 pitt's
pamphlets
The Dawn Of A New Democratic Party
by William Rivers Pitt
about William Rivers Pitt...
"The dead have been awakened-shall I sleep?
The world's at war with tyrants-shall I crouch?
The harvest's ripe-and shall I pause to reap?
I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch;
Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear,
Its echo in my heart."
- Lord Byron
I spent yesterday climbing to the summit of this bald bulb of a hill called
Mt. Monadnock, which rises incongruously from the level plains of southern
New Hampshire. The day was bright and clear with little wind, a perfect day
for a hike. I reached the top in under two hours and paused to absorb the
view. New England lay before me to all points on the compass, brown and
prepared for winter. Here and there were lakes and houses. In the distance
something burned, sending a column of smoke into the air.
The hard blue November sky was stitched with white lines that crossed each
other in every direction, as if a deranged skywriter had decided to paint
the air repeatedly with the letter 'A.' It took me a moment to understand
what I was seeing: contrails from combat aircraft arriving and departing
from various bases across the region. Even here, 4,000 feet above the
world, the troubles that consume us hover above, close enough to touch.
Then again, that is the rub. Once upon a time this nation seemed above the
world, of it but beyond its scalding touch. We were protected by two
oceans, vast treasure, armed guardians, and thousands of atom-tipped
missiles buried in the earth. One day the sky fell in, and we found
ourselves somewhere we had not been for generations. We found ourselves in
the middle of things. We found ourselves to be vulnerable.
A fundamental shift of comprehension has been fermenting within the minds of
American citizens since September 11th. All of a sudden, the realization
that each and every citizen has a stake in the actions and policies of this
country has begun to take root. Simply, if justice fails, the common folk
become targets. If economic privation goes unchecked, the common folk
become targets. If extremism, American or otherwise, achieves too much
power, the common folk become targets.
If a liberal, progressive agenda is to achieve purchase in today's climate,
this basic truth must be seized upon and repeated over and over again. The
fellow who only reads the sports page, who hasn't voted for twenty years, or
who votes Republican because he likes his tax cut, needs to have a finger
thrust into his face. He needs to be made to understand that the next
intelligence failure, the next proxy war, the next arms deal, the next
corporate bailout, could result in his shattered corpse lying in the dust.
This is brutal and cruel. It is also the truth. We are all on the firing
line. We are the targets in this war. There are reasons for this that have
nothing to do with people who hate our freedoms.
This is the most dangerous idea in the world for those currently in power in
America. It is an idea that has taken a slow burn through the populace. If
it flares alight, people will not shop. They will not tolerate excessive
tax cuts for financially healthy corporations. They will demand solutions
that do not involve carpet-bombing with B-52s. They will not stand for the
dissolution of their constitutional rights. In short, they will demand
actions that will reap actual results, instead of actions that give only the
illusion of progress. They will want to move forward as progressives
instead of backwards as conservatives. They will know that their very
survival depends upon it.
Liberals and progressives must seize this time, must pour kerosene on that
slowly burning idea, until it explodes into a pyre upon which will burn all
of the sad, sorry, broken policies that brought us to this house of woe.
But who is to do it?
It has become an article of faith since January 20th, 2001, that the
Democratic chieftains who walk the halls of power in Washington D.C. can not
be trusted to fight for this agenda. When the results of the scandalous
2000 election were ratified in Congress, only the Black Caucus had the
courage to turn their backs in protest. When religious extremist John
Ashcroft stood for nomination as Attorney General, no true opposition was
offered.
Today, as the 4th, 6th and 13th Amendments to the Constitution are disposed
of, as Posse Comitatus is replaced by clandestine military tribunals that
know no civil authority, the Democrats stand almost completely silent. Only
the timely defection of Senator James Jeffords has allowed Democrats to
thwart Republican thrusts into the Federal larder and our environmental
inheritance. Had Jeffords not jumped, there would be no stopping the GOP.
Democratic Senator and Presidential hopeful John Edwards worked night and
day to craft the abominable PATRIOT Anti-Terrorism bill, possibly the most
invasive bit of work to come out of Washington since Lincoln suspended
habeas corpus. Perhaps he believes that we must destroy freedom in order to
save it, but it is more likely that he succumbed to political cowardice and
went along for the ride to ensure a safe trip to the primaries in 2004. He
is certainly not alone in this.
On any other day, the anthrax sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy would be
called assassination attempts. Today, these attacks are shrouded in the
threatening veil of international terrorism, despite the fact that they
almost certainly originated from the American Right.
Even after this most dire of threats, the Democrats stand mute. Bush
enjoys approval ratings that would make Jesus Christ Himself blush, a
formidable obstacle for Democrats who may feel in their gut that the nation
is on the road to Hell. Their timidity is our catastrophe.
Thus, it falls to us. We must become the calcium in the withered Democratic
backbone, and we must do it now.
Writing to these people is useless. Protesting against the President will
bear no fruit. Letters to the editor go unread. Emails to like-minded
friends amount to political masturbation. We are a people made too
comfortable by pleasant arguments and debates. The day has arrived where
action is demanded, else all that happens from here on out can be lain at
our own feet. The document in question says We The People for a good
reason.
Take heed of conservative successes. They ran for state representative
positions, took over school boards, got jobs in local government and
basically stormed the bulwarks of the Republican Party from the bottom of
the walls. It took ten years, but they did it, and the Presidency of George
W. Bush is but one reward they have reaped by their labors. The media is
awash with the conservative viewpoint because they commandeered the dialogue
after years of grass-roots work. This is another reward, one that ensures
their continued success.
To overcome this, we must become it.
The only reason the Democrats moved to the right is because of the
aforementioned conservative grass-roots revolution. The Party had nothing
to counteract the surge of conservatism that blasted through Washington, no
shock troops of their own, so they swung Rightward in order to survive.
Now, the Parties are slowly becoming indistinguishable. They are not yet
there, no matter what Ralph Nader says, but they are on their way and this
can not be denied.
It has been argued that true progressives will never find a home in the
Democratic Party, because it has sold too much of its soul in a hard tack to
the right borne of defensive strategy and political expediency. This leaves
two alternatives: either abandon the Party completely, or roll up some
sleeves and clean out the Augean stables.
Despite its flaws, the Democratic Party is the best tool we have available
for the propagation of the liberal, progressive agenda. The Party have
faithful followers in every state, and unconquerable strongholds on both
coasts. The Democratic political machine stands in every county in every
state in the Union. There are doubtless men and women in the U.S. House of
Representatives who would savor the chance to act upon principle, instead of
from a core of self-defense, a chance we can give them if we get to work
now.
The time has come to invade this Party, to storm the battlements from the
ground up. The Democratic Party can again become a bastion of true
liberalism, as the Republican Party has become a bastion of
ultraconservatism, if American progressives take it over from pillar to
post. If we take back the Party, if we change the dialogue coming from the
media through the brute reality of our strident and unyielding voices, if we
tend and nurture that flame of new comprehension blazing in every American
breast, we can achieve all that our dreams have whispered.
Most within the Party will welcome this, I believe. Those who do not can be
reminded of the wisdom spoken by an old politico named James H. Rowe: "The
old bulls never quit until the young bulls run them out. The old bulls are
dead."
Master the issues. Walk down to your local Democratic Party office and find
work. Take as much responsibility as you can, and make it your office. Run
for positions on your school board, or within your local government, or
stand for election to your state congress. If you can not do these things,
find someone who is doing them and dedicate your energies to their success.
Run the old bulls out, and harness the young bulls to plow new fields. Make
the Party a home for everyone who knows in their heart that things must
change in this country before the targets can be stripped from our backs.
It will take time and patience. There is a window of opportunity to act in
time for the 2002 elections, but the target should be 2004. Don't look to
the Oval office, for working from the top down has bred a dizzying array of
recent failures. Go from the ground up, one step at a time.
What a paradise we can make of this world if given the chance. The chance
will not come on its own. We must make it, take it, demand it, fight for it
tooth and nail.
Get to work. --11.19.01
The Dream That Was America
by William Rivers Pitt
about William Rivers Pitt...
"In my own country I am in a far-off land
I am strong but have no force or power
I win all yet remain a loser
At break of day I say goodnight
When I lie down I have a great fear
Of falling."
- Francois Villon
There once was a dream called America.
In the beginning, it did not reside on a particular patch of earth. It had
no borders, no mountains, no rivers, no forests. It had no seas, crops,
roads, or cities. It claimed no army, nor navy, nor air force. No nuclear
dragons were coiled in the soil, waiting for the order to spring. It had no
people, rich or poor.
The dream that was America was born in turbulent days surrounding the final
collapse of the Stuart monarchy in England. King James II believed it
within his purview to dismiss, ignore and override Parliament, who were the
representatives of the People. He held citizens in prison without charging
them or bringing them before a magistrate. He deigned to have them tried
before secret courts. Troops loyal to him entered private homes as they
pleased. Citizens who did not practice the religion of the King knew fear.
When William of Orange marched on London in 1688, trailed by an army once
loyal to James and backed by the will of Parliament, the last Stuart monarch
was sent across the English Channel to live in disgrace in France. It is
believed that he threw the Great Seal of the Stuarts into the frigid waters,
a final symbolic drowning for a disgraceful era.
>From that day forth, England was to be ruled by the People, through their
representatives in Parliament. Parliament was to rule the King, and not the
reverse. A Bill of Rights was drafted, in which was enshrined the first
true habeas corpus laws protecting the basic rights of citizens against the
infringements of government. Troops could no longer enter private homes,
citizens could not be held without charge or trial, and true religious
freedom was at long last established.
This was the first germination of the dream that was America. The idea,
realized in the wake of a disgraced tyrant, demanded that the citizens of a
nation have the right to self-determination and self-rule. They were tasked
to decide for themselves who would represent them in government, and had the
power to rescind the invitation if a particular representative did not
perform as required. There was a responsibility inherent in this: if
government spun out of control, it was the people who had to set it right.
In payment for this responsibility, the people knew security in home and
church, in person and belief.
Over the next 300 years, the idea that was America carved out a space on the
planet that became a powerful nation. It found borders and mountains, seas
and rivers, crops and sky. It created an army, a navy, and an air force.
It buried dragons in the soil, and poured out great roads across it.
Magnificent cities rose into the clouds, housing people rich and poor.
Underneath it all lay two sheets of tattered paper, upon which were scrawled
words straight from the heart of John Locke. The Constitution and the Bill
of Rights defined the dream that was America, and codified the rights that
each citizen could expect. Amendments were attached over time, a remarkable
thing, that extended these rights and freedoms to places never before known
in the history of humanity.
