Lessons in Courage from Congresspersons Who Took a Stand

Time for change

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Fri Feb-20-09 08:50 PM
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Lessons in Courage from Congresspersons Who Took a Stand

Edited on Fri Feb-20-09 09:34 PM by Time for change

I have been very disappointed in our Congress over the past several years. My top three disappointments of the Democratic Congress that was elected in 2006 were: the failure to even attempt to impeach and remove from office the most blatantly lawless, criminal and immoral president and vice president in the history of our country; the failure to end the Iraq War and occupation that they were elected to end, and; the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The Military Commissions Act gave the Bush administration a blank check to continue his unconstitutional and internationally illegal disregard for the basic human rights of our prisoners, even after our very conservative Supreme Court had just determined those actions to constitute war crimes. Worst of all, it gave George W. Bush himself the right to unilaterally label anyone of his choosing a �terrorist�, and to indefinitely incarcerate them with no legal recourse to defend themselves. In our Senate, in addition to all but one Republican Senator (Lincoln Chafee), twelve Democratic Senators voted for the bill.

Hopefully someday these actions will be at least partially rectified, by the actions of either our current or a future Congress. In the meantime, I can be inspired by the examples that some Congresspersons from the past or present have set for us. Perhaps these examples show us what some future U.S. Congress may be like � after our system and our people have had more time to mature. Here are nine of my favorites:

John Quincy Adams � The fight against slavery in the U.S. House of Representatives

In May 1836, Southern Congressmen in the U.S. House of Representatives had had enough talk about interfering with their cherished institution of slavery. To cut off all further discussion on the issue they introduced and passed the infamous �gag rule�, which stipulated that all future �petitions involving slavery would be automatically tabled��

The gag rule then became the focus of the anti-slavery movement in the U.S. House for the next nine years, until it was finally repealed in December 1844. John Quincy Adams, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts and former U.S. President (1825-1829), led that fight. His attacks against the gag rule involved repeated motions to repeal it and attempts to get around it by finding ingenious ways to draw the slaveholders into discussions on slavery. For example, on one occasion he introduced a motion to repeal any law that was not consistent with the Declaration of Independence. Of course the slaveholders had to defeat that motion � which they did � because passing it would mean the end of slavery.

These tactics resulted in frequent malicious attacks against Adams. He was threatened with prosecution on the charge of attempting to incite a slave insurrection; he received a great amount of abusive mail, including death threats; and on three separate occasions the House attempted to censure him. In response to slaveholder outrage over an attempt to present a petition from slaves, Adams said:

If this House decides that it will not receive petitions from slaves, under any circumstances, it will cause the name of this country to be enrolled among the first of the barbarous nations� When you establish the doctrine that a slave shall not petition because he is a slave, that he shall not be permitted to raise the cry for mercy, you let in a principle subversive of every foundation of liberty, and you cannot tell where it will stop.

Adams encouraged attempts to censure him, knowing that once a motion against him arose, he would have the opportunity to speak as long as he wanted and raise any issue. The last attempt to censure him was the result of Adams� attempt to present a petition from his constituents that prayed for the dissolution of the Union, so that they would no longer have to be associated with slavery. Adams� friends and allies tried to table the motion, but Adams voted against the motion to table, saying, �Let�s have it out. Let�s see if you can censure me�. When the motion to table failed, Adams then used the opportunity to pound away at his favorite subject for a week, in the process presenting 200 more anti-slavery petitions.

By 1841 Adams was 74 years old and tiring out (but with no intention of quitting). Here is an entry from Adams� diary that shows how exhausted he was getting from his fight:

All the devils in hell are arrayed against any man who now in this North American Union shall dare to join the standard of Almighty God to put down the African slave-trade; and what can I, upon the verge of my 74th birthday, with a shaking hand, a darkening eye, a drowsy brain, and with all my faculties dropping from me one by one� what can I do for the progress of human emancipation, for the suppression of the African slave-trade? Yet my conscience presses me on�

And as he aged he tended to lose his former restraint, as shown in his reply on the House floor in response to a man who suggested that his actions could result in a civil war:

Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

For more information on this story see William Lee Miller�s wonderful book, �Arguing About Slavery � John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the U.S. Congress�.

