Issues
THE WAR IN IRAQ:
A speech by Senator John Kerry in Boston's historic Faneuil Hall
"Dissent"
As prepared for delivery:
Thirty-five years ago, I testified before the Foreign Relations Committee
of the United States Senate, and called for an end to the war I had returned
from fighting not long before.
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It was 1971 - twelve years after
the first American died in what was then South Vietnam, seven years after
Lyndon Johnson seized on a small and contrived incident in the Tonkin Gulf
to launch a full-scale war--and three years after Richard Nixon was elected
president on the promise of a secret plan for peace. We didn't know it
at the time, but four more years of the War in Vietnam still lay ahead.
These were years in which the Nixon administration lied and broke the law--and
claimed it was prolonging war to protect our troops as they withdrew--years
that ultimately ended only when politicians in Washington decided they
would settle for a "decent interval" between the departure of our forces
and the inevitable fall of Saigon.
I know that some active duty service members, some veterans, and certainly some
politicians scorned those of us who spoke out, suggesting our actions failed
to "support the troops"--which to them meant continuing to support the war,
or at least keeping our mouths shut. Indeed, some of those critics said
the same thing just two years ago during the presidential campaign.
I have come here today to reaffirm that it was right to dissent
in 1971 from a war that was wrong. And to affirm that it is both a right
and an obligation for Americans today to disagree with a President who
is wrong, a policy that is wrong, and a war in Iraq that weakens the nation.
I believed then, just as I believe now, that the best way to support
the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors
their sacrifice, and disserves our people and our principles. When brave
patriots suffer and die on the altar of stubborn pride, because of the
incompetence and self-deception of mere politicians, then the only patriotic
choice is to reclaim the moral authority misused by those entrusted with
high office.
I believed then, just as I believe now, that it is profoundly
wrong to think that fighting for your country overseas and fighting for
your country's ideals at home are contradictory or even separate duties.
They are, in fact, two sides of the very same patriotic coin. And that's
certainly what I felt when I came home from Vietnam convinced that our
political leaders were waging war simply to avoid responsibility for the
mistakes that doomed our mission in the first place. Indeed, one of the
architects of the war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, confessed in
a recent book that he knew victory was no longer a possibility far earlier
than 1971.
By then, it was clear to me that hundreds of thousands of soldiers,
sailors, Marines and airmen--disproportionately poor and minority Americans--were
being sent into the valley of the shadow of death for an illusion privately
abandoned by the very men in Washington who kept sending them there. All
the horrors of a jungle war against an invisible enemy indistinguishable
from the people we were supposed to be protecting--all the questions associated
with quietly sanctioned violence against entire villages and regions--all
the confusion and frustration that came from defending a corrupt regime
in Saigon that depended on Americans to do too much of the fighting--all
that cried out for dissent, demanded truth, and could not be denied by
easy slogans like "peace with honor"--or by the politics of fear and smear.
It was time for the truth, and time for it all to end, and my only regret
in joining the anti-war movement was that it took so long to succeed--for
the truth to prevail, and for America to regain confidence in our own deepest values.
The fissures created by Vietnam have long been stubbornly resistant
to closure. But I am proud it was the dissenters--and it was our veterans'
movement--and people like Judy Droz Keyes--who battled not just to end the
war but to combat government secrecy and the willful amnesia of a society
that did not want to remember its obligations to the soldiers who fought.
We fought the forgetting and pushed our nation to confront the war's surplus
of sad legacies--Agent Orange, Amer-Asian orphans, abandoned allies, exiled
and imprisoned draft dodgers, doubts about whether all our POWs had come
home, and honor at last for those who returned from Vietnam and those who
did not. Because we spoke out, the truth was ultimately understood that
the faults in Vietnam were those of the war, not the warriors.
Then, and even now, there were many alarmed by dissent--many who
thought that staying the course would eventually produce victory--or that
admitting the mistake and ending it would embolden our enemies around the
world. History disproved them before another decade was gone: Fourteen
years elapsed between the first major American commitment of helicopters
and pilots to Vietnam and the fall of Saigon. Fourteen years later, the
Berlin Wall fell, and with it the Communist threat. You cannot tell me
that withdrawing from Vietnam earlier would have changed that outcome.
