Wendy Michener's Response to Senator Edwards

January 14, 2003

Dear Senator Edwards,

Your statement of January 13 was received with great pleasure and read with dismay. To say people were revolted by what they read is not to offend you, but to report what happened. There were two reasons for our distress, one was the manner in which you spoke and the other was the content.

I want you to realize that the smooth, political, oil-on-the-waters mode of speaking is profoundly offensive to the peace-activist crowd. We believe we are addressing American behavior that amounts to war crimes and you respond as though we were discussing appearance rules for a housing subdivision. It is inappropriate.

I realize this is the common mode of political speech. I want you to know that, even if you said something that was actually supportive of peace, people would have a difficult time trusting your sincerity because it was conveyed in this manner.

Now about the content, here is your second paragraph:

Saddam Hussein's regime is one of the most repressive and violent on the planet. Its human rights record is abominable. And Iraq is a grave threat to America and our allies. For more than 20 years, Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every possible means. For over 10 years, he has acted in defiance of the United Nations. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons today, that he has used them in the past, and that he is doing everything he can to build more. Everyday he gets closer to his longtime goal of nuclear capability. We must not allow him to get nuclear weapons. The world must not be forced to live in fear of a tyrannical leader who is equipped with weapons of mass destruction.

In this paragraph, which lists the crimes of the Iraqi regime, if the name of Israel was substituted for Saddam Hussein, what would have to be deleted? Perhaps chemical and biological weapons, but I wouldn't bet money on it. Iraq is actually less repressive in one material point -- Iraqi law does not discriminate against people by religion. Iraq is a secular state which Israel is not. And Israel isn't just striving for nuclear capacity -- it has nuclear weapons.

Since our closest friend in the Middle East is equally guilty of seven of the nine items on your list, the items in this paragraph cannot actually have any bearing on the decision to invade Iraq. You must realize U.S. peace activists know this. Please do not insult our intelligence by suggesting these reasons have any bearing on the question of invading Iraq.

When you say such things you leave U.S. peace activists with three options.

1: You know these things have nothing to do with the planned invasion but you want to be President and you believe that only pro-war men get elected to the Office.

2: You know it and you think the United States actually does have the right to expropriate the resources of other countries.

Or 3: You actually believe these items matter to U.S. foreign policy.

You end up looking either venal or foolish. Can you understand that you gain no advantage by repeating these claims to this constituency?

Then you described the UN?s part in this process. Peace activists paid close attention to the UN events. You should be very careful about rewriting history when discussing what happened. We saw Russia and, particularly, France as fighting to restrain the U.S. and forcing the U.S. to accept a narrower resolution than the Bush Administration so ?strongly? wanted. From a peace activist?s standpoint, the UN resolution was not a victory for the U.S. -- it was a reprimand. It was a faint indication that the world may just be getting to the point of saying ?enough already? and becoming serious about cutting the U.S. down to size.

You start the next paragraph with this sentence:

"Yet if Hussein refuses to comply, the U.S. and it allies must be prepared to resort to military force."

What allies? Isn?t it true we have only one nation, Israel, on our side and this nation has no money of its own to help us with because we are paying its military bills? The Bush Administration may have Tony Blair?s approval, but with a solid opposition in the House of Commons and 70 percent of the English people opposed to joining up, England cannot be considered an ally.

That leaves one ally -- Israel. Israel has a war of its own in progress and won?t be able to help much. So much for allies.

Support for an Iraqi war in the United States falls to below 30 percent when the U.S. cannot get any other country to join with it in the war. I doubt this means that 70 percent will actively oppose the war, but I have to tell you my extremely apolitical landlady is asking for information on local peace activities. I was honestly shocked. I was sure I would never get more than moral support from her (for which support I am grateful).

The second part of the sentence says, ?[we] must be prepared to resort to military force.? Why? Since your initial paragraph is no longer operative and the paragraph about the UN said nothing more than Iraq is being unenthusiastic about the inspection process, you have not offered any justification for this assault.

The world community has, from the beginning, said this war was entirely about who controls Iraqi oil. I understand that President Bush has several times mentioned oil as a possible factor in the prosecution of this war and found that U.S. audiences simply did not care that much. Apparently, the average United States citizen given a choice of going to war or paying more for gas, is willing to pay more for gas.

