Dear Senator,
I bid you peace.
You and I are nearly the very same age; I am your junior by only a few weeks. So, like you, I know the sort of military and international anxieties American youths felt growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, I may even understand them better than you, since I did not live abroad, as you did, for any of my childhood.
With that said, you and I both opposed the Iraq War. I surely did. But you and I were against it in two very different ways.
In 2003, when the Iraq "War" began, you were a mere state senator in Illinois, which means you were essentially no closer to understanding the conflict than the average citizen, and I am an average citizen (actually, I am a below-average citizen). My opposition to the conflict was rooted in Just War Theory, latent Christian pacifistic ideals to which I held, and the belief that the Islamic terrorist threat was capable of being addressed on diplomatic terms. But my opposition was also rooted in humility: I COULD NOT know what the President of the United States, his cabinet, and his closest handlers, knew. In short, I was self-aware enough to know my limitations. I would defer to the professionals, those who were "inside."
Hence, my opposition to the war was by definition, if you will, open to change. I was willing to learn; to adapt to "conditions on the ground." After all, I was not elected president, nor was I privy to all those things that American presidents are privy. Nor was I ever in a position to treat my opinions as absolute. How could I be? What, pray tell, did I know?
But you, dear sir, have even recently admitted once again that you have been utterly consistent about Iraq being the wrong war. Let me return to this in a second. First, I have this to say about myself.
It was not until I learned of the "Iraq Liberation Act" signed in 1998 by Bill Clinton in which he called for regime change in Iraq that my heart and mind began to change (sometime after the start of the 2003 invasion). Perhaps the shock of 9/11 had dulled my senses; perhaps I had forgotten even recent history. Perhaps I forgot such things as those outlined here:
I bid you peace.
You and I are nearly the very same age; I am your junior by only a few weeks. So, like you, I know the sort of military and international anxieties American youths felt growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, I may even understand them better than you, since I did not live abroad, as you did, for any of my childhood.
With that said, you and I both opposed the Iraq War. I surely did. But you and I were against it in two very different ways.
In 2003, when the Iraq "War" began, you were a mere state senator in Illinois, which means you were essentially no closer to understanding the conflict than the average citizen, and I am an average citizen (actually, I am a below-average citizen). My opposition to the conflict was rooted in Just War Theory, latent Christian pacifistic ideals to which I held, and the belief that the Islamic terrorist threat was capable of being addressed on diplomatic terms. But my opposition was also rooted in humility: I COULD NOT know what the President of the United States, his cabinet, and his closest handlers, knew. In short, I was self-aware enough to know my limitations. I would defer to the professionals, those who were "inside."
Hence, my opposition to the war was by definition, if you will, open to change. I was willing to learn; to adapt to "conditions on the ground." After all, I was not elected president, nor was I privy to all those things that American presidents are privy. Nor was I ever in a position to treat my opinions as absolute. How could I be? What, pray tell, did I know?
But you, dear sir, have even recently admitted once again that you have been utterly consistent about Iraq being the wrong war. Let me return to this in a second. First, I have this to say about myself.
It was not until I learned of the "Iraq Liberation Act" signed in 1998 by Bill Clinton in which he called for regime change in Iraq that my heart and mind began to change (sometime after the start of the 2003 invasion). Perhaps the shock of 9/11 had dulled my senses; perhaps I had forgotten even recent history. Perhaps I forgot such things as those outlined here:
- In 1980, President Jimmy Carter created the Carter Doctrine. That Democratic Party leader's doctrine said, in part, that the United States would use military action to protect the nation's interest in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
- In 1991, George H. W. Bush, following the Carter Doctrine, led Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm to protect American interests in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by reversing Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
- In 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore's campaign for president against rival George H. W. Bush included broad and damning criticisms of Bush's bungling of the first Gulf War. Both Democrats argued that Bush had coddled terrorists; that Bush had failed his country and the world by not removing the regime of that "grave threat," Saddam Hussein.
- Once Bill Clinton won the White House, it was his administration that ramped up sanctions and military actions against Iraq. Clinton would handle Hussein: he would either be replaced or contained. (Moreover, I like to remind people what they have forgotten, namely, that there was virtually not one single day from 1991 to the end of the Clinton administration's final term, or more than 8 years, that the US was NOT in some type of military conflict with Iraq. The current "war" is not 5 years old, but 17.)
