Monday, December 27, 2004

Herbert: Shopping for War

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Shopping for War:

"The war in Iraq was the result of powerful government figures imposing their dangerous fantasies on the world. The fantasies notably included the weapons of mass destruction, the links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the throngs of Iraqis hurling kisses and garlands at the invading Americans, and the spread of American-style democracy throughout the Middle East. All voices of caution were ignored and the fantasies were allowed to prevail.
The world is not a video game, although it must seem like it at times to the hubristic, hermetically sealed powerbrokers in Washington who manipulate the forces that affect the lives of so many millions of people in every region of the planet. That kind of power calls for humility, not arrogance, and should be wielded wisely, not thoughtlessly and impulsively."

Monday, December 20, 2004

Actor, Governor, President, Icon (washingtonpost.com)

Actor, Governor, President, Icon (washingtonpost.com)

CBS News | Ronald Reagan, Master Storyteller | June 7, 2004

CBS News | Ronald Reagan, Master Storyteller | June 7, 2004�15:13:04

President Ronald Reagan: 75 Top Links

President Ronald Reagan RONALD REAGAN ronald reagan biography life links Ronald Reagan Biography Life 100 Top Links regan REGAN

NPR : Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004

NPR : Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004

Ronald Reagan: Second Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989

Ronald Reagan: Second Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989

Ronald Reagan Quotes - Funny Reagan Quotes and Jokes

Ronald Reagan Quotes - Funny Reagan Quotes and Jokes

Ronald "Dutch" Reagan and Eureka College: The Foundations of Leadership

Ronald "Dutch" Reagan and Eureka College: The Foundations of Leadership

"Reagan's Liberal Legacy" by Joshua Green

"Reagan's Liberal Legacy" by Joshua Green

Ronald Reagan Dies (washingtonpost.com)

Ronald Reagan Dies (washingtonpost.com)

TIME Magazine: Commemorative Issue: Ronald Reagan: 1911 - 2004

TIME Magazine: Commemorative Issue: Ronald Reagan: 1911 - 2004

Remembering Ronald Reagan

Remembering Ronald Reagan

Worldpress.org - Ronald Reagan - The World View

Worldpress.org - Ronald Reagan - The World View

The Phillips Foundation: Ronald Reagan Future Leaders Scholarship Program

The Phillips Foundation

Ronald Reagan - Quotes

Ronald Reagan - Quotes - Ronald Reagan Quotes, Quotations, Ronald Reagan Sayings - Famous Quotes

Ronald Reagan: First Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989

Ronald Reagan: First Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989

Pictorial History of Ronald Reagan

Pictorial History of Ronald Reagan

The American Experience | Reagan | Timeline (1911 - 1958)

The American Experience | Reagan | Timeline (1911 - 1958)

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

The Reagan Information Interchange

The Reagan Information Interchange

American President: Ronald Wilson Reagan

American President

American Presidents: Life Portraits

American Presidents: Life Portraits

The American Experience | Reagan

The American Experience | Reagan

The Public Papers of President Ronald Reagan

The Public Papers of President Ronald W

Welcome to the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project's Home Page

Welcome to the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project's Home Page

Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union Homepage

Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union Homepage

Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library & Museum Bookstore

Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library & Museum Bookstore

TIME 100: Ronald Reagan

TIME 100: Ronald Reagan

The Ronald Reagan Ranch

The Ronald Reagan Ranch

Ronald Reagan Quotes - The Quotations Page

Ronald Reagan Quotes - The Quotations Page

USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76)

USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76) "PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH"

Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library

Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library

RonaldReagan.com

RonaldReagan.com

Google Search: Ronald Reagan

Google Search: Ronald Reagan

Operation Truth

Operation Truth

Bob Herbert: War on the Cheap

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: War on the Cheap

How can I get in touch with Operation Truth?

Friday, December 17, 2004

Herbert: Fiddling as Iraq Burns

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Fiddling as Iraq Burns

Tenet, Franks, and Bremer: Honored for their service in the nation's interest in Iraq.

Herbert concludes: "Medals anyone? The president may actually believe that this crowd is the best and brightest America has to offer. Which is disturbing."

The New York Times: Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment

The New York Times > Washington > Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment

Sunday, December 12, 2004

A Further Comment on Friedman

Don't say, "What's done is done. Now we have to make the best of it." The proper attitude now is, "Stay away, and cage or kill this beast." Churchill said after Munich, "We can't do this," and people listened to him at last. What would history's judgment be if any leader had said after Hitler's invasion of Poland, "We have to make the best of it."? Resistance was the only right response to that invasion, and resistance is the only right response to the invasion of Iraq. Accommodation to this evil by the rest of the world will just bring more evil.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Friedman: Iraq, Ballots and Pistachios

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Iraq, Ballots and Pistachios

NATO won't get involved in Iraq because Europeans don't trust Bush. They are right not to trust him. He is not trustworthy. Never, never, never do anything to support someone who has done what he has done.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Postscript on Civil War

A civil war is different from other kinds of warfare. In a civil war, our opponents' only goal is to make us leave. That's what made Vietnam such a hard war to win. Our opponents were willing to sustain high losses in order to make us leave, and that's what they did. Our goal, which was to keep the country divided, was extremely hard to achieve if we did not have a strong and motivated local force fighting on our side. In fact, we did not have such a force, and we did not achieve our goal.

We can see a similar situation in Iraq: soldiers on the other side who are much more motivated than the soldiers on our side, and a simple goal to make us leave. A difference is that we can carry out ground operations against our opponents more effectively. We can attack Falluja, Najaf, and Baghdad on the ground, but we could not deploy infantry to Hanoi.

We can't lose this war, but it's not at all clear how we can win it, either. The word quaqmire was inappropriate for Vietnam, and it's not helpful for Iraq, either. It suggests that we get sucked in, as with quicksand, and that we have no way to get out: no exit strategy, as they say.

