Boston Globe Op-Ed

True Irony: Bush on personal responsibility

by Scot Lehigh

Hedges speaks at FU

May 27, 2008, Chris Hedges speaks at FU.

Final "We Object"

Under ordinary circumstances it would be an honor for Furman University to be visited by the President of the United States. However, these are not ordinary circumstances. In the spirit of open and critical review that is the hallmark of both a free democracy and an institution of higher learning, we, the undersigned members of the Furman University community, object to the following actions of the Bush administration:
• Claiming a linkage between Iraq and 9-11, and exaggerating the threat of weapons of mass destruction, to justify a new and morally questionable strategy of "pre-emptive warfare" against Iraq - a country that did not attack us and posed no immediate international threat;
• Classifying war prisoners as "detained nonmilitary combatants" to permit their detention and interrogation in violation of our own laws and standards of human decency;
• Sowing fear and using "threat levels" to side-step the Constitution and justify the erosion of individual liberties, such as challenging the Fourth Amendment (wiretapping without authorization of law) and the First Amendment (denying access to information and restricting dissent to "free speech zones");
• Suppressing or ignoring empirical evidence that contradicts administration ideology, such as denying global warming and then obstructing progress on reducing greenhouse gases while favoring billions in tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies that are earning record profits;
• Installing lobbyists for the coal, timber, and mining industries as the chief officials in charge of managing and protecting our public lands;
• Encouraging reckless over-spending (creating the largest deficits in history), expanding the reach of national government into local affairs (No Child Left Behind), and increasing our involvement overseas at the expense of domestic concerns (reconstructing New Orleans).
We are ashamed of these actions of this administration. The war in Iraq has cost the lives of over 4000 brave and honorable U. S. military personnel, wounded more than 13,000 military personnel so severely that they are unable to return to duty, killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, will cost more than 2 trillion dollars, and has severely damaged our government's ethical and moral credibility at home and abroad. Because we love this country and the ideals it stands for, we accept our civic responsibility to speak out against these actions that violate American values.
Cosigners, in alphabetical order:
William Aarnes
Ken Abernethy
Gilbert Allen
William Allen
Brannon Andersen
Catherine Anderson
Erik Anderson
Margaret Antonik
John Armstrong
Tony Arrington
Joe Ashley
Laura Baker
Alison Baraty
John Barrington
John Batson
Virginia Batts
Kyle Beaulieu
Lloyd Benson
Jessica M. Berkey
Alex Berrios
Karni Bhati
Temi Bidjerano
Monica Black
Albert Blackwell
Christopher Blackwell
Anna Beth Bonney
Michael Borer
David Bost
Ali Boyd
Chris Bradt
Charles L. Brewer
Terri L. Bright
Michael Brodeur
Kat Brown
Alan Bryson
Rhett Bryson
Tom Buford
Marie Burgess
Todd Campbell
Margaret Caterisano
Tony Caterisano
Victoria Chevalier
Jane Chew
Jean Childress
Erik Ching
Tom Cloer
Lisa Colby
Jenny Colvin
Steve Compton
Elizabeth Cooke
Shana Coshal
Robert W. Crapps
Janis Crowe
Stanley Crowe
Vaughn CroweTipton
Angel Cruz
Jeannette Cruz-Elledge
Doug Cummins
Pete Demarco
Sarah Dyer
Jim Edwards
Gil Einstein
Philip L. Elliott
Abby Elsener
Brian Emerson
Carmela Epright
Beth Evans
Julie Eyster
Mary Fairbairn
Timothy Fehler
Chelsea Feustel
Danielle Fisher
Gwyn Fowler
Cathy Frazier
Ronald J. Friis
Leslie Fuller
McMillan Gaither
David Gandolfo
John M. Garihan
Annie Garrett
Craig S. Gibson
Matthew Bryan Gillis
Graham Gilson
Gale Goodwin
Dustin Gourdin
Sallie Grant
D. Jonathan Grieser
Nancy Griffeth
Judy Grisel
David Gross
Erin Hahn
Dennis Haney
Cort Haldaman
Jennifer Haldaman
John Harris
Seth Harrison
Vincent Hausmann
Joanna Hawley
Susan Head
A. Scott Henderson
Maryanne Henderson
Leslie W. Hicken
Jimmy Hoke
Angela Hollis
Larry Hudson
Michael Huntsberger
Beth Hupfer
Hannah Jefferies
Gene Johnson
Lore Johnson
Edward Jones
Mary Margaret Jones
Sofia Kearns
Jordan Keels
Mark W. Kellogg
Bob Kelly
Elizabeth G. Kelly
Martha Kimmel
Cynthia P. King
Joe M. King
Lisa Knight
Jessie Koerner
Daniel Koppelman
Jennifer Lantz
Sandra Larson
Anne Leen
Nick Leitner
Adrienne Lemon
Aaron Lenox
Richard Letteri
Greg Lewis
Min-Ken Liao
George Lipscomb
Jason Long
Jane Love
Angelica Lozano-Alonso
Kristy Maher
Rebecca Maner
Adrian Massei
Shelly Matthews
Tamara Matthews
W. Duncan McArthur, Jr.
Austin Wesley McCain
Natalie McClearn
Madison McClendon
Melinda Menzer
Karen Metcalfe
Melissa Metcalfe
Elisa Miller
Caitlin Montgomery
Justin Moore
Lisa Mulvey
Susan Munkres
Scott Murr
Savita Nair
Elaine Nocks
Bonnie O'Neill
Jay Oney
Evelyn Onofrio
Sean Patrick O'Rourke
David B. Parsell
Willard Pate
Harlan Patton
A.J. Pawlikowski
Patricia Pecoy
Travis Perry
A. Joseph Pollard
Beth A. Pontari
Frank Powell
Joel Prather
Chris Priedemann
Ann Quattlebaum
Nicholas Radel
Bill Ranson
Paul Rasmussen
David Redburn
Kathryn Rhyne
Steve Richardson
Shirley A. Ritter
Emily Robinson
Brenda J. Roche
Bobby Rode
Carly Roessler
Bill Rogers
David Rutledge
Lane Salter
Renita Schmidt
Eva Sclippa
Pongracz Sennyey
John Shelley
Brian Siegel
George W. Singleton
Rachel Smidt
John Snyder
Bing Somers
Alma Steading
Cinnamon Stetler
Kathy Strother
Judy Stuart
Michael Svec
Emily K. Sweezey
Alfons Teipen
Adam Tenke
Joseph Tenini
Paul Thomas
Elizabeth Tilley
Annette Trierweiler
Brian Tropiano
Victoria Turgeon
J. David Turner
Grace Tuschak
Bingham Vick,Jr.
Kira Vine
Robin Visel
Steven Walter
Adrian Ward
Ashley Warlick
Marie Watkins
Victoria Welborn
Harrison Welch
Carolee Wende
Norman E. Whisnant
David White
Quinton White
Claire Willis
Sarah Worth
Wade Worthen
Laura Wright
Mark Yates
Ed Yazijian
Libby Young