The lesson here is not that some of us were right about Vietnam,
and some of us were wrong. The lesson is that true patriots must defend
the right of dissent, and hear the voices of dissenters, especially now,
when our leaders have committed us to a pre-emptive "war of choice" that
does not involve the defense of our people or our territory against aggressors.
The patriotic obligation to speak out becomes even more urgent when politicians
refuse to debate their policies or disclose the facts. And even more urgent
when they seek, perversely, to use their own military blunders to deflect
opposition and answer their own failures with more of the same. Presidents
and politicians may worry about losing face, or votes, or legacy; it is
time to think about young Americans and innocent civilians who are losing
their lives.
This is not the first time in American history when patriotism
has been distorted to deflect criticism and mislead the nation.
In the infancy of the Republic, in 1798, Congress enacted the
Alien and Sedition Acts to smear Thomas Jefferson and accuse him of treason.
Newspapers were shut down, and their editors arrested, including Benjamin
Franklin's grandson. No wonder Thomas Jefferson himself said: "Dissent
is the greatest form of patriotism."
In the Mexican War, a young Congressman named Abraham Lincoln
was driven from public life for raising doubts about official claims. And
in World War I, America's values were degraded, not defended, when dissenters
were jailed and the teaching of German was banned in public schools in
some states. At that time it was apparently sounding German, not looking
French, that got you in trouble. And it was panic and prejudice, not true
patriotism, that brought the internment of Japanese-Americans during World
War II--a measure upheld by Supreme Court Justices who did not uphold their
oaths to defend the Constitution. We are stronger today because no less
a rock-ribbed conservative than Robert Taft -- "Mr. Republican" himself
-- stood up and said at the height of the second World War that, "the maintenance
of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining
it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes
which might otherwise occur."
Even during the Cold War--an undeclared war, and often more a war
of nerves and diplomacy than of arms--even the mildest dissenters from official
policy were sometimes silenced, blacklisted, or arrested, especially during
the McCarthy era of the early 1950s. Indeed, it was only when Joseph McCarthy
went through the gates of delirium and began accusing distinguished U.S.
diplomats and military leaders of treason that the two parties in Washington
and the news media realized the common stake they had in the right to dissent.
They stood up to a bully and brought down McCarthyism's ugly and contrived
appeals to a phony form of 100% Americanism.
Dissenters are not always right, but it is always a warning sign
when they are accused of unpatriotic sentiments by politicians seeking
a safe harbor from debate, from accountability, or from the simple truth.
Truth is the American bottom line. Truth above all is fundamental
to who we are. It is no accident that among the first words of the first
declaration of our national existence it is proclaimed: "We hold these
truths to be self-evident.
This hall and this Commonwealth have always been at the forefront
of seeking out and living out the truth in the conduct of public life.
Here Massachusetts defined human rights by adopting our own Bill of Rights;
here we took a stand against slavery, for women's suffrage and civil rights
for all Americans. The bedrock of America's greatest advances--the foundation
of what we know today are defining values--was formed not by cheering on
things as they were, but by taking them on and demanding change.
And here and now we must insist again that fidelity, honor, and
love of country demand untrammeled debate and open dissent. At no time
is that truer than in the midst of a war rooted in deceit and justified
by continuing deception. For what is at stake here is nothing less than
life itself. As the statesman Edmund Burke once said: "A conscientious
man should be cautious how he dealt in blood."
Think about that now--in a new era that has brought old temptations
and tested abiding principles.
America has always embraced the best traditions of civilized conduct
toward combatants and non-combatants in war. But today our leaders hold
themselves above the law--in the way they not only treat prisoners in Abu
Ghraib, but assert unchecked power to spy on American citizens.
America has always rejected war as an instrument of raw power
or naked self-interest. We fought when we had to in order to repel grave
threats or advance freedom and self-determination in concert with like-minded
people everywhere. But our current leadership, for all its rhetoric of
freedom and democracy, behaves as though might does make right, enabling
us to discard the alliances and institutions that served us so well in
the past as nothing more now than impediments to the exercise of unilateral
power.
