IMO, THIS ENTIRE LETTER IS A MUST READ...
interrobanger.blog-city.com
Monday, 21 July 2003
AN OPEN LETTER TO GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Why You Must Run For President
Over the past few years the United States has come to resemble less and less the country I have always been quietly but deeply proud to call home.
When those planes struck the Twin Towers I, like so many others, sat glued to the television in impotent horror. Since that day I've watched with growing unease as the present administration strategically perverts that horror to further its own political agenda, an agenda conceived long before 9/11. An agenda so radical (according to the neocons' own "Project For A New American Century") that in a time of peace it could never be brought to fruition. An agenda those involved agreed would greatly benefit from a galvanizing incident comparable to Pearl Harbor.
How fortunate then that, in the aftermath of 9/11, a shocked and frightened American populace played its part beautifully. We stood by and watched (even cheered) as the administration set out to destroy whatever good will we had left in the world and to drag us, whatever the cost in whatever measure, into war against an enemy so inferior and ineffective the entire campaign had to be predicated upon exaggerations, verbal sleight of hand, and outright lies lest the entire premise of "imminent threat" be revealed as absurd. And so in our fear we isolated ourselves; in our collective rage, we lashed out.
Sadly, we weren't all that hard to convince. Likewise, we said little as many of our rights were quietly stripped away, as wholly unAmerican laws were rushed -- unread, let alone debated -- through a frightened and enraged Congress; all in the name of a perpetual War On Terror abroad and the prevention of further acts of domestic terror. Laudable goals both, yet one has to ask: When the war is perpetual, as we are so often reminded it is, what then of our "temporarily" suspended rights? And if we make these "accommodations" haven't the terrorists won the day by default?
We are Americans! We do not enact "protective" laws behind which to tremble in fear, to hide from "them over there." We do not surrender, physically or mentally. We do not break. We stand tall and those aligned against us, those who threaten our way of life -- they learn to tremble.
Who among us could grow up not instinctively knowing these things? Who among us doubts the inevitable result: We fight and we win. Those in our path are shown the suicidal folly of rousing us from the benevolent complacency for which we are so widely ridiculed and despised and upon which the world's despots are dependent for their survival. In the end, our way of life continues. It must continue; not one liberty we enjoyed prior to 9/11 must be taken from us or we fight for nothing because we have lost too much already for it to matter. Not one person must suffer unjustly at the hands of our increasingly paranoid government or we fight for nothing, having become the very thing at home we battle abroad.
Let these things happen and we are nothing more than a nation of hypocrites and self-deluded fools. Let these things happen and history will not remember fondly the generation that allowed the centuries-old experiment in freedom that is the United States to wither and die. In the war we now fight the enemy is not foreign. The enemy is our own paranoia and the shameful ambition of a secretive administration fortunate enough to find itself in power at an advantageous time. But advantageous for whom and at what price?
9/11 hurt us, and we aren't used to that. We weren't prepared for it. We were woefully ill-equipped to deal with a horror of such magnitude, as evidenced by the months-old 9/11 report only now about to be released (after careful vetting) because the administration is rightly ashamed to admit just how unprepared we were. In the aftermath, the world has become our enemy and, as always, what we fear and distrust we seek to control. Look to the violent chaos in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq for a poignant reminder of how ill-equipped we are to effectively implement that control. If history has taught us nothing else it has taught us that empire cannot endure. And when empires implode, as they must, they do not go gently.
So many Americans do not seem to realize it was the double-barrelled insult embodied in our infuriating freedom and in our mocking complacency the terrorists set out to destroy with those hijacked planes. The planes, buildings, and lost lives were, in the eyes of the terrorists, nothing more than means to an end. Our complacency is, of necessity, gone. Do we sit idly by and let them win on both counts?
