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September
15, 2001
Why I Will Not Rally
Around the President
By Robert Jensen
We are told that in this time of crisis,
all good Americans should rally around the president and the
flag.
I will rally, but not around
a leader calling for war or a symbol of nationalism.
It is easy to understand the
emotion behind the chanting of "USA, USA." But I will
not chant.
In this time of crisis, I will
rally around policies that seek peace and security, for all
people everywhere. And instead of chanting, I will speak quietly
about the grief we all feel, and loudly about the need to resist
our leaders' plans for global war.
Decent people agree that in
this time of crisis, we cannot let the lines of color and culture,
of language and religion, divide us. But we need to go another
step, to understand that the lines dividing people based on nations
are just as dangerous. We must also agree not to give in to
the urge to value the lives of innocent Americans over the lives
of innocent people in other countries.
For the past few days -- in
person and on the phone, through email and on the radio -- I
have been called "unpatriotic," condemned as a "traitor"
and labeled "anti-American" because my writing has
opposed the drive to war, the call for blood to avenge those
who died in the terror attacks.
But I also have heard from
many others who also are concerned that U.S. officials will
take us into a war that will bring only more death, pain and
grief, leaving us less secure. They want to speak out but fear
being attacked for not being "good Americans."
This is a moment when we need
the courage to say that being a good American does not mean
supporting a war so violent and so indiscriminate that more
innocent people will die.
That does not mean we renounce
the ideals of freedom and justice so often associated with the
United States; we should hold onto those ideals more fiercely
than ever and put them into practice by resisting the rush to
war.
We should honor the ideals
of this country by saying, in as clear a voice as we can manage:
Not in our name will the United States seek vengeance or go
forward to kill.
It is important to read closely
the joint resolution passed by Congress, which authorizes the
president "to use all necessary and appropriate force against
those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred
on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons,
in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism
against the United States by such nations, organizations or
persons."
That is not a resolution based
on a quest for justice. It is an open-ended invitation to attack
anyone U.S. leaders decide to target. And those leaders -- Dick
Cheney and Colin Powell among them -- are some of the same people
who during the Gulf War unleashed attacks not only on military
targets but on civilians and the entire civilian infrastructure
of Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people during
and after the war. This resolution, and the statements from
the Bush administration about an ongoing global war, suggest
that what is coming will be even more frightening.
When we speak out against war
in public, we will find support, but we also should expect hostility.
We should expect the question posed by one of the people who
wrote to condemn me: "Whose side are you on?"
The answers to that are simple:
I am on the side of the people
-- no matter where they live -- who will suffer the violence,
not the leaders -- no matter where they live -- who will plan
it.
I am on the side of peace,
not war.
I am on the side of justice,
not vengeance.
And most important, I am on
the side of hope, not despair.
We do not have the luxury of
despair right now. There is too much at stake for too many people.
CP
Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the
University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
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