America has always been stronger when we have not only proclaimed
free speech, but listened to it. Yes, in every war, there have been those
who demand suppression and silencing. And although no one is being jailed
today for speaking out against the war in Iraq, the spirit of intolerance
for dissent has risen steadily, and the habit of labeling dissenters as
unpatriotic has become the common currency of the politicians currently
running our country.
Dismissing dissent is not only wrong, but dangerous when America's
leadership is unwilling to admit mistakes, unwilling to engage in honest
discussion of the nation's direction, and unwilling to hold itself accountable
for the consequences of decisions made without genuine disclosure, or genuine
debate.
In recent weeks, a number of retired high-ranking military leaders,
several of whom played key combat or planning roles in Afghanistan and
Iraq, have come forward publicly to call for the resignation of Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And across the administration, from the president
on down, we've heard these calls dismissed or even attacked as acts of
disloyalty, or as threats to civilian control of the armed forces. We have
even heard accusations that this dissent gives aid and comfort to the enemy.
That is cheap and it is shameful. And once again we have seen personal
attacks on the character of those who speak out. How dare those who never
wore the uniform in battle attack those who wore it all their lives--and
who, retired or not, did not resign their citizenship in order to serve
their country.
The former top operating officer at the Pentagon, a Marine Lieutenant
General, said "the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with
a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have
never had to execute these missions--or bury the results." It is hard for
a career military officer to speak those words. But at a time when the
administration cannot let go of the myths and outright lies it broadcast
in the rush to war in Iraq, those who know better must speak out.
At a time when mistake after mistake is being compounded by the
very civilian leadership in the Pentagon that ignored expert military advice
in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, those who understand the price
being paid for each mistake by our troops, our country, and Iraq itself
must be heard.
Once again we are imprisoned in a failed policy. And once again
we are being told that admitting mistakes, not the mistakes themselves,
will provide our enemies with an intolerable propaganda victory. Once again
we are being told that we have no choice but to stay the course of a failed
policy. At a time like this, those who seek to reclaim America's true character
and strength must be respected.
The true defeatists today are not those who call for recognizing
the facts on the ground in Iraq. The true defeatists are those who believe
America is so weak that it must sacrifice its principles to the pursuit
of illusory power.
The true pessimists today are not those who know that America
can handle the truth about the Administration's boastful claim of "Mission
Accomplished" in Iraq. The true pessimists are those who cannot accept
that America's power and prestige depend on our credibility at home and
around the world. The true pessimists are those who do not understand that
fidelity to our principles is as critical to national security as our military
power itself.
And the most dangerous defeatists, the most dispiriting pessimists,
are those who invoke September 11th to argue that our traditional values
are a luxury we can no longer afford.
Let's call it the Bush-Cheney Doctrine.
According to the Bush-Cheney Doctrine, alliances and international
institutions are now disposable--and international institutions are dispensable
or even despicable.
According to the Bush-Cheney Doctrine, we cannot foreswear the
fool's gold of information secured by torturing prisoners or creating a
shadow justice system with no rules and no transparency.
According to the Bush-Cheney Doctrine, unwarranted secrecy and
illegal spying are now absolute imperatives of our national security.
According to the Bush-Cheney Doctrine, those who question the
abuse of power question America itself.
According to the Bush-Cheney doctrine, an Administration should
be willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the Iraq war, but
unwilling to spend a few billion dollars to secure the American ports through
which nuclear materials could make their way to terrorist cells.
According to the Bush-Cheney Doctrine, executive powers trump
the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.
According to the Bush-Cheney Doctrine, smearing administration
critics is not only permissible, but necessary--and revealing the identity
of a CIA agent is an acceptable means to hide the truth.
The raw justification for abandoning so many American traditions
exposes the real danger of the Bush-Cheney Doctrine. We all understand
we are in a long struggle against jihadist extremism. It does represent
a threat to our vital security interests and our values. Even the Bush-Cheney
Administration acknowledges this is preeminently an ideological war, but
that's why the Bush-Cheney Doctrine is so ill-equipped to fight and win
it.
