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.

To Criticize a President?

Presidential Criticism

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

Theodore Roosevelt, "Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918

Lessons from the Catonsville Nine

Lessons from the Catonsville Nine

by Ron Manuto and Sean Patrick O’Rourke

May 16, 2008

Why Object?

Martin Luther King, Jr., responded to the claim that objection was inappropriate; in the opening of his famous letter from Birmingham, King set the parameters for moral objection being voiced:

"16 April 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities 'unwise and untimely.' Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against 'outsiders coming in.' I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their 'thus saith the Lord' far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation."

Read the entire letter here.

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
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
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
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
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
Norman E. Whisnant
David White
Quinton White
Claire Willis
Sarah Worth
Wade Worthen
Laura Wright
Mark Yates
Ed Yazijian
Libby Young

Objection: Torture and the Bush Administration

[Excerpt from the writings/reports of Andrew Sullivan from 2005]

What's notable about the incidents of torture and abuse is first, their common features, and second, their geographical reach. No one has any reason to believe any longer that these incidents were restricted to one prison near Baghdad. They were everywhere: from Guantánamo Bay to Afghanistan, Baghdad, Basra, Ramadi and Tikrit and, for all we know, in any number of hidden jails affecting ''ghost detainees'' kept from the purview of the Red Cross. They were committed by the Marines, the Army, the Military Police, Navy Seals, reservists, Special Forces and on and on. The use of hooding was ubiquitous; the same goes for forced nudity, sexual humiliation and brutal beatings; there are examples of rape and electric shocks. Many of the abuses seem specifically tailored to humiliate Arabs and Muslims, where horror at being exposed in public is a deep cultural artifact.

Whether random bad apples had picked up these techniques from hearsay or whether these practices represented methods authorized by commanders grappling with ambiguous directions from Washington is hard to pin down from the official reports. But it is surely significant that very few abuses occurred in what the Red Cross calls ''regular internment facilities.'' Almost all took place within prisons designed to collect intelligence, including, of course, Saddam Hussein's previous torture palace at Abu Ghraib and even the former Baathist secret police office in Basra. (Who authorized the use of these particular places for a war of liberation is another mystery.) This tells us two things: that the vast majority of soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere had nothing to do with these incidents; and that the violence had a purpose. The report of the International Committee of the Red Cross says: ''Several military intelligence officers confirmed to the I.C.R.C. that it was part of the military intelligence process to hold a person deprived of his liberty naked in a completely dark and empty cell for a prolonged period to use inhumane and degrading treatment, including physical and psychological coercion.''

An e-mail message recovered by Danner from a captain in military intelligence in August 2003 reveals the officer's desire to distinguish between genuine prisoners of war and ''unlawful combatants.'' The president, of course, had endorsed that distinction in theory, although not in practice - even in Guantánamo, let alone Iraq. Somehow Bush's nuances never made it down the chain to this captain. In the message, he asked for advice from other intelligence officers on which illegal techniques work best: a ''wish list'' for interrogators. Then he wrote: ''The gloves are coming off gentlemen regarding these detainees, Col. Boltz has made it clear that we want these individuals broken.''

How do you break these people? According to the I.C.R.C., one prisoner ''alleged that he had been hooded and cuffed with flexicuffs, threatened to be tortured and killed, urinated on, kicked in the head, lower back and groin, force-fed a baseball which was tied into the mouth using a scarf and deprived of sleep for four consecutive days. Interrogators would allegedly take turns ill-treating him. When he said he would complain to the I.C.R.C. he was allegedly beaten more. An I.C.R.C. medical examination revealed hematoma in the lower back, blood in urine, sensory loss in the right hand due to tight handcuffing with flexicuffs, and a broken rib.''

Even Bybee's very narrow definition of torture would apply in this case. Here's another - not from Abu Ghraib:

A detainee ''had been hooded, handcuffed in the back, and made to lie face down, on a hot surface during transportation. This had caused severe skin burns that required three months' hospitalization. . . . He had to undergo several skin grafts, the amputation of his right index finger, and suffered . . . extensive burns over the abdomen, anterior aspects of the outer extremities, the palm of his right hand and the sole of his left foot.''

And another, in a detainee's own words: ''They threw pepper on my face and the beating started. This went on for a half hour. And then he started beating me with the chair until the chair was broken. After that they started choking me. At that time I thought I was going to die, but it's a miracle I lived. And then they started beating me again. They concentrated on beating me in my heart until they got tired from beating me. They took a little break and then they started kicking me very hard with their feet until I passed out.''

