Bill Moyers is as straight talking a journalist as you would ever want to meet. So when he was invited to be the speaker for “The Meaning of Freedom” lecture series, to be given to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in November 2006, he had a dilemma on his hands. He notes in his new book, “
Moyers on Democracy”:
The committee had to have known of my opposition to the invasion of Iraq…. These cadets had committed themselves to Duty, Honor, Country and were now being asked to fulfill those obligations in a war they should never have been asked to fight. As I weighed the decision to accept or decline, I fastened on the title of the lecture series: The Meaning of Freedom…
How do you give a speech to a group of young men and women who will soon be serving in a war that you despise? Do you try to sugarcoat that war in order to avoid risking offending them? Or do you tell them what you really think?
The speech that Moyers gave is one of the best I have ever read or heard. He explained how our Founding Fathers tried to limit the role of war in our nation’s future, and then he told the truth about our nation’s military history and how our current leaders have abused their powers and used our soldiers as pawns for their own nefarious purposes – while providing as little offense to his audience as he possibly could.
Moyers began
his speech by acknowledging that he had never been a soldier, but that he had tried very hard to learn about what war is like by talking with veterans about their experiences. His main experience with that was that veterans are rarely inclined to talk about their combat experiences.
He then launched into his feelings about how we were led into the Iraq War and the chicken hawks who led us there.
On the chicken hawks who led us into warWatching another White House go to war (Moyers was an aid to President Johnson during the early escalation of the Vietnam 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… How often we hear the most vigorous argument for war from those who count on others of valor to fight it… Rupert Murdoch comes to mind… In the months leading up to the invasion Murdoch turned the dogs of war loose… Today Murdoch says he has no regrets… and that “from a historical perspective” the U.S. death toll in Iraq was “minute”….
“Minute?” I don’t think so… I thought that to describe their loss as “minute”… 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.
Why our founding fathers felt it necessary to write a Constitution that makes war unlikelyMoyers then proceeds to give the cadets a history lesson on the safeguards against war in our Constitution. He
quotes John Jay on the ubiquity of war in world history:
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 get nothing by it, but for the … thirst for military glory, revenge…, ambition…
Moyers
quotes James Madison on the rationale for the place of war in our Constitution:
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… The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.
Moyers then describes how the safeguards against war in our Constitution have broken down, and what that means to our soldiers
Twice in forty years we have now gone to war paying only lip service to those warnings… 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.
This is a tough subject to address when so many of you may be heading for Iraq… It’s more important than ever that citizens and 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.
Moyers later elaborates on the dangers of war – how frequently it is used for the advantage of the powerful, who use soldiers as mere pawns in their great game, by asking them to fight for their King, their God, or their Nation. Again speaking of our Founding Fathers, he says:
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.
A brief history of the contradictions between U.S. military actions and American idealsProbably most of us DUers who are American citizens have struggled with the contradictions we feel between the ubiquitous calls for “patriotism” and the many examples of American military actions that have contradicted the ideals expressed in our founding documents. Moyers felt that it would be good for the cadets to think about this. He summed this up for them better than I’ve ever seen it described.
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…
When the Civil War came… 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…
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 … warred with Spain to help the Cubans complete a war for independence… 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… the Filipinos were cured of the illusion that independence meant … well, independence.
I bring up these reminders not to defame the troops… 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.
World War II… The incredibly gigantic mobilization of the entire nation, the victory it produced, and the ensuing sixty 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…
The meaning of freedomMoyers goes to some length to remind the cadets of the ideals of our nation, as expressed by our Founding Fathers. I think this is the most pertinent passage:
For Jefferson’s pursuit of happiness… the goal was… to secure productive property for all as a right to citizenship. It’s easy to forget the difference (between freedom for all versus freedom for a powerful few) 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.
On the tragedy that we call the Iraq War and the real meaning of “supporting the troops”Moyers then described some of the underlying problems with the Iraq War in a way that is unlikely to generate much enthusiasm for fighting in it:
The cheerleaders for war 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 under-strength, under-equipped, and unprepared for dealing with a kind of war fought in streets and homes full of civilians against enemies undistinguishable from noncombatants; who have time and again broken promises to the civilian National Guardsmen… 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 are useless in a war against nationalist or religious guerrilla uprisings that, like it or not, have support… 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? … The real winners of the anything-at-any-price philosophy would be the “military-industrial complex”…
The bargain between civilian authorities and the military on which our nation restsMoyers goes on to talk about the need for our military to be subservient to civilian authority, but also that our civilian authority must maintain their end of the bargain by using good judgment and common decency before committing our nation to war. He makes it clear that the bargain is no longer working out very well:
The army has, for the most part, kept its part of the bargain and…, 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…
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 armchair warriors are failing you… In veterans’ hospitals across the country – and in a growing number of ill-prepared, under-funded psych and primary-care clinics as well…
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 benefit… This is reprehensible.
I repeat: These are not palatable topics for soldiers about to go to war… 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.
Wow!!! Moyers says that “calling for an insurrection against the civilian deciders” is “the last thing on my mind”. If he says that it was the last thing on his mind, I believe him because of the tremendous amount of respect I have for him. But he certainly has given them a lot to think about.
Some great advice for the troopsMoyers ends his speech with some great advice:
What, then, can you do about it if (my emphasis) 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…
Second, remember that there are limitations to what military power can do… Some objectives are not obtainable at a human, diplomatic, and financial cost that is acceptable… Douglas MacArthur announced in 1951 that “there was no substitute for victory.” But… 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” – exactly what, pray tell, is that? – to the mind-set of… a 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…
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 everyone who believes that war is the wrong choice to some problems is your enemy. Blind faith in bad leadership is not patriotism… To say my country right or wrong is something no patriot would utter… 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… If there is mismanagement and incompetence, exposing it is more helpful to you than paeans to candy…
Finally, and this above all… 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 advisors that their information and their plans were both incomplete and misleading – and who paid the price… It is not easy to be honest and fair… But it is what free men and women have to do… 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…
The importance of Moyers’ speechA few weeks ago I did a post on a “
Special Comment” by Keith Olbermann, which I titled “
Thank you Keith, for Speaking of the Unmentionable”. Keith’s “Special Comment” was on a similar subject as Bill Moyers’ speech to the U.S. Military Academy – George Bush’s war crimes. I ended that post with this paragraph:
Keith Olbermann is one of the few highly and widely visible people in our country today who has the courage to speak of unmentionable subjects that are in dire need of discussion. By doing this he makes it much easier for other Americans to talk and think about these things. If more national politicians and journalists were like that we would throw George Bush and Dick Cheney out of office, end the Iraq War, and then get on with the business of living up to our nation’s ideals.
The same thing can be said of Bill Moyers. His speech to the West Point cadets reached a much smaller audience than Keith’s did. But it was clearly a very difficult audience with whom to speak of the things that he did. If enough of the U.S. military hears that speech and thinks carefully and honestly about it, the Iraq War will end, regardless of what our President, Congress, or military-industrial complex want to do about it.
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