To David Gregory - Some More Clues For You: "Where was Congress? The public?" Some Examples...

Hissyspit

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Thu May-29-08 10:32 AM
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To David Gregory - Some More Clues For You: "Where was Congress? The public?" Some Examples...

Edited on Thu May-29-08 10:33 AM by Hissyspit

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3353983

David asked Chris Matthews plaintively: "Where was Congress, where was the Senate, where was public opinion?"

Here you go, David:

http://www.tamejavi.com/iraq/guide/war-timeline.htm

Dec. 10, 2002- International Human Rights Day, commemorated by more than 150 U.S. cities with action, rallies, and vigils opposing war against Iraq. One theme is, �Let the inspectors work.�

Jan. 27, 2003- Bush receives a letter signed by 130 members of the House of Representatives, urging him to �let the inspectors work.�

March 12, 2003- New York City passes a city council resolution opposing a preemptive/unilateral war against Iraq , joining more than 150 other U.S. cities, including Philadelphia , Chicago , and Los Angeles. �We, of all cities, must uphold the preciousness and sanctity of human life,� says Councilman Alan Gerson, a Democrat whose district includes the World Trade Center site, where 2,792 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Free Inquiry Magazine's editorial stand, unprecented for them, from Spring 2003:

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kurtz_23_2.htm

The Immorality of the War Against Iraq

Editorial
Paul Kurtz

The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2.

Free Inquiry magazine does not endorse political candidates nor political parties. We recognize the wide diversity of political viewpoints among secular humanists. We do, however, take positions concerning two vital issues: first, we support humanist ethical principles on grounds independent of religion; and second, we defend the separation of church and state.

By both these standards, the United States faces an urgent crisis today, for the Religious Right has virtually captured the Bush administration. Increasingly, the administration�s moral ideology is that of evangelical Christianity. This directly impacts on U.S. foreign policy, which shows strong overtones of self-righteous moral indignation and seems guided by the sense that we face a battle between �good and evil.� This can be read in the speeches of Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, and others. Unfortunately, in its extreme form the War on Terrorism smacks of a Holy Religious Crusade against Islam. This impression has been created by some administration rhetoric and reinforced by a torrent of inflammatory language from right-wing pundits and clerics of the Religious Right. Disturbingly, millions of Muslims around the world now believe that the War on Terror constitutes an American Christian jihad against their religion.

As we go to press, the War on Terrorism has morphed into an impending war against Iraq, which may have erupted by the time you read these words. President Bush has repeatedly condemned Saddam Hussein as evil (surely Hussein is no angel�far from that�but that is true of many world leaders). Bush has further demanded the disarming of Iraq and the replacement of its government with a regime to our liking.

We object to the impending war on Iraq on moral grounds.

What especially bothers us is the crescendo of drumbeats advocating, however incoherently, a preemptive strike. This marks a fundamental reversal in American foreign policy. Never before has the U.S. openly announced its intention to strike first in the absence of an immediate threat.

America has previously gone to war in response to ambiguous or arguably fabricated threats (the Spanish-American War, Vietnam, and the Panama incursion come to mind), but the very fact that U.S. leaders went to such lengths to craft threat scenarios demonstrated that Americans considered the resort to force unthinkable without at least the pretext of aggressive provocation. In dispensing with such niceties and espousing an open doctrine of pre-emption, Bush blazes a disturbing trail.

One might conceivably justify a first strike when there is danger of imminent attack by a threatening adversary. Iraq currently does not fit into this category. Defeated in the Gulf War of 1991, its population impoverished, its economy in shambles, its no-fly zones constantly bombarded by American and British aircraft, Iraq hardly poses a threat to the safety of the United States.

If the United States reserves the right to engage in preemptive warfare (even nuclear1), what are we to say about the confrontation between India and Pakistan�would they or anyone else be justified in taking the same action? We believe in a world in which there are certain norms of established international conduct and in which one power (in this case, a hyperpower such as the United States) does not arrogate to itself the right to dictate acceptable behavior across the globe.