This was the dream: Americans had the right, the right! to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. They had the right to be secure from governmental
searches of their homes. They were free to practice whatever religion they
chose, or to practice no religion at all. They could say or write anything
they wished, so long as those words did not overtly threaten or frighten any
other citizen.
They could not be imprisoned without charge or trial, could not be punished
cruelly, and had the right to zealous representation by a lawyer in whom
could be placed absolute trust, thanks to the protection endowed by
privilege. With elastic restrictions, Americans even had the right to arm
themselves with incredibly powerful and deadly weapons.
To be sure, the dream had never been truly realized. Citizens had been
denied many of the basic rights outlined in those tattered documents due to
the foul souls of those chosen to represent the people. Unimaginable crimes
had been committed within and without the borders of the nation that housed
the idea. There were failures, and failures again.
This was the magic of the dream, the poetry and beauty of the idea: that
such wrongs could and would be righted, that the idea would march ever
onward to a greater perfection, that those illegitimately excluded would be
brought inside the fold, because according to the idea, that was the only
right thing to do. For 300 years it was happening, and would continue to
happen, unto the end of the world.
On September 11th, 2001, the dream that was America died in a ball of fire,
flesh and dust.
It was not murdered by the killers who brought such hideous carnage to the
land. A dream so powerful, an idea so pure and good, was too strong to be
shattered by violent outsiders. No, such a thing can only be destroyed by
those who live within it, by those who had for so long pulled the warm
blanket of liberty to their chins that they came to take it for granted.
The dream that was America died by the hand of those who were most warmed by
it.
The dream began to die long before September 11th, 2001. Cracks began to
appear every election day, as more and more Americans decided they wanted no
part of the responsibility that guaranteed the safety of the rights and
privileges. On the night of the 2000 election, one hundred million citizens
- fully one half of the voting populace - did not participate in that most
fundamental of obligations. The result, after a contested election and the
intervention of a politically biased court, was a government that
represented only the narrowest slice of the nation.
This court had been installed years before by representatives who won office
through elections in which a majority of the populace did not participate.
By abdicating responsibility, the citizens guaranteed their own doom. After
September 11th, 2001, the negligence of the people had allowed the
installation of an administration whose greed, incompetence and narrowness
of ideology destroyed that great and noble American idea.
It is all finished now. Today in America, it is dangerous to speak feely.
Officers of the government may enter private homes without notice and
perform invasive searches of personal property. Officers of the government
may listen to private conversations between client and attorney, thus
tearing the shroud of privilege and thus the guarantee of zealous
representation. Individuals are being held without charge or trial, their
fates to be determined by secret courts.
It was said once that the Constitution is not a suicide pact, and there is
wisdom in this. The physical nation that is America endured a catastrophic
attack, and there must be a response. Today in America, that response has
been to murder the idea that is America. The idea is more important, far
more important, than the land or the borders or the treasure, or even the
people. Without the idea, the nation is worthless. In the death of the
idea lies complete and total victory for those who attacked the country.
They need never come here again, for their job is well and truly done.
That it was done by the citizens and the government of America, keepers of
that murdered dream, is the greatest victory of all.
The only hope, the last hope, for a nation based upon an idea is the simple
truth that no good thing ever truly dies. Like the phoenix, it can rise in
glory from the ashes of its own conflagration. Today, the dream that was
America has ceased to exist. Tomorrow, it may come again. If it does, it
will happen only because the citizens of the country who are the keepers of
the flame decide to again place upon their shoulders the yoke of
responsibility that was for so long scorned and ignored.
The citizens of that idea must take back the government that has so casually
and fearfully destroyed their freedoms. They must snatch victory from the
jaws of defeat. They must send these newly incarnated Stuarts out into
disgrace. They must cast the Great Seal of corrupt rulers into the frigid
waters, drowning it once and for all.
Do not forget the dream that was America. Do not let your children forget.
The Greatest Sedition is Silence
by William Rivers Pitt
"The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous
actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an
infamous reputation with posterity."
- Tacitus
The argument is simple: it is in the best interest of the nation that
nothing controversial regarding the administration be publicly discussed.
To do so would undermine all efforts currently directed towards bringing the
terrorists to justice, and would unnerve a populace bombarded hourly with
reports of anthrax contaminations. The maintenance of this best-interest
argument relies completely on the idea that the administration deserves
total freedom of action, and the belief that everything they are doing is
directed towards protecting us and capturing the butchers.
The great trust Americans are laying at the feet of George W. Bush and his
administration is being horribly abused. Under normal circumstances, e.g.
the days before September 11th, this would perhaps raise some eyebrows and
earn a goodly share of vitriol on the editorial pages. Now, with all that
is at stake, such abuses are criminal and treasonous. Worse, they are being
ignored in the name of unity and patriotism by much of the media.
If the American people come to the realization that those responsible for
their safety are nothing more than 21st century robber barons, the delicate
latticework of faith and tightly controlled fear within the populace will
shatter. God help us all if this should occur, for it will signify nothing
less than total victory for the murderers who attacked us.
Under this patriotic cloak of absolute faith, the Bush administration is
engaged in crimes and constitutional perversions that besmirch the very
essence of our American system. Their actions undermine the premise
described above completely and totally. They do not deserve our trust, and
do not deserve the shroud of trusting silence that has been enveloped around
them. They must be called to account for it. As Bill Moyers so eloquently
stated in his speech on October 16th, the greatest sedition at this point is
our silence.
The betrayal began in earnest with the passage of Bush's stimulus package,
which gives vast swaths of our tax dollars to massive corporations who are
still turning a healthy profit in these economically trying days. They are
in the black while many Americans dive headlong into the red, and yet it is
the financially sound corporations who will receive 80% of the stimulus. No
provision has yet been created to provide protection for the scores of
Americans who are out of work.
The airline industry has received a massive financial bailout. The
insurance industry has come to Bush with hat in hand, and will be rewarded.
For working Americans there is nothing, and nothing, and nothing but the
fraudulent promise of trickle-down economic principles that has been proven
time and again to be empty. Despite all that has happened, Bush clings yet
to greedy conservative economic concepts that reward the top 1% immediately
while relying on some absurd concept of financial gravity to assuage the
needs of the rest of us. It did not work for Reagan, and it will not work
today. Still, they persist.
Then came the airline security bill. Millions of Americans need to fly for
their livelihoods, and millions more require that passenger flow to maintain
their businesses. Visions of aircraft slamming into buildings still dance
in everyone's heads, and getting onto an airplane today requires more
courage than the average American ever expected to have to display on their
own soil. A vast majority of these people want and need assurances that
these planes are safe. The economics of the airline industry, and the
cottage industries that have grown around it, demand that sense of security.
The airline industry, presumably, knows this. It was their security failure
in large part that helped the terrorists attack us, because they chose for
years to scrimp on security in the name of the bottom line. That bottom
line apparently remains the dominant consideration, despite the Federal
bailout, because the airline industry lobbied hard against the airline
security legislation proposed by the Senate.
The Senate wanted to Federalize airline security, but the lobbyists would
have none of it, because it would cost too much. The House threw it out
along near-perfect party lines, augmenting American fears that an airplane
they board could become yet another fuel bomb.
The airline industry lobbyists were not the only ones working against the
legislation. George W. Bush was lobbyist in chief, arguing against
Federalization of airliner security in the face of massive public support
for the idea. His reasoning broke yet again along conservative partisan
lines. Bluntly, Bush apparently fears the unionization of these new Federal
workers more than he fears another airline-borne terrorist attack. Perhaps
he knows something we do not, but it is far more likely that he does not
want the Democratic Party to gain 33,000 more votes from newly-unionized
employees.
The cognitive dissonance involved in this process is baffling until the
political cards are laid down. Bush wants to help the economy, wants to
assuage our fears, wants us to continue our lives with as much normalcy as
possible. Yet his actions on behalf of the airline industry will not calm
American fears of flying, which will make it difficult to return to normal,
which will keep us off the airplanes and further damage the economy.
Lay those cards down, and the answer comes clear. In the name of politics,
Bush is willing to gamble with our financial and personal security. This is
a betrayal of staggering proportions. In the current context, it is a
crime. It is treason. He does not deserve our silence. We aid and abet
his treason if we acquiesce to the stern-browed patriotism represented by
tattered flags on automobile antennas.
This is the administration that has been handed unprecedented power after
the passage of the PATRIOT Anti-Terrorism bill of 2001. In this bill lies
the ability of Federal investigators to tap telephones without warrants. In
it lies the ability of Federal investigators to enter your home without a
warrant, search your belongings and personal papers, and attach a device to
your computer that can record every keyboard keystroke you make. This
"sneak and peek" provision is outlined in Section 213 of the bill, and is a
stake through the heart of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
Have the actions of this administration to date given them the right to
expect our trust in this? Absolutely not. The anti-terrorism bill could be
harmless enough in the hands of a benign administration that can be trusted
to seek the health, welfare, safety and security of the people. This is not
such a government. By giving them this power, we have placed the noose
around our own necks. Before we drop to our doom, we must take that power
back. We cannot allow Bush to have it, because he is demonstrably unworthy
of it.
Bush and his administration should fear the judgment of history. By their
most recent actions, it is made clear that they already do. Yet their
recent actions have been aimed at thwarting history, denying it, hiding it,
burying it at midnight. On November 2nd, Bush signed an executive order
that will forever seal all Presidential documentation. This executive order
further states that any President may bottle up the papers of any former
President, even if that former President wants them released.
This order shreds the Presidential Records Act, legislated by Congress in
1978 in the wake of Watergate. Any persons who now wish to view
Presidential records must demonstrate a "specific need" to see them, the
gravity of that need to be decided by the administration.
Why?
68,000 pages of communications between Ronald Reagan and his advisers were
due for release last January. Many people in Bush's current administration
were part of the Reagan cabal, and would have their names and deeds all over
these papers. The most notable name that would be found within these papers
is George Herbert Walker Bush. The administration managed to par off this
release for months, but in the end ran out of excuses for doing so. This
executive order is the last gasp, created in the name of "national
security."
The audacity of this action is staggering. Even the stupefyingly naive must
see through this farce for what it is: a betrayal of the Freedom of
Information Act meant solely to protect members of this current
administration for being called to task for their actions. The truth of the
Iran/Contra scandal is likely in these papers, something that Bush Sr. would
just as soon see burned.
What else is in these papers? Which members of the current administration
have a vested interest in seeing them buried forever? Why?
Finally, if this administration is so worthy of our trust, as we have been
lead to believe, how can we maintain our faith in the face of this betrayal
of history? Why can't they tell us the truth? If they are indeed hiding
nefarious and criminal actions taken two decades ago, what on earth should
give us faith that they can be trusted today?