An incident uncovered by the A.C.L.U. and others was described in The Washington Post on Dec. 22. A young soldier with no training in interrogation techniques ''acknowledged forcing two men to their knees, placing bullets in their mouths, ordering them to close their eyes, and telling them they would be shot unless they answered questions about a grenade incident. He then took the bullets, and a colleague pretended to load them in the chamber of his M-16 rifle.''

These are not allegations made by antiwar journalists. They are incidents reported within the confines of the United States government. The Schlesinger panel has officially conceded, although the president has never publicly acknowledged, that American soldiers have tortured five inmates to death. Twenty-three other deaths that occurred during American custody had not been fully investigated by the time the panel issued its report in August. Some of the techniques were simply brutal, like persistent vicious beatings to unconsciousness. Others were more inventive. In April 2004, according to internal Defense Department documents recently procured by the A.C.L.U., three marines in Mahmudiya used an electric transformer, forcing a detainee to ''dance'' as the electricity coursed through him. We also now know that in Guantánamo, burning cigarettes were placed in the ears of detainees.

Objection: Political Corruption of Education from Reagan to George W. Bush

[Excerpt from book currently in-press; chapter by P. L. Thomas]

In Reagan’s White House, the National Commission on Excellence in Education was formed in 1981 with the assumption that the public school system in the U. S. was failing—and had been in decline for decades. This perception of constant decline, this mischaracterization of the past as golden is a common flaw in popular thought; at any moment we seem to idealize the past. Nostalgia is a dangerous and inaccurate thing. For education, however, the assumption that education was failing proved to be catastrophic since the report this commission was charged to make was politically poisoned from the outset. Gerald Holton (2003) was a member of that commission and revealed some twenty years later that the much publicized A Nation at Risk, the damning report eventually generated from the commission’s work, was merely a political ploy driven by Reagan’s blunt claims for his agenda:

"We met with President Reagan at the White House, who at first was jovial, charming, and full of funny stories, but then turned serious when he gave us our marching orders. He told us that our report should focus on five fundamental points that would bring excellence to education: Bring God back into the classroom. Encourage tuition tax credits for families using private schools. Support vouchers. Leave the primary responsibility for education to parents. And please abolish that abomination, the Department of Education. Or, at least, don't ask to waste more federal money on education—'we have put in more only to wind up with less.'" (Holton, 2003)

Possibly more disturbing than Holton’s own insider’s view of the corruption of A Nation at Risk by political ideology is Gerald Bracey’s analysis of the research and conclusions drawn by A Nation at Risk, a report that was widely available in the popular press and a report that is the primary motivation for the powerful accountability movement occurring over the past twenty years and culminating in the historically unprecedented No Child Left Behind legislation. Bracey (2003) has revealed that although A Nation at Risk touted itself as a report driven by research, the data are simply not there to support the claims. Broadly, Bracey reveals that the commission looked at “nine trendlines. . ., only one of which could be used to support crisis rhetoric” (p. 620). Essentially, we must realize that the accountability movement that was spurred by A Nation at Risk was born out of ideological rhetoric—not scientific evidence.

Ansary (2007) recognizes the misleading and continuing impact A Nation at Risk has on education today:

"Standing for reform apparently means supporting rigorous testing, a back-to-basics curriculum, higher standards, more homework, more science and math, more phonics, something called accountability, and a host of other often daunting initiatives. Some educators worry about the fallout from these measures, such as the proliferating plague of standardized testing, but don’t know how to oppose them without casting themselves as obstructionists clinging to a failed status quo." (p. 50)

And this current predicament can be traced back to the crisis rhetoric in A Nation at Risk, rhetoric that again is not supported by the data. Ansary notes the disjuncture between the data proclaimed by the Reagan-appointed study and the more nuanced analysis of the data that shows, for example, that SAT scores remained constant or improved within subgroups while the overall SAT average dropped between 1970 and 1990; this statistical phenomenon is called Simpson’s paradox, Ansary explains, but such sophisticated analyses are rarely offered in the political debate and results that are contrary to ideological aims (such as this data resulting from the Sandia report from the Secretary of Energy in 1990) are never revealed.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s both federal and state leaders beat the drum concerning our failing schools and the need for more accountability. Many states implemented high-stakes testing systems tied to graduation; then in 2001, George W. Bush brought his Texas Miracle to the White House and produced No Child Left Behind (See also Camilli). With No Child Left Behind, literacy was specifically targeted and seriously corrupted. First, as No Child Left Behind gained momentum, the Bush White House, fronted by Rod Paige as Secretary of Education, practiced the same pattern as the Reagan White House—portray ideology as research. Two well-documented situations connected to literacy reveal this pattern.

