1
Munich American
Peace Committee (MAPC)
Radio Lora, 9. Januar 2007
Bill Moyers
Die Bedeutung der Freiheit
Der bekannte
Fernsehjournalist Bill Moyers hielt die folgende Rede am 15. November
2006 an der United States Military Academy von West Point im
Rahmen einer Vortragsreihe "über die Bedeutung der Freiheit"
Viele von Ihnen werden demnächst in den Irak gehen. Ich selbst war
nie Soldat und mußte mich nie in Todesgefahr zwischen Pflicht,
Gefühl oder Gewissen entscheiden. Ich werde also nie wissen, ob
ich den Mut und die Disziplin hätte, mich erschießen zu
lassen oder zurück zu schießen. Wenn ich deshalb von
Veteranen, etwas über den Krieg erfahren will, sprechen sie nur
sehr ungern über ihre Erlebnisse. Sowohl mein Schwiegervater, der
1941 als Freiwilliger im Pazifik kämpfte, als auch mein Onkel, der
dort den Untergang seines Schiffes knapp überlebte und auch einer
meiner besten Freunde schienen einen Eid geschworen zu haben, nie
über das Dunkle und Schreckliche zu reden, das sie nicht mehr los
lassen sollte.
Für einen Dokumentarfilm begleitete ich mit einem Kamerateam
Veteranen aus dem 2. Weltkrieg auf dem Weg, der sie 1944 nach der
Landung in der Normandie tief hinein nach Deutschland geführt
hatte. Als sie nun nach 45 Jahren wieder dort standen, wo Freunde und
Feinde gefallen sind, wo sie gefangen genommen oder zum Schein
hingerichtet wurden, da versagte auch diesen alten, ergrauten
Soldaten die Stimme.
Erst die Dichter halfen mir, die Wirklichkeit des Krieges zu verstehen:
das "Göttin, singe mir nun des Peleussohnes Achilleus
unheilbringenden Zorn." der Illias genauso wie Wilfred Owens
ergreifende Gedichte aus dem 1.Weltkrieg . Man sollte die
Mächtigen der Welt zwingen, Literatur zu studieren, damit sie von
abgerissenen Gliedmaßen und zerfetzten Leibern reden und nicht
nur von Politik, Strategien, Zahlen und Geld. Heute zieht das
Weiße Haus wieder in einen Krieg, der sich auf unfähige
Geheimdienste, überzogene Forderungen und voreilige Urteile
stützt. Man umgeht den Kongress und hofiert eine von den eigenen
Parteifreunden bejubelte Presse mit ihren so genannter Experten, die
den Krieg nur aus den elfenbeinernen Türmen ihrer Schreibstuben,
Fernsehstudios und Katheder kennen. Schon General Sherman hatte nach
dem amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg gewarnt, dass nur diejenigen nach
Blutvergießen, Rache und Verwüstungen rufen, die noch nie
eine Schuss abgefeuert haben und noch nie die Schreie und das
Stöhnen von Verwundeten gehört haben..
Der Medienmogul Rupert Murdoch ließ seine Bluthunde schon Monate
vor dem Überfall auf den Irak von der Leine und schwärmte von
billigem Öl als Stimulus für die Weltwirtschaft. Noch heute
verteidigt er diesen Krieg, der seiner Ansicht nach nur relativ wenige
amerikanische Todesopfer gefordert habe. Eines dieser "relativ wenigen"
Opfer ist Leutnant Emily Perez, der erste farbige weibliche Offizier in
der Geschichte dieser Akademie und die erste West Point-Absolventin,
die im Irak gefallen ist. Als ich heute am Grab dieser tapferen Frau
stand, wurde mir bewußt, wie tief der Graben ist zwischen denen,
die den Krieg aus sicherem Abstand befürworten und denen, die
mutig kämpfen, ohne genau zu wissen wofür.
- 2 -
Weder Vietnam noch Irak haben aus mir eine Friedenstaube oder einen
Pazifisten gemacht, aber ich begann, die Verfassung genauer zu lesen,
und dort steht, dass die Entscheidung über Krieg und Frieden eine
Aufgabe der Legislative ist und nicht die eines einzelnen Mannes. Wenn
es also unseren Vizepräsidenten und den Präsidenten nicht
interessiert, was die Menschen über einen Krieg denken, dann
verstoßen sie gegen die elementarsten Grundlagen der
amerikanischen Verfassung!
Wenn Sie nun bald im Irak kämpfen, vergessen Sie nicht, dass
Sie einer Armee angehören, deren Anfänge auf die
Amerikanischen Revolution zurückgehen. und dass Sie Absolventen
einer Akademie sind, die bereits zwei Präsidenten, Hiram Ulysses
Grant und Dwight Eisenhower hervorgebracht hat. Unsere klassisch
gebildeten Gründerväter wollten die Endscheidung über
Krieg und Frieden nicht einem einzelnen Mann überlassen und viele
bezweifelten auch den Sinn einer regulären Armee, die in ihren
Augen immer nur von bezahlten Anhängern absolutistischer Monarchen
oder kaiserlicher Tyrannen gestellt worden war, denen es nicht um das
Wohl der Untertanen ging. Auch die britische Kolonialarmee mit ihren
Aristokratensöhnen und einem bunt zusammengewürfelten Heer
war kein Vorbild für unsere Republik freier Bürger. So waren
es Freiwillige, die als Erste für die Revolution ins Feld zogen,
bevor sie von gut ausgebildeten Truppen unterstützt wurden. Lange
vor der Einführung der Wehrpflicht im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,
ruhte die Sicherheit unseres Landes in Krisenzeiten also auf den
Schultern einer nur kleinen Berufsarmee und vieler Bauern und
Handwerker. Weil sowohl Freiwillige als auch die Berufsarmee stets auf
dem neuesten Stand der technischen Entwicklung sein mußten,
war West Point nicht nur eine Militärakademie, sondern auch eine
der ersten öffentlichen Technischen Hochschulen, die in
Friedenszeiten das wirtschaftliche Wachstum beschleunigte
.Doch unsere Soldaten haben nicht nur in Freiheitskriegen
gekämpft, wir führten auch Eroberungsfeldzüge und einen
blutigen Bürgerkrieg, den der West Pointer Grant auch dank
neuester Militärtechnik, Eisenbahn und Telegraf gewann. Es war
dieser Sieg, der den weltweiten Ruhm einer Armee von Demokraten
für Demokraten begründete, die jedoch kurz danach mit der
Vernichtung und Vertreibung der Indianer um so mehr Schande auf sich
laden sollte. Auch die ersten, von einer Mehrheit der amerikanischen
Bevölkerung unterstützten Versuche, Demokratie mit
Militärgewalt zu exportieren, scheiterten in Kuba genauso
kläglich wie in auf den Philippinen.