But we can get out easily if we recognize the nature of the situation we're in. In a two-sided war against a unified state, or against an alliance of unified states, one side has to win decisively, or both sides have to agree to stop fighting. It does no good to declare peace if the other side keeps attacking you. In a civil war, where an outside power fights to support the weaker force, the outside power can withdraw any time. The exit strategy is a simple one, if not easy to execute. In this case, we don't even have to admit that the original invasion of Iraq was a mistake. The Iraqis are grateful that we got rid of Saddam Hussein: they were grateful in April 2003 and they still are. We just have to admit that we made mistakes after getting rid of him. Then the path is clear for an honorable withdrawal.

So these reasons - there'll be a civil war, we can't lose the war, we can't appear to lose it - all of these reasons for staying in Iraq are misconceived. The question is, what serves our interests, given the situation that exists right now? The answer now is the same answer that held when we rolled the first tanks over the border: start planning for disengagement. Let the Iraqis build their own state, because they don't want our help. If we let them alone now, they'll be our friends later.

The New York Times > Washington > News Analysis: Will More Power for Intelligence Chief Mean Better Results?

The New York Times > Washington > News Analysis: Will More Power for Intelligence Chief Mean Better Results?

I am an outcome oriented person. Results do matter. Everyone is focused on whether we can win the war in Iraq. For the sake of our troops fighting there, I hope we do win. But that neglects the question of whether we ought be fighting the war to begin with. Success in the war does not mean that the war is right.

The fact that the Nazis lost in 1945 does not make their war wrong. It would not have been right if they had stayed in France and Russia, if they had actually built their thousand year reich. And their defeat is not proof of their wickedness. The actions themselves prove it.

Similarly, the Romans weren't right because their attempt to build an empire succeeded. Yes, we remember the winners, and we overlook the bad things that winners do, but the bad things that winners do are still bad. Rape is still rape, torture is still torture, murder is still murder, and cruelty is still cruelty. Success doesn't affect moral judgments at all.

But, you say, ends do justify the means: if we are successful in bringing democracy to the Middle East, that outcome is so significant that all the bad things we had to do will have been worth it. That outcome is so good that we ought to overlook all the bad things we had to do to achieve it. Realizing the utopian vision of a new world order built on a democratic Middle East will make us forget what happened during the war, and we should forget about it.

Most people believe that, but I don't. I believe that we are going to pay for what we did in Iraq. I believe Lincoln when he said that the United States would pay for every lash of the overseer's whip, that it had already paid with every drop of blood shed in the Civil War. I believe the United States is going to pay, no matter how good the outcome in Iraq. It will pay in lost allies, lost respect, lost leadership. It will pay when China overtakes us as leader of the world, and when we struggle in a long war with Islamic militants that we can't win. It will pay when our enemies seek revenge.

So policy makers have to focus on how to resolve this war as successfully as they can. Commentators have to focus on what the policy makers are doing. But the rest of us should focus on the moral nature of our country's actions. The only way out of our current situation, the only way to redeem it at all is to admit to the world that we made a mistake, and to ask for its forgiveness. Richard Clarke did that when he testified before the 9/11 commission several months ago. I don't think John Kerry would have spoken so forthrightly as Clarke if he had been elected, but he did aim to repair our standing somehow. Bush will not do any of these things. He thinks that if we win the war, everything will be okay. The people who voted for him believe that, too. They're wrong.

The only way to win the war we are in is to fight the enemy who attacked us. To think that our enemies will give up because we defeat an enemy who didn't attack us is foolish. The only way to win the war we are in is to set up shop in the country where we had to fight: Afghanistan. I'm pretty sure that's not possible any more: a lot of time has passed since 2002, and I don't believe we'd be welcome there anymore. It's hard to tell, though. Other people's reactions are hard to predict.

What does setting up shop mean? Well, some of you have heard me say it so often that you won't need to hear it again: construct air bases, highways and super highways, roads, listening bases, army bases, naval air stations, training centers, supply depots, communications facilities, intelligence centers, humanitarian relief operations, radio and television stations, trade relations, schools, consulates, joint commands with our allies, water projects, fuel depots, armaments depots, and... you have the idea now. After we set all these things up, we should use them. Make Afghanistan the fifty-first state. Do everything but collect taxes. Make Afghanistan an extension of our own country. Use it as our forward base for operations throughout South Asia and the Middle East.

I honestly don't know if we could do that anymore. We could have done it in 2002. It may be too late, now. But we ought to try. The effort would have some interesting outcomes. The only way we could launch the effort now, given the amount of fear and distrust we've generated with the war in Iraq, is to do what I suggested above: admit our mistake and ask forgiveness. If we did that, I believe we would have a lot of help in whatever we undertook after that. That confession would restore trust with the people's whose help we need. And we do need help to defeat Al Qaeda.

Here is a postscript: Just last night I heard on the radio again the standard thinking. If we leave Iraq now, the country will dissolve into civil war. That was a credible warning a year and a half ago, but how is it a warning now? The country has already dissolved into civil war. It's true that Iraq has no large armies on the march, but most of the civil wars we've seen since World War II have been fought by small bands of soldiers. A key difference between the civil war in Iraq and the other civil wars we've seen is that we're in the middle of it. Our reasoning about what we should do shouldn't be based on what will happen if we get out. The war we fear has already started.

So what should we do? Work with local leaders - local leaders who aren't currently shooting at us. Find out what they want. Do what we can to help them get what they want. Work from those beginnings to communicate with the people who are shooting at us. Some of our enemies won't want to talk with us. Some will. Listen to anyone who wants to talk with us. Find out what they want, think about what serves our interests, and make a plan that helps Iraqis and helps us at the same time. Most Iraqis want us to leave now. Who is to say they are wrong? Who is to say that the country would be so poorly off if it broke into three separate states after we left? We would see some very interesting developments were we to let the Iraqis determine their own future. We think that the January 30 election is the key to self-determination. They believe our departure is the key to self-determination. Perhaps doing both would be a good idea.

