Sunday, February 23, 2003 - When I grew up on the plains of eastern
Colorado, I walked across wheat fields to a little three-room country
school. I slept on summer nights under the cottonwoods, raised chickens
and sheep and some days rode horses like the wind flying across the
prairies. In school, we had three classes in the same room, but I
learned what we thought were the values of America.
I learned that we had saved the world from the aggressions of Hitler
and Japanese warlords, that we, as a principle, resisted imperialism and
contained communism. That we had fostered the United Nations, were
champions of international law and descendants of a new order for the
ages, a country in which law was above the king. In that little red
brick school house we learned of George Washington's self restraint,
Abraham Lincoln's essential kindness, Woodrow Wilson's search for the
rule of international law, the generosity of Truman's Marshall Plan.
I learned that when World War II was over we supported the Nuremberg
principles and incorporated them into treaties outlawing the practice of
killing civilians indiscriminately in war. I learned that people were
not to be judged by the color of their skins or their religions, or
condemned for their political associations and that the great gift of
the American republic was to hold high the flag of equal dignity. We did
not blame the German people for the crimes of Hitler, nor the Japanese
as a people for the crimes of Hirohito. We fed the hungry, we granted
courts of law to the wicked, even to war criminals.
When I served in the U.S. Army infantry in the 1960s I learned that
we would oppose illegal aggression but never become aggressors
ourselves. I learned that we depended upon the rationality of leaders in
the Soviet Union and that they depended upon us for the rationality not
to commit mutual suicide. I learned that the United States would never
be the first to use nuclear weapons.
On Jan. 28, in one speech, George W. Bush threw away and rejected all
this that I had learned. He scorned the rationality of his opponents,
scorned the diplomatic process, scorned containment, condemned
deterrence, declared the right of pre-emptive aggressive war, implied a
willingness to use nuclear weapons first and authored a new doctrine of
American imperialism for the Middle East.
He dismissed 50-year-old treaties banning aggression, stating that we
would attack when we wished, and explicitly rejected the legal
pre-requirement that the threat to us be "imminent," knowingly
mocking international law.
He narrowed his eyes and stated his intention to kill terrorist
suspects, wherever he finds them, upon suspicion, without trial. He
endorsed guilt by association as the test of criminality, a willingness
to kill people for their association with al-Qaeda, without actual proof
of their intention or action. He will track down and kill his targets,
undoubtedly based upon the color of their skin and their religion,
wherever in the world he might find them and whenever he might suspect
them.
The small band of ideologues who seized the presidency in Florida two
years ago have now demonstrated with what mind they were willing to use
shouting crowds, mob intimidation and force. This State of the Union
speech was a product of the same mind. Carefully inserted under the
superficial heading of Iraq and terror was artfully embedded an agenda
that has been dogging the moderate Republican Party ever since World War
II.
When Bush used the word "containment" and explicitly
renounced that concept, he rejected the centrist foreign policies of
Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan. When he used the word
"rationality," and specifically rejected that approach, he
scorned the core principle of deterrence that has guided every president
in the nuclear age.
When he looked the world in the eye and said he would not abide by
the United Nations, he rejected the 50-year old foundation of world
order. When he said he would not hesitate to cause the deaths of
innocent civilians in Iraq, he endorsed the idea of collective
responsibility, a violation of the Nuremberg principles. When he said
that he would track down and kill people whom he imagined were
terrorists, without trial, without evidence or proof, he rejected the
foundation of American democracy, that we are a nation of law.
It is as if, in Florida two years ago, the NRA had seized the
government and suspicion, malice and bravado had become our flag. This
State of the Union was the bold declaration of the extreme conservative
victory they have sought for a generation.
Jan. 28, 2003, is therefore apt to be remembered as a watershed day
in American history, a day of infamy reminiscent of Pearl Harbor. This
time the infamy is the conquest of bravado and guns over restraint and
decency, imperialism and militarism over the rule of law, the extreme
right over the moderate center. This speech was not so much a
declaration of war against Iraq as the announcement of the long-sought
victory over what the president scornfully in his speech called
"process" and we call democracy.
This passionate regard for the use of force rather than process is
what drove the explicit rejection in the speech of all those code words,
all those "soft" policies of the past. This was intended to be
the Krystalnacht of post-war American liberalism and the uncowed
declaration of American pre-eminence in the world.
Call it the Grand Reversal of 2003 and prepare for the war it
launches, not only in Iraq, but in the hearts and minds of broad middle
America, those who went to ordinary schools, those who are not elite -
those who need democracy to survive.
Craig S. Barnes is a former Denver lawyer who ran
unsuccessfully as a Democratic candidate for Congress in 1970. He has
negotiated nuclear issues in Moscow, ethnic cleansing issues in the
Caucasus and water agreements for the U.S. in Central Asia. His memoir,
"Growing Up True," is the story of his school days in rural
Colorado.