Abraham Lincoln � Criticizing a U.S. president�s motivation for the Mexican War

It has long been taboo in our country for mainstream politicians to speak out against wars once our country has entered into them � and those that do so risk being labeled as unpatriotic and un-American. Unfortunately, the progressive failure of the U.S. Congress to restrain American Presidents from going to war has resulted in an imperial course for our country, from which there currently appears to be no end in sight.

Abraham Lincoln, as a first time U.S. Representative from Illinois, was one of the first and most vocal U.S. Congresspersons to aggressively criticize an American President�s decision and motivation to invade a foreign country. David Donald, in his book �Lincoln�, describes the response to President James Polk�s request to Congress for additional funds to bring the Mexican War �to a close�:

Lincoln led the assault on Polk. On December 22 (1847) he introduced a series of resolutions requiring the President to provide the House with �all the facts which go to (justifying the war)�� Lincoln clearly intended to show that the American army had begun the war by making an unprovoked attack on a Mexican settlement� A few days later Lincoln continued the campaign against Polk in a long speech� Subjecting Polk�s version of the origins of the war to a close, lawyerly scrutiny, he chided the President for the gaps in his evidence and his logic� He demanded that Polk respond to the interrogatories� �Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments�� The President, Lincoln speculated� must have begun the war motivated by a desire for �military glory � that attractive rainbow that rises in the shower of blood��

Lincoln also attacked the constitutionality of the war:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion� and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

For his efforts, Lincoln was castigated by various newspapers, warned that he �would have a fearful account to settle with the veterans when they returned from Mexico� (Lincoln was himself a veteran), and denounced for his �base, dastardly, and treasonable assault upon President Polk�.

George McGovern � Prolonged opposition to imperial wars

George McGovern was one of three or four U.S. Senators who opposed U.S. involvement in the early years of the Vietnam War. This opposition was forcefully manifested with the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment (defeated by 55-39), which required the complete withdrawal of American forces over a period of several months. In pushing for his amendment to end the war, McGovern was not afraid to point fingers at his Senate colleagues: Rick Perlstein, in his book �Nixonland�, describes the scene:

On September 1 (1970) Senator McGovern gave the concluding speech in the debate over his amendment to end the Vietnam War. Opposing senators had spoken of the necessity of resolve in the face of adversity, of national honor, of staying the course, of glory, of courage. McGovern responded:

�Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending fifty thousand young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood.�

Senators averted their eyes or stared at there desks or drew their faces taut with fury; this was not senatorial decorum.

�Every senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage� young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or face, or hopes� Do not talk about national honor, or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible� So before we vote, let us ponder the admonition of Edmund Burke, the great parliamentarian of an earlier day: �A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood��.

McGovern later said that it took more courage for him to speak out against the war as a junior Senator than it did for him to fly combat missions during World War II.

For his efforts to stop the war, he was pilloried by the Republicans and by much of the national news media an anti-American �radical�. Though his bid for the Presidency was a miserable failure, and he lost his Senate seat in 1980, his efforts to end the Viet Nam War probably resulted in a considerable shortening of that war and therefore the sparing of the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

As a private citizen, he later spoke out against George Bush�s Iraq War. McGovern explained to BuzzFlash:

The President keeps talking about the Iraqi terrorist danger. It's a danger because we have an American army in Iraq to be shot at by the guerillas and by the terrorists� What we accomplished by our invasion and that heavy area of bombardment was to destroy their electricity, destroy their water supplies� We turned that country into an economic mess� It's a climate of desperation� They're going to recruit increasing numbers of people to serve as� guerilla leaders and suicide bombers against our American troops�

Let me say that one thing that Richard Perle and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have in common is that none of them have ever been near a combat scene� They're very generous with the blood of the young men and women that they throw into combat so casually� And it makes me furious to see people like that beating their chests on how patriotic they are, waving the flag, glorifying God�

And now George McGovern is asking President Obama to reconsider his plan to escalate the Afghanistan War.

