Month: March 2003

In unrelated news, a historic copy of the Bill of Rights, which was one of 14 commissioned by George Washington when he was president and which was subsequently stolen from the North Carolina State House by a Union soldier during the Civil War, has been recovered, according to CNN. No word on whether Ashcroft has been notified, or whether he’s aware that we have a Bill of Rights.

CNN: Twenty-four cruise missiles were fired and 2000-lb. “bunker buster” bombs were dropped at “selected targets of military importance.” Speculation is that the target was a meeting of Saddam and his military advisors.

Hmm. Apparently itís operation Iraqi Freedom. As operation names go, itís no “Desert Storm.”

From a different front: The Guardian has reprinted a series of emails from Rachel Corrie, the American who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to keep Palestinian houses in the Gaza Strip from being destroyed:

I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances – which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.

I’m having a not-infrequent crisis of confidence, brought on by the failure of the administration’s incompetent, amateurish, hypocritical diplomacy… no, wait, let me start over.

I’m having a not-infrequent crisis of confidence, brought on by the nearness of the war and the lives being placed in danger on both sides. Prayer seems called for but pointless. Part of me says I should be supportive of our troops and not question their leader’s motives for bringing us to this point. And I do wish our troops Godspeed and a quick and decisive action, with no innocent blood spilt.

Part of me says I should just ignore it, that it will quickly go away, and that the stock market rebound will fix everything. (If it happens.) That’s not a very big part of me.

But I can’t stay silent. Even without questioning the president’s motives (which is tempting), I have to question his actions when they seem to fly in the face of everything I ever learned about this country and what it stands for.

I have to question his statement that we are legally justified in going to this war when the evidence to the contrary is strong.

I have to question his claims that Iraq poses a clear danger and possesses weapons of mass destruction, when all evidence of these weapons has proven to be based on fabricated documents, plagiarized British war dossiers, unreliable and discredited speculation, and misinterpreted reports.

I will not stay silent. These are my duties in this war:

1. It is my duty as a citizen to be informed.
2. It is my duty as a blogger to inform others.
3. It is my duty as a Christian to pray for the safety of our troops.
4. It is my duty as a patriot to question and challenge.

It’s probably long past time to do anything constructive with this, but Steve Kirsch’s listing of the top five learnings from 9/11—and how the administration’s actions have ignored them—is pretty persuasive. And his conclusions echo a lot of my thoughts:

1. Disarmament of foreign powers is not sufficient because our own weapons can easily be used to attack us
2. Increasing homeland security is not sufficient because there are way too many holes and we still can’t even plug one of them after years of trying
3. Attacking governments who support terrorists is not sufficient because it is not unfriendly governments who are the threat today; it is now the people from friendly nations who are attacking us
4. The root cause of the attack is that people don’t like us overseas because of our hegemonic foreign policies, not because they are jealous of us
5. The biggest threat to our world may be in our own reactions, and not the incident itself

…We should be asking ourselves two key questions:

• What could we have done that would have reduced the chance that this would have happened?
• What should we do now to reduce the chance of this happening again?

The answer is obvious. We should put our efforts on addressing the root causes of this terrorism, not the symptom. We need to make it less likely that people will want to fund and/or participate in such activities.

• We should have a Department of Peace and International Cooperation and Assistance, not a Department of Homeland Security.
• We should be supporting international treaties, not backing out of them.
• We should be a leader in seeking peaceful solutions to conflicts, not a leader in the pre-emptive strike.
• We should be respectful of foreign leaders, not insulting them by calling them pygmies.
• We should respect foreign governments, not label them “evil.”
• We should be having talks with our adversaries, not refusing to talk (as we are with North Korea).

In short, we should be doing exactly the opposite of what we are doing now.

Incidentally, this is the same Steve Kirsch who is the founder and CEO of Propel. When I met him in January of 2001, he was talking about energy policy mismanagement in California. Sounds like he found himself a bigger target.