Ben Franklin once said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." If the man were alive today imagine the contempt with which he would view what his country is becoming! Imagine explaining Mr. Ashcroft's efforts to squelch Freedom Of Information Act requests or Mr. Bush's March 2003 executive order further decreasing governmental transparency and preventing the declassification of thousands of decades-old documents. To this administration the FOIA is at best burdensome, at worst terrifying. To question the motives or methods of those in power is to become the enemy. Mr. Ashcroft concedes as much in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee (12/01): "To those who scare peace loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil." Mr. Franklin would, one hopes, disagree. His contemporary, Thomas Jefferson, wrote to James Madison in early 1787, "A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
To Mr. Ashcroft we must respond: If we do not challenge you, if we do not actively and meticulously preserve liberty for every individual in this country then we lose the war by default even if the Stars and Stripes one day fly over every capital city in the world. To do otherwise, Mr. Ashcroft, is a tacit admission of defeat, in however small a measure, and you may be willing to make such concessions to the enemy but the rest of America is most emphatically not. Freedom is tenuous. Should we release our grip on it it will slip through our fingers like sand. Regaining what is lost is vastly more difficult.
The Founders dedicated their lives to the arduous task of creating from scratch a vibrant, living country, a task far more difficult than merely attempting to administer it adequately for a few brief years. As a people we owe it to their legacy to remain vigilant in defending their work. Just as previous generations toiled to maintain for us the freedoms we enjoy today, so must we toil to preserve those freedoms for future generations. The insistence of this adminstration that the policies it enacts and the beliefs it espouses are, as it were, "The One True Way," and that dissent -- any dissent -- equates to giving succor to "the enemy" must be challenged.
Imagine attempting to explain to Mr. Franklin the justification for and efficacy of legislation such as the PATRIOT Act. Imagine explaining how the executive branch refuses to disclose even to high-ranking members of the legislative branch specifics regarding how and with what frequency the sweeping powers granted by the PATRIOT have been used. What of checks and balances? Imagine his shock at learning of the movement in Congress to make these new powers permanent. Imagine justifying to him Congress ceding its power to declare war to the President in an act of what can only be described as self-castrating capitulation. The implications are staggering. The most important decision a nation can make, once the responsibility of hundreds, is now contingent upon the whims of an individual. Mr. Bush summed it up succintly, referring to the possibility of war in Iraq during a press conference from the White House, March 6, 2003: "I've not made up our mind about military action." That it was a lie, that his mind had in fact been made up for quite some time and he lacked only at least the appearance of justification, has since become obvious. It was not a question of if or when but only under what facade.
Imagine explaining to Mr. Franklin that he can now be covertly spied upon given even the flimsiest of excuses; that he can be arrested via secret warrant and held indefinitely without charge or representation; that his government has quietly granted itself the right to covertly review his reading habits and, should it see fit, interrogate him on the matter. Imagine attempting to justify this administration's arrogant opacity to a man who would rightly demand maximum governmental transparency. Imagine explaining to him the rationale for a half-trillion dollar deficit, translated to a sum a man of his era could accurately appreciate (if any human can be said to derive real meaning from such a sum).
It is fortunate in a way that the man is no longer with us; surely he, an unapologetic revolutionary and radical thinker, would have no conscionable alternative but make himself heard. The thought of Mr. Franklin earning a visit to Guantanamo Bay or being indefinitely detained at some undisclosed location as a "material witness" is not a happy one.
You have fought for your country on foreign battlefields, General. I ask you now to fight the battle at home. Give us a President who says what he means and means what he says, a President we can trust. As it stands now, trust is in short supply. Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of the WMD controversy is that I and a great many others (those of us often labelled seditious, cowardly, treasonous terrorist-appeasers) would no doubt have supported the removal of Hussein on nothing more than principle: he is an evil, despicable man, one of those rare human monsters for whom the punitive relief offered by the death penalty seems wholly inadequate. The first Gulf War, ending as it did with Saddam still in power, brought egregious long-term harm to the Iraqi people. We did not finish what we started and in the intervening years it was not Saddam, safe in his palaces, who suffered. While Saddam surrounded himself with gold and Western luxuries his people lived and died in squalor. There are those among us -- a great many, one hopes -- for whom this would have been justification enough.
There would have been a sticking point, though: We would have demanded it be done correctly. We'd have demanded that the planning stage extend beyond "Shock & Awe," which in execution loosely translated to, "Let's hurry up and blow a lot of stuff up. Spare no thought for the efficient reconstruction of the shattered country and suffering people left behind after the smoke clears. Let's do it with a fraction of the troops and materiel we can reasonbly expect to need and rent some reporters to spin it for us! It'll make riveting TV!" One supposes the brevity of "Shock & Awe" made for better soundbites.