Während wir am 1. Weltkrieg nun kurz beteiligt waren, läutete
der lange und verhängnisvolle 2. Weltkrieg eine neue Ära in
der amerikanischen Geschichte ein. Dem Sieg folgte eine 60 Jahre
andauernde Periode kleiner und großer, mehr oder minder geheimer
Kriege und einer ununterbrochen andauernden Krise, die eine Supermacht
hervorbrachte und das Verhältnis der Nation zu ihrer Armee
grundlegend verändern sollte.
- 3 -
Heute sind die US-Streitkräfte nicht mehr das Stiefkind des
Staatshaushaltes und wer gegen eine Erhöhung der ständig
wachsenden Militärausgaben stimmt, begeht politischen Selbstmord.
Der Berufssoldat wurde zur Ikone, genau so wie Apple Pie und Fahne.
Für Sie könnte das schmerzliche Folgen haben.
Diejenigen, die Sie lautstark gegen die angeblichen Beleidigungen der
Irak-Kriegsgener verteidigen, sind dieselben, die die Ausgaben für
das Gesundheitswesen gekürzt haben und mit ihrer Hinhaltetaktik
Soldatenfamilien zu Sozialhilfeempfängern degradieren. Sie sind
dafür verantwortlich, dass die Männer und Frauen, die Sie
demnächst befehligen werden, in zu geringer Stärke,
unzureichend ausgerüstet, und unvorbereitet in einen
Straßen- und Häuserkrieg geschickt wurden, in dem sie
Zivilisten nicht von Kämpfern unterscheiden können. Sie haben
die zivile Nationalgarden belogen und ihre Kampfeinsätze immer
wieder verlängert.
Unabhängig davon, ob Sie für oder gegen diesen Krieg sind,
werden Sie mir zustimmen, dass nicht Lobhudelei, sondern
Verantwortungsbewußtsein gegenüber unseren Soldaten gefragt
sind, anstatt das viele Geld für High-tech-Waffensysteme
auszugeben, die in diesem Guerrilla-Krieg gegen nationalistische und
religiöse Fanatiker völlig nutzlos sind. Doch bereits Dwight
Eisenhower wußte, dass "der eigentliche Sieger immer der
militärisch-industrielle Komplex ist".
Das amerikanische Militär hat sich gegenüber den zivilen
Autoritäten fast immer loyal verhalten. Im Moment sieht es jedoch
so aus, als entzöge sich die zivile Seite ihrer Verantwortung
gegenüber dem Militär. 1941 war es das letzte Mal, dass der
Kongress einen Krieg erklärt hat. Seitdem ist es den US-
Präsidenten immer gelungen, die Zustimmung der Volksvertreter
für einen Krieg zu umgehen. George W. Bush tut gerade so, als
wäre er der Oberbefehlshaber der ganzen Nation. Ohne
Rücksicht auf die Sicherheit seiner Soldaten maßt er sich
an, das Genfer Abkommen nach seinem Gutdünken auszulegen. Wie soll
der junge Rekrut lernen, ungesetzlichen Befehlen nicht zu gehorchen?
Und wenn er psychisch krank aus dem Krieg zurückkommt, steht er
mit 20,638 anderen Veteranen in der Warteschlange für eine
mögliche Entschädigung.
Wie also soll sich ein gehorsamer Soldat verhalten?
- Auch als Träger einer Uniform haben Sie ein Stimmrecht.
- Bedenken Sie, dass es auch für die höchste Kriegskunst
menschliche, diplomatische und finanzielle Grenzen gibt. Unsere
Todesrate im Irak ist nicht "relativ gering" und die Kriegskosten
werden bereits auf 2 Billionen Dollar geschätzt. Wäre da
nicht ein Waffenstillstand eine ehrenhafte Lösung?
- "Der Krieg gegen den Terror", das Aufspüren und
Überwältigen von Terroristen sollte Aufgabe von Interpol
und FBI sein.
- Auch wenn Sie nicht ihrer Meinung sind, zweifeln Sie nicht an der
Integrität und Glaubwürdigkeit der Kriegsgegner. Als
Journalist weiß ich, wie schnell man denunziert werden kann, wenn
man auch in Ihrem Interesse Fehler und Inkompetenz aufzudecken
versucht.Das amerikanische Volk muss wissen, wie es seinen Söhnen
und Töchtern im Irak wirklich geht!
- Sagen Sie immer die Wahrheit, selbst dann, wenn es Ihrer Karriere schaden sollte.