The acts perpetrated on September 11th did not erase or recast the
definition of dishonesty. In fact, it has solidified that definition as we
know it. America, with all she has suffered, deserves far better than what
we have in power today. We cannot allow these immoral and fraudulent robber
barons to range about unchecked, unsanctioned, and uncontrolled. They do
not deserve our trust.
The time has come for the Left to overcome what has for years been their
Achilles heel. The Left trusts Government - not this government, but the
idea of Government. It is visceral, given to us with mother's milk. We see
injustice and call our U.S. Senators, or write the White House, or send off
scathing letters to the editor. We believe this level of engagement is
satisfactory, because we trust Government to respond to the will of the
people. This is what it is supposed to do.
The current administration has no interest or intention of responding to the
will, or the dire needs, of the American people. This administration is
stealing from us, undermining our safety, and lying to us with their bare
faces hanging out. Our representatives in Congress are not acting
vigorously enough to thwart these crimes. We must, therefore, act in our
own defense, and in the name of true American justice. We must begin yet
another American Revolution, and we must do it within the bounds of the law.
The reasons Al Gore lost the contest in Florida were not first forged in the
polling houses, or in the vicious actions of men like James Baker, or even
in the Supreme Court. The reasons were first forged by the conservative
Republican redirection of energies in 1992. They stopped pestering the
Federal Government and began running their people for low-level offices in
states all across the Union.
By 2000, their people were entrenched in local Florida government, giving
Bush a massive home-field advantage when push came to shove. These
office-holders were able to act with partisan vigor any way they chose, and
their actions killed Gore's chances before Antonin Scalia ever became
involved. Had the Supreme Court not intervened, the Florida legislature
would have chosen the elections in the name of Bush, because the GOP had the
numerical advantage thanks to years of local political work.
Evidence of this redirection of energy is also evident in the conservative
takeover of the House in 1994. The GOP went to the grass roots, running
their people for state offices, priming the field, setting the tone locally
for a push to the Federal level. This effort, in the end, yielded the
criminal administration of George W. Bush.
The Left must abandon their faith in Government, release the idea that
simply shouting up to these representatives is enough to carry the day. We
must look down, into our own neighborhoods and precincts and wards and
districts. We must imitate the victors. We must run our own people locally
all across the country and take back the dialogue. The only effective way
to do this is to work from the bottom up.
With the Left truly in power, the airline industry would not be able to
steal from us with one hand while shredding our security with the other.
With the Left truly in power, corporate greed can be brought to heel, and
real election reform can become a reality. With the Left truly in power,
criminal administrations will be unable to hide behind executive orders
forged in the roiled wake of tragedy.
They have been lying to us, and we can do nothing to stop it today.
Tomorrow, however, is another matter.
This is a call to the Minutemen, to the real American patriots. Stand up
and get to work. The new American Revolution is at hand, and we need
everyone. Run for local office, or support one of us who does so. It will
take time, and it will take patience, but it must be done.
Can such an effort be successful in the current climate? With absolute
certainty, yes it can. The events of September 11th have awakened Americans
to the realization that each and every one of us has a personal and
fundamental stake in the development of justice, democracy and human rights
here and across the globe. We are the targets when these ideals fail. The
current administration acts as though this awakening has not occurred. It
has, and we must act upon it.
Take back the truth. --11/05/01
Order Lets Sitting or Former President Block Release (Washington Post)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27293-2001Nov1.html
Critics Blast Bush Order on Papers (Associated Press)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1102-01.htm
Eating The Sword
by William Rivers Pitt
10/30/01
"Pointed threats they bluff with
scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying."
--
Bob Dylan
Oct. 29, 2001 -- BOSTON (APJP) -- On every car and every
porch flutters an American flag, symbol of pride and strength for the people of
this nation. Bumper stickers make declarations of unity, and lapel pins speak
wordlessly for citizens who still weep at the thought of the dead and the lost.
As the sun prepares to set on the second month of this war, however, it is
becoming clear that those symbols, so proudly displayed, represent a nation
racing towards ignominious defeat.
We are losing this war, not because of the actions of a
clever enemy, but because of dangerously poor leadership in Washington D.C.
As William Shakespeare said, "When valour preys on
reason, it eats the sword it fights with." There is little reason for the
actions George Bush's government has taken to date, valorous or otherwise. In
the end, we may all be forced to eat the sword he is wielding in so cumbersome a
fashion.
In the newest barrage of attacks upon Afghanistan, errant
U.S. munitions struck yet another civilian village. Eight members of a family
were wiped off the face of the earth while gathered at the breakfast table. The
mother, lone survivor of the attack, was quoted by BBC reporters: "What
shall I do now? Look at their savageness. They killed all of my children and
husband."
This is but one instance of the ravaging effect of this
war upon non-combatants in the region. United Nations relief workers are
anticipating between 300,000 and one million refugees coming to them in dire
straits as the winter begins to wind a death shroud around the country. These
relief workers are helpless before the tide, trapped by the knowledge that they
will be unable to do much of anything to prevent massive death and misery in the
coming weeks.
Beyond the toll this horror will inevitably take upon the
soul of this nation, the tactical outlook is bleak. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
and his generals have expressed surprise at the resilience and strength of the
Taliban warriors who have been the main focus of our attacks. The fact that
history has time and again proven Afghan warriors to be quite good at defeating
foreign invaders while fighting barefoot in the snow apparently has made no
purchase within the Pentagon.
Rumsfeld and his warriors have taken great pains to inform
the Afghan populace that this war is not being waged against them. This message
is blunted by an effective Taliban propaganda campaign that uses deaths like
those described above to good effect. Many fighters in Pakistan do not even need
to hear well-crafted messages within the media. They can look across the border
to Afghanistan and see the thousands of civilians living in filth after fleeing
the bombs.
10,000 Pakistani warriors have left their homes to join
the Taliban forces. Armed with Klasnikov rifles, rocket launchers, missiles,
grenades, anti-aircraft guns and even swords, members of a militant group called
Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi have surged across the border and headed for
Kabul. Joining their ranks are some 4,000 ordinary villagers who volunteered for
duty.
This is the nightmare scenario, one whose rise was all too
apparent.
Every time we kill a civilian, every time we level a
house, every time we strike terror into the innocents in Afghanistan and cause
them to flee into misery and death, we give birth to new warriors for the Jihad.
Every one of these new volunteers must be killed, according to the Bush battle
plan, and their deaths will give rise to more and more warriors seeking revenge
for a lost loved one.
The Greeks feared the Hydra for a reason. Every time one
head was cut off, another rose snarling in its place. We are creating, every
day, more enemies who will die in the fight against us. It is clear that the
order of battle, comprised in haste and fear by the Bush administration, is not
only failing to defeat the chosen foe, but is in fact making the task more
difficult by orders of magnitude.
Even more disquieting is the waning moon, sign that the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan is fast approaching. Our propaganda has failed to
sway nations already hardened in hatred against us. Rumsfeld and Bush now seem
prepared to continue the bombing right through this holy season. The wrath and
vitriol aimed at us thus far will pale in comparison to what will come if we
defile these sacred days. The ranks of the Taliban and Al Qaeda will swell yet
again with men who become convinced by our actions that this is, in fact, a war
against Islam itself.
Amazingly, the failures of leadership in Washington are
even more evident on the home front. The administration, in concert with the
CDC, decided to publicly play down the threat of anthrax contamination, despite
the fact that a virulent strain made its way through the postal service to
Senator Daschle's office. Two dead mailmen later, we see the result of this
folly.
The envelope to Daschle was passed through the mail
system, apparently spraying spores in all directions. Rather than rush to
determine the scope of contamination possible when anthrax is passed through a
major mail processing system, we were told to hush, relax, be at ease, shop.
Mail carriers were specifically told there was no danger. The administration's
priorities -- calm and soothe before investigation and fact -- are clearly not
effective when facing a genuine threat. One wonders how far the contamination
spread because of these priorities.
One wonders how well they will handle an attack with an
agent like smallpox, which is decidedly more deadly and difficult to contain.
Thus far, the actions of this administration do not being a sense of safety and
security. That in itself is a terrible defeat, one that is sure to be magnified
if another attack does come.
In the rush to determine who is responsible for these
anthrax attacks, administration officials have been quick to suggest that Iraq
is a likely suspect. Certainly, the biological weapons program of that nation is
of great concern, and the possibility that they or another nation might have had
a hand in this attack. Focusing on that one possibility alone, however, may
cause Federal investigators to miss what appears to be the most likely set of
suspects: home-grown American extremists on the far Right.
The letters mailed to Daschle and to broadcaster Tom
Brokaw were dated September 11th but mailed many days later, an apparently
craven attempt to link their attack to the airplane bombers. The date itself is
written in the American style, 9-11-01, rather than the European/Arabic fashion,
11-9-01. The handwriting on the letters slope from left to right; an individual
schooled in the Arabic style would have handwriting that sloped from right to
left.
The extreme American Right, represented by groups like the
National Alliance, the Army of God, and the Aryan Nation, have long coveted
biological weapons of mass destruction. Survivalist militiaman and
microbiologist Larry Wayne Harris successfully placed an order for Yersinia
pestis, the organism that causes bubonic plague, in 1995. Members of a group
called the Minnesota Patriots Council were arrested in 1994 for making the toxin
ricin. There are many examples of these groups making, or trying to make,
weapons like anthrax.
These groups have greeted the attacks of September 11th
with what can only be described as savage glee. Fearful of a Zionist world
conspiracy, as hateful towards American multiculturalism as the narrowest
fundamentalist Muslim cleric, many of these groups have decided that the enemy
of their enemy is their friend. It is not so far out of bounds to believe that
one group may have gone beyond angry rhetoric to action.
130 family planning clinics across the country, including
Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, received threatening
letters that contained an unidentified powder during the week of October 15th.
Several of the letters mentioned the Army of God, a virulent anti-abortion group
that actively espouses the killing of doctors who provide abortions.
According to Attorney General Ashcroft, any act that
threatens the use of anthrax shall be considered terrorism, and shall be
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Clinics where women go for prenatal
care and gynecological exams, as well as for abortions, received 130 of these
threats. This is by far the largest terrorist act to take place in this country
since September 11th. Despite his words, no action has been taken by Ashcroft to
determine who is responsible, nor has the media reported on it at all.
Senator Barbara Boxer was forced to write Ashcroft a
public letter demanding an investigation into these attacks. The fact that such
a demand even needed to be made is a colossal failure, and quite possibly an
indication of the true mindset of Ashcroft's Justice Department. Mr. Ashcroft is
a known opponent of abortion, and has displayed in several publications his
affinity for causes and ideals shared by many extreme right groups.