Unfortunately, the administration, in its eagerness to wage war and its arrogant presumption of moral superiority, could not bring itself to trust the unwashed masses to make such a decision merely for the common and greater good. We had to be coaxed and frightened and verbally bludgeoned into line. And here again we are told that should we disagree, for whatever reason, we are traitors. At worst we are no better than the criminals they seek to destroy, at best we are guilty of offering those criminals aid and comfort. As Mr. Bush is fond of saying, "You're either with us or you're against us." It is this unAmerican and shameful hubris that is weakening the administration (and by extension, America itself) from the inside out even as Bush himself declares, whenever questioned, "that sounds like revisionist history to me," and seems to think, 'That's behind us, let's proceed as if nothing has happened,' is a perfectly rational policy.
That type of reasoning -- especially among powerful men and women who shun transparency and accountability as Stoker's creature shuns the light of day -- is terrifying and insulting. The depth of the disgust engendered in me by the actions and attitude of this administration saddens me as an American and frightens me as a human being. If we agree to "put it behind us" just because Mr. Bush commands it and doing so would be much easier than the alternatives, we will have failed as a nation.
The poorly executed War On Terror (Afghanistan shattered, Osama at large, anti-American sentiment at all-time highs) and this irrational need by the administration to "blame Saddam, no matter what; destroy him at any cost" has left our national security and general standing in the world in far more precarious positions than any American should find acceptable or even tolerable.
Iran, Syria, North Korea -- each of these countries pose a far greater and immediate threat than Iraq has in a dozen years. Why were they not targeted? Because these countries have something in common that Iraq lacked: the ability to mount a meaningful defense. We have become, in the eyes of the world, no better than a schoolyard bully. The perpetrators of 9/11 were not Iraqi. They were not Iranian or Syrian. They were Saudi. Our relations with Saudi Arabia are, by and large, positive. Why? Like Iran, Syria, and North Korea, Saudi Arabia could fight back. But it doesn't end there. Unlike Iran, Syria, and North Korea, Saudi Arabia has something we desperately need. Odd how that works out, is it not? The war on Saddam was not, as Mr. Bush would like us to believe, an extension of the War on Terror. It was and continues to be an inexcusable and dangerous departure from it because we are forced to go it alone. We are stretched too thin. It didn't have to be this way.
In hindsight it has become clear that Saddam was no imminent threat to us here at home. He was, however, a killing cancer upon the body of his people. For the benefit of the people the cancer needed to be excised. I say again that the evil the regime represented, along with the 12-year-old debt we owed the Iraqi people, would have been justification enough for me. Current polls on the topic indicate I am not alone. Why, then, did the administration feel the need to fabricate justification when the unadorned truth would have sufficed? Was immediate war truly the only option? Why the rush? There were no nuclear weapons, there were no "45-minute" weapons of mass destruction. We, the American people, were not given the opportunity to evaluate the situation and make an informed decision.
And what have these fabrications gotten us? Of roughly 160,000 troops deployed in Iraq only around 1,000 represent nations other than the US and Great Britain. This morning (7/21) Fox News was reporting that the President has secured 30,000 additional troops from around the world. The report did not say from where these forces would come but did note that France, Germany and India were not among those supplying troops. At any rate the war is now technically over. Better late than never?
That does not change or excuse the fact that, at present and throughout the conflict to this point, British (~12-13,000) and American (~146,000) forces account for over 99% of the troops deployed in Iraq and Mr. Bush has to beg, threaten and pay exorbitant bribes (money this country does not have) to secure those paltry few. That is where we stand in the world. Mr. Bush appears eerily comfortable with it. "Bring 'em on!" he says, while troops in the field yearn only to come home, to cease fighting and dying for a cause they do not, by and large, believe in or clearly understand. They deserve better.
He should remember that when he says "Bring 'em on!" he remains safely ensconced in well-appointed, well-defended, comfortably air-conditioned offices and limos; that he makes his proclamations from behind stately podiums on manicured lawns far from the violence he so blithely invites. Meanwhile the American and British men and women in Iraq swelter and suffer in an unforgiving desert, far from home and family among an enemy who would gladly see them dead. When the bullets and rockets are flying, they ultimately stand alone. For this they are worthy of our respect and admiration. They do what they do so we do not have to or, more likely, because we cannot. They fight, they die; they witness horrors the likes of which myself and President Bush cannot conceive in any immediate, personal way. I never joined up; he skipped out. "Bring 'em on!" is easy for people like Mr. Bush and myself. The difference is, I wouldn't dare. I acknowledge that I haven't earned the right.