Letters to the Editor, in support

From the Greenville News:

May 23, 2008

Furman faculty right on Bush

I am writing in regards to the controversy at Furman concerning the choice of President Bush as the convocation speaker for this year's graduation. As a Furman alum, I was offended by the snippy and insulting tone of Dan Hoover's recent column explaining the situation.

Mr. Hoover implied that the Furman professors who have signed an "I Object" letter in response to President Bush's upcoming visit to the university are troublemakers, inappropriately griping about problems they have with the Bush administration. Mr. Hoover even deadpanned, "Somehow Bush escaped blame for the recent cyclone in Myanmar."

I want to give a voice of respect for the professors at Furman who I know to be a thoughtful and respectful group. Many of the Furman faculty as well as many of the citizens of our state, country and world are deeply disappointed in the Bush administration.

I believe the Furman faculty who signed the "I Object" letter have found a suitable way to deal with an unfortunate situation in which the students' voices were heard and considered but no prior discussion was held within the academic faculty family before such a potentially controversial invitation was issued.
Ellie Hammond
Travelers Rest

Furman faculty fulfilling duty

I opposed the war in Iraq months before I participated in the invasion. As an officer in a front-line unit with the 101st Airborne Division, I experienced firsthand the hardships unraveled when an incompetent administration squanders a competent military on a poorly planned and unnecessary war.

Forgive me, then, for objecting when another administration -- that of my alma mater, Furman University -- plans to squander a commencement afternoon honoring the man directly responsible for countless failures leading to and stemming from the war in Iraq, not least of which is a military weakened to such an extent that Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody said last month that he's "never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today."

I support the We Object campaign and I hope participating faculty members are able to impart to the graduating class one last lesson in their Furman education: that a civic responsibility to protest is worth more than a contractual obligation to sit.
Geoff Edwards
Fayetteville, Ga.

Bush's record, actions give reasons to 'object'

