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I am writing to express my concern that the U.S. Government lied about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction in order to foment a war with Iraq. I am further concerned that the U.S. is torturing prisoners, or is encouraging other countries to torture our prisoners, to get information that we want. Finally, I am concerned that the Government is going to whitewash the rape scandal at the Air Force Academy. All of these matters indicate how low the moral standards of the U.S. Government have fallen. The press has reported that Americans do not care whether President Bush and other senior U.S. officials lied about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the months before the Iraq war. I care. I think it is sad that Great Britain is so much more concerned about Prime Minister Blair’s lying, than America is about President Bush’s lying. Why are America’s moral standards so low, compared to Britain’s? One of the most serious problems with President Bush’s lying about WMD is that it was combined with the introduction of pre-emptive war into U.S. national security policy. The idea behind pre-emptive war was that we had to kill them — the Iraqis — before they killed us with WMD. If they didn’t have WMD, and so far the evidence is that they did not, this justification for a pre-emptive attack in defense of America doesn’t hold water. I am extremely disappointed that the U.S. Government has embraced a Nazi policy espoused by Hitler in his pre-emptive attacks on his neighbors in the run up to World War II. After Hitler used the threat of force to intimidate Austria to surrender in 1938, he said, “Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators.” (Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 349.) Does that sound familiar? The Middle East “roadmap” shows how closely tied the war in Iraq was to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. President Bush and his advisers have clearly decided to try to take some of the Jewish vote and Jewish financial support away from the Democrats. Therefore, in the grossest terms, it appears to me that in return for Jewish money and votes, the Republicans have sent Christian soldiers to kill Muslims in Iraq. It’s hard to think of a more racist policy, unless you go back to Hitler in World War II. The AP has estimated that U.S. troops killed over 3,000 Iraqi civilians in the recent war, but the U.S. refuses to state how many Iraqi military it killed. Since about 10,000 were killed in the first Gulf War, and this war was even more successful, I would estimate that the U.S. military killed something like 20,000 Iraqi military. Twenty-three thousand people killed! That’s a lot of blood on the ground; it would probably have taken even Saddam Hussein a year or more to kill that many Iraqis. I hope you got lots and lots of money for it. If Bush raises $230 million, he will collect about $10,000 per Muslim killed. Is that about what an Iraqi life is worth? On the other hand, how many billion dollars did the war cost, and how many billion more will the occupation of Iraq cost? Because of my concern about the low moral standards of American public figures, I have been reading about General George C. Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army during World War II, whom Churchill called, “the true organizer of victory,” and whom Truman called, “the greatest living American.” Marshall was a man of high moral character, one of the few twentieth century leaders who deserves comparison to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I was primarily interested in the Marshall Plan to which he gave his name. I was somewhat surprised to learn that he was Secretary of State when Israel was created, and that he opposed its creation. Marshall believed that Truman supported the creation of the state of Israel mainly to win Jewish votes for his re-election campaign. Clark Clifford argued that Truman should recognize Israel; Marshall argued that he should not. After meeting Truman with Clifford, Marshall wrote that he told President Truman, “The transparent dodge to win a few votes would not, in fact, achieve this purpose. The great dignity of the office of the president would be seriously damaged. The counsel offered by Mr. Clifford’s advice was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem confronting us was international. I stated bluntly that if the president were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice, and if I were to vote in the next election, I would vote against the president.” (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, pp. 975-6.) In 1947 at the State Department Loy Henderson had written to Secretary Marshall, “I wonder if the President realizes that the plan which we are supporting for Palestine leaves no force other than local law enforcement organizations for preserving order in Palestine. It is quite clear that there will be wide-scale violence in that country, on both the Jewish and Arab sides, with which the local authorities will not be able to cope…. It seems to me we ought to think twice before we support any plan which would result in American troops going to Palestine.” (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, pp. 1281-82.) On the second issue, I believe that the American use of torture to get information about al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations is morally contemptible. Certainly the terrorists are a threat, but by stooping to the use of torture, we lower ourselves to the level of the terrorists. By doing so, President Bush, Attorney General Ashcroft, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld show their cowardice, because I believe that men who resort to torture are cowards. If Colin Powell has signed on to this, too, then he deserves the same criticism, but I am not sure that he has. America’s Auschwitz — the prison camp at Guantanamo, Cuba — is a Defense Department creation, designed to undermine the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. I like the Constitution, and think that it is a good thing. I am really unhappy that this Administration hates the Constitution and sees it as a constraint on their desire to bypass its prohibition of torture and other human rights violations. I think that one of the problems with trying Zacarias Moussaoui in a constitutionally authorized court is that the witness he wants to interview, Ramzi Binalshibh, has been tortured somewhere, and the interview would bring this out. When terrorists attacked Morocco recently, one of the reasons they gave was that Morocco had been torturing American detainees at the request of an American organization, such as the CIA or the Defense Department. Even more to the point, several detainees have died in unexplained circumstances while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. To the extent that you embrace the Government’s policy of torture, you are not only a failure as a politician, and as a man, but as a human being. Finally, I was originally encouraged by the Congressional response to the rape scandal at the Air Force Academy, but recent stories in the Denver press indicate that the investigation has now turned into a whitewash. There will be few changes at the Academy. Apparently you and your colleagues have decided that boys will be boys. Apparently you think that Air Force officers can’t control their baser impulses. I have a higher opinion of Air Force officers, and I think that you denigrate the entire service by your low opinion of them. You should see that some of the rapists actually get punished, not just that some generals get reassigned. There may be some problems in Colorado Springs under the statute of limitations in the constitutional courts that I like so much, but these men are Air Force officers. They could at least get a demotion or a letter of reprimand under some military proceeding, if anybody really cared. I’m not if favor of torture, but I am in favor of justice. The Administration, the Senate, and the House of Representatives need to restore their sense of morality, their sense of decency. I am deeply disappointed at how low you have fallen. Sincerely, James W. Chamberlin |