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Frank Rich: The Nascar Nightly News: Anchorman Get Your Gun

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: The Nascar Nightly News: Anchorman Get Your Gun: "Kevin Sites, the freelance TV cameraman who caught a marine shooting an apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque, is one such blogger. Mr. Sites is an embedded journalist currently in the employ of NBC News. To NBC's credit, it ran Mr. Sites's mid-November report, on a newscast in which Mr. Williams was then subbing for Mr. Brokaw, and handled it in exemplary fashion. Mr. Sites avoided any snap judgment pending the Marines' own investigation of the shooting, cautioning that a war zone is 'rife with uncertainty and confusion.' But loud voices in red America, especially on blogs, wanted him silenced anyway. On right-wing sites like freerepublic.com Mr. Sites was branded an 'anti-war activist' (which he is not), a traitor and an 'enemy combatant.' Mr. Sites's own blog, touted by Mr. Williams on the air, was full of messages from the relatives of marines profusely thanking the cameraman for bringing them news of their sons in Iraq. That communal message board has since been shut down because of the death threats by other Americans against Mr. Sites."

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Kristof: China's Donkey Droppings

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: China's Donkey Droppings: "or the last century, the title of 'most important place in the world' has belonged to the United States, but that role seems likely to shift in this century to China."

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Kristof: Saving the Iraqi Children

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Saving the Iraqi Children: "Lately, I've been quiet about the war because it's easy to rail about the administration's foolishness last year but a lot harder to offer constructive suggestions for what we should do now. President Bush's policy on Iraq has migrated from delusional - we would be welcomed with flowers, we should disband the Iraqi army, security is fine, the big problem is exaggerations by nervous Nellie correspondents - to reasonable today. These days, the biggest risk may come from the small but growing contingent on the left that wants to bring our troops home now."

But this is not an either-or choice! The choice is not between staying the course and leaving now. The reason we can't imagine other possibilities is that we haven't even tried to think of them. Let's stop now to think about what we should do, and leave aside the options that clearly won't work.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Dowd: A Plague of Toadies

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Plague of Toadies: "W. and Vice want to extend their personal control over bureaucracies they thought had impeded their foreign policy. It's alarming to learn that they regard their first-term foreign policy - a trumped-up war and bungled occupation, an estrangement from our old allies and proliferating nuclear ambitions in North Korea, Iran and Russia - as impeded. What will an untrammeled one look like?"

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Dowd: Slapping the Other Cheek

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Slapping the Other Cheek: "Bob Jones III, president of the fundamentalist college of the same name, has written a letter to the president telling him that 'Christ has allowed you to be his servant' so he could 'leave an imprint for righteousness,' by appointing conservative judges and approving legislation 'defined by biblical norm.'
'In your re-election, God has graciously granted America - though she doesn't deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganism,' Mr. Jones wrote. 'Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ.' Way harsh."

Friday, November 12, 2004

King Abdullah II: The Road From Here

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: The Road From Here: "We can't win the war on terror if we don't act together. We Muslims were the first targets of the extremists, whose stated goal is to bring down moderate governments and stop the growth of democratic civil society. "

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Lou Cannon: Can Bush Break the Second-Term Jinx?

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Can Bush Break the Second-Term Jinx?: "President Bush, now basking in his re-election honeymoon, is likely to face even greater skepticism over Iraq if the prospects for success there do not improve after the current offensive in Falluja and the Iraqi elections in January. Both Mr. Buckley andMr. Will, for example, have questioned the wisdom of the Iraq war. Further to the right, Patrick Buchanan has denounced the war and insisted (accurately, I believe) that Ronald Reagan would never have waged it."

Monday, November 01, 2004

Herbert: Days of Shame

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Days of Shame: "It was Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, who said that 'America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.'"

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Dowd: Will Osama Help W.?

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Will Osama Help W.?: "You'd think that seeing Osama looking fit as a fiddle and ready for hate would spark anger at the Bush administration's cynical diversion of the war on Al Qaeda to the war on Saddam. It's absurd that we're mired in Iraq - an invasion the demented vice president praised on Friday for its 'brilliance' - while the 9/11 mastermind nonchalantly pops up anytime he wants. For some, it seemed cartoonish, with Osama as Road Runner beeping by Wile E. Bush as Dick Cheney and Rummy run the Acme/Halliburton explosives company - now under F.B.I. investigation for its no-bid contracts on anvils, axle grease (guaranteed slippery) and dehydrated boulders (just add water). "

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Thoughts on Democracy in Advance of November 2

"Things like faith, love of country, courage and dedication - they are all part of the inner strength of America. And sometimes, they do not become self-evident until there is a time of crisis."
Ronald Reagan, September 9, 1974
"Well, I know this. I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me . . . even if it's in the middle of a cabinet meeting."
Ronald Reagan, April 13, 1984