Our enemies argue that all our claims about advancing universal
principles of human rights and mutual respect disguise a raw demand for
American dominance. They gain every time we tolerate or cover up abuses
of human rights in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, or among sectarian militias
in Iraq, and especially when we defiantly disdain the rules of international
law.
Our enemies argue that our invasion and occupation of Iraq reflect
an obsession with oil supplies and commercial opportunities. They gain
when our president and vice president, both former oil company executives,
continue to pursue an oil-based energy strategy, and provide vast concessions
in Iraq to their corporate friends.
And so there's the crowning irony: the Bush-Cheney Doctrine holds
that many of our great traditions cannot be maintained; yet the Bush-Cheney
policies, by abandoning those traditions, give Osama bin Laden and his
associates exactly what they want and need to reinforce their hate-filled
ideology of Islamic solidarity against the western world.
I understand fully that Iraq is not Vietnam, and the war on terrorism
is not the Cold War. But in one very crucial respect, we are in the same
place now as we were thirty five years ago. When I testified in 1971, I
spoke out not just against the war itself, but the blindness and cynicism
of political leaders who were sending brave young Americans to be killed
or maimed for a mission the leaders themselves no longer believed in.
The War in Vietnam and the War in Iraq are now converging in too
many tragic respects.
As in Vietnam, we engaged militarily in Iraq based on official
deception.
As in Vietnam, we went into Iraq ostensibly to fight a larger
global war under the misperception that the particular theater was just
a sideshow, but we soon learned that the particular aspects of the place
where we fought mattered more than anything else.
And as in Vietnam, we have stayed and fought and died even though
it is time for us to go.
We are now in the third war in Iraq in as many years. The first
was against Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction.
The second was against terrorists whom, the administration said, it was
better to fight over there than here. Now we find our troops in the middle
of an escalating civil war.
Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall
died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral
then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion. We want
democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our valiant
soldiers can't bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq's leaders are unwilling
themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires.
As our generals have said, the war cannot be won militarily. It
must be won politically. No American soldier should be sacrificed because
Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences.
Our call to action is clear. Iraqi leaders have responded only
to deadlines--a deadline to transfer authority to a provisional government,
and a deadline to hold three elections. It was the most intense 11th hour
pressure that just pushed aside Prime Minister Jaafari and brought forward
a more acceptable candidate. And it will demand deadline toughness to reign
in Shiite militias Sunnis say are committing horrific acts of torture every
day in Baghdad.
So we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get
Iraq up on its own two feet.
Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to
deal with these intransigent issues and at last put together an effective
unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military. If Iraqis
aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the
election, they're probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war
will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.
If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then
we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American
combat forces by year's end. Doing so will actually empower the new Iraqi
leadership, put Iraqis in the position of running their own country and
undermine support for the insurgency, which is fueled in large measure
by the majority of Iraqis who want us to leave their country.
So now, as in 1971, we are engaged in another fight to live the
truth and make our own government accountable. As in 1971, this is another
moment when American patriotism demands more dissent and less complacency
in the face of bland assurances from those in power.
We must insist now that patriotism does not belong to those who
defend a President's position--it belongs to those who defend their country.
Patriotism is not love of power; it is love of country. And sometimes loving
your country demands you must tell the truth to power. This is one of those
times.
Lives are on the line. Lives have been lost to bad decisions -
not decisions that could have gone either way, but decisions that constitute
basic negligence and incompetence. And lives continue to be lost because
of stubbornness and pride.
We support the troops--the brave men and women who have always
protected us and do so today--in part by honoring their service, and in
part by making sure they have everything they need both in battle and after
they have borne the burden of battle.
But I believe now as strongly and proudly as I did thirty-five
years ago that the most important way to support the troops is to tell
the truth, and to ensure we do not ask young Americans to die in a cause
that falls short of the ideals of this country.
When we protested the war in Vietnam some would weigh in against
us saying: "My country right or wrong." Our response was simple: "Yes,
my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right and when wrong, make
it right." And that's what we must do again today.
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