We thoroughly approve of the administration�s earlier decision (under the influence at that time of Colin Powell, who has since become more hawkish) that U.N. inspectors return to Iraq and that retaliatory measures be taken only if explicitly authorized by the U.N. Security Council. But we hope that war could be avoided, for we believe that the best method of resolving international conflicts is by the negotiation of differences. We thus agree with efforts to disarm Iraq peacefully.

Obviously, current U.S. policies threaten to undermine the entire fabric of collective security so carefully developed by the world community after the Second World War. As a result of our policies, will the United Nations be rendered impotent like the League of Nations and left unable to resolve international conflicts? If so, this could have tragic implications for the future of humankind.

Indeed, the Bush administration�s recent policy choices, such as its refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty on global warming or to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, illustrate an increasingly chauvinistic character.

Mr. Bush expresses his reasons for war in high-flown rhetoric about defending ourselves from the weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein. Interestingly, his speeches are drafted by evangelical speechwriters (such as Michael Gerson), and they express a dismaying level of religious imagery.

They convert the presidency into a bully pulpit for God, which simultaneously masks underlying imperialist economic ambitions while it suggests divine sanction for American policy. We wonder whether the real motive in all this is oil, for Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world; and we suspect that the underlying goal of the United States and Britain is to replace the Iraqi oil contracts bestowed upon France and Russia with new ones benefiting themselves. Nevertheless, we deplore the undermining of the United Nations and NATO and the disenchantment of our traditional allies, who view our foreign policy as a form of unilateral nationalism.

- snip -

Paul Kurtz, Editor-in-Chief
Tom Flynn, Editor
Norm Allen, Deputy Editor
Andrea Szalanski, Managing Editor
Tim Madigan, Chair, Editorial Board

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E6DA153CF934A15751C0A9659C8B63

U.S. Diplomat Resigns, Protesting 'Our Fervent Pursuit of War'

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: February 27, 2003
A career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan resigned this week in protest against the country's policies on Iraq.

The diplomat, John Brady Kiesling, the political counselor at the United States Embassy in Athens, said in his resignation letter, ''Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson.''

Mr. Kiesling, 45, who has been a diplomat for about 20 years, said in a telephone interview tonight that he faxed the letter to Secretary of State Colin L, Powell on Monday after informing Thomas Miller, the ambassador in Athens, of his decision.

He said he had acted alone, but ''I've been comforted by the expressions of support I've gotten afterward'' from colleagues.

''No one has any illusions that the policy will be changed,'' he said. ''Too much has been invested in the war.''

Louis Fintor, a State Department spokesman, said he had no information on Mr. Kiesling's decision and it was department policy not to comment on personnel matters.

In his letter, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by a friend of Mr. Kiesling's, the diplomat wrote Mr. Powell: ''We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners.''

His letter continued: ''Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests.''

It is rare but not unheard-of for a diplomat, immersed in the State Department's culture of public support for policy, regardless of private feelings, to resign with this kind of public blast. From 1992 to 1994, five State Department officials quit out of frustration with the Clinton administration's Balkans policy.

Asked if his views were widely shared among his diplomatic colleagues, Mr. Kiesling said: ''No one of my colleagues is comfortable with our policy. Everyone is moving ahead with it as good and loyal. The State Department is loaded with people who want to play the team game -- we have a very strong premium on loyalty.''

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0303/032103h1.htm

Diplomat resigns to protest war

By Shane [email protected] 21, 2003

A career Foreign Service officer and Army Reserves colonel has resigned from the State Department in protest over several foreign and domestic Bush administration policies. Ann Wright, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, sent a letter of resignation Wednesday to Secretary of State Colin Powell, telling him that "this is the only time in my many years serving America that I have felt I cannot represent the policies of an administration of the United States.

"Wright wrote her letter five weeks ago and delayed sending it in the hopes the administration would avert a war against Iraq, she said in an interview Friday. Her letter is dated March 19, the day U.S. forces launched a strategic air strike on targets in Baghdad. Wright said she sent her letter to the State Department before the strikes began."There is no doubt Saddam Hussein is a despicable dictator," Wright told Powell. But she believed U.S. military forces shouldn't be used without Security Council compliance. "In our press for military action now, we have created deep chasms in the international community and in important international organizations," Wright said.