Russ Feingold � Protecting our Constitution

Russ Feingold was the only U.S. Senator to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act following the September 11 attacks on our country. So, in voicing his opposition to it, he not only incurred the wrath of the Republican Party, but he bucked his own party as well. Sanford Horwitt, in his book, �Feingold�, describes the situation. Provisions of the Act:

Violated basic constitutional protections, or at least raised serious questions, Feingold believed, and he planned to offer amendments to remove them� But suddenly, the Democratic leadership announced� that the legislation was going straight to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote, no amendments allowed. �What?� Feingold blurted in disbelief when he heard the news� �I was so shocked, and I objected,� which resulted in a heated shouting match� with Tom Daschle, the Democratic majority leader. �He was demanding that I not pursue these things,� Feingold says� Daschle pushed for a vote on the PATRIOT Act, but Feingold blocked it until he was allowed to offer his amendments. But each of his amendments was quickly tabled�

Before his vote on the final legislation, Feingold spoke on the Senate floor� The Constitution� was conceived to ensure �fundamental constitutional guarantees� when the temptation to suppress civil liberties was greatest � namely, when governments fear that constitutional guarantees �will inhibit government action� I believe we must redouble our vigilance� to ensure our security and prevent further acts of terror. But we must also redouble our vigilance to preserve our values and the basic rights that make us who we are.��

Feingold told the Senate he found disturbing signs that the Bush administration was heading down a road littered with historic violations of constitutional rights� Feingold said, �the Justice Department is making extraordinary use of its power to arrest and detain individuals, jailing hundreds of people on immigrations violations� The government has not brought any criminal charges related to the attacks with regard to the majority of these detainees.� And he expressed great concern about a new, dangerous kind of racial profiling that had emerged. Feingold said� �We must strive mightily� against racism and ethnic discrimination. Preserving our freedom is one of the main reasons that we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.�

How prophetic! Feingold didn�t know at that time how badly the attacks on our Constitution would become under the rule of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Cynthia McKinney � Trying to hold a President accountable

Cynthia McKinney has been a major target of right wing hatred and fear ever since she was elected to Congress in 1992. This article sums up a lot of the reasons for that:

First elected to Congress in 1992, McKinney was an outspoken opponent of the Bush administration�s policies on issues ranging from the war on Iraq to cutbacks in social programs.

She took on the blatant disenfranchisement of Black voters in the Florida election in 2000. She held a hearing that determined that Florida state officials knowingly used faulty data to remove tens of thousands of registered voters from the precinct lists for being convicted felons.

McKinney helped expose the horrific conditions of Katrina evacuees. She castigated the PATRIOT Act and compared it to the FBI�s Cointel program that targeted Dr. Martin Luther King, the Black Panther Party and other freedom fighters during the 1960s. She stood up for African nations to get favorable trade agreements and loans to improve their economies�

Of all the reasons for right wing antipathy to Cynthia McKinney, probably none is relevant than her hostile questioning of the Bush administration�s role in 9/11 and her opposition to the Iraq War. Indeed, it is fair to say that her words about George Bush in this 2002 speech �crossed a line� that many Americans consider sacred, especially with regard to his role in the 9/11 attacks on our country:

I'm most proud of my work to hold this Administration accountable to the American people. And after I've asked the tough questions, here's what we now know:

That President Bush was warned that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and crash them into buildings in the US�. (She then lists many more suspicious circumstances)�.

All of this has become public knowledge since I asked the simple question: What did the Bush Administration know and when did it know it. Now against this backdrop of so many unanswered questions, President Bush wants us to pledge our blind support to him. First, for his war on terrorism and now for his war in Iraq. How can we, in good conscience, prepare to send our young men and women back to Iraq to fight yet another war�?

Her House seat was consequently twice successfully targeted for defeat (2002 and 2006, after regaining her seat in 2004). But before leaving office she became the first U.S. Congressperson to introduce articles of impeachment against George W. Bush.

Barbara Boxer � Protecting our democracy

When George W. Bush�s handlers stole the 2000 election, that was one of the darkest days of our nation�s history. Yet there was an almost total blackout of news on that tragedy. In order for Congress to begin a debate on the subject a single Senator was needed to officially object to the results of that election. Yet, in the interest of �national unity�, not a single U.S. Senator came forward to object.