If his political predilections distract him from
instigating an investigation into groups that could well be responsible for the
anthrax threats leveled at Washington and these clinics, a deadly enemy within
will be allowed to range about unpunished and unrestrained. It is difficult to
imagine a worse failure.
Yet imagination is a terrible thing, especially when it's
darkest forebodings burst forth into reality. Calls for unity from the
Republican leadership, in concert with an effort to quash any questions about
their handling of this crisis, may shatter under the weight of their own
hypocrisy. Partisanship must be laid aside, we are told, and the Democratic
party has surged en masse to salute this ideal. They bear throats begging to be
slashed by GOP profiteers who are too happy to wield the knife.
Bush and his allies in the House have passed a $100
billion "stimulus package" that was wrapped securely in the flag and
soaked with patriotic rhetoric. The package is needed, we are told, to bolster a
weak economy further damaged by the September 11th attack. The fine print of
this bill reveals it to be nothing more than the second half of a financial
windfall promised to Bush's corporate campaign backers.
Only 30% of the money earmarked for this bill will go to
individuals. The rest of the money is being delivered to General Motors, IBM,
and scores of other corporations who were fairing well in the new economic
climate. The effect of this stimulus plan will be felt most acutely by
individual states, who will lose billions of dollars in tax revenue because of
it. How this will generate an economic revival is a mystery, and a betrayal of
all the states-rights arguments we have heard from the GOP for generations.
In fact, this package is nothing more than compensation to
corporations and their lobbyists who supported Bush's enormous and irresponsible
$1.35 tax cut bill last winter. That bill did not do for these corporations what
they wanted, and they are being rewarded for their patience with this one. This
has nothing to do with patriotism, national defense, or the revival of the
economy. This is old-school patronage passed under the veil of national
mourning, and it is a travesty.
This from the people who held up the defense
appropriations bill in the Senate last week in an attempt to force the Democrats
to accept right-wing judicial nominations. The attempt failed, as will many
aspects of this stimulus bill once it reaches Daschle's desk. The very idea that
such attempts are being made is nauseating, and dangerous. If our political
unity in the face of this terrorist threat is shattered by the greed of the GOP,
the nation's safety will be imperiled even further.
Speaking of imperiled safety, Bush and friends don't want
airline security jobs to become Federally-controlled, because doing so would
swell the ranks of the unions. This is, like the stimulus package, a partisan
decision that affects the safety and well-being of millions of Americans.
Federalized airport security teams would receive better training and pay, and
would go a long way towards defending the country against attacks like those
that came September 11th.
In Bush's mind, however, more people carrying union cards
are a greater threat to America than airborne bombs made of jet fuel and people.
Better to keep them free of union entanglements. Better to have people guarding
our lives who would, in the words of Democrat Max Cleland, see a job at a fast
food restaurant as a promotion.
In one wretched way, the terrorists have already won. The
anti-terrorism bill that was recently passed under the horribly ironic euphemism
of PATRIOT gives unprecedented access to personal phone calls and electronic
messages to both the FBI and CIA. Warrants no longer shall require that a person
is notified if his home and belongings are searched by Federal investigators.
This brazen violation of privacy rights is something called a "sneak and
peek" provision, codified in section 213 of the bill, and is in direct
violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The anti-terrorism bill deserves a close read by every
American, for within it lies the death and destruction of so much we hold dear.
In many ways, the bill marks the end of freedom and democracy in this country.
We are no longer secure in thought, word and deed. Our homes are open to
invasion and search without notification. Our email and internet habits are
fodder for clandestine tapping.
We are losing this war. Our bombs in Afghanistan are not
bringing to justice those who perpetrated the acts of September 11th, and are
creating more enemies who will fight to see us die. We are stumbling about like
fools trying to deal with the threat of anthrax while mailmen die and viable
suspects evade investigation. Our tax dollars, vitally needed to defend the
economy and the country, are being spent to reward corporations for their
support of the GOP agenda. Our airports remain sieves through which more deadly
threats may pour unchecked. Our homes and private communications are made of
glass.
There is no guarantee that we will win this fight, no
guarantee that our dead will be avenged by the steady hand of justice. If
matters continue as the have to this point, we are sure to be defeated. The
potential of the next American century, so bright a year ago, will fall to dust.
Our children will never know the rights we so freely took for granted. Our dead
will rest uneasily.
Elections matter.
References:
US
bomb kills 10 in Kabul (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1624000/1624156.stm
TNSM
supporters head for Kabul (Dawn Newsgroups)
http://www.dawn.com/2001/10/28/top7.htm
Playing
Down Anthrax Risk Has Cost Us (Los Angeles Times)
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-000085242oct26.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dpe%2Dcalifornia
U.S.
fringe groups praising terrorist actions (Chicago Tribune)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0110270173oct27.story
Letter
from Senator Boxer to Attorney General Ashcroft (truthout.com)
http://www.truthout.com/10.27B.Boxer.Ashcroft.htm
An
Economic Stimulus Bill With Corporations in Mind (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/27/business/27HAND.html
Safeguard
the sky (San Diego Union Tribune)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/fri/opinion/news_1ed26bottom.html
Cyber-liberties
swept away by tidal wave of security concerns (MSNBC.com)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/646793.asp?cp1=1#BODY
The Man Behind The Curtain
by William Rivers Pitt
10/25/01
"Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the
clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth." ~Virginia Woolf
October 24, 2001—In the early months of 1962, General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President Kennedy, wanted a war. Part of a cabal of extreme right wing anti-communist
Cold Warriors within the Pentagon, General Lemnitzer believed Kennedy had gone soft on communism and Castro. Kennedy had put any and all provocative action against Cuba on hold, and ordered only the
gathering of intelligence data. (Information regarding Operation Northwoods was provided by James Bamford's book, "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency," pp. 82–91)
For, General Lemnitzer, this was totally unacceptable. Further frustrated by the fact that Castro himself had failed to do anything that would demand an invasion of Cuba, General Lemnitzer and
his cabal planned an action called Operation Northwoods. Bluntly, this operation called for acts of terrorism within the United States perpetrated by agents of the United states loyal to Lemnitzer.
A plan, crafted in exquisite detail, was drafted describing the scope of Operation Northwoods, and was later signed in approval by all of the Joint Chiefs. Citizens would be shot in the
streets. Boats of Cuban refugees would be sunk on the high seas. Bombings would be perpetrated within Washington, DC, and Miami. There were even plans to fake the hijacking, and later the destruction, of
a civilian aircraft.
Phony evidence would then be provided pointing a finger at Castro. The American people, in their outrage, would demand a full invasion of Cuba. General Lemnitzer would have his war.
Needless to say, Operation Northwoods was never put into effect. When directly asked by Congress whether plans were afoot for the invasion of Cuba, General Lemnitzer swore an oath and said no.
Eventually, he was removed from his position. Operation Northwoods became buried under subsequent events, a forgotten idea for more than 40 years.
It is an appalling thing to know that such an idea could even be spoken aloud in the Pentagon. It is comforting to believe General Lemnitzer was on the lunatic fringe, a man obsessed with Cuba
to such a degree that he would be willing to attack his fellow citizens to create the false pretext for war.
Yet, Operation Northwoods was signed off on by all the Joint Chiefs of Staff, leading to the inevitable conclusion that this cavalier and bloodthirsty attitude towards the lives and safety of
American citizens and military personnel was not the exception, but the rule.
This is but one story of our government, of the men behind the curtain. It took 40 years for this story to be told. The reason why such an insidious plot was hidden so completely and for so
long from the eyes of the American people lies within the trust we give to the agencies that are supposed to stand in defense of our country. We give the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, the
Central Intelligence Agency, and to a lesser extent the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the widest possible latitude with vital information, all in the interest of national security.
Today, a war is being fought in Afghanistan and on our own soil. Before the snow flies, it may well expand into a variety of other countries. The purpose of the war is as clear as the twisted
rubble at the end of Lower Manhattan, as clear as the smashed and gutted section of the Pentagon. Terrorism has arrived on American shores, and those who perpetrated these acts must be brought to justice.
We have been told that this is a "new type of war," where secrecy is paramount. The news media has been cut almost completely out of the information loop, relegated to reporting on grainy green
videotapes of nothing highlighted by almost nothing. Those who operate in this new theater do so under the cover of complete darkness.
In light of Operation Northwoods, in light of the legacy of men like General Lemnitzer, and in light of recently revealed information regarding warnings about the Sept. 11 attacks that were
received and virtually ignored by the CIA and FBI, the question of whether our government deserves that cloak of secrecy must be voiced in the strongest possible terms.
According to CIA agents interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, who refused to give their names, a warning about two "bin Laden related individuals" was transmitted to the FBI on Aug. 27, 2001.
The information was classified as "Immediate," one step below the "Flash" warning reserved for the outbreak of war.
Somewhere in the translation, according to the CIA, the veneer of urgency was dropped from the document. The FBI failed to apprehend Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two men named in the CIA
warning who later crashed an airliner into the Pentagon, killing 189 people.
What is disquieting is the simple fact that this warning did exist, and was bungled. The INS was not given the information in a timely fashion, and was unable to block the entry of Almihdhar
and Alhazmi, which it could well have done.
The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs was likewise kept uninformed of the threat and warning. This bureau is responsible for issuing visas to foreign visitors, and in fact gave one
to suspected terrorist Mohamed Atta, because the information was not shared. The head of the Consular Affairs Bureau, Mary Ryan, commented angrily before Congress that she was "surprised how much we
learned in the immediate aftermath" of Sept. 11.
Likewise, the airline industry could have been warned to stop passengers with names matching those on the alert from boarding any aircraft, had they been provided the information. None of this
happened. The terrorists managed to walk through a wide variety of governmental firewalls, up the ramps to those aircraft, and into the cockpits unmolested.
At this point, the questions must turn to dark corners, places from whence monstrous plots like Operation Northwoods have sprung.
A former Los Angeles Police Department field officer and narcotics agent named Michael C. Ruppert, who twice turned down recruitment overtures from the CIA before being forced out of the
department for questioning CIA involvement in civil police affairs, has leveled some disturbing accusations.
Some very strange transactions regarding United and American Airlines took place in the days before the Sept. 11 attacks. Similarly odd transactions took place regarding Morgan Stanley, Merrill
Lynch, and a variety of other prominent companies who made their homes in the World Trade Center towers. These transactions, made in astoundingly large volume, were essentially betting that certain
stocks would lose an enormous amount of value.
On Sept. 11, planes from United Airlines and American Airlines crashed into the World Trade Center and those stocks immediately sank. Whoever made the transactions reaped an enormous profit:
$16 million alone for trades on the airline stocks.
