Daniel Ellsberg, famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press during the Vietnam War is featured in This month's
Harpers Magazine's Notebook (not online). The piece, titled
The Next War is a compelling call to Bush administrative and military officials to commit treason and prevent the next war, Iran.
Quotes below the fold...
Ellsberg begins,
A hidden crisis is under way. Many government insiders are aware of serious plans for war with Iran, but Congress and the public remain largely in the dark. The current situation is very like that of 1964, the year preceding our overt, open-ended escalation of the Vietnam War, and 2002, the leading up to the U. S. invasion of Iraq.
In both cases, if one or more conscientious insiders had closed the information gap with unauthorized disclosures to the public, a disastrous war might have been averted entirely.
Ellsberg next tells us about his own failure to release what he knew sooner. Ellsberg recalls a conversation with Senator Wayne Morse 35 years ago and seven years after the start of the Vietnam War. Morse heard Ellsberg announce to an audience that he had all the evidence of fraud at the time of the
Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
If you had given me those documents in time, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution would never have gotten out of committee. And if it had somehow been brought up on the floor of the Senate for a vote, it would never have passed.
Ellsberg, at first dismissed the significance of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Perhaps because he was under indictment for twelve felony counts or perhaps he did not want accept responsibility for the loss of 50,000 American and millions of Vietnamese lives.
Years later, Ellsberg says he had second thoughts,
What if I had put out before the end of the year, whether before or after the November election, all of the classified papers from that period that I did eventually disclose in 1971.
Ellsberg answers his own question,
Had I done so, the public and congress would have learned that Johnson's campaign theme, "we seek no wider war," was a hoax. They would have learned, in fact that the Johnson Administration had been heading in secret toward essentially the same policy of expanded war that his presidential rival, Senator Barry Goldwater, openly advocated - a policy that the voters openly repudiated at the polls.
Ellsberg then shows us the parallels between Iraq to Vietnam to suggest that what he did for Vietnam could have been repeated (but sooner) for Iraq
The run-up to the 1964 Tonkin Gulf resolution was almost exactly parallel to the run-up to the 2002 Iraq war resolution.
In both cases, the president and his top Cabinet officers consciously deceived Congress and the public about a supposed short-run threat in order to justify and win support for carrying out preexisting offensive plans against a country that was not a near-term danger to the United States. In both cases, the deception was essential to the political feasibility of the program precisely because expert opinion inside the government foresaw costs, dangers, and low prospects of success that would have doomed the project politically if there had been truly informed public discussion beforehand. And in both cases, that necessary deception could not have succeeded without the obedient silence of hundreds of insiders who knew full well both the deception and the folly of acting on it.
Who could have played the same role as Ellsberg prior to Iraq? Ellsberg points to Richard Clarke, chief of counterterrorism for George W. Bush and advisor to three presidents before him. Ellsberg reports on Clarke's Memoir
Against All Enemies: Inside America's war on terror, where Clarke writes about discovering the next morning (September 12, 2001), to his amazement, that most discussions (at the White House) were about attacking Iraq.
Ellsberg quotes Clarke speaking to Secretary of State Colin Powell on September 12, 2001:
Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response" - which Rumsfeld was already urging - "would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.
Ellsberg, not surprisingly, sympathizes with Clarke and the other people in a position to leak information about Iraq,
Costly as their silence was to their country and its victims, I feel I know their mind-set. I had long prized my own identity as a keeper of the president's secrets. In 1964 it never even occurred to me to break the many secrecy agreements I had signed, in the Marines, at the Rand Corporation, in the Pentagon...
So it would appear that pride kept Ellsberg from revealing what he knew. Yet now he reports on damaged pride for not revealing what he knew,
... I'm not proud that it took me years of war to awaken to the higher loyalties owed by every government official to the rule of law, to our soldiers in harm's way, to our fellow citizens, and explicitly, to the Constitution, which every one of us had sworn and oath "to support and uphold."
Ellsberg continues with commentary on his own inaction,
It took me that long (7 years) to recognize that the secrecy agreements we had signed frequently conflicted with our oath to uphold the Constitution...
I was no worse or better than any Vietnam-era colleagues, or those who later saw the Iraq war approaching and failed to warn anyone outside the executive branch.
From here, Ellsberg reports further on Clarke and makes a good case that Clarke could have stopped this "second Vietnam."
Then, Ellsberg quickly brings us to the present,
We face today a crisis similar to those of 1964 and 2002, a crisis hidden once again from the public and most of Congress. Articles by Seymore Hersh and others have revealed that, as in both those earlier cases, the president has secretly directed the completion, though not yet the execution, of military operational plans - not merely hypothetical "contingency plans" but constantly updated plans, with movement of forces and high states of readiness, for prompt implementation on command - for attacking a country that, unless attacked itself, poses no threat to the United States: in this case, Iran.
Ellsberg's biggest complaint about current reports appears to be the fact that Hersh's and other reporters' information is both anonymous and without documentation thus not raising the public alarm.
Here is where Ellsberg rightfully calls for treason (my word not his):
I believe it is time for one or more of them to go beyond fragmentary leaks unaccompanied by documents. That means doing what no other active official or consultant has done in a timely way: what neither Richard Clarke nor I nor anyone else thought of doing until we were no longer officials, no longer had access to current documents, after bombs had fallen and thousands had died, years into a war. It means going outside executive channels, as officials with contemporary access, to expose the president's lies and oppose his war policy publicly before the war, with unequivocal evidence from inside.
Ellsberg ends with a caution and a plea,
The personal risks of doing this are very great. Yet they are not as great as the risk of bodies and lives we are asking daily of over 130,000 young Americans - with many yet to join them - in an unjust war. Our country has urgent need for comparable courage, moral and civil courage, from its public servants. They owe us the truth before the next war begins.
While this article was
diaried on September 15 by kossack Mary, it preceeded the actual publication of the Harpers Magazine. I feel my coverage expands on Mary's work. However, if you feel I should delete, please say so.
Mark
Update [2006-9-20 17:34:21 by durrenm]:Ok, ok I relent. I've taken the word Treason out of the title and replaced it with Patriotism. In my defense, getting a diary read around here is difficult. Especially if you have boring handle like "durrenm." I used the word Treason to generate interest. It is a common practice here. (Like "Kos Delete my F***ing Account").
However, more reasond minds have suggested that we might be providing right wingers ammo against us. Far be it for me to contribute to the nutcases on the right.
M.