Welcome to all of our new subscribers! You've joined a varied, vocal group, and you're going to like what you read here. Whether you're a recent subscriber or you're well acquainted with the journal, thanks for your interest! It keeps me going.
One thing that has always distinguished small d democrats from more aristocratic skeptics is a faith in the people's judgment. Jefferson, Lincoln, Reagan, and most recently, William Jefferson Clinton all believed that the people will make the right choice if they know the truth. If people have the facts they'll make a good decision, the democrats have said. That's a pretty big qualification, though, this appeal to truth and facts. We know that getting good information, and then making sound judgments about the information, is not easy work. In fact, if you have done a good job of evaluating your facts, you've already done most of what you need to do to make a good decision.
There's another qualification in there that we don't think about as much. People have to care enough about their country to do the hard work of decision making to begin with. Experts in politics analyze voter turnout, and ask questions like these:
- What party benefits if turnout is good?
- What does low turnout say about the state of our democracy?
- Why should we care about voter turnout in the first place?
The key question is, what effect does turnout have on the quality of the decisions we make? In the past, people have said that high turnout with distorted or incomplete information is something we should avoid. It's better to go with low turnout, and have good information in the hands of the people who do vote. Interesting as these thoughts are, they're not so helpful when we truly want to influence the nature and the outcome of the fight.
Well, we can estimate voter turnout pretty accurately, but making judgments about the quality of information that's available isn't as easy as you might think. Let's take the swift boat ads about John Kerry as an example. The people who run the ads say that Kerry doesn't deserve his medals, and the people who served with him say that he fought with valor and courage. What are we to make of such a contradiction? How can we make a reliable judgment about his character if people can't agree about the basics of his military record?
If we look into the issue, we learn that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth aren't all that concerned about what Kerry did in Vietnam. What they really care about is what he did after he returned to the United States. They don't like it that he led a movement of veterans against the war. They don't like it that he criticized his senior officers in public, or that he publicized the atrocious things American soldiers did to Vietnamese civilians. They don't like it that he threw his medals away at an anti-war rally in Washington, and they certainly don't see him as a war hero. It rankles them that he plays up his service as a naval officer, because they see his behavior after he returned from the war as traitorous. For them he's a male Jane Fonda, and they show a picture of him sitting near Fonda at a Washington anti-war rally to prove it.
This simple example illustrates that it's not so easy to separate facts from judgments. In fact, it's not clear we should try. We have to decide what we think about active opposition to an ongoing war - what Kerry did when he came back from Vietnam - while we try to reach judgments about his character. We want to say that accurate information about the candidates will lead to a good choice on election day. More important than accuracy, though, is our ability to think clearly about the information we have. The campaigns are engaged in a great polemic, and we have to stand apart from them with good analytical tools. And then we have to vote, which means we have to participate in the fight.
So let's take up an underlying issue in the discussion of Kerry's war record: the question of whether it's unpatriotic to oppose an ongoing war. The same issue applies to the war in Iraq, of course. I didn't know what it was like to receive hate mail until I began to write about the current conflict. There's nothing insipid about the mail I receive on this issue. But what do you make of the last message I received, where someone I know well compared me to Tokyo Rose? He wrote that if I had been similarly outspoken during World War II, I would have been thrown in jail.
Does that mean that public criticism of the war just isn't permitted because it's traitorous? How patriotic can it be to support a war that has already done so much harm to our reputation and our ability to lead, not to mention our security? Doesn't everyone have an obligation to argue strongly about the merits of the case? It doesn't seem right at all to cast the people on one side of the issue as patriots, and the people on the other side as traitors. Where will that lead? To look at this phenomenon another way: the people who oppose the war might reach severe judgments about those who favor it - but they don't call them traitors.
Now we need to tie these thoughts about patriotism to the call for democratic participation. After all it's patriotism - an inbred concern for the health of our country - that leads us to become involved in its affairs in the first place. We the people have to decide who will lead the country. If we don't, other people who have their own interests at heart will decide for us. We ought to have faith that good judgment and devoted participation by people who care about their country will result in a good decision. It doesn't matter if the quality of information in the candidates' ads is contradictory, aggressive, and self-serving. Don't expect a balanced presentation of facts in campaign ads! The only way to evaluate the claims we've encountered during this election season is to use our independent judgment.
During previous election campaigns, we heard all the reasons for not voting: (1) there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, (2) I don't like either candidate, so why should I give either one my support, (3) my vote doesn't make a difference anyway, (4) the system is corrupt and I can't do anything to change it. The close election in 2000, the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq all make these defenses lame and irrelevant. It's not cool to be detached and indifferent anymore. When you hear people say that this is the most important election in our history, believe it. The only election of comparable importance occurred in 1864. Then the southern states indicated they would leave the Union before they would tolerate an administration opposed to slavery. The voters sent Lincoln to the White House in a three way race. Many people sense that our future as a free nation depends on the choice we make when we vote on November 2. Their instinct is correct.
I won't make an argument in this article about why you should vote one way or the other. The main purpose here is to persuade you it's worth your time to vote next week. More than that, it's worth your time to persuade other people to vote. Do what you can to remind people to participate in this great occasion - this remarkable event in our communal life. Send this article around to the people on your personal mailing list. You won't receive any hate mail for doing it!
I remember a teacher of mine in graduate school who is both good natured and serious about democratic citizenship. He asked students on election day in 1984, "Did you vote?" He didn't put people on the spot, but he sure left no doubt about what one's civic duty required. He set a good example, and it's an example we should follow now. We shouldn't wait until next Tuesday to deliver our reminders, though. We should follow the lead of both parties, get ready for the occasion, and do what we can to let people know that their participation is needed. If we all get together and vote our true beliefs, we'll have an outcome that is good for our country, and therefore good for us.
Sincerely,
Steven Greffenius

P.S. Above I referred to my writing on the war in Iraq. A week or so ago I published an expanded edition of my essay, Ugly War, which first came out in this journal last May. The new edition has maps, pictures, and a more readable format. To have a look at the new version, visit http://thelastjeffersonian.com/ugly_war.pdf. Please let me know if the file does not open for you. And please send the link for Ugly War to others who would like to read the essay, whether or not you think they agree with it.
I wrote the essay with the aim of persuading people to vote their hearts and minds on this critical issue of the war, and I do hope it does that. The more citizens who participate in this decision on November 2, the more we can live with the outcome, and the better our prospects as a free, secure, and respected nation.

Steven Greffenius is the author of The Last Jeffersonian: Ronald Reagan's Dreams of America. To learn more about the book, please visit http://thelastjeffersonian.com/.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Dowd: Cooking His Own Goose

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Cooking His Own Goose: "One of my first presidential trips was going to Texas one weekend to cover Ronald Reagan hunting with James Baker at Mr. Baker's ranch. President Reagan came back proudly empty-handed. He didn't want to shoot any small animals. He had his faults, but he never overcompensated on macho posturing, thinking that blowing away a flock of birds in borrowed camouflage for the cameras or bombing a weakened dictator and then sashaying in Top Gun gear for the cameras would give him more brass."

Brzezinski How to Make New Enemies

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: How to Make New Enemies

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Understanding Fourth Generation War - by William S. Lind

Understanding Fourth Generation War - by William S. Lind

The Grand Illusion - by William S. Lind

The Grand Illusion - by William S. Lind

Tommy Franks: War of Words

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: War of Words

Franks's vision is clear enough, but he has no more judgment than his commander in chief. He cannot see that he was involved in the biggest military blunder our country has ever committed.