- Möge in Ihren Herzen geschrieben sein: "Ich kämpfe
für die Freiheit meines Landes und bin für mein Handeln
verantwortlich. Ich stehe zu den Prinzipien, die meinem Land die
Freiheit gebracht haben." Diese Freiheit beginnt mit der kleinen leisen
Stimme unseres Gewissens, wenn wir entscheiden müssen, wofür
wir leben oder sterben.
Ich wünsche Ihnen Glück für Ihren Einsatz für unser Land..
Message To West Point
By Bill Moyers
TomPaine.com
Wednesday 29 November 2006
This is an excerpt
from the Sol Feinstone Lecture on The Meaning of Freedom delivered by
Bill Moyers at the United States Military Academy on November 15, 2006.
Many of you will be heading for Iraq. I have
never been a soldier myself, never been tested under fire, never faced
hard choices between duty and feeling, or duty and conscience, under
deadly circumstances. I will never know if I have the courage to be
shot at, or to shoot back, or the discipline to do my duty knowing the
people who dispatched me to kill - or be killed - had no idea of the
moral abyss into which they were plunging me.
I have tried to learn about war from those who know
it best: veterans, the real experts. But they have been such reluctant
reporters of the experience. My father-in-law, Joe Davidson, was 37
years old with two young daughters when war came in 1941; he enlisted
and served in the Pacific but I never succeeded in getting him to
describe what it was like to be in harm's way. My uncle came home from
the Pacific after his ship had been sunk, taking many friends down with
it, and he would look away and change the subject when I asked him
about it. One of my dearest friends, who died this year at 90, returned
from combat in Europe as if he had taken a vow of silence about the
dark and terrifying things that came home with him, uninvited.
Curious about this, some years ago I produced for
PBS a documentary called "D-Day to the Rhine." With a camera crew I
accompanied several veterans of World War II who for the first time
were returning together to the path of combat that carried them from
the landing at Normandy in 1944 into the heart of Germany. Members of
their families were along this time - wives, grown sons and daughters -
and they told me that until now, on this trip - 45 years after D-Day -
their husbands and fathers rarely talked about their combat
experiences. They had come home, locked their memories in their mind's
attic, and hung a "no trespassing" sign on it. Even as they retraced
their steps almost half a century later, I would find these aging GIs,
standing alone and silent on the very spot where a buddy had been
killed, or they themselves had killed, or where they had been taken
prisoner, a German soldier standing over them with a Mauser pointed
right between their eyes, saying: "For you, the war is over." As they
tried to tell the story, the words choked in their throats. The stench,
the vomit, the blood, the fear: What outsider - journalist or kin -
could imagine the demons still at war in their heads?
What I remember most vividly from that trip is the
opening scene of the film: Jose Lopez - the father of two, who had lied
about his age to get into the Army (he was too old), went ashore at
Normandy, fought his way across France and Belgium with a water-cooled
machine gun, rose to the rank of sergeant, and received the
Congressional Medal of Honor after single-handedly killing 100 German
troops in the Battle of the Bulge - Jose Lopez, back on Omaha Beach at
age 79, quietly saying to me: "I was really very, very afraid. That I
want to scream. I want to cry and we see other people was laying
wounded and screaming and everything and it's nothing you could do. We
could see them groaning in the water and we keep walking" - and then,
moving away from the camera, dropping to his knees, his hands clasped,
his eyes wet, as it all came back, memories so excruciating there were
no words for them.
The Poetry Of War
Over the year I turned to the poets for help in
understanding the realities of war; it is from the poets we outsiders
most often learn what you soldiers experience. I admired your former
superintendent, General William Lennox, who held a doctorate in
literature and taught poetry classes here because, he said, "poetry is
a great vehicle to teach cadets as much as anyone can what combat is
like." So it is. From the opening lines of the Iliad:
Rage, Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' Son
Achilles…hurling down to the House of Death so many souls, great
fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion for the dogs and
birds….
to Wilfred Owen's pained cry from the trenches of France:
I am the enemy you killed, my friend…
to W. D. Ehrhart's staccato recitation of the
Barely tolerable conglomeration of mud, heat, sweat,
dirt, rain, pain, fear…we march grinding under the weight of
heavy packs, feet dialed to the ground…we wonder…
Poets with their empathy and evocation open to
bystanders what lies buried in the soldier's soul. Those of you soon to
be leading others in combat may wish to take a metaphorical detour to
the Hindenburg Line of World War I, where the officer and poet Wilfred
Owen, a man of extraordinary courage who was killed a week before the
Armistice, wrote: "I came out in order to help these boys - directly by
leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their
sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can."
People in power should be required to take classes
in the poetry of war. As a presidential assistant during the early
escalation of the war in Vietnam, I remember how the President blanched
when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it would take one
million fighting men and 10 years really to win in Vietnam, but even
then the talk of war was about policy, strategy, numbers and budgets,
not severed limbs and eviscerated bodies.
That experience, and the experience 40 years later
of watching another White House go to war, also relying on inadequate
intelligence, exaggerated claims and premature judgments, keeping
Congress in the dark while wooing a gullible press, cheered on by
partisans, pundits, and editorial writers safely divorced from
realities on the ground, ended any tolerance I might have had for those
who advocate war from the loftiness of the pulpit, the safety of a
laptop, the comfort of a think tank, or the glamour of a television
studio. Watching one day on C-Span as one member of Congress after
another took to the floor to praise our troops in Iraq, I was reminded
that I could only name three members of Congress who have a son or
daughter in the military. How often we hear the most vigorous argument
for war from those who count on others of valor to fight it. As General
William Tecumseh Sherman said after the Civil War: "It is only those
who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the
wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation."