Now about sanctions. Do you realize that the peace community knows that Hussein asked for and recieved U.S. permission to invade Kuwait? It was all couched in much more diplomatic language, but that?s what it amounted to. Which only makes Gulf War I and the sanctions look even more venal.

After saying the Iraqis now have kinder and gentler sanctions, you then claim that all those billions of dollars are going to Hussein's war machine. Do you realize that NPR has reported the Iraqi food aid distribution system is the best system any country has ever operated? Those who report on the medical difficulties say that the problem is not money, but the sanctions which forbid delivery of needed medical supplies. And the most common cause of death in Iraq is diarrhea because the U.S. bombed the water purification plants in Iraq, and the water is no longer safe to drink. Do you know it is illegal to import water purification equipment to Iraq?

I know this because the religious organization to which I belong imports water purification equipment into Iraq. The equipment is only small machines, the point is we are in defiance of the law. We have never been arrested because the law is morally indefensible and we are defying the law as an expression of our faith. No politician in their right mind would try to enforce it against us. You are considered a supporter of this policy until you publicly denounce it.

Nobody is painting Saddam Hussein as a decent person. But neither are the people running Burma, Columbia or China. It is a poor joke to suggest U.S. foreign policy is profoundly guided by the decency rating of the rulers of any country.

The U.S. opposition to the United States going to war is based on the idea that ?American values? of justice, equality and democracy are actually worth living up to. Speaking of democracy, it is a fine institution that you helped to cripple when you voted for the Patriot Act. You didn?t know what you were doing, nobody did, but isn?t it time you repudiated that legislation and sponsored a bill to rescind those provisions which attack our democratic way of life? You could underline the vile character of the original Act by including the text of the affected passages so other Senators can judge what the original said and what changes were enacted. You might also include what the changes have allowed the Bush Administration to do to our civil liberties. Things like entering homes without a warrant and rounding up people and holding them without, as our Constitution requires, either disclosing the charges against them or releasing them.

I agree this is a difficult time, but not because our oil supply is in question or because any country does or does not have nuclear weapons. It is a difficult time because the old ways no longer work and neither you nor most of your colleagues seem to have the courage or imagination to recognize the new order.

The changes we have witnessed in places like Vietnam, Nicaragua, South Africa, Europe, and New York City (September 11th) all indicate the old order of wealth and military strength ruling supreme is over. It is very amusing to me that this is now being underlined by Venezuela and North Korea. Here the United States is gearing up to invade Iraq either (depending on your beliefs) to gain control over the oil or to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and in the same moment Venezuela cuts our oil imports and North Korea restarts its nuclear program. And the U.S. is helpless. We cannot attack Venezuela, North Korea and Iraq at the same time. We just barely have the wherewithal to attack Iraq, and it is a badly damaged country.

The United States has more military might than the rest of the world all together and it isn?t enough to rule the world when the world won?t cooperate. And now Saudi Arabia is publicly calling upon all Arab nations to rally around Iraq. Not because they like Iraq, but because, to quote Benjamin Franklin, "We must all hang together or we will surely all hang separately." I will be enormously pleased if they actually follow through because I am always pleased when people stand up for themselves and stop groveling.

Our own American Revolution is a very good example to study for clues about how this ?war on terrorism? will go. There is a book called ?How the British Lost the American Revolution.? I recommend you read it and, when you do, you substitute the United States wherever it says England and Second World (countries that are neither impoverished nor one of the G8) wherever it says America. I cannot think of a single point where you will need to adjust for different circumstances. We are living through a textbook case of history repeating itself and it is wonderfully ironic that it should be the United States playing the role of the British. They lost, by the way.

This is my nightmare -- that the United States government will choose the military road, in response to the world?s justifiable anger, and the United States will be destroyed. The U.S. could be destroyed in the same way that Germany and Japan were destroyed, in the same way that Iraq has been destroyed. I believe the world will no longer tolerate an overlord, an empire building nation; it is a road we must not take if the United States is to survive as a great nation. I, as a citizen of the United States, would rather see my country share the wealth of the Earth as one among equals than see it go down in flames attempting to be the ?policeman of the world? in defiance of world opinion.

Respectfully yours,

Wendy Michener

P.S. It will be even better irony if the European Union plays the role of France.