Mr. Ruppert was interviewed recently by Kellia Ramares and Bonnie Faulkner on "Guns and Butter" that aired on KPFA in Berkeley, on the subject of the CIA's involvement with Wall Street. He
provided the following information:
"One of the primary functions of the Central Intelligence Agency by virtue of its long and very close history of relationships with Wall Street, I mean to the point where the current
executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange is a retired CIA general counsel, has had a mandate to track, monitor, all financial markets worldwide, to look for anomalous trades, indicative of
either economic warfare, or insider currency trading or speculation which might affect the US Treasury, or, as in the case of the Sept. 11 attacks, to look for trades which indicated foreknowledge of
attacks like we saw.
"One of the vehicles that they use to do this is a software called Promis software, which was developed in 1979 . . . and Promis is very unique for two reasons: first of all, it had the ability
to integrate a wide range of databases using different computer languages and to make them all into one readable format. And secondly, in the years since, Promis has been mated with artificial
intelligence to even predict moves in markets and to detect trades that are anomalous, as a result of those projections."
Mr. Ruppert said that the CIA, with all of its abilities and with its careful observation of financial transactions, should have seen the Sept. 11 attacks coming a mile away. He further
asserted that the CIA let the attacks happen to further the economic and military agenda of the current administration.
The first assertion, that the CIA should have been able to detect a pattern in the financial trades and been able to act in the defense of the country, connects nicely with the botched warning
of Aug. 27. The terrible scenario that develops is that the CIA, with its budget declared a state secret and with all of the trust given in the name of national security, failed in spectacular fashion to
do its job.
The second assertion, that the CIA knew of the attacks and allowed them to happen in order to provide inertia for a variety of governmental agendas, is almost blasphemous in its implications.
Only the existence of plans like those delineated in Operation Northwoods makes the accusation even worth consideration.
The first assertion gives birth to the second. How could such a powerful and far-seeing agency like the CIA have so thoroughly failed to perceive and thwart such a monstrous threat, unless that
ignorance was deliberate?
One thing is certain. Every agency tasked with the care and protection of this nation failed in its duty on Sept. 11, and thousands of Americans died as a result. The justification for the
billions of dollars in budgetary allocations these agencies receive from our tax dollars has disappeared in a ball of flaming dust. Unless and until this catastrophe is set right, these agencies will no
longer deserve our trust or our money.
As for the assertions above raised, assertions that use words like "complicity" and "foreknowledge," they will not go away. Operation Northwoods makes anything and everything possible. Until this matter
is settled appropriately, the CIA stands in taint of high treason and murder. It's time to pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
CIA, FBI Disagree on Urgency of Warning
The CIA's Wall Street Connections
New Solutions for an Old War
by William Rivers Pitt
10/14/01
"If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts,
avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result
for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of
promiscuous misery."
- Albert Einstein
Turn on the television and find a news station, and you will be greeted
within seconds by a graphic, and by suitably dramatic music, that tells us
we are engaged in America's New War. You will be reminded that we were
attacked out of nowhere by entities that hate our freedom. You will be
counseled to understand that everything has changed.
In his recent prime time press conference, George W. Bush took the long
walk, a la Reagan, down the red-carpeted hallway to the East Room of the
White House and answered about twelve questions. In one response, he
professed amazement at the hatred our new enemies hold for us. We're so
good, he claimed. How could they miss that?
The answer to that question embarrasses all the networks that tell us we are
involved in a 'new' war, and should embarrass a President whose oft-repeated
disdain for reading has left him with little historical understanding for
our current circumstances.
For you see, this is not a new war at all, nor is it a new world, nor has
everything changed.
This is a very old war that has been raging for decades. There are nations,
some of whom are apparently complicit in the 9/11 attacks, who believe that
they have been at war with the United States for twenty years. The
destruction of the Trade Towers and a section of the Pentagon was not a
lightning-strike from a blameless sky. It was a bold tactical stroke by an
enemy that has, for the first time, managed to strike back.
This is not a new world, and nothing has changed. America has been rudely
and horrifyingly awakened to the circumstances of the world around them.
The cushion provided by two oceans, 2,000 nuclear missiles, and a media
establishment that quails from reporting what is actually happening
elsewhere because of our policies, has been ripped from under us.
Welcome to the world, America. This is what life is like for many, many
nations.
Now that we are here, at last aware of the war that we have been waging for
a generation, we must analyze our reaction and decide if the course we have
set is just, proper, worthy of the lives of our servicepeople, and above
all, winnable .
As it stands today, I am against this war.
I am against this war because it is being fought in exactly the wrong way.
Pursued as it is, we will soon find ourselves facing a united Muslim world
that has a long laundry list of grievances against us to begin with. A
united Pan-Islamic Front is precisely what bin Laden wants, and by strafing
the rubble in Afghanistan, we are skipping gaily into his arms.
The more civilians we kill, the stronger and more sympathetic we make bin
Laden to a poor and enraged Muslim world. Continue to support this bombing
campaign and you are feeding the fires that will burn us all out of house
and home.
I am against this war because the millions of Afghan civilians who escape
the bombs can look forward to unknown amounts of time eating grass and
drinking poisoned water in deathtrap refugee camps. We dropped 37,000 meals
on Afghanistan when the bombing started, which leaves, by my math, 6,963,000
people who need to eat.
There is dying, and there is dying. Among those who flee will undoubtedly be
thousands who listen to clerical rhetoric against America and decide, in
their despair, that strapping Semtex to their chests and boarding a plane is
preferable to a squalid death far from home at the hands of an unseen
bomb-dropping enemy.
Better to die on you feet than live on your knees, right? I would bet the
farm that many of those now fleeing our bombs will come to decide the same
thing. Again, we put the barrel of the gun to our own heads.
The head of the largest Islamic group in Pakistan has called for the
overthrow of that government. If Pakistan falls, as it may well do, the
fundamentalists will have nuclear weapons. On that road lies total
annihilation. India, China and Russia will immediately go 'red-alert' if
Pakistan falls. If just one bomb goes off over there, all of our Cold War
night sweats will become a reality.
Besides, who says those Pakistan-based fundamentalists can't cart one of
those bombs over here, should they get their hands on them?
I am against this war because Afghanistan is a convenient target whose
ultimate destruction will do little to win 'The War On Terrorism.' bin Laden
will survive and flee, and the thousands of Al Qaeda terrorists in places
like Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Germany, Ireland, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland
and Los Angeles will be totally unharmed.
Afghanistan is a straw man. Yes, they are repressive. Yes, they treat women
unspeakably. They did so on September 10th, and I heard no one advocate the
limitless bombing of that country on that day or any day before it.
I have heard in several forums the comparison of bin Laden and the Taliban
to Hitler and the Nazis. That is a joke. bin laden has no mechanized army to
roll on Poland or France, nor does he have a Navy to close sea lanes, nor
does he have an air force, nor even a nation. The Taliban are not a
government. They are a gang.
This is a war between two rich power-brokers - Bush and bin Laden - that is
gambling with all of our lives. bin Laden is no Hitler. He is a lunatic who
kills us with weapons and training we provided him.
In that, he is like Saddam Hussein, another lunatic who kills people with
weapons and training we provided him. Also like bin Laden, Hussein was
compared to Hitler by Bush Sr.. The comparison did not, and does not, hold
water. It did, however, manage to get us all whipped up as we are now.
Waving the bloody shirt of Hitler is exactly what Bush wants you to do,
because it obscures clear and critical thinking. Being afraid right now is
understandable, but lashing out with that fear and destabilizing the planet
is stupid and suicidal.
If we continue to lash out, if we continue to bomb the nothing that is
Afghanistan, bin Laden can fulfill his Pan-Islamic dreams. He will unite
the Muslim world against us, and will then have the capability to become
Hitler. He's not there yet, but is helped on his way with such inflammatory
and inaccurate comparisons.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has described this conflict as a 'new Cold War.'
That war lasted from Truman to Bush Sr., and the circumstances we are
currently enduring are a direct result. I refuse to even consider supporting
something that will create a new 45-year war.
The old Cold War gave us nuclear weapons in all corners of the globe, Korea,
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Iraq, the Gulf War, the Red Scare, the
Black Lists, McCarthy, Hoover, anthrax weapons, smallpox weapons, Star Wars,
massive ecological destruction, and yes, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
The ultimate fallacy behind the idea that this is a new war lies in the fact
that we are fighting it in a very old-fashioned way. Bombing a defenseless
nation will not stop terrorism. It will not allay the fears of our
populace, who are bombarded daily with reports of anthrax infections.
All the bombing of Afghanistan will do is create new jihad warriors who are
ready to die so as to see you die. In their rage and despair, they will
sign up willingly. Our so-called endless war will become a reality, as we
manufacture droves of the very people we seek to destroy. It will never
end.
Let us speak of new solutions for this old war:
1. Immediately recognize a Palestinian State, and pull out all the stops to
broker a peace deal. Beat Arafat and Sharon about the head and shoulders
until they come to an agreement that will stop the unspeakable suffering of
the Palestinian people while ensuring the safety and security of Israel.
Make Jerusalem a UN Protectorate guarded by Swiss troops, or some equally
uninvolved nation. This is no longer an eternally nagging problem. It is the
lynchpin upon which peace or total destruction will turn.
2. Take the billions of dollars we are currently spending to destroy rubble
and mud in Afghanistan and turn it into food, medicine, radios, propaganda,
clothing, seeds. If we can read Mullah Abdul bin Tallal bin Alla bin
Mustafa's watch as he rides his camel through the Kaybher pass with our
satellites, we can feed and clothe these people, because we are clever. Who
says a Marshall Plan has to come after a war? With a concentrated effort,
all the Taliban warriors in Afghanistan won't be able to stop it. They will
fall.
3. Continue what had been shaping up to be an excellent diplomatic course.
Cut off terrorist funding. Organize the coalition to marshal every iota of
intelligence ability to tracking, arresting and convicting terrorists in
every corner of the globe. Before we started bombing, we had massive
cooperation. That may evaporate in a cloud of outrage soon, and the
aforementioned safe terrorists will not have the combined might of the
international community looking for them anymore.
4. Stop bombing Afghanistan. Hundreds of civilians have been killed already
by errant munitions. We have already created more terrorists. Stop the
bombing and stop this genesis. We've got Special Forces in Afghanistan
right now lazing 'targets', i.e. mudpiles and rubble. Reconstitute their
mission to search-and-destroy mode. Shoot these Al Qaeda fighters between
the eyes from 1,000 yards out...you know we can do it.