In 2004, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney stole yet another Presidential election � this time mostly by suppressing voters in Ohio. Again, one U.S. Senator was needed to officially object to the election, in order to trigger several hours of Congressional debate on the subject. I remember this well because I went to D.C. with a small group of people to lobby U.S. Senators to step up to the plate on this issue.

This time, one Senator stepped up to officially object to the 2004 election. Barbara Boxer�s official opposition to the results of the 2004 Presidential election triggered several hours of televised debate in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. The final vote was a landslide in both houses of Congress against overturning the election results, with Boxer being the only U.S. Senator to object. She was joined by 30 House members, but no U.S. Senators. But the several hours of debate in the House and Senate may have sown some of the seeds for the later surfacing of much more evidence for the election fraud of 2004. Here are some excerpts of Senator Boxer�s 2005 explanation of her decision to challenge the 2004 election, for which she was duly pilloried by Republicans in the U.S. Senate and House:

For most of us in the Senate and the House, we have spent our lives fighting for things we believe in � always fighting to make our nation better. We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice. Now we must add a new fight � the fight for electoral justice�. Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are as a nation�.

Following that election, Senator Boxer was one of our few Congresspersons to fight against the electronic machines that count our votes in secret with no recourse to ensure their accuracy, as she co-sponsored the �Count Every Vote Act�. She also addressed that issue in her explanation for her objection to the 2004 election.

Senator Boxer is also, as best I can determine, the only U.S. Senator to have publicly called for the impeachment of George W. Bush. Given the unfathomable reluctance of Democratic Party leaders to proceed with impeachment, that is a very courageous act. This is what she said about the subject during a radio interview (scroll up to top):

I've always said that you need to keep it (impeachment) on the table, and you need to look at these things, because now people are dying because of this administration. That's the truth. And they won't change course. They are ignoring the Congress. They keep signing these signing statements which mean that he's decided not to enforce the law. This is as close as we've ever come to a dictatorship. When you have a situation where Congress is stepped on, that means the American people are stepped on. So I don't think you can take anything off the table. Because in fact the Constitution doesn't permit us to take these things off the table.

Richard Durbin � Trying to open America�s eyes to torture performed in our name

Of the many serious crimes of the Bush/Cheney administration, its rampant torture of its detainees mainly for the purpose of obtaining forced confessions to support its case for war, are the ones that disgust me the most. Yet, until these crimes became so obvious that our knowledge of them could no longer be avoided, our corporate news media barely covered them; and when they did, they led us to believe that torture of our detainees was the result of �a few bad apples�, rather than a systematic occurrence approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration. So, when Senator Durbin discussed these crimes on the floor of the U.S. Senate, he did a great service to our country by helping to make us aware of how we were going astray. Here are some excerpts from his testimony:

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here � I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what an FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:
�On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for eighteen to twenty-four hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold� On another occasion, the air conditioner had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion�. with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.�

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in the gulags, or some mad regime � Pol Pot or others � that had no concern for human beings�.

It is not too late. I hope we will learn from history. I hope we will change course. The president could declare the United States will apply the Geneva Conventions to the war on terrorism. He could declare, as he should, that the United States will not, under any circumstances, subject any detainee to torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The administration could give all detainees a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention before a neutral decision maker.

Such a change of course would dramatically improve our image and it would make us safer. I hope this administration will choose that course. If they do not, Congress must step in.

Senator Durbin�s remarks set off a firestorm of accusations, as the rabid right wing super patriots went wild.

Dennis Kucinich � Exposing the Bush administration�s motives for war

Dennis Kucinich did the unthinkable. He went beyond accusations of Bush�s war being a mistake, to expose the real motivations for the war. Of course, it should have been obvious from almost the beginning that Bush�s motivations for war in Iraq were not at all in accordance with professed American ideals. His claims of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein connections with al Qaeda never had any basis in actual evidence; almost immediately after our invasion of Iraq we moved to protect the oil supply while allowing everything else to go to hell; Bush provided no-bid contracts to his cronies, with little oversight, while billions of dollars went missing; and the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report provides numerous recommendations (or maybe �demands� is a better word) on how the Iraqis should handle their oil.

