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CounterPunch
March 19,
2003
Come On, Democrats
Stand Up for
Peace
By RALPH NADER
Dear Minority Leader Daschle and Minority
Leader Pelosi:
President Bush is on the verge of taking
the United States into a costly preemptive war, against an enemy
widely viewed as posing no imminent or direct threat to our nation
or allies, despite the nonviolent alternative of relying on continued
and expanded UN-backed inspections. He seems bent on a war, fraught
with short- and long-term global risks, without support from
long-time international allies, in violation of international
law, and without a Congressional declaration of war required
by our Constitution.
Moreover, he does so despite the grave
dangers his actions provoke -- not just to the children and people
of Iraq, who are sure to suffer thousands and perhaps many more
deaths, injuries and toxic sickness -- but to the United States
and its international standing in world affairs. These include:
* The heightened risk of terrorism on
U.S. soil and against U.S. citizens in foreign countries;
* The risk of serious casualties for
our soldiers, including toxic illness as in the first Gulf War
and, in Mr. Bush's view, possible exposure to chemical and biological
weapons for which official U.S. army audits say they are inadequately
trained and ill-equipped;
* A draining of the federal budget to
pay the enormous costs of war and occupation, at the expense
of existing critical domestic and international programs and
the daily health and safety of the American people.
* A diversion away from the struggle
against stateless terrorism which has concerned many former national
security specialists, including General Anthony Zinni and the
first President Bush's National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.
Confronted with a President who has made
clear for months an intention to drive his manufactured crisis
to war with a surrounded, weakened, watched and inspected Iraqi
regime, Congressional Democrats have been divided, and the party
leadership has declined to criticize the President directly and
on the core issue of the dangerous rush to invasion. Mr. Bush,
as a consequence, has had a virtually unrebutted propaganda barrage
to the public through the mass media before and after the November
2002 elections. This must be the first unilateral war in American
history driven by a covey of chickenhawks in and around the Presidency
and opposed by many ex-military, ex-diplomatic, ex-intelligence
leaders who are speaking also for muffled dissenters in the U.S.
military and intelligence agencies.
Now, in the remaining days before the
outbreak of war, is the time for the Democratic Party's leaders
to declare that while you of course support the troops and hope
to minimize all dangers they face, that you oppose the President's
dangerous, illegal and immoral war-invasion and occupation. The
nation will surely rally around the troops once hostilities break
out, but this war, its Presidential promoter, and especially
its festering aftermath will feed public dismay and disillusionment.
The citizenry will want to know not just who criticizes the inevitable
problems after they emerge, but who had the foresight and courage
to identify the risks in advance and counsel a more prudent path
in our country's best interests.
I urge you to meet this challenge. Forcefully
and clearly declare your opposition to the President's present
war path. Not only is it the right course of action, but history,
and this nation's citizens, will judge you kindly for offering
a more sensible and peaceful alternative: containment, deterrence,
UN inspections and doing what the early 2001 Bush administration
once favored -- tightening military sanctions while easing the
economic sanctions that have caused untold suffering for the
Iraqi people.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
is America's leading consumer advocate. He is the founder of
numerous public interest groups including Public Citizen, and
has twice run for President as a Green Party candidate. His latest
book is Crashing
the Party: How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for President
(St. Martin's Press, 2002)
Yesterday's
Features
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream (Interview)
Jason Leopold
Rumsfeld and Bush Sr. Opposed 1989 UN Investigation of Saddam
for Human Rights Violations
Josh Ruebner
An
Open Letter to My Former Dean, Paul Wolfowitz (and Other "Court"
Jews)
Mitchel Cohen
The
Gulf War 12 Years Later: Why Class Matters
Carlos Fuentes
The Insulting Insinuations of the Bush Regime
Fareed Marjaee
The Road to Jerusalem Goes Through Baghdad
Rick Giombetti
The Savagely Soft Underbelly
of the Anti-War Movement: Misquided Faith in the UN
Rich Procter
Rove Memo: How to Launch a War
Ritt Goldstein
Oil
War: the Smoking Guns
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