Public Comment

Sept. 11, 2001 was a terrible tragedy. For those of us who were up early that morning and were called to turn on the TV, we saw a horrible series of events—not read, not imagined—in real time. A worse tragedy occurred when our country, under false pretenses, attacked Iraq. Although the bombs, mortars, other sophisticated weapons were directed at Iraqis, the attack was also a less obvious one against Americans. 

Although more than 3,000 U.S. military personnel are dead, more than 22,000 maimed, and a yet-to-be-determined number suffer from post-traumatic-stress-disorder, the human physical toll paid by Iraqis is off the scale compared to our numbers. We have effectively destroyed the Cradle of Civilization. 

In a different manner, the Bush administration has grievously harmed the United States. The National Priorities web page (http://nationalpriorities.org) has a frightening microsecond report on the cost of the war: at 6:50 p.m. on Jan. 21, we had spent $362,772,925 or $2 billion a week. National Priorities also reported that the cost to California is $46 billion and to Berkeley, $130 million. Our social, physical, ethical, moral condition is tattered. Our environmental condition is fragile. We are much weaker in every way from each of our wars since World War II, but the Iraq war is perhaps the most evil. Individual profiteers from Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, Bechtel, have become fabulously wealthy. The rest of us are poorer in every way.  

We have also become in the years after the attack on Iraq the moral pariahs of the world. As a nation we shuddered to see (and also imagine) people jumping, falling off the top floors of the Twin Towers, the employees, the fire fighters and the police trapped in the buildings. And, I, as an individual cannot forget the Iraqi men, women and children, innocent or not, who never attacked the United States, being shot, mortared, shrapnelled, beaten, humiliated, tortured, raped, pushed out of their houses, out of their cities, out of their living and pushed to the brink of and over to death. Their condition is never far out of my mind. I cannot enjoy any event without feeling guilt that it is my tax dollars, my complicity as an American that is doing such barbarous acts. 

I go to demonstrations, write letters, engage in political activity, as efforts to stop the war, to assuage the horror felt, the guilt over what we have done and continue to do. Individuals like Cindy Sheehan can galvanize part of the population with her just and emotionally effective call to end the war and we are grateful for our leaders against the war. 

Lt. Ehren Watada, is one of these leaders. Lt. Watada, is the first U.S. Army officer to refuse to serve in Iraq. He enlisted in patriotic firmness after 9/11. Over his mother’s protests, he insisted that he did the right thing. His military superiors consider him to be exemplary as an officer, “a leader of men” and told him that he would have a bright future in the Army. While stationed in Korea, his superior officer told him that he would undoubtedly be posted in Iraq, and as a good officer, he should learn everything about the country to which he was to be sent. And he studied. In the process, he learned that the attack was based on lies told by the Bush administration: that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that there was no connection between the attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and wherever the downed plane in Pennsylvania was approaching and Iraq. 

Watada was also aware of the Nuremberg Principles that essentially places responsibility on the individual, even if that person is the head of state, or a member of the military, to not obey orders that violate international law. 

He tried to resign three times (an officer submits his resignation to the president) and was denied each time. He is now court-martialed in Ft. Lewis, Washington facing four counts: two for missing troop movement and two for criticizing the president. Two other speech counts, which depended on the testimony of freelance journalists Sarah Olson and Star Bulletin’s Gregg Kakesako, were dropped when other journalists joined in defending freedom of the press. 

Watada is a young man (27) with extraordinary clarity about his moral responsibility and I am grateful for his principled and clearly articulated thoughts about his obligation to defend the Constitution, the U.N. Charter, and the Nuremberg Principles, He said, in talking to a roomful of veterans: “...that to stop an illegal war and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fight it.” 

My gratitude to him is expressed in committing civil disobedience by blocking the doors of the San Francisco Federal Building (450 Golden Gate Ave.) last month and again this first Thursday of February (every first Thursday) as well as joining a dozen or so Bay Area people, including Berkeley resident Betty Kano, who are traveling to Ft. Lewis to support Lt. Watada and to stand in protest of the war. 

Molly, you made many of my dark days brighter by your wit, your humor, your clear disgust with what the Bushies were doing. I shall miss you terribly but will struggle on against the dark forces in this country just as you did.  

Ying Lee is former member of the Berkeley City Council who served on Congressman Ron Dellums’ Washington staff for many years.