- During the entirety of the Clinton administration, the US flew more sorties against Iraq than were flown during the first Gulf War. And let us not forget the two major operations run in 1996 and 1998, Operation Desert Strike and Operation Desert Fox, respectively.
- In 1998, Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act calling for regime change in Iraq.
- In 1998, Osama bin Laden issued his infamous fatwa against the United States, calling for the death of Americans everywhere. Bin Laden's biggest grudge? The continued abuse and oppression of the Iraqi people by the Clinton regime. (I like to remind people that the fatwa was issued under the Clinton administration.)
- In 2001, the fatwa of Osama bin Laden was dramatically obeyed on September 11.
- In 2002, as the 9/11 Commission was about to interview Bill Clinton's national security advisor, Sandy Berger, Mr. Berger went to the National Archives and stole allegedly original documents. Curiously, the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Berger had not stolen original and unprotected materials. He was fined $50,000, sentenced to 2 years probation, and had his security clearance revoked for three years. (A mere wrist slap.)
- In 2003, George W. Bush, following the Carter Doctrine and Bill Clinton's Iraq Liberation Act, began the invasion of Iraq.
- In 2007, former American member of the UN Iraq Weapons Inspection team, Scott Ritter, a popular (among the left) Bush critic and critic of the Iraq War, told Laura Knoy on New Hampshire Public Radio that the Clinton administration continously suppressed the findings of the weapons inspectors (the inspectors kept reporting that there were no weapons), because Clinton was concealing a "regime change" strategy under the cloak of weapons inspections. Ritter said that if the news of the Iraqi government's compliance with the demolition of weapons caches were published, the Clinton plan to remove Hussein would be doomed, as compliance meant reducing sanctions and penalties against Iraq.
You see, then, Senator, that there was much to remember about the Iraq "war", such things that are not one whit becoming to Democrats. In fact, the timeline is really something Democrats have every reason to want to forget. But the important thing I learned was that Iraq was deemed a central war front by Osama bin Laden himself. George W. Bush and his minions made no such declaration; Iraq was never a "distraction" to the greater war on terror. Osama bin Laden defined the front for America, as did both the Carter Doctrine and the Clinton Iraq Liberation Act.
My agreement with you today might be that what is debatable is actually the invading of Iraq. But when both the Carter and Clinton legacies seem to point in the direction of that very act, and when we have seen rather incredible success in a country your own party had declared lost and mired in civil war (where'd that war go?), I have to admit that I may have had things mixed up when I opposed the war. Don't get me wrong. I don't like war; I am not particularly bellicose. But that is just me: I will never stand in the way of those who freely choose to defend themselves in ways I may dislike.
Yet here's my larger criticism, and it is rather plain: You ran for president knowing that a wild success in Iraq would be disasterous for your candidacy. You went into this whole thing knowing that a glowing end to the Iraq conflict, one that ended in greatness and fanfare during George W. Bush's tenure, would diminish your alleged "prescience" tremendously. You persistently "stayed the course," following your own "the-war-was-wrong" narrative. You even demonstrated an incredible reluctance to admit your own myopia and fallibility regarding the "surge," which John McCain practically designed. The best you could do was to decry it with praise: saying that it succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations meant simply that everyone was wrong. That sort of praise, of course, is not an admission, but it is protection. Such protection though is rather thin, for your position and posturings have left me with an incredible insecurity: knowing as you did that a success in Iraq would hurt you, I can't help but think that you HAD to have rooted against it, at least secretly. My sad cynicism is indeed so very sad that I am even willing to consider the possibility that you worked to undermine the war's success at every political turn. How could you possibly hope for something that could be to your ruin? What evidence is there that you ever REALLY did fight on behalf of the war; what evidence is there that you did not root against it?