Here is a passage about people who have both clear vision and good judgment - good moral judgment:

"What is a great man who has made his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, his is a man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has seen the moral issue involved; he is a man who has refused to have his sense of justice distorted; he has listened to his conscience until conscience becomes a trumpet call to the like-minded men, so that they gather about him and together, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, they make a new period in history."

-- Jane Addams

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Ugly War

Hi All,

The next version of Ugly War is ready! This version has pictures of the
leading actors, maps of Afghanistan and Iraq, a better format, and new
material written since last May. Please have a look at it. To open the essay
in Adobe Reader, just click this link:

http://www.thelastjeffersonian.com/ugly_war.pdf

The PDF file opens in your browser. For easier reading, click View > Full
Screen in the browser's top menu bar. Also, you can use the Save button in
Adobe Reader to save a copy of the file to your hard drive.

If you don't have Adobe Reader on your computer already, let me know. Adobe
Reader has been available for quite a while now, but I wonder if I'm correct
in my supposition that most people have it. If the essay doesn't open when
you click the link, it's probably because the reader isn't installed. If
you'd like to obtain the reader, it's free at

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Lastly, and perhaps most important, please forward the link for the essay to
people you know. You might wonder how people will react to strongly worded
arguments about the war in Iraq, but you can say, "Here is something a
friend of mine wrote. He's written a lot about politics and the arguments in
this essay are worth thinking about."

The election is only two and a half weeks away! A democratic decision means
that everyone who can vote, should vote. If you remember the story in Horton
Hears a Who, we have to make sure we don't have any shirkers. Our future as
a respected country depends on the outcome of the election on November 2. To
see why I assess this vote in such sober terms, please read Ugly War!

Thanks,

Steve


P.S. Some of you receiving this note haven't heard from me for a while. If
you'd like to update your address, tell me what you think of the essay, take
yourself off the mailing list, or just say hello, please send a note by
return mail.

All the best,

S. G.


_____________________________

June, July, and August Books
www.TheLastJeffersonian.com

Steven Greffenius
Office: 781-762-6757
Mobile: 781-223-1396
_____________________________





Friday, October 01, 2004

Krugman: America's Lost Respect

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: America's Lost Respect

Two Car Bombings in Iraq Kill 41, Many Children

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Two Car Bombings in Iraq Kill 41, Many Children

We keep saying that the worst thing that could happen in Iraq if we pull out is civil war. We should recognize that Iraq is already undergoing a civil war. Many, many more Iraqis have died in this conflict than have Americans. On one side in this conflict are the so-called insurgents or terrorists; on the other side are the Americans, and any Iraqi who has any contact with the Americans. The insurgents see those who have contact with the Americans as legitimate targets, anyway. The Iraqi civil defense force - the police and military forces currently under training - are both targets and fighters in the war. We say that the insurgents are sowing chaos in order to prevent democratic processes in Iraq from producing a legitimate government. They offer no positive plan, we conclude, just destruction. They do have a positive plan, though: get the United States armed forces out of the country.

We have made it plain in our conduct of the war in Iraq that we do not know how to fight our enemies there. If we knew how to fight an enemy so weak that it must resort to suicide car bombings against civilians, we would be taking less casualties now than a year ago, not more. If we knew how to fight this enemy, we would not have lost large population centers to their control. If we could engage this enemy, we could prevent it from acting at will. What has been a fragmented insurgency will become better organized and more determined as the weeks pass. Actually, they've been resolute and willing to take large losses from the beginning, but they haven't had the ability to conduct operations across the entire country. Starting last spring and continuing into this fall, that has changed. Last spring we called it an uprising. This fall we have to recognize the war for what it has become: a civil war.

We are not caught in the middle of this conflict. We created the conditions for it, and we want our side to win. So far, we are losing, even though our opponents are still very weak. If we try to win the war, we'll take more civilian lives than our opponents have taken. If we keep fighting, we can't lose. The only way to end the conflict is to withdraw. If we do that, the insurgents will have achieved their main goal. What's not clear is whether they would continue to attack Iraqi soldiers and civilians after we leave. I'm not sure that they would. Their main enemy is the United States. Still, the conditions might be right for a lengthy civil war. We shouldn't deceive ourselves, however, into thinking that our withdrawal is the factor that allows a civil war to start. It has already started, and it is going to get worse.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Dowd: The Prince of Tides, Tacking and Attacking

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Prince of Tides, Tacking and Attacking

Yet Mr. Kerry's case has a hollow center. He was asked at his press conference on Tuesday about W.'s snide reminders that his rival gave him authority to go to war (and, playing frat pledge to W.'s rush chairman, inanely agreed that he would still have voted to give that authority even if there were no W.M.D.).

That vote, he replied, was correct "because we needed to hold Saddam Hussein accountable for weapons. That's what America believed."

Not all Americans.

The administration rolled the Democrats on the authorization vote. It was clear at the time that going after Saddam to punish Osama made no sense, that Cheney & Co. were going to use Saddam as a lab rat for all their old neocon agendas. It was clear, as the fleet sailed toward Iraq, that the Bush crew had no interest in diplomacy - that it wanted to castrate the flaccid U.N., the flower child Colin Powell and his pinstriped State Department, snotty Old Europe, and the despised Saddam to show that America is a hyperpower that is not to be messed with.

As I quoted a girlfriend saying in September 2002, a month before Mr. Kerry's authorization vote, "Bush is like the guy who reserves a hotel room and asks you to the prom."

When Mr. Kerry says it was the way the president went about challenging Saddam that was wrong, rather than the fact that he challenged Saddam, he's sidestepping the central moral issue.

It was wrong for the president to take on Saddam as a response to 9/11, to pretend the dictator was a threat to our national security, to drum up a fake case on weapons and a faux link to Al Qaeda, and to divert our energy, emotions and matériel from the real enemy to an old enemy whose address we knew.

It was wrong to take Americans to war without telling them the truth about why we were doing it and what it would cost.

