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A Short History of Dissent in America

By STANLEY I. KUTLER
Stanley I. Kutler is the author of The Wars of Watergate.

Chicago Tribune, Mar. 18, 2003

"As we march to war, the Bush administration's interest is to discredit, even foreclose, dissent. Passivity and a sense of powerlessness are pervasive everywhere. Tabloids and cable channels refer to the 'treason' of celebrities who oppose President Bush. Our political leaders march in lockstep with the president. The so-called 'opposition' hedges its bets, 'patriotically' supporting Bush's actions, but ever hopeful he will stumble on the economy and give them the opportunity of 1992 all over again."
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"The freedom and diversity we so cherish for others is strikingly lacking in our public discourse. We must not forget our traditions of challenge and dissent. For openers, we can invoke the injunctions of Theodore Roosevelt, the most red-blooded and manly of our presidents - if that is to be the litmus test for strong leadership. In 1918, ex-President Roosevelt challenged Woodrow Wilson's sweeping crackdown against dissent after the American entry into World War I. 'To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong,' Roosevelt said, 'is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.' "
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"Abraham Lincoln more pointedly serves the present, critical need. Challenging President James Polk's dubious response to alleged Mexican aggression against the United States, Congressman Lincoln voted to censure the president in 1848 - while the war against Mexico still raged. He contended that the president's justification for war was 'from beginning to end the sheerest deception.' Polk would have 'gone further with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him.' Lincoln threw down the gauntlet: 'Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. . . . Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation.' Lincoln more than suspected that the president was 'deeply conscious of being in the wrong.' "
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"Today, as we prepare to go to war, will the qualities of democracy, diversity, and the open society President Bush so ardently desires for the nation-building he will do for the Iraqis be available at home? The chorus for unanimity is rising, usually in the name of support for our troops in harm's way. Hardly a new ploy for presidential behavior. Once he commits troops abroad, the argument goes, then we must have a moratorium on criticism. Again, Lincoln can help us. He realized that he had to distinguish between the role of the military and the policies of President Polk. The army had done its work admirably, Congressman Lincoln noted, but the president had 'bungled' his. Polk, he feared, was 'a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity.' "
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"Our 'loyal opposition' at this moment borders on the comic. Most Democratic leaders desperately try to walk both sides of the line, keeping their options open, and say little to criticize or restrain the president in his headlong rush for war. Notably, ex-President Jimmy Carter and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) have spoken out. Carter rests his opposition to Bush's policy on Christian principles of a just war. We have not exhausted all non-violent options, Carter argues; we plan no distinctions between combatants and civilian non-combatants; and we face a strong prospect that war will only destabilize Iraq and the Middle East, and increase opportunities for terrorism. Carter also has noted that the war will not be sanctioned by the international community the United States professes to represent. George Bush's 'alliance of the willing' apparently is a very exclusive club."
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"Sen. Byrd has pointedly challenged the president's recital of slogan, and his paucity of facts and evidence. Byrd is a powerful man within congressional boundaries, but he is readily dismissed as a caricature of sorts in the media, and elsewhere. Those anxious to discredit him resurrect his youthful membership in the Klan, a fact which he has decisively repudiated - unlike Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), and others like him, who never, never publicly disowned or repudiated their support for segregation, then or forever. But the passivity of the media is most striking in giving President Bush an open field."
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"Bush's Mar. 6 press conference was not, in the minds of many observers, a particularly forceful or articulate moment for him. His answers seemed repetitious. Commentators suggested that many questions might have been planted, and that the president carefully limited his attention to friendly reporters. Planted questions? Favored softball questioners? How shocking; how surprising. Meanwhile, chattering commentators shortchanged their audience with little or no attention to the substance, or lack thereof, of his performance. Omission is the weapon of choice for the media's passivity. The Sunday T.V. programs ignored the revelations of the executive director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, demonstrating that a document purporting to show an Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger had been forged. That document was a key element in a British intelligence report, which the United States in turn had used to build its case against Iraq."
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"Even more lamentable has been the ongoing refusal of the American media to acknowledge a Mar. 2 London Observer story detailing 'an aggressive surveillance operation' against U.N. delegates, including the interception of home and office telephone calls and e-mails. The information came from a leaked memo from the National Security Agency. The targets were uncommitted U.N. delegations, including Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan. The pro-war, Murdoch-owned London Times called it an 'embarrassing disclosure.' "
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"American officials quietly labored to discredit the report, suggesting it was a forgery. Well, the British government has announced an arrest of someone in its National Security Administration counterpart, who is charged with leaking the memo. The New York Times did not print it because it could not get confirmation, although it had been confirmed in a variety of ways by the English press. Several days later, The Washington Post downplayed the story by noting that it was not particularly alarming, and The Los Angeles Times said American spy activities were 'longstanding.' No one could quite bring themselves to acknowledge the obvious: It was true, however longstanding and commonplace such practices may have been."
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"And now, on C.N.N., Richard N. Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board and the president's 'minister without portfolio' labeled Seymour M. Hersh a 'terrorist' - 'the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.' And why? Because 'he [Hersh] sets out to do damage.' In a recent New Yorker magazine article, Hersh exposed how Perle's venture-capital firm invests in 'companies dealing in technology goods and services that are of value to homeland security and defense.' C.N.N. talk show host Wolf Blitzer sat silently through Perle's tirade and dutifully asked him if the opponents of war were 'sending a mixed message to Saddam Hussein and giving him some comfort in suspecting that if he plays out this game, he's going to be able to get his way.' Perle almost smiled."
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