But Kucinich actually said it out loud: The Iraq War was not a �mistake�; the primary motive of the Bush administration for invading Iraq was to provide a cheap source of oil for American oil companies; we are currently trying to force an agreement with Iraq to gain their consent for our �theft� of Iraqi oil; Kucinich calls Bush�s invasion of Iraq what it was � a war crime; and he pointed out the obvious: How can our current imperialistic stance towards Iraq possibly lead to stabilization of that country or the surrounding area � as we are currently claiming as our primary reason for staying there?

Kucinich was also our only Congressperson other than Cynthia McKinney to introduce Articles of Impeachment against George Bush. Each of the 35 articles he introduced is very serious and probably justifies impeachment even when considered alone. In my opinion, the most important reasons can be found in articles XXVII through XX, which include the indefinite detention of prisoners without charges, torture, kidnapping and rendition of the kidnapped for the purpose of being tortured, and the imprisonment of children.

Al Franken � Lambasting his future colleagues for their failures to do their job

Al Franken is not quite yet a Senator. But he�s close enough to be included in this post, since he wrote a book, �The Truth � With Jokes�, in which he lambasted some of his future colleagues for their utter failure to hold the Bush administration accountable for its many crimes. This is something that really needs to be done, and I�m not aware of any other current Senators who have done this in similarly forceful terms.

Franken describes in some detail the gross corruption of the Bush administration�s handling of reconstruction in Iraq � specifically its handing out no-bid contracts to its cronies, who then rake in billions in return for doing next to nothing. He then goes on to describe the purpose of the U.S. Senate:

The nice thing about having multiple branches of government is that they can balance each other, or, when necessary, even check one another. This system of balances and checks is the cornerstone of our democracy. Unfortunately, this Republican Congress sees itself as a rubber stamp.

On Susan Collins:

The body that should have been investigating the corruption in Iraq is the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, chaired by Maine Republican Susan Collins, who likes to flaunt her supposed independence. Since 2003, that committee has conducted eight hearings on the postal service, two on Defense Department employees� improper use of airline tickets, and two on diploma mills. They have conducted none on corruption in Iraq�

On Norm Coleman (thankfully, not a future colleague of Franken�s):

There�s a Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. That seems like the perfect place to investigate Scott Custer and KBR�. The subcommittee�s chairman, Minnesota Republican Norman Coleman, is one of the administration�s leading butt boys. He hasn�t held a single hearing on postwar corruption� He�d do well to follow the example of Harry Truman. In early 1941, Truman took a ten thousand mile tour around the United States to look into rumors of defense contractor mismanagement. When he returned, he convinced a Senate and a president from his own party that waste and corruption would impair the nation�s mobilization for war� The Truman Committee was born, launching a three year marathon investigation into �waste, inefficiency, mismanagement, and profiteering�, saving millions of dollars and the lives of American soldiers. Truman considered war profiteering �treason.� It still is. And the senators who stand by and allow it to happen must be called to account�

On the Republican Congress of 2005:

For three years (Republican Congressman Jim) Leach has been calling for a modern-day Truman Committee to investigate war profiteering in Iraq. I had Leach on my radio show, and although the mild-mannered Iowan avoided the term �butt boy� when describing his Republican colleagues, I could tell he was as mad as I was about the way this Congress is putting party above patriotism.

The Hazards of failing to hold criminals accountable for their crimes

Eight years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have given us a nation sinking into depression, with its Constitution and international credibility in tatters, and a precedent that tells anyone with their eyes open that the rule of law simply does not apply to high government officials. This is not just the fault of the Bush administration. It is also the fault of a Congress that failed for eight long years to fulfill its responsibility to act as a check on a tyrannical Executive Branch and hold it accountable for its crimes.

When our Congress hands over to one man its responsibility to go to war (or not), it opens the way to an endless string of imperialist conquests that have invariably managed to destroy past empires. When Congress fails to criticize and act upon the most blatant acts of lawlessness and tyranny, it condones those things by its inaction. And when a nation fails to hold a tyrant accountable for its crimes, a precedent is set that makes the �rule of law� a meaningless phrase and paves the way for future tyranny.

The kinds of Congresspersons whom I�ve described in this post are the kinds we need in order to avoid the disasters of the past and get our country moving in the right direction again. These kinds of Congresspersons exist � We just don�t have enough of them. That�s one reason why these kinds of stories inspire me to hope for a better future.