These actions will strip bin Laden and the Taliban of their most potent
weapon - the ability to generate outrage in the Muslim world. If we are not
bombing cities, if we are actively seeking peace between Palestine and
Israel, if we are lobbing tons of food and supplies at Afghan civilians,
nothing bin Laden can say or do will be able to deflect the obvious fact
that America is not being belligerent to yet another Muslim country. His
ranting will make him and his friends more and more isolated, and a well-fed
Afghan populace with the Northern Alliance hot on their heels will make some
good changes.
There are problems which require cures on the home front, as well:
1. Restore Congressional oversight to its full Constitutional stature.
Bush has sworn to limit the flow of data to Congress. This must not stand.
Harry Truman investigated America's conduct of World War II while a Senator,
and Congress investigated several facets of the Vietnam War. Both actions
helped America in its actions. We can not lose this essential aspect of our
government in the rush to battle.
2. The Republican Party must immediately cease its attempts to pass
partisan legislation under the guise of military necessity. The war will
not be helped by tax cuts, nor will it be helped by drilling for oil in the
Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, nor will it be helped by a ceaseless
barrage of denunciations aimed at President Clinton. If this does not
cease, our much ballyhooed unity will fall to dust, and rightly so.
3. Immediately begin Congressional investigations into the spectacular
failures by the FBI, CIA, NSA and the security sections of the national
airlines that allowed this travesty to take place with nary a word of
warning.
4. A complete analysis of our international policies over the last fifty
years must be immediately undertaken. We must determine where our own
actions have helped bring this old war to our shores. From our toppling of
the Iranian government, to Palestine, to Lebanon, to the sanctions on Iraq,
our policies have left many large and damaging footprints. Before we can
get to how we will win, we must first undertake to fully understand why it
all happened. Simply being amazed at the hatred of our enemies is not
enough, and does scant justice to the American lives that have been lost.
There is one last truth we all have to face when considering this war:
Absolutely, positively nothing we can say or do will completely end the
threat of terrorism in this country.
Nothing.
It's here, friends. For 225 years we were protected by those two oceans and
2,000 nuclear missiles. Those days are gone. We were protected and isolated
from our policies, our wars, our mistakes and our evils. Not anymore.
We did not deserve the attack we have absorbed, but neither did those whom
we have attacked, or helped others to attack. Nobody deserves it, but it has
done by us and in our name for generations. The Bible says that he who
troubles his own house shall inherit the wind. We have troubled this house
for a long time, and that wind has begun to blow hard and strong.
9/11 was merely an upping of an ante that has been bid upon for years.
Super-terrorism did not come from nowhere. It is a step on the ladder to
hell, a ladder we did much to place.
Finally, the time has come to ask the really hard question:
If we cannot stop terror without becoming a barricaded, isolated,
totalitarian state - a dark choice that is the only sure cure - then what is
left?
More bombs far away? More civilian death? More feeding of the cycle that
will surely bring more of the same to our shores and theirs?
Or a long, slow, tortured path towards some kind of redemption?
There is no way to win this old war if we fight it the way we have been for
the past several days. The only way to guarantee victory is to transform
the conflict into a genuine New War, one that looks inward as well as
outward.
If we can come up with solutions that do not involve the bombing of
civilians and the creation of new terrorists, we will win. If we can bring
the criminals who attacked us to justice without such tactics, we will win.
If we can foster genuine peace in that tortured region, we will win. If we
can come to understand the desperation and rage that is aimed at us and
change that reality, we will win. If we can maintain democracy in our own
country, we will win.
I'd like to think we can win this new war. To do so, we must discard the
old one, and the old ways in which we fight it.
We Must Dare To Speak Our Minds
September 29, 2001
by William Rivers Pitt
"Never trust thine enemy: for like as iron rusteth, so is his wickedness.
Though he humble himself and go crouching, yet take good heed and beware of
him, and thou shalt be unto him as if thou hadst wiped a looking-glass, and
thou shalt know that his rust hath not been altogether wiped away."
- Apocrypha: Ecclesiasticus 12:10-11
Recently in Boston, noted historian Howard Zinn implored a hall packed with
peace activists to remember, "Governments lie. Governments lie all the time,
because if they tell the truth, they won't be in power for very long."
Those of us who have stood in defiant opposition to the man who took over
the White House by foul means last January, know this truth all too well.
Before September 11th, there were many who did the best they could to keep
track, catalogue and challenge all the lies that flowed from the Oval
Office.
On some days, we felt like Sisyphus. We would roll that rock up the hill and
show it to everyone, and the damned thing would roll right back down over
us.
It seemed, in those days, that we had the Bush administration on the run.
The budget was a catastrophe, the tax cut was dragging our economy into that
ditch laying alongside the information superhighway, and a legion of
Democratic Senators had just finished spending August practicing their
rhetorical broadsides in the bathroom mirror. The recently deceased entities
once known as Social Security and Medicare were about to be laid at Bush's
feet.
There were even rumors that Al Gore was going to emerge and do an "I Told
You So" tapdance all over George's head.
Republican Congresspeople were running for political cover at such an
accelerated rate that they became mere blurs. Bush's energy plan was facing
a brutal savaging in the Senate, because a number of environmentally-minded
members from the ranks of the GOP knew in their hearts that what Bush was
peddling amounted to nothing more than actual, literal poison.
Bush's faith-based initiative promised to fare equally poorly, and his Vice
President was looking forward to subpoenas from the General Accounting
Office because he refused to divulge the width and breadth of the plum that
had been secretly offered to the giants of the energy industry.
In the murky distance, almost too amazing to be believed, lay the results of
the independent review of Florida votes that had been undertaken by a number
of newspapers. No one could guess what it would reveal, but a hint was
delivered to the American public on Monday, September 10th. Newsweek
Magazine ran several articles that all but accused Bush of being a total
fraud.
They did not reveal the results of that review, but one can read between the
lines of their published stories and see the news probably wasn't so good
for Bush. They were getting out ahead of what looked to be a long series of
very bad days for the man from Crawford.
Then.infamy. In the unanimous words of the media industry and those in
political office, everything changed.
It became a pressing moral imperative to get in line behind Bush and declare
absolute solidarity with fellow citizens and with the Government. I, myself,
professed this viewpoint widely. The reversal was jarring, but in those
first terrifying days it seemed necessary beyond measure.
Because, you see, everything had changed.
In the days since the attack I have tried with all my might to hold on to
that feeling of unity with Bush, because I felt I owed it to my fellow
citizens, to the office of the Presidency, and to the nation itself. A voice
inside me hissed that it would be treasonously unpatriotic to do otherwise.
In the end, the truce flag was raised virtually everywhere. Eloquent cries
of anguish and loss were voiced from voices usually engaged in partisan
snarls. We mourned in bleakest sorrow those who died, praised the men and
women who worked to save them, and laid aside our political differences in
the name of the common good. The rising tide that had threatened the Bush
administration broke and receded, and what had been a swelling, powerful
Movement shattered in disarray. It was over.
The spark of outrage, the tiny voice inside that wailed whenever Bush's face
or voice entered our consciousness, never entirely faded, however. We
listened to him and his minions with ears well-trained in detecting
duplicity. Soon enough, even in the depths of this awful crisis, we heard it
again.
It became clear that any voices raised in opposition to anything Bush said
were to be regarded as treasonous. Simply put, that meant all of us. Never
again, under any circumstances, could we question the man at the top.
Those in the media who dared to speak their minds were stomped like roaches.
A reporter from Nebraska was fired for stating in the public prints that
Bush hid like a coward on September 11th. Popular television personality
Bill Maher was subjected to a withering assault and the loss of advertising
revenue for suggesting that launching cruise missiles from 1,000 miles away
was not the bravest moment in American military history.
Once upon a time, words like these were well-protected by our Constitutional
right to free speech. It appeared that the dark prophesy uttered by the
media was indeed true: everything had changed.
Powerful men like John Ashcroft, who inspired the deepest mistrust in us,
demanded an enormous latitude with our civil liberties. We knew him of old,
and shuddered at the thought of such a man wielding so much power over our
very freedom. Once upon a time, the powers he was asking for were beyond
comprehension. But, again, everything had changed.
As a leader, Bush himself showed demonstrable and dangerous flaws. He
appeared helpless to do anything other than refer to the crisis as a
struggle between good and evil, as a Crusade. The very word inflamed
virtually the entire Muslim world, and rightfully so.
He described our attackers as being opposed to our freedoms, assisting in
the broadening of an already endemic case of national amnesia and ignorance
regarding the very history that tragically helped to drive those wretched
madmen to act as they did.
Before September 11th, those of us who actively opposed George W. Bush did
so because were offended by the very idea that an election could be so
conspicuously stolen out from under the American people. We opposed him
because we feared that a man capable of such a nefarious act was capable of
virtually anything. If votes no longer count in America, then freedom itself
stood in peril.
All of our nightmares appear to be coming true. Our freedom to speak as we
wish is under assault. In the media's rush to beat the battle drum, our
national discourse has narrowed even further than what had been before. This
is no small feat.
There is one calamity that has not yet dared be uttered aloud. This unspoken
tragedy is the elephant in the room, obvious to all but commented upon by
none. Simply put, George W. Bush is the wrong man for the job, and cannot be
trusted with the freedom and security of the United States of America. There
is a small comfort to be taken from this. It is perhaps the only fact of our
American life that has not changed at all.
Bush currently enjoys an approval rating of 90%, if the polls are to be
believed. This says nothing about the man himself. A ham sandwich would earn
astronomical approval ratings in a crisis such as this. That number is not a
comment on his leadership abilities, but is a testament to the loyalty of
the American people. He does not deserve it, nor has he, nor will he ever.
This is tragic because I would be willing to surrender some of the freedoms
he is demanding if a person worthy of trust stood in his stead. This is
tragic because the very fact that he is our leader in this crisis compounds
our fears and paranoia, a cruel twist of the knife. This is tragic because
all the sad and sorry truths about him and his administration have been
swept away, leaving him as innocent and blameless as the day he was born. He
does not deserve such a clean slate, nor has he, nor will he ever.
Once upon a time, those of us who stood in opposition to his plans
rightfully believed we were doing our patriotic duty. The time has come
again to raise our battle standards and our voices in dissent. This unspoken
tragedy can not go unchallenged.
We will be called traitors, to be sure. It will be said that we aid the
terrorists, that we believe America deserved to be attacked, that we insult
the memories of the dead by refusing to get in line. These are lies.
There is no underestimating the threat we currently live under, and it is
clear that measures need to be taken to ensure our safety and security.
Likewise, those who brought these horrors to our shores must be brought to
justice. This, too, is a moral imperative. We know these things as well as
anyone.
Nothing in this changes the facts at hand. America is under assault on two
fronts. On one side are the terrorists, a new enemy difficult to track or
thwart. On the other side are Bush and his people, who threaten our lives
and freedoms in equal measure.