"America has lost the incredible sympathy (resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks) of most of the world because of our policy toward Iraq."Wright's government career spanned the worlds of diplomacy and military affairs. She joined the Foreign Service in 1986, and asked to be assigned to a position as a Defense Department attach�. At the time, however, women weren't allowed to hold those jobs.In 1997, Wright managed the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Sierra Leone and of Americans living there when a coup d'etat took place. She assisted in the evacuation of a number of diplomats from other countries, as well, and was given the State Department Award for Heroism for her work.In December 2001, Wright helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. A few months later, she said the administration's preoccupation with Iraq began to show in its slackening efforts to support rebuilding Afghanistan and fostering the roots of diplomacy on the ground.She accused the administration of expecting other nations to do a greater share of the work, but of shunning the need for international cooperation on the Iraq issue.

As a result, Wright said the administration is "leaving in tatters the organizations (particularly the United Nations) that we have helped build," over many years.Wright made her views on administration policy known to State Department officials through an official "dissent channel," but she hadn't received a response by the time she submitted her resignation.Wright is the third senior diplomat to resign in two months over the administration's Iraq policy. But in her letter, Wright also expressed her concern that the administration has ignored the threat posed by North Korea as it pursues a nuclear weapons program. Wright also criticized the lack of participation over the past several months by the administration in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and what she sees as the curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Since sending her letter to Powell, Wright said she has received about 150 e-mails from Foreign Service officers around the world expressing support for her actions.John Brown, a career diplomat who also resigned this month, has said there is an air of dissent in the State Department over the administration's policies. But it's rare that Foreign Service officers use public resignations as a means of protest, or an attempt to influence administration policy.

Nevertheless, the resignation of three senior diplomats is significant because the individuals had invested so many years climbing the ladder of the Foreign Service. The organization accepts very few applicants and sometimes rewards officers with their desired posting only after they've served in some of the most remote locations in the world. "To dump your career...after 20 years is a major, major step," said Robert Keeley, the former U.S. ambassador to Greece.A State Department spokeswoman had no comment on Wright's resignation, other than to confirm she was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Mongolia. She said she didn't know when Wright's resignation would take effect.Wright said she would leave Mongolia within the next two weeks, after she has completed annual reviews of her staff. She has no future employment plans, but will receive full federal retirement benefits.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec02/antiwar_11-25.html

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Last week some 350 people gathered in downtown Chicago for a peace rally. Most were high school and college students, like 20-year- old Gimena Gordilla, who is passionately opposed to war with Iraq.

GIMENA GORDILLA, College Student: I'm against the war, because I don't believe that all possible non-military measures have been exhausted. I feel like Bush won't take yes as an answer from the inspectors, and he won't take no to war as an answer.

A growing anti-war movement

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: While polls show that a majority of Americans do support the President, anti-war sentiment has been growing around the country. Tens of thousands turned out for anti-war demonstrations last month in cities like Washington, San Francisco and Seattle.

While the rally behind me in Chicago is the most visible sign of the new anti-war movement, there's also a lot going on in smaller venues: Teach-ins at universities and high schools, strategy sessions, and educational meetings in churches, community centers, and homes across the country.

In this home in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood, a group organized by the community organization Acorn met to decide whether opposition to war in Iraq should be on their agenda.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x216610

The largest anti-war protests in the history of the world:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x216610

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war...

The February 15, 2003 anti-war protest was a coordinated day of protests across the world against the imminent invasion of Iraq. Millions of people protested in approximately 800 cities around the world. According to BBC News, between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries over the weekend of the 15th and 16th; other estimates range from eight million to thirty million.

The biggest protests took place in Europe. The protest in Rome involved around 3 million people, and is listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history. Opposition to the war was highest in the Middle East, although protests there were relatively small - Mainland China was the only major region not to see any protests...

The largest protests took place in the nation's largest cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, but there were also smaller rallies in towns such as Gainesville, Georgia; Macomb, Illinois; and Juneau, Alaska, among scores of others.

In Colorado Springs, 4,000 protesters were dispersed with pepper spray, tear gas, tazers and batons. 34 were arrested on failure to disperse and other charges, and at least two protesters had to have hospital treatment...

I found all of this in just 10 minutes of Google-ing. But then, I'm not worried about defending my reputation through revisionism.