You joined up, though, and you didn't skip out. You fought and you bled and you suffered. You were physically shattered by war, but never broken in any place that mattered. You not only walked again when lesser men would have contented themselves with a comfortable chair and sedentary life, you refuse to this day even to limp. You shame me, and had Mr. Bush a shred of humility you would shame him as well. Had he a shred of humility then as soon as you placed your name on the ballot he'd bow out gracefully and offer you his full support. If he is, as he desperately wants us to believe, a true patriot, and if he sincerely wants what is best for this country, he could do no less.
In his autobiography (My American Journey), Colin Powell wrote: "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed ... managed to wrangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units." Ask Mr. Bush one day, General, where he was while you were teaching yourself to walk again. Ask Mr. Bush where he was and what he was doing while you bled into foreign soil for your country. Mr. Powell went on to write: "Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." Ask Mr. Bush what drugs for what reasons he was taking while you were pumped full of painkillers and antibiotics, while you endured endless hours of excruciating physical therapy. Ask him, General, where he was and what he was doing when you were out there fighting for his life and his freedom.
Ask him these questions and do not stop asking until he is forced to answer. Demand details and documentation. If he equivocates, as he is wont to do ("When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible."), call him on the cop-out and ask again. Do this, General, and the Presidency is yours. Do this because the American people deserve a President who need not be asked such things. Failing that, the American people deserve a President who can face down tough questions without flinching and provide plain answers without blinking. The American people, when faced with imminent danger, deserve a President who can step forward proudly from a position of strength to show the world what the true face of a united America looks like; who can summon the moral authority to do what must be done.
I, like most people, am none of those things. My life and my choices would not survive such questions and scrutiny unscathed. There are few people fit and able to lead others and I accept that I am not among their number. Mr. Bush would have done this nation a great service had he been able long ago to acknowledge as much about himself rather than live as he does, apparently believing greatness rests not in who you are but in who you know and who you can fool.
You, General, are intimately acquainted with the demands and expectations of the real world. You know war and I'd wager it is no friend of yours. I cannot believe you would ever hunger for or wage war with anything like the smiling, confident, "I'm sleeping just fine, thanks" "Bring 'em on!" manner affected by Mr. Bush. I'd wager you'd never demean the contribution these men and women make for us by demanding their sacrifice based on self-serving lies, self-aggrandizing showmanship and easy, schoolboy tough-talk.
Would you, General, ever look out across troops under your command and for whom you are ultimately responsible, and invite -- dare! -- the enemy to do its worst? Would any responsible commander? His spin doctors claim he mis-spoke. He seems to do so with disheartening regularity. We could trust in the fact that you would be honor-bound to acknowledge the truth and, if need be, 'take your medicine' rather than work to spin and subvert it in order to save face. One doubts you rose to the rank of general or earned your battle scars and decorations by shirking responsibility or shunning accountability.
Our troops (and their British counterparts) are powerful, brave, and honorable. They deserve a commander who can truly appreciate what they represent. The contributions they make shame those of us sitting safely in front of our televisions at home. For us the war is dismissed with the wave of a remote control. For them it is constant and inescapable. They are few among a distrusting and hostile many. They are rapidly tiring and replacements are hard to come by. Mr. Bush would do well to remember that as he thumbs his nose at the world. Where are our allies? Why aren't they at our side this time out?
Had it been you who led us into this war, General, I believe our allies would stand with us this time, too. Had the case for removing Saddam been competently and honestly presented to the world, had the war plans consisted of more than empty promises and pipe dreams of smiling Iraqis and warm receptions, our troops and the people of Iraq would not be suffering as they are now.
Yet, in the present reality, Mr. Bush seems unaware anything is amiss. The man gives every appearance of laboring under the assumption that America, its interests, and the President himself are inviolable. He professes a great faith in the teachings of the Bible but seems not to remember what famous Proverbial transgression 'goeth before the fall.'