Once upon a time, we believed we could remove him, corner him, strip him of
his ability to do our nation harm. We are stuck now with this man from
Crawford, a fact which must be swallowed in the face of all we know about
the election of 2000. In place of our former agenda, a new course must be
forged.
We must remember that dissent is our birthright. We must remind ourselves
that the threat Bush posed to the health and welfare of our country before
September 11th pales in comparison to what he is capable of now. His agenda
is not our agenda, his way is not our way, and his idea of freedom is one we
do not share. Again, here is proof that not everything has changed.
We must once again gather our collective strength and raise our voices
against him if he comes within shouting distance of damaging our country. We
must not be afraid to speak. We must again mount the watchtowers and go
where angels, and too many of our elected representatives, fear to tread.
If it was important on September 10th, it is crucial today. We are still
patriots, lovers of America, and we still have work to do.
Stout hearts. The battle has only just begun. --Democratic Underground, 10/10/01
Ignore This
by William Rivers Pitt
9/26/01
"Ignorance is not innocence but sin."
- Robert Browning
The people of Afghanistan are among the poorest in the world. Many there are
starving and without shelter. They have suffered through a drought that has
lasted for three years, and have been in a perpetual state of war for more
than twenty years. A new conflict there will certainly elevate their misery
by orders of magnitude. Already, U.N. aid workers have fled. If this does
not concern you, ignore this.
American military might is crouched and ready to spring at Afghanistan, the
ruling Taliban, and Osama bin Laden. If an attack does come, untold scores
of innocent civilians, not unlike the people who died in New York and
Washington, will die. This is all happening despite the fact that the Bush
administration has yet to offer a scintilla of proof that these groups bear
the guilt for what happened on September 11th. If this does not trouble you,
ignore this.
American soldiers seem almost certain to invade Afghanistan, perhaps the
most perfectly constructed natural fortress to be found on earth. They have
no intelligence regarding the location, armaments or movements of the forces
they intend to enter conflict with. Few, if any, speak the local dialect.
Winter is less than a month away. If this does not give pause, ignore this.
After so many years of warfare, the terrain of Afghanistan is littered with
some ten million unexploded land mines. If you are unmoved, ignore this.
The last time we entered into a conflict where the land itself stood against
us was in Southeast Asia. There, when unable to defeat a hidden enemy in set
piece battles, we resorted to mass bombings and chemical defoliation of the
terrain. The conflict lasted ten years, and millions of civilians died. If
you don't remember, ignore this.
It is certain that any attack upon Afghanistan, or anywhere else, will
involve the use of 'Smart Weapons' like the ones utilized in the Gulf War.
Those weapons missed their targets over 60% of the time, often striking
civilians. If this does not worry you, ignore this.
The 30% of the 'Smart Weapons' that did find their targets in Iraq destroyed
facilities necessary to civilian survival, including water and sewage
treatment plants. According to UNICEF, some 500,000 children have died in
Iraq due to water-borne diseases, and due to the fact that sanctions do not
permit medicines into the country. This, by any definition, is biological
warfare. If you feel comfortable with repeating that history, ignore this.
Madeline Albright, when confronted with the fact of those 500,000 innocent
deaths, said it was a price we Americans were willing to pay. If you agree,
ignore this.
Speaking of children, another weapon almost sure to be used is something
called a cluster bomb. This device spreads small grenade-like explosives
called 'bomblets' over an area the size of a football field. In Iraq, such
weapons missed their targets over 90% of the time. Many of those bomblets
remain unexploded after impact. They are very colorful and attractive to
children. If this does not worry you, ignore this.
On the home front, a man named John Negroponte has been approved by the
Senate to be America's representative at the United Nations. Negroponte was
the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 through 1985. During that time,
thousands of civilians were slaughtered by government forces sponsored by
the United States. When questioned about it, Negroponte dismissed all the
readily evident bloodshed as rumor. By our new common definition, Mr.
Negroponte is a supporter of terrorism. If you disagree, ignore this.
Because Mr. Negroponte is a representative of the United States, and because
his hands are red with the blood of innocent civilians killed in innumerable
acts of state-sponsored terrorism, it would seem that America will be forced
to bomb and invade itself if it wishes to stay true to the bellicose words
of Mr. Bush. If you are not stricken by the contradictions inherent in this,
ignore this.
The horrors of September 11th have been framed by Mr. Bush as an attack upon
our American freedoms. Attorney General Ashcroft has spent the last two days
trying to convince a timorous Congress that the only way to fight such
threats is to restrict great swaths of our civil liberties. Ergo, we must
save freedom by destroying and restricting it. If this does not strike you
as perilously odd, ignore this.
The enemy of America, we are told, is Terrorism. But by whom? From where?
How is a fight against these shadow men with the angry eyes waged? In the
absence of concrete answers to these desperately important questions, we are
instead told to batten down for what appears to be an eternal state of war.
If this does not frighten you, ignore this.
The man who is telling us these things, George W. Bush, has been earning
high praise for his ability to read words written by others in a clear
manner. Seldom is the substance of his comments commented upon. His use of
the word 'Crusade' in describing our conflict is offensive and frightening
to millions of people who had nothing to do with the attacks against us. If
you are totally confident in his ability to shepherd us through this
terrible time, ignore this.
Those who should be asking the questions have been totally silenced. These
days, to question or (God forbid) dissent is tantamount to treason. Also,
this will be a war waged almost completely in secret, much the way the Gulf
War was. The American media is out of the loop, and has accepted the lapdog
role of beaters of the battle drum with almost incomprehensible ease. If you
have no interest whatsoever in observing what your government is doing
around the world in your name, ignore this.
Thoughtful considerations and debate regarding why this wretched attack has
befallen us have not happened anywhere in public discourse. Instead, we are
placed into siege mentality where thought is buried behind fear. There is
ample evidence that our international activities over the last several
decades had a hand in the deaths of thousands of American civilians on that
Tuesday, and even more evidence that we appear to be gearing up for even
more of an active and violent role in the world. If you do not believe that
history repeats itself, or that our actions have consequences, ignore this.
If you do not believe that desperation, hunger, fear, and political
exploitation create fertile fields for fundamentalist extremism, ignore
this.
If you do not think the way to win this war is to end those terrible
worldwide realities, ignore this.
If you do not believe that war begets war, terror begets terror, fear begets
fear, and that wheel will roll on if we unleash our armies, ignore this.
If your rage and sorrow at what has happened to us has rendered you
incapable of any emotion beyond a desire for revenge, ignore this.
If you have forgotten how to think for yourself, if you agree that dissent
and questions are unpatriotic in a nation founded upon those very ideas,
ignore this.
If you have done what those who pray for war wish you to do and forgotten
everything, ignore this.
If you have learned nothing, ignore this.
I dare you.
Gut-Check
by William Rivers Pitt
9/20/01
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at
the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."
- C. S. Lewis
The events of Tuesday, September 11 have been described in a number of ways.
It has been called another Pearl Harbor. It has been called an act of
war. It has been called a crime.
The new reality that has settled in since the attack has likewise been
described in various ways. We have heard the burgeoning conflict described
as a 'Crusade.' We have heard it explained as a battle against good and
evil. Our society has been called a changed one, where rights are less
important than safety.
Ask my mother what name to bestow upon everything that has happened,
however, and she will use a term that has probably been in my family since
the earliest Irish immigrants in my line beheld the Statue of Liberty for
the first time.
She would call it a gut-check.
Integrity has been described as the quality of the actions one takes when no
one is looking. My mother worked to instill this lesson in me from the
beginning of my life. Living according to that simple code has been a
difficult struggle, one that virtually everyone can relate to in some form
or another.
A gut-check, in my family, is the moment of deliberation when you decide
what to think or do in the aftermath of a calamity or moral dilemma. That
moment can last hours, days or weeks if need be. A gut-check is a test; if
you pass it, it allows you to look into mirrors without fearing what you
will see reflected in your eyes.
The attack upon New York City, upon Washington D.C., upon every civilian and
soldier, upon the entire country, is unquestionably the most frightening and
unnerving and important gut-check this nation has ever faced. Everything
depends upon our reaction to this.
If we, as ordinary citizens, are to gauge our own reaction, it is helpful to
review how those visible in our society have reacted. We may measure
ourselves by them.
Jerry Falwell failed the test in spectacular fashion. His first instinct
was to turn upon those whose lifestyle or politics he finds distasteful and
subject them to a withering verbal assault. In essence, he blamed his
fellow Americans for the horror visited upon us. I am sure the gay New York
City firefighter who rode Tower Two down to dusty death would have an
opinion on this. Sadly, he has no voice now. Therein lies the essence of
Falwell's failure.
The aforementioned firefighter, along with his comrades and those who
answered the call within the New York City police and disaster rescue
departments, cannot be lionized enough. Among the dead and the living
within their ranks walks the pride of a nation. We hold them all in the
light. In this test of tests, these men and women pass with all the flying
colors of the rainbow.
Those within our nation who have turned their anger and fear upon our Muslim
citizens have failed the test in truly bloody fashion. Falwell's attack was
nauseating, to be sure, but in the end was only words. Fists, clubs,
spittle, vitriol and gunfire have rained down upon Americans who share
cultural connections with those who attacked us. The immigrant is the
easiest to blame, and doing so has been a wretched American parlor game
passed from generation to generation like a malignant gene. Those who do
this shame us all.
A number of individuals deserve recognition for passing this test. Rudolph
Giuliani, mayor of New York City, must be singled out in particular. In the
first few days of darkness, Giuliani became the true leader of the nation.
He was seemingly everywhere, never sleeping, healing with one hand and
informing with the other, and all the while he showed everyone what a person
who has passed the gut-check looks like.
To our great misfortune, the entity most able to inform and heal has been
once again perverted to more insidious purposes. The news-providing wing of
the American media establishment has allowed coverage of this event to
merely skim the surface of an important topic, and has likewise kept all but
the narrowest of viewpoints from disbursement to the American public.
With the sole exception of one Nightline episode, and a few programs on PBS,
the news outlets have told us the attack against us came because our enemies
hate our freedoms. No more dangerous an obfuscation could be foisted.
Certainly, within the fundamentalist Islamic community, there are cultural
gulfs. Imams of that wing of the Islamic faith deplore our ability to speak
anything but orthodoxy. The freedoms American women enjoy jar against the
traditions espoused by the Taliban and other fundamentalist sects.
This cultural divide is only a small part of the explanation for Tuesday,
September 11th and does not do just service to the large majority within
Islam that deplores the attacks. The rest of the truth lies in our long and
often disreputable involvement in those regions, for purposes that are as
simple as the numbers on the sign above your local gas station.