Remembering Emily Perez
Rupert Murdoch comes to mind - only because he was
in the news last week talking about Iraq. In the months leading up to
the invasion Murdoch turned the dogs of war loose in the corridors of
his media empire, and they howled for blood, although not their own.
Murdoch himself said, just weeks before the invasion, that: "The
greatest thing to come of this to the world economy, if you could put
it that way [as you can, if you are a media mogul], would be $20 a
barrel for oil." Once the war is behind us, Rupert Murdoch said: "The
whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger
stimulus than anything else."
Today Murdoch says he has no regrets, that he still
believes it was right "to go in there," and that "from a historical
perspective" the U.S. death toll in Iraq was "minute."
"Minute."
The word richoted in my head when I heard it. I had
just been reading about Emily Perez. Your Emily Perez: Second
Lieutenant Perez, the first woman of color to become a command sergeant
major in the history of the Academy, and the first woman graduate to
die in Iraq. I had been in Washington when word of her death made the
news, and because she had lived there before coming to West Point, the
Washington press told us a lot about her. People remembered her as "a
little superwoman" - straight A's, choir member, charismatic,
optimistic, a friend to so many; she had joined the medical service
because she wanted to help people. The obituary in the Washington Post
said she had been a ball of fire at the Peace Baptist Church, where she
helped start an HIV-AIDS ministry after some of her own family members
contracted the virus. Now accounts of her funeral here at West Point
were reporting that some of you wept as you contemplated the loss of so
vibrant an officer.
"Minute?" I don't think so. Historical perspective
or no. So when I arrived today I asked the Academy's historian, Steve
Grove, to take me where Emily Perez is buried, in Section 36 of your
cemetery, below Storm King Mountain, overlooking the Hudson River.
Standing there, on sacred American soil hallowed all the more by the
likes of Lieutenant Perez so recently returned, I thought that to
describe their loss as "minute" - even from a historical perspective -
is to underscore the great divide that has opened in America between
those who advocate war while avoiding it and those who have the courage
to fight it without ever knowing what it's all about.
We were warned of this by our founders. They had put
themselves in jeopardy by signing the Declaration of Independence; if
they had lost, that parchment could have been their death warrant, for
they were traitors to the Crown and likely to be hanged. In the fight
for freedom they had put themselves on the line - not just their
fortunes and sacred honor but their very persons, their lives. After
the war, forming a government and understanding both the nature of war
and human nature, they determined to make it hard to go to war except
to defend freedom; war for reasons save preserving the lives and
liberty of your citizens should be made difficult to achieve, they
argued. Here is John Jay's passage in Federalist No. 4:
It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to
human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have
a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often
make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the
purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military
glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to
aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and
a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the
sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice
or the voice and interests of his people.
And here, a few years later, is James Madison,
perhaps the most deliberative mind of that generation in assaying the
dangers of an unfettered executive prone to war:
In war, a physical force is to be created, and it is
the executive will which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures
are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense
them. In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied;
and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed.
It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the
executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most
dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity,
the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the
desire and duty of peace.
I want to be clear on this: Vietnam did not make me
a dove. Nor has Iraq; I am no pacifist. But they have made me study the
Constitution more rigorously, both as journalist and citizen. Again,
James Madison:
In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be
found, than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the
objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the
temptation would be too great for any one man.
Twice in 40 years we have now gone to war paying
only lip service to those warnings; the first war we lost, the second
is a bloody debacle, and both rank among the great blunders in our
history. It is impossible for soldiers to sustain in the field what
cannot be justified in the Constitution; asking them to do so puts
America at war with itself. So when the Vice President of the United
States says it doesn't matter what the people think, he and the
President intend to prosecute the war anyway, he is committing heresy
against the fundamental tenets of the American political order.
An Army Born In Revolution
This is a tough subject to address when so many of
you may be heading for Iraq. I would prefer to speak of sweeter things.
But I also know that 20 or 30 years from now any one of you may be the
Chief of Staff or the National Security Adviser or even the President -
after all, two of your boys, Grant and Eisenhower, did make it from
West Point to the White House. And that being the case, it's more
important than ever that citizens and soldiers - and citizen-soldiers -
honestly discuss and frankly consider the kind of country you are
serving and the kind of organization to which you are dedicating your
lives. You are, after all, the heirs of an army born in the American
Revolution, whose radicalism we consistently underestimate.
No one understood this radicalism - no one in
uniform did more to help us define freedom in a profoundly American way
- than the man whose monument here at West Point I also asked to visit
today - Thaddeus Kosciuszko. I first became intrigued by him over 40
years ago when I arrived in Washington. Lafayette Park, on Pennsylvania
Avenue, across from the White House, hosts several statues of military
heroes who came to fight for our independence in the American
Revolution. For seven years, either looking down on these figures from
my office at the Peace Corps, or walking across Lafayette Park to my
office in the White House, I was reminded of these men who came
voluntarily to fight for American independence from the monarchy. The
most compelling, for me, was the depiction of Kosciuszko. On one side
of the statue he is directing a soldier back to the battlefield, and on
the other side, wearing an American uniform, he is freeing a bound
soldier, representing America's revolutionaries.
Kosciuszko had been born in Lithuania-Poland, where
he was trained as an engineer and artillery officer. Arriving in the 13
colonies in 1776, he broke down in tears when he read the Declaration
of Independence. The next year, he helped engineer the Battle of
Saratoga, organizing the river and land fortifications that put
Americans in the stronger position. George Washington then commissioned
him to build the original fortifications for West Point. Since his
monument dominates the point here at the Academy, this part of the
story you must know well.