Do something to stop this insanity, sir. Bring our country back to us before it is turned into something we no longer recognize.
When a monster such as Saddam Hussein can release a tape from some dank hidey-hole naming as liars the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain and I find myself forced to agree in however small a measure, something is wrong. When an action as just as removing Saddam from power is called into question and sullied before the world because our leaders felt the need to lie to us to get it done, something is wrong.
When a man speaks to the press not because he seeks the limelight -- quite the opposite! -- but because his conscience demands it of him, and he is villified for shining a light on the truth, something is wrong. When a reporter interviews our troops and shows us the sad, un-vetted truth of a group of young men pushed too hard for too long in intolerable conditions, only to have the White House itself make a pitifully transparent attempt to smear that reporter (not just gay, but Canadian, too!), something is wrong. When a dark-haired, bearded young college student is seen reading an article (the aptly titled "Weapons Of Mass Stupidity," largely a criticism of Fox News) and subsequently finds himself chatting with two "well-meaning" FBI agents about his choice of reading material, something is wrong. When my fingers hesitate on the keyboard owing to a legitimate fear that my words might invite a knock at the door from those same "well-meaning" visitors, something is wrong.
But the damage is not irreparable.
You have spent your life working to better this country. Take the next logical step. You owe it to the country you have sworn to serve and to yourself, so that all you have spent your life fighting for will have meant something. Rally the American people, General. Wake the sleeping giant to the necessity of its own defense before it is too late. Do not give Bush and his cabal another four disastrous years to have their way with this country.
Before I close, I'd just like to mention that before 9/11 I had not a political bone in my body. I'm not an activist, I'm just a regular guy: no fancy job, no formal education; no money, no power, no influence; no significance beyond these few words and whatever power they may have to sway your decision in a positive direction. As best I can recall, this is only the second letter I've ever written to a politician (though you technically aren't one -- yet).
Like many Americans, I always took the workings of the government for granted. I guess subconsciously I felt such things were beyond my ken. I was failing my country, though I did not know it. As Abbie Hoffman said, "Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles." What did it take to wake me up? I'll let President Lincoln answer for me: "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." The words, spoken long ago and heard in the context of the present, ring with prescience. America deserves a President capable of handling both adversity and the awesome power and influence of the office with dignity and integrity.
Of all those with an eye toward the Democratic nomination you are the one who can make it happen. You are presented now with an opportunity to once again do a great service for your country. Please, General, do not let it pass you -- all of us -- by. Remember as you read these words that I write to you today not because writing things like this is just something I do, but because I care.
We need you. It's that simple. As a nation we have become desensitized to scandal and conditioned to accept the intolerable. We need a leader, not another in a series of cookie-cutter professional politicians. That you have never sought public office proves you are precisely the man for the job. In the spin-doctored, self-serving realm of modern American politics there can be no higher recommendation of a man than this healthy aversion to the entire process.
For this reason I do not blame you for questioning whether you want the job. What sane person would? You'd be inheriting quite a mess, that much no one doubts. What sane person would take up such a burden?
A person with a surfeit of ego, a generous splash of hubris, and a dearth of old-fashioned common sense, perhaps. Or, conversely, a person whose moral compass and sense of duty allows him to do no less; a person who knows he'll never come close to fixing everything but will give it a helluva try just the same. We've had quite enough of the former. It's about time we had eight years or so of the latter.
I believe you could be the kind of President our troops would fight and bleed for, uncomplaining and proud. Unlike Mr. Bush and his predecessor you'd ask them to give nothing of themselves you have not already given of yourself. You could restore compassion and reason to the White House. Not to mention integrity and accountability; and strength based on things other than mindless military might, broad, endless threats and cowboy bravado. You could be the kind of President who induces patriotism in Americans as none have in decades, the kind of President Americans have come to believe can only exist in works of wistful political fiction. You could be the kind of President in front of whom world leaders tremble, not in fear or rage but in respect and awe, grudging though the sentiments may be. In your presence they would have little choice but to better themselves or risk unfavorable comparison. You might even become one of that rarest of all breeds of President: the kind kids actually enjoy doing reports on.
I implore you to be that President, General Clark. Make us proud again. Remind the world that we are not just the mightiest nation on earth, we are the greatest nation on earth.
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