread radio station bans against playing their music. Their fans have responded by circulating petitions on the Internet objecting to the “chill” that has tried to silence free speech in the U.S.

And opposition to the war has spawned many new songs, some remixes of old Vietnam protest songs, and Web sites devoted to anti-war lyrics.

Dozens of fans walked out of a Pearl Jam concert in Denver, Colo., last spring when lead singer Eddie Vedder hoisted a Bush mask on a microphone stand and sang, “He’s not a leader, he’s a Texas leaguer.”

But musician Carlos Santana was cheered in Australia, a key U.S. ally in the Iraq war and recent proponent of the “Bush doctrine” of intervention in smaller states’ affairs, when he spoke against the war and American foreign policy.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

BUZZFLASH SPECIAL GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Bill Moyers

From your letters I know some of you are curious as to why journalists like me keep opening the Pandora’s box of democracy; why we come round and round to what ails America . . . the bribing of Congress, the desecration of the environment, corporate tax havens, secrecy, fraud on Wall Street, the arrogance of ideology, the pretensions of power. Do we delight in the dark side of human experience, you ask? Do we never see good in the world? Or was Nietzsche right: that the Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad?
I can only speak for myself, of course. And I confess to thinking of journalism as the social equivalent to a medical diagnosis. My doctor owes me candor; I pay him for it. Candor could save my life.

I like to think journalists are paid for candor, too; society needs to know what could kill us, whether it’s too many lies or too much pollution. Napoleon left instructions that he was not to be awakened if the news from the front were good; with good news, he told his secretary, there is no hurry. But if the news were bad, he said, “rouse me instantly, for then there is not a moment to be lost.” Think of journalism as a kind of early warning system — iceberg spotting in the choppy waters of democracy.

But there’s another reason for what we do. I’m reminded of it every year at this time, when my thoughts about the honor and respect we pay to our nation’s soldiers on Memorial Day are colored by its proximity to D-Day.

I was just ten years old when the allies landed on Normandy on June 6, 1944. I couldn’t then imagine what it must have been like on those beaches when our world was up for grabs and men spilled their blood and guts to save it. I never knew what it was like until fifteen years ago when I accompanied some veterans from Texas who had fought at Normandy and survived, and were now returning to retrace their steps. Jose Lopez was one of the veterans that joined me on that journey.

Lopez said of his experiences as a soldier, “I was really very, very afraid. That I want to scream. I want to cry and we see other people was laying wounded and screaming and everything and it’s nothing you could do. We could see them groaning in the water and we keep walkin’.”

Jose Lopez went on to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest honor for gallantry in action. But searching for the place he landed that day, he didn’t want to talk about the Medal of Honor. He just wanted to be alone with his memories.

Howard Randall took a bullet in his ankle and almost had his leg amputated. His buddy Ed wasn’t so lucky. (Edward J. Myers, First Lieutenant, fought in the 17th Infantry, 76th Division.)

Randall spoke of his friend Ed during our trip, “He’s from the State of Washington, Puyallup, Washington. March 1, 1945. That was the same day I was wounded. He was behind me probably a hundred yards, maybe 200 yards. And he caught a piece of mortar fragment in the stomach, lived until that night. I didn’t know he’d died until a couple of days later.”

Every Memorial Day I think about what these men did and what we owe them. They didn’t go through hell so Kenny Boy Lay could betray his investors and workers at Enron, or for a political system built on legal bribery. It wasn’t for corporate tax havens in Bermuda, or an economic system driven by the law of the jungle, or so a handful of media buccaneers could turn the public airwaves into private sewers.

Sure, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, freedom makes it possible for people to be crooks, but so does communism, and fascism, and monarchy. Democracy is about doing better. It’s about fairness, justice, human rights, and yes, it’s about equality, too; look it up.

I was never called on to do what soldiers do; I’ll never know if I might have had their courage. But a journalist can help keep the record straight, on their behalf. They thought democracy was worth fighting for, even dying for. The least we can do is to help make democracy worthy of them.

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