But what many don't realize about Kosciuszko is the
depth of his commitment to republican ideals and human equality. One
historian called him "a mystical visionary of human rights." Thomas
Jefferson wrote that Kosciuszko was "as pure a son of liberty as I have
ever known." That phrase of Jefferson's is often quoted, but if you
read the actual letter, Jefferson goes on to say: "And of that liberty
which is to go to all, and not to the few and the rich alone."
There is the clue to the meaning of freedom as Thaddeus Kosciuszko saw it.
After the American Revolution, he returned to his
homeland, what was then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1791 the
Poles adopted their celebrated May Constitution - Europe's first
codified national constitution (and the second oldest in the world,
after our own.) The May Constitution established political equality
between the middle class and the nobility and also partially abolished
serfdom by giving civil rights to the peasants, including the right to
state protection from landlord abuses. The autocrats and nobles of
Russia feared such reforms, and in 1794, when the Russians sought to
prevent their spread by partitioning the Commonwealth, Kosciuszko led
an insurrection. His untrained peasant forces were armed mostly with
single-blade sickles, but they won several early battles in fierce
hand-to-hand fighting, until they were finally overwhelmed. Badly
injured, Kosciuszko was taken prisoner and held for two years in St.
Petersburg, and that was the end of the Polish Commonwealth, which had
stood, by the way, as one of Europe's leading centers of religious
liberty.
Upon his release from prison, Kosciuszko came back
to the United States and began a lasting friendship with Jefferson, who
called him his "most intimate and beloved friend." In 1798, he wrote a
will leaving his American estate to Jefferson, urging him to use it to
purchase the freedom and education of his [Jefferson's] own slaves, or,
as Jefferson interpreted it, of "as many of the children as bondage in
this country as it should be adequate to." For this
émigré, as for so many who would come later, the meaning
of freedom included a passion for universal justice. In his Act of
Insurrection at the outset of the 1794 uprising, Kosciuszko wrote of
the people's "sacred rights to liberty, personal security and
property." Note the term property here. For Jefferson's "pursuit of
happiness" Kosciuszko substituted Locke's notion of property rights.
But it's not what you think: The goal was not simply to protect
"private property" from public interference (as it is taught today),
but rather to secure productive property for all as a right to
citizenship. It's easy to forget the difference when huge
agglomerations of personal wealth are defended as a sacred right of
liberty, as they are today with the gap between the rich and poor in
America greater than it's been in almost one hundred years. Kosciuszko
- General Kosciuszko, from tip to toe a military man - was talking
about investing the people with productive resources. Yes, freedom had
to be won on the battlefield, but if freedom did not lead to political,
social and economic opportunity for all citizens, freedom's meaning
could not be truly realized.
Think about it: A Polish general from the old world,
infusing the new nation with what would become the marrow of the
American Dream. Small wonder that Kosciuszko was often called a "hero
of two worlds" or that just 25 years ago, in 1981, when Polish farmers,
supported by the Roman Catholic Church, won the right to form an
independent union, sending shockwaves across the Communist empire,
Kosciuszko's name was heard in the victory speeches - his egalitarian
soul present at yet another revolution for human freedom and equal
rights.
After Jefferson won the presidency in l800,
Kosciuszko wrote him a touching letter advising him to be true to his
principles: "do not forget in your post be always a virtuous Republican
with justice and probity, without pomp and ambition - in a word be
Jefferson and my friend." Two years later, Jefferson signed into being
this professional officers school, on the site first laid out as a
fortress by his friend, the general from Poland.
A Paradox Of Liberty
Every turn in American history confronts us with
paradox, and this one is no exception. Here was Jefferson, known for
his vigorous and eloquent opposition to professional armies, presiding
over the establishment of West Point. It's a paradox that suits you
cadets to a T, because you yourselves represent a paradox of liberty.
You are free men and women who of your own free choice have joined an
institution dedicated to protecting a free nation, but in the process
you have voluntarily agreed to give up, for a specific time, a part of
your own liberty. An army is not a debating society and neither on the
field or in headquarters does it ask for a show of hands on whether
orders should be obeyed. That is undoubtedly a necessary idea, but for
you it complicates the already tricky question of "the meaning of
freedom."
I said earlier that our founders did not want the
power of war to reside in a single man. Many were also dubious about
having any kind of regular, or as they called it, "standing" army at
all. Standing armies were hired supporters of absolute monarchs and
imperial tyrants. The men drafting the Constitution were steeped in
classical and historical learning. They recalled how Caesar in ancient
times and Oliver Cromwell in more recent times had used the conquering
armies they had led to make themselves dictators. They knew how the
Roman legions had made and unmade emperors, and how Ottoman rulers of
the Turkish Empire had supported their tyrannies on the shoulders of
formidable elite warriors. Wherever they looked in history, they saw an
alliance between enemies of freedom in palaces and in officer corps
drawn from the ranks of nobility, bound by a warrior code that stressed
honor and bravery - but also dedication to the sovereign and the
sovereign's god, and distrust amounting to contempt for the ordinary
run of the sovereign's subjects.
The colonial experience with British regulars, first
as allies in the French and Indian Wars, and then as enemies, did not
increase American respect for the old system of military leadership.
Officers were chosen and promoted on the basis of aristocratic
connections, commissions were bought, and ineptitude was too often
tolerated. The lower ranks were often rootless alumni of jails and
workhouses, lured or coerced into service by the paltry pay and chance
of adventure - brutally hard types, kept in line by brutally harsh
discipline.
