In his 1954 book Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent, the American historian Henry Steel Commager said, “If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function, it must have dissent.” Like the Vietnam War and Iraq?
Sen. J. William Fulbright, of Arkansas, became one of the most vocal critics of American policy. In a 1966 speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association, he gave an insight/view/perspective as to how he felt about loyal dissent: “The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.”
One of the best examples was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.” Dr. King was describing the time-honored concept of civil disobedience.
Our founding fathers recognized the potential for harm from those attempting to do good. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams wrote, “Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service, when it is violating all his laws.”
Even when people are right in trying to do good, they can fail by overreaching, by attempting too much. The midterm elections of ’06 sure seem to reflect some oxymoronica!
David A. Hancock
Chester
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
IRAQ “EXPERTS” EXPOSED
Who said the war would pay for itself? They did!
The following quotes were compiled by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky in the capacity of chief executive officer and president of the Institute of Expertology, which has just issued a report on the experts who were wrong about Iraq—before, during, and after the invasion—under the title Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq: The Experts Speak (Simon and Schuster). Here, the “experts” speak about the costs of war.
“Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will” (Richard Perle, chairman, the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, July 11, 2002).
“The likely economic effects [of a war, in Iraq] would be relatively small … Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits” (Lawrence Lindsey, White House economic adviser, Sept. 16, 2002).
“It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars” (Kenneth Pollack, former director for Persian Gulf affairs, National Security Council, September 2002).
“The costs of any intervention would be very small” (Glenn Hubbard, White House economic adviser, Oct. 4, 2002).
“Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction” (Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary, Feb. 18, 2003).
“When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community” (Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, March 27, 2003).
“There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon” (Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, testifying before the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, March 27, 2003).
“The United States is very committed to helping Iraq recover from the conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid” (Mitchell Daniels, director, White House Office of Management and Budget, April 21, 2003).
“The allies [have contributed] $14 billion in direct aid” (Dick Cheney, vice presidential debate with Democratic candidate John Edwards, Oct. 5, 2004). Actually, only $13 billion was pledged, and on the date Mr. Cheney spoke, only $1 billion had arrived. As of October 28, 2007, the National Priorities Project estimated that the share of Iraq War costs that had been borne by American taxpayers exceeded $463 billion.
And of course, let us not forget the inveterate, confabulating verisimilitudes and malapropisms of Dick Cheney: “So?”, “Go —— yourself,” and “I had other priorities than the military.”
David A. Hancock
Chester
Common Sense on Hiatus
Wow! The RNC in CLE! GOP (Greedy Old Party), OMG, WTF?
This reminds me of a cartoon poster on the office door of a political science colleague. On it was a picture of an elephant and a donkey. The caption defined bipartisanship: “I’ll hug your elephant is you kiss my a——.”
Fact: The states that the Republican National Committee chooses to have its convention votes Democratic 90 percent of the time. It’s unfortunate that stupidity isn’t painful. Oh well, Voltaire said, “Common sense is not so common.”
Which reminds me that Sen. Sherrod Brown proposed legislation requiring that all American flags be made in the United States. Maybe we should also attach the following quote from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and The Historic Unfulfilled Promise, “No flag is large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
David A. Hancock
Chester
Political Priorities
One of the gold medals of hubris should be presented to George W. Bush, who said, “I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”
However, I’ll explain.
Some diabolical, didactic, pensive musings in reference to the letter “Dumbfounding Language” by Rory Althans (Aug. 7–8), which was in response to the letter “Common Sense on Hiatus” by David A. Hancock (July 24–25). Cartoons and political satire / sarcasm / parody and caricature are examples of expressions and opinions about attitudes, values, and philosophy.