May 23, 2008 Bush's record, actions give reasons to 'object' By Sean Patrick O'Rourke After last month's announcement that President Bush will speak at Furman's commencement, members of the Furman community posted a letter titled "We Object" at http://www.furman.edu/bushvisit/petition.htm. Over 200 members of the faculty, staff and student body have signed the letter. It has prompted protest and controversy on campus and online, erroneous and derisive responses from and in The Greenville News, and an on-air statement that one of the protest's leaders should be "taken out." And though not a single substantive charge made in our initial letter has been contested, we are still asked why we object. Why? Because public officials and their administrations are vested with a public trust. They are obligated to follow and execute the law. They must act in the public's best interest. They are bound by moral standards. And when they act contrary to these standards they are answerable to the people, for when the actions of a public official and his administration become as odious as this president's, silence implies consent. It is to acquiesce to the awful, to condone the criminal. Our objection, then, is on moral and legal grounds. According to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, in the two years following 9-11, "President Bush and seven of his top officials made at least 935 false statements" about weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions and Iraq's connection to al-Qaida's attacks. The study, "an exhaustive examination of the record, shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that ... led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." The consequences of that campaign are horrific. According to the Department of Defense, the war in Iraq has cost the lives of over 4,000 U.S. military personnel and wounded over 13,000 more so severely that they are unable to return to duty. Estimates vary widely but all agree that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed. Professors Linda Bilmes (Harvard) and Joseph Stiglitz (2001 Nobel Economics Laureate from Columbia) estimate that the war will cost more than $2 trillion, far more than the administration's misleadingly low estimates. And there is no end in sight. President Bush and his administration are also directly responsible for grave violations of international law and human rights. The Bush doctrine of pre-emption, concocted to justify war against Iraq (a country that did not attack us and posed no immediate international threat), contravenes Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, which limits war to self defense (Article 51). The Bush Military Commissions Act, by classifying prisoners of war as "unlawful enemy combatants" to permit their detention and interrogation, violates the due process and fair trial provisions of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. And the Bush policy of secret, "extraordinary rendition" and torture violates every standard of international law and morality -- but particularly the Convention against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and five separate articles of the Geneva Conventions. Consider U.S. law. President Bush has resisted the constitutional limitations on his powers. He has asserted executive privilege to withhold information about corporate influences on energy and environmental policy. He has appropriated, with the help of an acquiescent Congress, the congressional war-making powers for the executive. He has admitted violating U.S. electronic surveillance law in blatant disregard of our Fourth Amendment right to be free from warrantless searches and seizures. But the American Bar Association reports that the gravest threat to our constitutional separation of powers may be President Bush's unprecedented use of "signing statements." Instead of simply signing bills into law and executing them as he should, the president delivers statements in which he claims the authority to disobey more than 750 laws. President Bush has issued more signing statements than all previous presidents combined, even though a bipartisan ABA task force judged this practice "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." Those of us at Furman, however, have been touched more directly by President Bush's disregard for intellectual inquiry, the environment and religious faith. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (including 20 Nobel laureates), President Bush systematically distorts and undermines scientific information when it runs counter to his policy goals. He has also accelerated a program to reclassify and thus remove from public access thousands of historical documents that should be available to scholars. These actions stand in direct opposition to the spirit of free and open inquiry at the heart of university life. Given Furman's emphasis on sustainable environmental practices, the Bush administration's habit of suppressing or ignoring empirical evidence of human contribution to global warming is particularly alarming. So too is the administration's resistance to greenhouse gas reduction plans, granting of tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies now earning record profits, and installation of coal, timber and mining lobbyists as the chief stewards and guardians of our public lands. Perhaps most disturbing of all is the report by David Kuo, former deputy director of President Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, that the administration cynically uses religion for political ends, mocking Christian leaders and "taking Jesus and reducing him to some precinct captain, to some get-out-the-vote guy." And yet, those of us who object to all this have been accused of politicizing the event, denying free speech, disrespecting the presidential office and undermining our students. Such irony. This president has broken trust with the American people and has done so with an unprecedented level of cynicism and arrogance. We have sought to remind him and others that even in places dominated by members of his own party, some Americans will not sit silently by. We will object. GUEST COLUMN Sean Patrick O'Rourke is a member of the Furman University faculty. He wrote this column on behalf of the 221 signatories to the "We Object" letter. He can be reached at sean.orourke@furman.edu. Wade Worthen and Paul Thomas of Furman University contributed to this piece.

Washington U. protests

May 16, 2008

At Washington U., Protesters Turn Their Backs on Phyllis Schlafly

Several hundred people — including some faculty members and graduating students — turned their backs on Phyllis Schlafly as she was awarded an honorary degree at Washington University in St. Louis today, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Ms. Schlafly, the conservative activist and founder of the Eagle Forum, called the protests “juvenile.” A 1944 graduate of the university and a 1978 graduate of its law school, she was honored in front of a crowd of about 14,000. She is known for her role in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and for her vocal opposition to — among other things — abortion rights, gun control, and same-sex marriage.

During the ceremony, she was introduced by Margaret Bush Wilson, a retired civil-rights lawyer, who said she disagreed with Ms. Schlafly on a number of issues but strongly supports free speech. —Lawrence Biemiller

Read the disturbing discourse here.

Evidence of the Bush Record

• Budget deficits (note particularly 2004): See Table 1.1 in this government document.

• Bush's record on scientists, global warming, and free speech within the government: "60 Minutes" report; MSNBC report; Rolling Stone

• Political interference in science: Union of Concerned Scientists report

• Corruption in Reading First Program, major component of NCLB: Reading First Program's Grant Application Process.