Not exactly your model for the army of a republic of free citizens.
What the framers came up with was another novelty.
The first battles of the Revolution were fought mainly by volunteer
militia from the states, such as Vermont's Green Mountain Boys, the
most famous militia then. They were gung-ho for revolution and flushed
with a fighting spirit. But in the end they were no substitute for the
better-trained regiments of the Continental line and the French
regulars sent over by France's king after the alliance of 1778. The
view nonetheless persisted that in times of peace, only a small
permanent army would be needed to repel invasions - unlikely except
from Canada - and deal with the frontier Indians. When and if a real
crisis came, it was believed, volunteers would flock to the colors like
the armed men of Greek mythology who sprang from dragon's teeth planted
in the ground by a divinely approved hero. The real safety of the
nation in any hour of crisis would rest with men who spent most of
their working lives behind the plow or in the workshop. And this was
long before the huge conscript armies of the 19th and 20th centuries
made that a commonplace fact.
And who would be in the top command of both that
regular force and of volunteer forces when actually called into federal
service? None other than the top elected civil official of the
government, the President. Think about that for a moment. The
professional army fought hard and long to create a system of selecting
and keeping officers on the basis of proven competence, not popularity.
But the highest commander of all served strictly at the pleasure of the
people and had to submit his contract for renewal every four years.
And what of the need for trained and expert
leadership at all the levels of command which quickly became apparent
as the tools and tactics of warfare grew more sophisticated in a
modernizing world? That's where West Point came in, filling a need that
could no longer be ignored. But what a special military academy it was!
We tend to forget that the West Point curriculum was heavily tilted
toward engineering; in fact, it was one of the nation's first
engineering colleges and it was publicly supported and free. That's
what made it attractive to young men like Hiram Ulysses Grant,
familiarly known as "Sam," who wasn't anxious to be a soldier but
wanted to get somewhere more promising than his father's Ohio farm.
Hundreds like Grant came to West Point and left to use their civil
engineering skills in a country badly needing them, some in civil life
after serving out an enlistment, but many right there in uniform. It
was the army that explored, mapped and surveyed the wagon and railroad
routes to the west, starting with the Corps of Exploration under Lewis
and Clark sent out by the protean Mr. Jefferson. It was the army that
had a hand in clearing rivers of snags and brush and building dams that
allowed steamboats to avoid rapids. It was the army that put up
lighthouses in the harbors and whose exhaustive geologic and
topographic surveys were important contributions to publicly supported
scientific research - AND to economic development - in the young
republic.
All of this would surely have pleased General
Kosciuszko, who believed in a society that leaves no one out. Indeed,
add all these facts together and what you come up with is a portrait of
something new under the sun - a peacetime army working directly with
and for the civil society in improving the nation so as to guarantee
the greater opportunities for individual success inherent in the
promise of democracy. And a wartime army in which temporary
citizen-solders were and still are led by long-term professional
citizen-soldiers who were molded out of the same clay as those they
command. And all of them led from the top by the one political figure
chosen by the entire national electorate. This arrangement - this
bargain between the men with the guns and the citizens who provide the
guns - is the heritage passed on to you by the revolutionaries who
fought and won America's independence and then swore fidelity to a
civil compact that survives today, despite tumultuous moments and
perilous passages.
West Point's Importance
Once again we encounter a paradox: Not all our wars
were on the side of freedom. The first that seriously engaged the
alumni of West Point was the Mexican War, which was not a war to
protect our freedoms but to grab land - facts are facts - and was not
only bitterly criticized by part of the civilian population, but even
looked on with skepticism by some graduates like Grant himself. Still,
he not only fought well in it, but it was for him, as well as for most
of the generals on both sides in the impending Civil War, an unequalled
training school and rehearsal stage.
When the Civil War itself came, it offered an
illustration of how the meaning of freedom isn't always easy to pin
down. From the point of view of the North, the hundreds of Southern
West Pointers who resigned to fight for the Confederacy - Robert E. Lee
included - were turning against the people's government that had
educated and supported them. They were traitors. But from the Southern
point of view, they were fighting for the freedom of their local
governments to leave the Union when, as they saw it, it threatened
their way of life. Their way of life tragically included the right to
hold other men in slavery.
The Civil War, nonetheless, confirmed the importance
of West Point training. European military observers were amazed at the
skill with which the better generals on both sides, meaning for the
most part West Pointers and not political appointees, maneuvered huge
armies of men over vast areas of difficult terrain, used modern
technologies like the railroad and the telegraph to coordinate
movements and accumulate supplies, and made the best use of newly
developed weapons. The North had more of these advantages, and when the
final victory came, adulation and admiration were showered on Grant and
Sherman, who had come to a realistic and unromantic understanding of
modern war, precisely because they had not been steeped in the
mythologies of a warrior caste. Their triumph was seen as vindication
of how well the army of a democracy could work. Just as Lincoln, the
self-educated rail-splitter, had provided a civilian leadership that
also proved him the equal of any potentate on the globe.
After 1865 the army shrank as its chief engagement
was now in wiping out the last vestiges of Indian resistance to their
dispossession and subjugation: One people's advance became another's
annihilation and one of the most shameful episodes of our history. In
1898 the army was briefly used for the first effort in exporting
democracy - an idea that does not travel well in military transports -
when it warred with Spain to help the Cubans complete a war for
independence that had been in progress for three years. The Cubans
found their liberation somewhat illusory, however, when the United
States made the island a virtual protectorate and allowed it to be
ruled by a corrupt dictator.