It wasn't the way W. did it. It was what he did.

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Thursday, September 02, 2004

The New York Times Editorial: Mr. Bush and the Truth About Terror

The New York Times > Opinion > Mr. Bush and the Truth About Terror: "The Bush campaign is betting the ranch on the idea that Americans, in the end, will vote for the candidate they think is most likely to keep the nation safe from terrorism. The president has been honest about saying we will never be totally safe. He has been much less frank about explaining that even relative safety depends on our ability to create international alliances and to pick our fights not on the basis of where our armies can successfully fight, or of settling old scores, but where the gravest dangers lie. There are few venues less promising for truth-telling than a political convention, but there are also few better opportunities to make the public listen."

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Cheney and G.O.P. Mount Vigorous Assault on Kerry

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Cheney and G.O.P. Mount Vigorous Assault on Kerry

Kristof: Crowning Prince George

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Crowning Prince George: "Instead, Mr. Bush emulates Coriolanus, a well-meaning Roman general and aristocrat whose war against barbarians leads to an early victory but who then proves so inflexible and intemperate that tragedy befalls him and his people.
Unless Mr. Bush learns to see nuance and act less rashly, he will be the Coriolanus of our age: a strong and decisive leader, imbued with great talent and initially celebrated for his leadership in a crisis, who ultimately fails himself and his nation because of his rigidity, superficiality and arrogance. "

Kristof: Crowning Prince George

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Crowning Prince George

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Laura Bush: Upbeat Republicans Revive Bush Theme of Compassion

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Upbeat Republicans Revive Bush Theme of Compassion: "'No American president ever wants to go to war,' Mrs. Bush said. 'Abraham Lincoln didn't want to go to war, but he knew that saving the union required it. Franklin Roosevelt didn't want to go to war, but he knew that defeating tyranny demanded it. And my husband didn't want to go to war, but he knew the safety and security of America and the world depended on it.'"

If Lincoln had gone to war against Kansas, would we praise him now? If Roosevelt had gone to war against Mexico, would we be grateful for his courage and practical wisdom? Republicans say we should feel safer under George Bush's leadership, but he picked the wrong enemy! He doesn't know what he is doing. However sure our president is that he's doing the right thing, no amount of steadfastness can substitute for poor judgment. In fact, his self-assurance makes him unable to see his mistake.

Paul Krugman: A No-Win Situation

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A No-Win Situation

David Brooks: The Courage Factor

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Courage Factor

Friday, August 06, 2004

What About Iraq? Consequentialist Reasoning

Cathy Young writes for Reason magazine. I like her writing and her arguments, and she's one of those columnists I read when I have a chance. The other day she published a column in the Globe where she said the jury was still out on Iraq. I thought, still out! I also thought she could be right: you can't tell how things are going to turn out.

The problem with this reasoning is that it's consequentialist. Consequentialist reasoning is where you judge the rightness or wrongness of something based on its consequences. By this reasoning, we don't know yet whether going to war in Iraq was the right thing or the wrong thing to do, because we don't have a full balance sheet yet on all the good and bad consequences of the decision. Consequentialist thinking about the war is totally mainstream. Most of the public commentary on the war fits this model. We shouldn't have gone in there because so many bad things happened as a result. We should have gone in there because we got Hussein and we're bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. The battle of consequences continues, and as the election approaches, neither side seems to have much of an advantage. And as Ms. Young observed, the jury is still out because we're still in the middle of the war.

How about an argument that says we shouldn't have attacked Iraq because it was wrong in itself? We don't need a jury to tell us that an unprovoked attack on another country is wrong. We don't need a jury to tell us that you don't attack a country because they might pose a threat to you in the future. If we're going to go to war on that basis, we should start preparations to march on Beijing right now.

So the moral question on the Iraqi war is easy to answer. The charges about weapons of mass destruction were trumped up, and it was obvious before we went in there that they were. The charges about links between Hussein and Al Qaeda were trumped up, and that charge was so laughable I still can't understand how our leaders could have made it. If they hadn't made that charge, sympathetic historians might have said the war in Iraq was an honest, understandable mistake, in light of 9/11. Having suggested the connection, having persuade people it was true, historians will have to see the grounds for war as dishonest, the war itself as a vicious fraud.

I should add before I sign off that I use consequentialist arguments myself. You can't make good evaluations without them. The biggest consequence of the war in Iraq, I've argued, is that it makes defeat in our war against Al Qaeda much more likely. We cannot lose that war and survive as a civilization. This misstep in Iraq will be with us for a long time, and if we do lose the war against Al Qaeda, historians will see the attack on Baghdad on March 19, 2003, as the first step toward defeat. That's a big consequence.

So please don't conclude that I regard consequences as unimportant. Rather, we should evaluate consequences and the thing itself. Sound judgment depends on good reasoning in both areas. We've had a lot of analysis that centers on the war's results. That's no surprise, since the analysts are policymakers and others who evaluate policies based on costs and benefits. Cost-benefit analysis is useful for economic decisions, but it's not your tool of choice for moral questions. A decision about war or peace is the supreme moment in moral reasoning. Our decision to initiate war was a grave moral failure. We attacked a nation that was not capable of attacking us, and we let escape an enemy that had clearly demonstrated its ability to attack us. The only way to correct this failure is to admit the mistake, carefully extract ourselves from Iraq, then pursue our real enemy with all vigor. Are we capable of that?

Bob Herbert: Failure of Leadership

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Failure of Leadership: "The pressure may be getting to Mr. Bush. He came up with a gem of a Freudian slip yesterday. At a signing ceremony for a $417 billion military spending bill, the president said: 'Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.' "

Thursday, August 05, 2004

World Trade Center to Abu Ghraib

World Trade Center to Abu Ghraib

How did we go from the heroism, unity, and sense of purpose that marked 9/11, to the degradation, shame, and cruelty of Abu Ghraib? Do you remember the spirit of that time, less than three years ago? We told ourselves that we had to see our enemies clearly, work with our friends, especially our friends in the Middle East, and draw hope from those who were equally determined to destroy Al Qaeda. We knew that many Muslims shared our determination to put this organization out of business. And we knew that we needed their help.