This nation must reexamine our priorities, and our history, for we have at
last been taught the horrible lesson that actions have consequences. The
actions of tomorrow, under these new circumstances, do not escape this
immutable law. The media could and should be assisting in this, but do not.
They hide history behind rhetoric, dooming us to repeat what has befallen
us.
Because the media has failed this test, it falls to the common citizens to
seek that information and introspection for themselves. Perhaps the most
common reaction to these attacks has been, "My God, why did this happen?"
The information is out there. This is but one aspect of the gut-check we as
citizens face.
With only a tiny fraction exempted, it can be said that the great body of
the American citizenry have passed the test, and passed it well. We hold
high the flag, and hold each other close. We have given so much money,
food, and supplies that it has become difficult for those collecting it to
know what to do with it. They have been overwhelmed with generosity. We
rally behind our leadership in unprecedented fashion, demonstrating both
solidarity and trust in this time of conflict.
It must also be said that those who wear the military uniform have responded
to the test in excellent fashion. Whether you agree with the combative
course we have set or not, only the wretched speak ill of the soldiers.
These men and women have left aside their lives and embarked without
hesitation into a conflict that has promised casualties.
They do this for us all, and are prepared to give that last full measure of
devotion. Hawk or dove, the courage and integrity of their actions cannot
and should not ever be questioned. Once upon a time we blamed both the
sword and the hand that wields it. We spat upon soldiers returning from a
war they did not start, and we failed for years to honor their sacrifice.
We must not repeat that terrible chapter.
This nation is a republic, meaning that American citizens and soldiers in
uniform cede control of our national and individual destiny, through our
votes, to elected leaders. The gut-check we face, essentially, tests the
fabric of this very idea, and tests the foundations of our government.
It has yet to be determined if those we trust to lead the way have passed
this test and earned the trust we have so freely given in this crisis.
Opportunistic politicians have taken advantage of this crisis by wrapping
new and fiscally dangerous tax cuts in the flag, describing what would be
yet another windfall for the rich as something desperately required for
national and economic security. Some have attempted to attach to the
Defense Appropriations bill a rider that would open the Alaskan National
Wildlife Reserve to plunder by the petroleum industry.
Actions like these have been taken in stealth. This is still America, and
such important decisions must be done before the ears and minds of the
American people. Not everything changed last week, and actions that favor
the few over the many cannot be advantageously rammed into legislation by
leaders who know we are necessarily distracted.
Those within our leadership who decided that 'Infinite Justice' would be an
appropriate title for our looming military actions are another example of
individuals who fail the test. Even the blandest connotation of that phrase
is chilling, and not designed to create the international unity we will need
to see this fight through. The religious overtones are striking, for who
but God has the power to dispense infinite justice? The title was
withdrawn, but the impact of it remains.
Those among our leadership who stampede to restrict and shred our personal
American liberties deserve loud condemnation. Many aspects of our American
life must change in order to secure ourselves from further catastrophes, to
be sure. This is not an excuse to recreate America into a fearful
totalitarian state, something that appears to be happening one drip at a
time. If we fall into this trap, those who attack us win, even if we should
destroy them all.
At the end of the day, all of the confused, fearful and greed-influenced
failures described above must be laid at the feet of George W. Bush, who has
likewise failed to demonstrate whether or not his own gut-check has
delivered that which is essential to our country. As the plaque that once
sat upon his desk clearly states, the buck stops there.
The news media is not describing the whole story in no small part because
our ultimate leader has avoided that conversation completely. In his speech
to the joint session of Congress, Mr. Bush spoke better than at any other
moment in his presidency. He was forceful, firm, and took pains to separate
Islam from terrorism. He told the American people that a calm and measured
response to this new threat is absolutely required. These were good words,
ones I willingly praised him for.
However, so much of that speech was in reaction to words and deeds preceding
it that were far less than honorable. Before the speech, Mr. Bush appeared
helpless to do anything but speak with belligerence, to frame this event as
a battle of religions by using the word 'Crusade.'
Over and over, he told us that we were attacked because our freedoms and
liberties are hated, reinforcing the lie. In his speech, he repeated this
grievous error. This was a failure, a shout into our national echo chamber
that resonates loudly, drowning out truths that require a full and complete
airing.
More troubling, it is becoming more and more clear that Mr. Bush may have
cut and run on that deadly and dangerous day. Radar reports describe with
precision the course of those hijacked aircraft. None, but none, appeared
to threaten Air Force One. This flies in the face of explanations coming
from the White House press office.
In times of crisis, other Presidents have made a point to dash back to
Washington D.C. as quickly as possible. Bush, however, went into hiding.
Perhaps there are good reasons for this demonstration of weakness and fear,
but the American people have yet to hear them.
Perhaps the greatest failure of Mr. Bush has been to challenge other nations
in such a bellicose manner. They are either with us or against us, we are
told. Machiavelli spoke of this long ago, and said that such a challenge
inevitably causes all to be against the challenger. This ham-fisted
diplomacy carries none of the delicacy required to face the threat.
This will not be a conventional war. It will be a struggle whose ultimate
outcome will be based upon diplomacy and the mutual sharing of information.
Many nations will not do this at gunpoint, thus damming up possible sources
of information that could aid us.
In fairness, it must be stated clearly that Mr. Bush faces the most
important and immeasurable gut-check of all. The process may well not be
complete, and there is hope that his sail may yet further unfurl to set him
upon a better direction than he has thus far traveled.
The early signs have not been promising, but as another Presidential desk
plaque says, "Oh God, thy sea is so large and my boat is so small." That
Bush has been tossed violently along with the rest of us is clear. How he
ultimately responds will define him for all time, and will determine our
fate. He must be watched.
This leads to the last aspect of the test we as Americans face in this time
of trial. It has been made quite clear in a variety of ways that dissent at
this time is nearly tantamount to treason. Disagree with the leadership,
disagree with Bush, and you are herded into the same corner with the
terrorists.
Nothing could be further from fact, and nothing could be more unhealthy to
our nation. Now more than ever, the simple fact that the citizens are
ultimately the essence of the government comes into play. We The People,
that parchment reads.
If we dissent, we must speak. If we see a better way, we must speak. If we
are being taken down a path dangerous to all we hold dear, we must speak.
If we hear things that are not true, or that seek to hide the truth, we must
speak to set the record straight.
We have been told to keep to our American way as much as we can. We are
told to spend money as an aid to our wounded economy. We are told to go out
into our cities and sports arenas, juicy targets all, and live our lives
with as much normalcy as possible.
Likewise, we must nurture and tend that flame of dissent, for it is the fire
that first forged America, and is the fire that has kept us warm for
generations. Dissent is our birthright. Forfeit it and we forfeit
everything.
Finally, we must not give in to our fears. Fear begets vengeance, and
vengeance is a river of blood that has no end. We look forward to a day of
justice, in the name of all who have died and all who have risen to this
challenge. Justice, however, cannot be revenge. This, perhaps, is the most
pressing aspect of the test. The status of our very souls are on the line.
I do not come to these assessments lightly, for I have faced my own
gut-check in recent days.
On Thursday night, I heard of a threat to my home city of Boston. The
existence of that threat was confirmed Friday morning - Attorney General
Ashcroft had telephoned Boston mayor Thomas Menino and informed him that
credible evidence was in hand describing a potential attack on the city,
scheduled for the coming Saturday.
I was faced with a decision. I could stay in the city with my loved ones,
and have faith in those who defend it. Or I could leave with my loved ones,
seek safety in distance, and wait to see what transpired. Within this
decision lived so many of the dilemmas described above - fear, freedom,
integrity, and measured response to a threat among them.
I remembered my years in San Francisco. Each day I went to work in offices
housed high in skyscrapers. The threat of earthquake was ever-present, and
images of 1906 loomed large. Despite this, my life continued. I went to
work each day, walked passed buildings made of glass, and traveled across
bridges whose structural strength was uncertain. I did this because I
refused to live in fear.
If someone had told me that an earthquake was almost definitely coming
tomorrow, however, I would not have planted myself on Market Street with my
middle finger pointed at the ground. I would have left, sought safety, and
not thought twice about it.
So it was Friday night, when I found myself in a Jeep with my loved ones
traveling northwest on Route 2. I spent the next night and day in New
Hampshire, watching the news and slowly becoming convinced that the reports
of danger had been badly overblown.
The Attorney General, it seems, received a poorly translated bit of
intelligence pointing a bloody finger at Boston. He called with the warning
before consulting other sources, and the brushfire began. I am heartened
that he is so ready to respond to threats, but am disturbed that such dire
news was launched before due consideration.
I refuse to regret the fact that I sought shelter for myself and my loved
ones. The shattered debris in midtown Manhattan are a testament to the
ingenuity of our enemies, and to the difficulty our leaders face in
defending against this kind of threat. In this way, our nation is truly
changed. Prudence and safety have been given new definitions, and achieving
them requires new actions.
Nevertheless, I will not forget watching the skyline of Boston recede into
obscurity in my rear-view mirror Friday night. I still wrestle with the
fear that leaving Boston was an act of cowardice, that I too was cutting and
running. I fear that I ceded a small victory to those who attacked us.
I am not finished with my gut-check, and my actions on Friday are proof of
this. There is much of my course I do not yet know. So it is with many of
us.
I take courage in my test from something I saw while in New Hampshire. I
walked the streets of Keene that day, and came upon the town square. There
were gathered about twenty people, who faced the traffic with American flags
and signs which read, simply, "Peace."
They had completed their gut-check, and were acting upon principles
invigorated by the test. They do not want bloodshed, and they do not want
war. They had not fallen into the awful quagmire that is the desire for
vengeance.
Whether you agree or disagree with those people from Keene, you must respect
them. They have reached a place we all must seek. They stand upon firm
ground, they speak and act without fear. They passed the test.
about William Rivers Pitt...
William Rivers Pitt was born in Washington, DC., and lived several years in
Alabama before eventually moving to Boston. He was educated in English
Literature at a small Jesuit college in New England, and after graduation
spent two years in San Francisco pursuing an ill-conceived career in the
law. Currently, he teaches English Literature, Journalism, Grammar and
History at a small private high school outside of Boston.
Pitt has been writing about politics off and on for years, but became
devoted to the practice during the interminable months of the Clinton
impeachment. Since the election and subsequent Supreme Court catastrophe,
he has directed all of his energies to the fight the rising tide of
conservative fundamentalism in American government.
Pitt is currently writing a book of essays that will, when completed,
span the course of American politics from the end of the Super Tuesday
primary to Election Night 2004. Several of the essays to appear in this
book can be read here. He is actively seeking publishers.
email correspondence is welcome at w_pitt@hotmail.com.
More Rants
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