Let's get something out of the way first:

Some people have gotten the idea since September 11 that just because they come up with an opinion or a statement of their positions, that somehow they are being "oppressed" or "censored" if a large number of people tell them they are full of it. When professors and others stood up to defend the terrorists, they were upset when the vast majority of Americans of all creeds and colors jumped all over them. This is not "censorship." This is the free play of ideas.

This ad appeared as a full page in the New York Times, so obviously it wasn't "censored" in any way. Just because I think that most of it is horse manure is in NO WAY saying that I think the ad should not have been placed, or that this gaggle of liberals should have been officially silenced.

Now, for the statement. Let me just wade through the "stand on the ramparts" rhetoric, and pick out a few points:

...We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers.

What "right" to determine their own destiny do the people of Iraq have? Did the people of Afghanistan have? Or North Korea? To be accurate, this statement should say "We believe that Saddam Hussein and the other tyrants have the right to determine their own destinies, free from military coercion by great powers."

...we call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.

Repression? Who the hell are we "repressing" all over the world? Can I get a list? And what is "repression" anyway? Isn't it shooting people in the back of the skull for their opinions, or for not following the religious rules?

And which "people of the world?" Does this include Americans, of which two-thirds in polls support military action in Iraq? Or just the usual European leftists who were heaping the same scorn on Reagan as he demanded the fall of the Berlin Wall?

...We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.

Again, I don't know where they get the idea that their "rights" are being trampled because a majority of Americans do not agree with them. I will bet a month's salary that not one of the people on this list gets arrested solely for placing this ad. These are not suffering dissidents fighting a repressive government, living in squalor or exile from being "repressed." Many of them are wealthy, with positions of great influence in their fields, and there is probably not one person on this list who has ever missed a meal.

We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11, 2001. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage -- even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City, and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.



But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of “good vs. evil” that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home.



This is the foulest statement in this letter. It attempts to generate the impression that what we suffered on September 11 was no different than if the WTC had fallen in an earthquake, and that our response should have been no different. We were deliberately attacked, and in a manner specifically designed to destroy the maximum number of unsuspecting civilians. Not one person reading this doubts that had these people had their hands on a nuclear warhead, they would cheerfully have set it off in Times Square.

To be unable to assign the description "evil" to those who flew passenger planes into occupied buildings, shows a complete inability to render a valid moral judgment. What the hell does someone have to do to be considered "evil" in the eyes of these people? Well, other than be anti-abortion, I suppose.

Look at the assumption made in the second paragraph. The leaders unleashed a "spirit of revenge?" This is not something that would have occurred to the average American had they not been "instructed" by the pliable media? Sorry to bust their bubble, but Americans came up with righteous vengeance all by themselves, and I don't think it would be to far-fetched to say that had Bush on September 12 asked for a "spirit of understanding" about these terrorists, that Americans would have risen up and demanded his resignation.

It is not news that the Left views the average American citizen as a sheep, a cog, a myrmidon, easily molded, easily fooled, who must be controlled and utilized by wiser, more perceptive rulers to survive. This attitude oozes from every policy statement they make, and this one is no exception.

And of course, throw in all the usual leftist laundry list of American "oppression" overseas, trying again to draw an equivalence between terror and military action. Hey, I remember us forcing loaded passenger planes into buildings in Panama, don't you?

...The government now openly prepares to wage all-out war on Iraq -- a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become if the U.S. government has a blank check to drop commandos, assassins, and bombs wherever it wants?

A lot safer for Americans and civilized nations. Sorry, cheap shot.

In our name, within the U.S., the government has created two classes of people: those to whom the basic rights of the U.S. legal system are at least promised, and those who now seem to have no rights at all. The government rounded up over 1,000 immigrants and detained them in secret and indefinitely. Hundreds have been deported and hundreds of others still languish today in prison. This smacks of the infamous concentration camps for Japanese-Americans in World War 2. For the first time in decades, immigration procedures single out certain nationalities for unequal treatment.

The detainee issue does need to be addressed. More on this at the end.

"Why didn't Bush do something to STOP September 11?" Because to do so would have required singling out certain nationalities for unequal treatment. The farce of security currently at airports is the result of political correctness to the point of insanity. In any case, it's a dead issue. It's becoming obvious that the new terrorists are being selected from ranks of American citizens, some native born, and I will not be surprised when blond-haired, blue-eyed men begin showing up in their ranks.

Comparing the detaining of 1000 visa violators and others with Roosevelt's internment of 120,000 Japanese who were hauled off simply for their ancestry, is reaching a bit, to say the least.

...Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and suppressed.

In other words, people disagree with what they say. Few, if any, have been "suppressed."

President Bush has declared: “you’re either with us or against us.”

This declaration was made to nations harboring terrorists, not to American citizens, but why quibble?

Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. We say NOT IN OUR NAME. We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies; we will show our solidarity in word and deed.



We who sign this statement call on all Americans to join together to rise to this challenge. We applaud and support the questioning and protest now going on, even as we recognize the need for much, much more to actually stop this juggernaut. We draw inspiration from the Israeli reservists who, at great personal risk, declare “there IS a limit” and refuse to serve in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

We also draw on the many examples of resistance and conscience from the past of the United States: from those who fought slavery with rebellions and the underground railroad, to those who defied the Vietnam war by refusing orders, resisting the draft, and standing in solidarity with resisters.

Let us not allow the watching world today to despair of our silence and our failure to act. Instead, let the world hear our pledge: we will resist the machinery of war and repression and rally others to do everything possible to stop it.



Hot DAMN! The Sixties are BACK!

Considering how many of these signers have spent most of their lives worshiping at the altar of Karl Marx, this high rhetoric about repression and the right to dissent is kind of a hoot.

I will admit that there are a few valid points in the statement. Although the civil liberties crowd tends to mush up all detainees in one big pile to confuse the issue, including visa violators and Taliban captured in Afghanistan in the same group, we do need to get some kind of consistent handle on how to deal with detainees and prisoners who have not yet been charged with specific crimes, but who stand a very good chance of blowing something up if we let them go. This is actually the same situation in microcosm as the concept of preemptive military action on nations like Iraq, and I don't have a quick answer for it. Do we hold someone for a crime we think they're going to commit? On what evidence? This idea goes against a long Western tradition of jurisprudence, and for good reason. If your neighbor is shooting up targets with your picture on them, is that a threat? Enough to arrest him? Or just an enthusiastic expression of opinion?

The Left firmly believes nobody should ever have guns because they might someday shoot somebody with them. What justification do they use for this similar attitude? Would this same justification work for holding internees who are likely to commit more serious crimes?

As for not watching Terry Gilliam movies because of this, that's ludicrous. If I boycotted the work of everybody who had asinine politics, I'd lead a very boring life indeed. Harlan Ellison, who I am somewhat surprised not to find on the list, is one of my favorite authors. Certainly Isaac Asimov would have signed this, and many other of my favorite SF authors as well. Heinlein, on the other hand, probably would have rolled it up and shoved it up the petitioner's butt.

Maybe some of our own posters are on the list, under different names.