Now let me ask you: do you think that man lying on the floor is an enemy of ours? I'll tell you something: I don't know who he is. I'll bet virtually no American in the whole prison knew who he was. He was an Arab and they were going to have some fun with him. You know that even if he were a member of Al Qaeda, we would have been wrong to treat him that way. Our enemies may not follow the rules of war, but we should.

Let's go back to the original question: How did we go from the World Trade Center on September 11 to Lyndie England holding a beaten, naked man on a leash? Will anyone admit that when you engage in a war that's wrong you can expect that kind of thing to happen? You have to see the connection between an unjust war and the way we have treated people who aren't even our enemies.

For a longer answer to the question above, see Ugly War at the TheLastJeffersonian.com. The essay explains why America should leave Iraq. America should leave Iraq because it should not have gone there in the first place. To defeat your enemies, you have to go where your enemies are.

Lincoln said that we had to suffer through the Civil War as punishment for the sin of slavery. What will our punishment be for attacking Iraq? We have already heard our enemies, the ones who planned 9/11, call us war criminals, and know they are telling the truth. We have ceded the moral high ground to some of the worst people who have ever lived, people who are clearly criminals themselves. That's an accomplishment.

When I lived through the Reagan years, I had an instinct, a feeling in my heart, that this was it, this was the apogee, this was like the time that Julius Caesar ruled Rome. Caesar's rule actually came pretty early in the history of Roman civilization, and Rome still had quite a few good rulers to come, including Marcus Aurelius. But after Caesar's friends betrayed him and killed him, things unraveled, and historians could truthfully say that Rome never shone as brightly after that astonishing act of selfishness on the steps of the Senate.

America, Reagan's shining city on a hill, will never again shine as brightly as it did during those eight brief years. I certainly didn't want my instinct to be proven correct. When Reagan said that America's best years were still to come, I agreed with the sentiment, and I wanted it to be true. I certainly liked his rhetoric, and I was not among those who charged him with false optimism. I wanted him to bolster American confidence, and Americans had lots to be hopeful about, lots to be proud of. Reagan did the right thing, as a leader, to encourage the people who followed him. We would praise a military leader for doing so, and we should praise Reagan as a political leader for doing the same.

Yet Reagan's refrain that our best years were ahead of us proved wrong. Events proved the instinct correct after all. I had no idea in the 1980s how the story might turn out. The 1990s brought exactly the kind of prosperity that Reagan predicted: technology driven and based on innovation, it was a prosperity that rewarded free enterprise and entrepreneurship. Not only that, the Soviet Union collapsed, just as Reagan said it would. As a judge of human events and a seer of human aspirations, Reagan built an outstanding record of accurate prophecy.

As far as I could tell, no one in the 1980s thought about the significance of the Reagan years this way. I didn't see any essays from the people who liked Reagan about how America's best years were behind her. The left had long nurtured a reputation for speaking pessimistically about America's future. The conservatives who liked Reagan didn't seem to have any reason to doubt what Reagan himself said about our shining prospects.

Well, no one predicted 9/11, that's for sure. It was easy to predict that our enemies would strike us at home someday, but that particular attack took everyone off guard. What a turning point that unexpected event turned out to be. We could have shrugged it off, or we could have gone nuts. If we had shrugged it off, Reagan would have been right: we would have been the world's shining city on a hill for many more generations. If we went nuts, as we did, we would provoke the outcome that we are already coming to see: despised, defeated, dejected and discouraged, we command no admiration or respect anywhere, least of all in the places where we need it the most.

Let me elaborate a little. How could we have wanted to shrug off something like 9/11? One commentator, on public radio a few weeks after 9/11, told the story of a Roman legion that lost about 600 men a minute during a terrible battle against a powerful enemy. He said that the Romans just shrugged it off. They went ahead and coldly destroyed their opponent. That's how they maintained their power. The commentator did not say that we should forget the people who died on 9/11, or that we should not honor them. He just wanted to say that we should not give in to hand-wringing, anger, soul-searching, and the like. We should just find our enemies, destroy them, and be done with it. Be methodical and ruthless. It's one of the things you have to do to maintain order and protect your citizens.

Well, we didn't search out our enemies, and our leaders certainly didn't search their souls. We went totally nuts, like a blinded boxer who, out of pain and frustration, swings wildly and hits anyone who might be standing by. Bush's defense of his action against Iraq sounds more strained and unconvincing each time he delivers it. If you don't find Bush's defense persuasive, the only explanation for our attack is the blind boxer gone nuts. Or perhaps not so blind. We found a victim we could defeat, and one where we had a score to settle to boot. We went after a non-enemy that was available rather than the real enemy who got away.

So now we're going to spend the next four hundred years looking back, wondering how we could have made such a serious mistake in 2003. It's not going to seem so bad here in the United States. We'll still have our prosperity, some of our freedoms, our ideals and disconnected memories. We'll still have a few friends like Britain and Australia, and others who will tolerate us out of self-interest or because they have no choice. But I tell you, we won't ever command the respect that we had around the world when Eastern Europe expressed its gratitude to us for delivering them from the Soviet Union. We won't ever know the warmth and the genuine sorrow that flowed toward us in the days and weeks after 9/11. We'll be a byword and an object of contempt through most of the world now, because we couldn't see clearly what we had to do after the twin towers fell. We'll become irrelevant, and then defeated, because we couldn't shrug it off.