I spoke with a friend who is seeking reelection to the NH legislature (his wife and mine are quite close). He is a liberal Democrat and one of your supporters. He shared how discouraged he is by the constant breaks in the legislative calendar and the leadership shake-ups that occur any given year. Continuity and consistency, he averred, were tantamount to creating decent domestic policies. And he agreed with my observation that America's penchant for changing its top leaders so frequently, every four years (or eight), meant that American foreign policy can be rendered feckless, appearing incoherent, contradictory, and capricious as the country goes this way, then that way, and then a completely different way, all within perhaps a decade. The world's calendar is not often ours.
So, in light of the fact that we have before us gargantuan struggles both foreign and domestic, and in light of the fact that you have shown me that you've not one tidbit of competence in such grave matters (you've given me no idea or resumé by which I can determine how you will decide or even IF you can make a decision), I cannot vote for you when America is at war and in crisis. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds; but a wise consistency is the very marrow of excellence. America needs someone who could not ever have generated in even one voter the thought that a candidate for president may have hoped against the war efforts of his or her own nation. This country needs someone who has a proven record of decision-making, not dream-making. Since the only clear decision you have made is to run for office; and though it is not even clear your decision was even your own and not one made by a committee of your ambitious backers, I conclude, again, that I cannot vote for you.
Of course, I've already said this five times. Forgive the redundancy.
Peace this night, and always.
©2008. All Rights Reserved.
My agreement with you today might be that what is debatable is actually the invading of Iraq. But when both the Carter and Clinton legacies seem to point in the direction of that very act, and when we have seen rather incredible success in a country your own party had declared lost and mired in civil war (where'd that war go?), I have to admit that I may have had things mixed up when I opposed the war. Don't get me wrong. I don't like war; I am not particularly bellicose. But that is just me: I will never stand in the way of those who freely choose to defend themselves in ways I may dislike.
Yet here's my larger criticism, and it is rather plain: You ran for president knowing that a wild success in Iraq would be disasterous for your candidacy. You went into this whole thing knowing that a glowing end to the Iraq conflict, one that ended in greatness and fanfare during George W. Bush's tenure, would diminish your alleged "prescience" tremendously. You persistently "stayed the course," following your own "the-war-was-wrong" narrative. You even demonstrated an incredible reluctance to admit your own myopia and fallibility regarding the "surge," which John McCain practically designed. The best you could do was to decry it with praise: saying that it succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations meant simply that everyone was wrong. That sort of praise, of course, is not an admission, but it is protection. Such protection though is rather thin, for your position and posturings have left me with an incredible insecurity: knowing as you did that a success in Iraq would hurt you, I can't help but think that you HAD to have rooted against it, at least secretly. My sad cynicism is indeed so very sad that I am even willing to consider the possibility that you worked to undermine the war's success at every political turn. How could you possibly hope for something that could be to your ruin? What evidence is there that you ever REALLY did fight on behalf of the war; what evidence is there that you did not root against it?
I spoke with a friend who is seeking reelection to the NH legislature (his wife and mine are quite close). He is a liberal Democrat and one of your supporters. He shared how discouraged he is by the constant breaks in the legislative calendar and the leadership shake-ups that occur any given year. Continuity and consistency, he averred, were tantamount to creating decent domestic policies. And he agreed with my observation that America's penchant for changing its top leaders so frequently, every four years (or eight), meant that American foreign policy can be rendered feckless, appearing incoherent, contradictory, and capricious as the country goes this way, then that way, and then a completely different way, all within perhaps a decade. The world's calendar is not often ours.
So, in light of the fact that we have before us gargantuan struggles both foreign and domestic, and in light of the fact that you have shown me that you've not one tidbit of competence in such grave matters (you've given me no idea or resumé by which I can determine how you will decide or even IF you can make a decision), I cannot vote for you when America is at war and in crisis. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds; but a wise consistency is the very marrow of excellence. America needs someone who could not ever have generated in even one voter the thought that a candidate for president may have hoped against the war efforts of his or her own nation. This country needs someone who has a proven record of decision-making, not dream-making. Since the only clear decision you have made is to run for office; and though it is not even clear your decision was even your own and not one made by a committee of your ambitious backers, I conclude, again, that I cannot vote for you.
Of course, I've already said this five times. Forgive the redundancy.
Peace this night, and always.
©2008. All Rights Reserved.