Americans also lifted the yoke of Spain from the
Filipinos, only to learn that they did not want to exchange it for one
stamped 'Made in the USA.' It took a three-year war, during which the
army killed several thousand so-called "insurgents" before their leader
was captured and the Filipinos were cured of the illusion that
independence meant…well, independence. I bring up these
reminders not to defame the troops. Their actions were supported by a
majority of the American people even in a progressive phase of our
political history (though there was some principled and stiff
opposition.) Nonetheless, we have to remind ourselves that the armed
forces can't be expected to be morally much better than the people who
send them into action, and that when honorable behavior comes into
conflict with racism, honor is usually the loser unless people such as
yourself fight to maintain it.
Our brief participation in the First World War
temporarily expanded the army, helped by a draft that had also proven
necessary in the Civil War. But rapid demobilization was followed by a
long period of ever-shrinking military budgets, especially for the land
forces.
Not until World War II did the Army again take part
in such a long, bloody, and fateful conflict as the Civil War had been,
and like the Civil War it opened an entirely new period in American
history. The incredibly gigantic mobilization of the entire nation, the
victory it produced, and the ensuing 60 years of wars, quasi-wars,
mini-wars, secret wars, and a virtually permanent crisis created a
superpower and forever changed the nation's relationship to its armed
forces, confronting us with problems we have to address, no matter how
unsettling it may be to do so in the midst of yet another war.
The Bargain
The Armed Services are no longer stepchildren in
budgetary terms. Appropriations for defense and defense-related
activities (like veterans' care, pensions, and debt service) remind us
that the costs of war continue long after the fighting ends. Objections
to ever-swelling defensive expenditures are, except in rare cases, a
greased slide to political suicide. It should be troublesome to you as
professional soldiers that elevation to the pantheon of untouchable
icons - right there alongside motherhood, apple pie and the flag -
permits a great deal of political lip service to replace genuine
efforts to improve the lives and working conditions - in combat and out
- of those who serve.
Let me cut closer to the bone. The chickenhawks in
Washington, who at this very moment are busily defending you against
supposed "insults" or betrayals by the opponents of the war in Iraq,
are likewise those who have cut budgets for medical and psychiatric
care; who have been so skimpy and late with pay and with provision of
necessities that military families in the United States have had to
apply for food stamps; who sent the men and women whom you may soon be
commanding into Iraq understrength, underequipped, and unprepared for
dealing with a kind of war fought in streets and homes full of
civilians against enemies undistinguishable from non-combatants; who
have time and again broken promises to the civilian National Guardsmen
bearing much of the burden by canceling their redeployment orders and
extending their tours.
You may or may not agree on the justice and
necessity of the war itself, but I hope that you will agree that
flattery and adulation are no substitute for genuine support. Much of
the money that could be directed to that support has gone into
high-tech weapons systems that were supposed to produce a new, mobile,
compact "professional" army that could easily defeat the armies of any
other two nations combined, but is useless in a war against nationalist
or religious guerrilla uprisings that, like it or not, have some
support, coerced or otherwise, among the local population. We learned
this lesson in Vietnam, only to see it forgotten or ignored by the time
this administration invaded Iraq, creating the conditions for a savage
sectarian and civil war with our soldiers trapped in the middle, unable
to discern civilian from combatant, where it is impossible to kill your
enemy faster than rage makes new ones.
And who has been the real beneficiary of creating
this high-tech army called to fight a war conceived and commissioned
and cheered on by politicians and pundits not one of whom ever entered
a combat zone? One of your boys answered that: Dwight Eisenhower, class
of 1915, who told us that the real winners of the anything at any price
philosophy would be "the military-industrial complex."
I want to contend that the American military systems
that evolved in the early days of this republic rested on a bargain
between the civilian authorities and the armed services, and that the
army has, for the most part, kept its part of the bargain and that, at
this moment, the civilian authorities whom you loyally obey, are
shirking theirs. And before you assume that I am calling for an
insurrection against the civilian deciders of your destinies, hear me
out, for that is the last thing on my mind.
You have kept your end of the bargain by fighting
well when called upon, by refusing to become a praetorian guard for a
reigning administration at any time, and for respecting civil control
at all times. For the most part, our military leaders have made no
serious efforts to meddle in politics. The two most notable cases were
General George McClellan, who endorsed a pro-Southern and pro-slavery
policy in the first year of the war and was openly contemptuous of
Lincoln. But Lincoln fired him in 1862, and when McClellan ran for
President two years later, the voting public handed him his hat.
Douglas MacArthur's attempt to dictate his own China policy in 1951 ran
head-on into the resolve of Harry Truman, who, surviving a firestorm of
hostility, happily watched a MacArthur boomlet for the Republican
nomination for the Presidency fizzle out in 1952.
On the other side of the ledger, however, I believe
that the bargain has not been kept. The last time Congress declared war
was in 1941. Since then presidents of the United States, including the
one I served, have gotten Congress, occasionally under demonstrably
false pretenses, to suspend Constitutional provisions that required
them to get the consent of the people's representatives in order to
conduct a war. They have been handed a blank check to send the armed
forces into action at their personal discretion and on dubious
Constitutional grounds.
Furthermore, the current President has made
extra-Constitutional claims of authority by repeatedly acting as if he
were Commander-in-Chief of the entire nation and not merely of the
armed forces. Most dangerously to our moral honor and to your own
welfare in the event of capture, he has likewise ordered the armed
forces to violate clear mandates of the Uniform Code of Military
Justice and the Geneva Conventions by claiming a right to interpret
them at his pleasure, so as to allow indefinite and secret detentions
and torture. These claims contravene a basic principle usually made
clear to recruits from their first day in service - that they may not
obey an unlawful order. The President is attempting to have them
violate that longstanding rule by personal definitions of what the law
says and means.