Lincoln said that America's example gives "hope to mankind, future for all time." What a loss to the world that we couldn't live up to Lincoln's ideal in a time of trial. Reagan always asked, what will people one hundred years from now say about us, when they look to the decisions we made about life and death, war and peace, freedom and slavery? Will they thank us for making the right decisions, for protecting what we had and passing it down? Until the war in Iraq, we had a good reputation. A good reputation is worth protecting: it takes a long time to build, only a short time to ruin it. That's why good people are so careful not to make a mistake that destroys something they've worked hard to create. We used to have a good reputation with freedom loving people, and we gave hope to everyone who aspired to a free life. Now people around the world, though they won't admit it, would like to put a leash on us.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Bruce Springsteen: Chords for Change

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Chords for Change: "Like many others, in the aftermath of 9/11, I felt the country's unity. I don't remember anything quite like it. I supported the decision to enter Afghanistan and I hoped that the seriousness of the times would bring forth strength, humility and wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited. ...It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities - respect for others, honesty about ourselves, faith in our ideals - that we come to life in God's eyes. It is how our soul, as a nation and as individuals, is revealed. Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting."

Friday, July 30, 2004

Barbara Ehrenreich: The New Macho: Feminism

The New York Times > Opinion > Guest Columnist: The New Macho: Feminism: "First, let's stop calling the enemy 'terrorism,' which is like saying we're fighting 'bombings.' Terrorism is only a method; the enemy is an extremist Islamic insurgency whose appeal lies in its claim to represent the Muslim masses against a bullying superpower."

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Robert Kennedy in 1964

Here is the quotation from Bobby Kennedy's speech at the 1964 convention. The author of the article is R. W. Apple.

And then Robert F. Kennedy appeared on the podium, barely nine months after his brother had been murdered in Dallas. The hall exploded in cheers that lasted for 22 minutes, despite every effort to restore order. Standing in the midst of the New York delegation, I could scarcely hear the senator as he evoked his brother's memory with a passage from "Romeo and Juliet."

"When he shall die," he began, "Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine. " All around me, hardened pols wept.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

David Brooks: Kerry at the Wheel

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Kerry at the Wheel

Notes on Reagan and Freedom

Ronald Reagan had an ear for the vocabulary of freedom.

the masses - that's not something we've called ourselves around here

Peter, Paul, and Mary - Don't take away our freedom, please don't take it away.

That's not the way we talk around here.

Can I have the car keys, Daddy? ...Please don't take them away.

Free citizens can't have their freedom taken away.

Who are Peter, Paul, and Mary appealing to? The government?

Do you feel comfortable with a government that leaves us alone because we ask it to leave us alone? If we remain free because the government lends a sympathetic ear to our appeal, we have problems. Free citizens can't have their freedom taken away. They can give it away,

To go back to the example of the car, which represents freedom. The daughter is in the position of the government. It is subservient, not in authority. The daughter obeys her father, who is in charge. The father is in the position of the people, the citizens. He issues instructions and expects them to be followed. So imagine if the father goes to his daughter and appeals to her not to take his car keys away. We'd say that something was wrong in that family. We'd say that a father who makes an appeal like that to his daughter has already lost his freedom and his authority, is no longer in the position he should be in. So it is with citizens in a state. If they make an appeal like that - Don't take away our freedom - they've already lost it.

So is it that serious? Have we reached the point where we think the government grants us freedom, and can therefore take it away? (Remember, the true situation is just the opposite: we grant the government whatever authority it has to act, and we can therefore take that authority away.) Reagan worried that we were headed in that direction. He thought that nothing is so easily lost as freedom, nothing so hard to regain, once lost. A powerful government - it became powerful because the citizens gave it power - can indeed take people's freedom away. But if it was powerful enough to do that, the people were already not free. The taking of freedom is just the last stage of giving it.

Monday, June 07, 2004

The New York Times: Crowds Honor a President Who Believed in the Good

The New York Times: Crowds Honor a President Who Believed in the Good

Bob Dole: Forever the Optimist

Bob Dole: Forever the Optimist

Mikhail Gorbachev: A President Who Listened

Mikhail Gorbachev: A President Who Listened

The President Reagan Information Page

The President Reagan Information Page

Ronald Reagan Dies (washingtonpost.com)

Ronald Reagan Dies (washingtonpost.com)

washingtonpost.com: Ronald Reagan: Early Years

washingtonpost.com: Ronald Reagan: Early Years

Lou Cannon: Actor, Governor, President, Icon (washingtonpost.com)

Actor, Governor, President, Icon (washingtonpost.com)

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan: Why We Talk About Reagan

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

TIME 100: Ronald Reagan, by Peggy Noonan

TIME 100: Ronald Reagan

That American Cowboy Ronald Reagan

That American Cowboy Ronald Reagan

Crikey - Ronald Reagan: a rough draft of history

Crikey - Ronald Reagan: a rough draft of history

Business Week | June 7, 2004 | Ronald Reagan's Greatest Role: Himself

BW Online | June 7, 2004 | Ronald Reagan's Greatest Role: Himself

The Great Communicator: The Legacy of Ronald Reagan

IHT: The Great Communicator: the legacy of Ronald Reagan

CNEWS - World: To Nancy, Ronald Reagan was always 'my fella, my love'

CNEWS - World: To Nancy, Ronald Reagan was always 'my fella, my love'

Telegraph | News | Ronald Reagan

Telegraph | News | Ronald Reagan

RememberRonaldReagan.com - Remembering President Ronald Reagan

RememberRonaldReagan.com - Remembering President Ronald Reagan

MSN Slate Magazine: Reagan Remembered

MSN Slate Magazine

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: Reagan Now

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Greatest Hits - People

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Greatest Hits - People

The New York Times: Ronald Reagan Dies at 93; Fostered Cold-War Might and Curbs on Government

The New York Times > Obituaries > Ronald Reagan Dies at 93; Fostered Cold-War Might and Curbs on Government

CBS News | Ronald Reagan Remembered | June 6, 2004

CBS News | Ronald Reagan Remembered | June 6, 2004

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Remarks by Al Gore at New York University

Gore Criticizes Bush on the Iraq War

Remarks by Al Gore
May 26, 2004
As Prepared

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a groan man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name.

President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."

When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.

Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers."

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars (CHECK) and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all these years.

One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. ... The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible for this kind of abuse..

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and twenty five days remaining in this president's current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration.

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point.

We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense.

Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?

The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights....

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'

Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders.

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America - it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president.

Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength."

The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation...We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth...The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Admistration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world.

President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability...

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility."