Fear Imperils Free Speech
Jimmy Breslin
April 1, 2003
"I agree with the war," she said.
"Why?" I asked her.
"Just a minute. I am counting."
Kathy Fierre, 26, here from Ecuador for 16 years, was arranging her cash register in the coffee shop at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
I am watching TV at this coffee counter yesterday afternoon. It was the counter nearest the Times Square subway entrance.
This subway is my base for this war, the subways of the city, a battlefield that could be the most important action in the war. Because you can lose through enemy action, an attack on the subway now, and 10 and 20 years from now, or by your own people snatching freedom from you on the grubby pretext of security.
When Kathy finished her counting, she said, "We have war because something he's not supposed to do. Leave or else. He didn't want to leave. That is why they go in for him."
On the wall was television showing the war.
"All we have on is CNN," she said.
"Do people watch it?"
"Oh, yes. They are very interested in this war. But not right now. Now they wait for Baghdad."
"How much do you watch it?"
"When Baghdad starts, I'll watch it."
"Do you watch it home?"
"Not now. I am waiting for Baghdad."
Outside the open entrance, two National Guard soldiers from upstate stood with their M-16s pointed at the floor. One was Rick, and he is a college student at SUNY Geneseo. He is taking primary education, which his girlfriend majors in, too.
"We can both teach and have summers off," he said. His partner gave his name as John and he said he works at a civilian job at the army base at Fort Drum, up at Watertown. They stay at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn and are on duty at various spots in the terminal from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Standing guard outside my coffee shop, they were proof that we do have Operation Atlas. But they only stay here for an hour and then they go to another spot. The coffee shop next was guarded by a police sergeant and a cop and they did not have these big M-16s that make me feel so good.
I was waiting to hear on TV some general saying that we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which is the reason we went in there in the first place, as I recall.
Soon, if they can't find any, they are going to have to lug something in and plant it somewhere, as police would put a gun on a suspect, and say, here, we have found the Weapons of Mass Destruction!
The announcer was intoning, "Operation Iraqi Freedom." I remember when they first started the war, they used "Operation Enduring Freedom."
Nobody yesterday dared use "Shock and Awe." That has a boomerang built into it. The moment somebody used it, the vile words spun around and hit you right smack in the head.
Now on television was a story about Peter Arnett, a correspondent in Baghdad for NBC, who was fired for saying something on Arab television in Baghdad. His words were about the same as what is reported on television and newspapers here. It was silly for Arnett to go on the Arab television because they were only going to steal it from Arnett's NBC anyway. However, if Arnett said this on Arab television because NBC wouldn't let him say it to America, then there is deep trouble.
Earlier yesterday, my friend Sam Roberts made a speech at Brooklyn Law School in which he quoted Theodore Roosevelt's famous adult admonition to his country:
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people."
Roberts yesterday talked about his extraordinary book, "The Brother," about the Rosenberg trial. It took place all those years ago, 50 of them, and it still lives with us. The Rosenbergs were executed for stealing the secret to the atomic bomb and delivering it to the Soviet Union. Greatest crime!
There happened to be no single secret to the atom bomb. If there were any, the Russians had two agents steal them long before the Rosenbergs.
But it was out of this case that you got McCarthy and now all these years later the same vile slogans coming out of the mouths of galoots: "Love it or leave it!"
Perched on a barstool in the old Costello's on 44th Street, visitor I.I. Rabi, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for pioneering research that paved the way for the CAT scan and MRI, and who also was a consulting engineer on the first atom bomb, told us:
"It is a fact in this country that you have free speech. But everybody is afraid to use it."
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