There is yet another way the chickenhawks are
failing you. In the October issue of the magazine of the California
Nurses Association, you can read a long report on "The Battle at Home."
In veterans' hospitals across the country - and in a growing number of
ill-prepared, under-funded psych and primary care clinics as well - the
report says that nurses "have witnessed the guilt, rage, emotional
numbness, and tormented flashbacks of GIs just back from Iraq." Yet "a
returning vet must wait an average of 165 days for a VA decision on
initial disability benefits," and an appeal can take up to three years.
Just in the first quarter of this year, the VA treated 20,638 Iraq
veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder, and faces a backlog of
400,000 cases. This is reprehensible.
I repeat: These are not palatable topics for
soldiers about to go to war; I would like to speak of sweeter things.
But freedom means we must face reality: "You shall know the truth and
the truth shall set you free." Free enough, surely, to think for
yourselves about these breaches of contract that crudely undercut the
traditions of an army of free men and women who have bound themselves
voluntarily to serve the nation even unto death.
The Voice Of Conscience
What, then, can you do about it if disobedience to the chain of command is ruled out?
For one, you didn't give up your freedom to vote,
nor did you totally quit your membership in civil society, when you put
on the uniform, even though, as Eisenhower said, you did accept
"certain inhibitions" at the time. He said that when questioned about
MacArthur's dismissal, and he made sure his own uniform was back in the
trunk before his campaign in 1952. It has been most encouraging, by the
way, to see veterans of Iraq on the campaign trail in our recent
elections.
Second, remember that there are limitations to what
military power can do. Despite the valor and skills of our fighting
forces, some objectives are not obtainable at a human, diplomatic, and
financial cost that is acceptable. Our casualties in Iraq are not
"minute" and the cost of the war has been projected by some sources to
reach $2 trillion dollars. Sometimes, in the real world, a truce is the
most honorable solution to conflict. Dwight Eisenhower - who is a
candidate for my favorite West Point graduate of the 20th century -
knew that when, in 1953, he went to Korea and accepted a stalemate
rather than carrying out his bluff of using nuclear weapons. That was
the best that could be done and it saved more years of stalemate and
casualties. Douglas MacArthur announced in 1951 that "there was no
substitute for victory." But in the wars of the 21st century there are
alternative meanings to victory and alternative ways to achieve them.
Especially in tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to
change our metaphor from a "war on terror" - what, pray tell, exactly
is that? - to the mindset of Interpol tracking down master criminals
through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking
the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without
leveling the entire neighborhood in the process. Help us to think
beyond a "war on terror" - which politicians could wage without end,
with no measurable way to judge its effectiveness, against stateless
enemies who hope we will destroy the neighborhood, creating recruits
for their side - to counter-terrorism modeled on extraordinary police
work.
Third, don't let your natural and commendable
loyalty to comrades-in-arms lead you into thinking that criticism of
the mission you are on spells lack of patriotism. Not every politician
who flatters you is your ally. Not every one who believes that war is
the wrong choice to some problems is your enemy. Blind faith in bad
leadership is not patriotism. In the words of G.K. Chesterton: "To say
my country right or wrong is something no patriot would utter except in
dire circumstance; it is like saying my mother drunk or sober."
Patriotism means insisting on our political leaders being sober,
strong, and certain about what they are doing when they put you in
harm's way.
Fourth, be more prepared to accept the credibility
and integrity of those who disagree about the war even if you do not
agree with their positions. I say this as a journalist, knowing it is
tempting in the field to denounce or despise reporters who ask nosy
questions or file critical reports. But their first duty as reporters
is to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth and report it to
the American people - for your sake. If there is mismanagement and
incompetence, exposing it is more helpful to you than paeans to candy
given to the locals. I trust you are familiar with the study done for
the Army in 1989 by the historian, William Hammond. He examined press
coverage in Korea and Vietnam and found that it was not the cause of
disaffection at home; what disturbed people at home was the death toll;
when casualties jumped, public support dropped. Over time, he said, the
reporting was vindicated. In fact, "the press reports were often more
accurate than the public statements of the administration in portraying
the situation in Vietnam." Take note: The American people want the
truth about how their sons and daughters are doing in Iraq and what
they're up against, and that is a good thing.
Finally, and this above all - a lesson I wish I had
learned earlier. If you rise in the ranks to important positions - or
even if you don't - speak the truth as you see it, even if the
questioner is a higher authority with a clear preference for one and
only one answer. It may not be the way to promote your career; it can
in fact harm it. Among my military heroes of this war are the generals
who frankly told the President and his advisers that their information
and their plans were both incomplete and misleading - and who paid the
price of being ignored and bypassed and possibly frozen forever in
their existing ranks: men like General Eric K. Shinseki, another son of
West Point. It is not easy to be honest - and fair - in a bureaucratic
system. But it is what free men and women have to do. Be true to your
principles, General Kosciuszko reminded Thomas Jefferson. If doing so
exposes the ignorance and arrogance of power, you may be doing more to
save the nation than exploits in combat can achieve.
I know the final rule of the military Code of
Conduct is already written in your hearts: "I am an American, fighting
for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the
principles which made my country free..." The meaning of freedom begins
with the still, small voice of conscience, when each of us decides what
we will live, or die, for.
I salute your dedication to America and I wish all of you good luck.
Bill Moyers is
deeply grateful to his colleagues Bernard A Weisberger, Professor
Emeritus of History at The University of Chicago, and Lew Daly, Senior
Fellow of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, for their
contributions to this speech.