Similar to the Nation Commission on Excellence in Education, the National Reading Panel was formed by the Bush White House; the public charge was to gather the existing research on reading instruction in order to provide NCLB with scientific clout to improve reading among students. Yet, Joanne Yatvin (2002, 2003), an insider just as Holton was for A Nation at Risk, revealed that the panel was instructed and manipulated to create a statement on reading that fulfilled political and financial goals that contradicted what was best for reading instruction. As we have seen, political corruption of a commission is nothing new, but a more recent finding by the U. S. Department of Education does suggest the corruption has spread far beyond political rhetoric.

A central component of NCLB is the Reading First Initiative, which is grounded in the distorted work of the National Reading Panel. The Final Inspection Report (U. S. Department of Education, 2006) has uncovered corruption by those implementing Reading First, political ideologies being promoted through federal funding and textbook companies creating their own markets through that same federal funding. And we should not be surprised since there has been growing evidence over the past decade that the Texas Miracle proclaimed by George W. Bush and Rod Paige during their tenures in Texas actually was a political misrepresentation of data, not a miracle of school reform at all (Thomas, 2004).

Since NCLB has been a cornerstone of the Bush administration and since NCLB was modeled on education reform in Texas under Bush as governor and Rod Paige, who led education in Texas before becoming Bush’s Secretary of Education, the U.S Department of Education has a great deal invested in both accountability standards and their success. The NCLB web page and comments by then-Secretary Paige and current Secretary Spelling are primarily positive interpretations of both raising standards and increasing testing. While assessments of state standards such as those by the Fordham Foundation offer a resounding endorsement of continuing accountability standards and high-stakes testing, these reports should be credited for also acknowledging their own versions of relative success by the process; both the Hoover and Fordham reports present a wide range of “success.” The information coming from the Secretary of Education, however, does not deserve the same praise. . . .

In 2006, the U. S. Department of Education (2006, September) uncovered serious corruption in the Reading First Program spawned by NCLB and the Reading Panel. While this disturbing report was primarily ignored by the press and the average citizen, often we read in that same press comments by Secretary Spelling and even hear addresses by President Bush touting the success of NCLB as measured by NAEP scores. However, both Gerald Bracey and Stephen Krashen (2006) have revealed that the claims by the Bush White House about NCLB positively impacting student achievement is false. Spelling and Bush refer to a five-year trend for increased reading scores of fourth graders in NAEP. Yet, the increase from 212 in 1999 to 219 in 2005 primarily occurs only from 1999 (212) until 2002 (219). In 2002 (219), 2003 (218), and 2004 (219), the scores remain flat.

Why is this important? The entire increase claimed by Spelling to be the result of NCLB occurred before the implementation of the legislation. While the administration has also referred to other studies supporting their claims of success by NCLB (one from Michigan and one from Washington), Krashen (2006) and Bracey have shown positive conclusions from those studies to be terribly misleading. Many of the messages offered by politicians when addressing education and particularly the accountability movement trigger assumptions that most people have about teaching, learning, and academic rigor. The ability of both the Secretary of Education and the President to express provably inaccurate information without negative consequence is a testament to the difficult task that lies ahead for literacy educators.

Ansary (2007) offered a comment above that suggests Krashen and Bracey along with those of us in the classrooms are destined to be rejected if we question the claims of organizations or elected officials who support accountability standards and high-stakes testing. As Ansary stated, when we reject the calls for higher standards we often appear to be endorsing the status quo, which has been clearly established in the average person’s mind as a failure. Yet, we should begin to acknowledge the growing body of research that does show accountability standards to be ineffective at both raising academic rigor and creating educational reform.

References

Ansary, T. (2007, March). Education at risk. Edutopia, 48-53. http://www.edutopia.org/landmark-education-report-nation-risk

Bracey, G. W. (2003). April foolishness: The 20th anniversary of A Nation at Risk. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(8), 616-621.
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0304bra.htm

Holton, G. (2003, April 25). An insider’s view of “A Nation at Risk” and why it still matters. The Chronicle Review, 49(33), B13. http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i33/33b01301.htm

Krashen, S. (2006, October 2). Did Reading First work? The Pulse. Available on-line:
http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/
commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=17349.

Thomas, P. L. (2004). Numbers games: Measuring and mandating American education. New York: Peter Lang.

U. S. Department of Education. (2006, September). The Reading First Program’s grant application process: Final inspection report. Office of Inspector General. Washington, D. C. Available here:
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/aireports.html
Under:

• The Reading First Program's Grant Application Process. ACN: I13F0017. Date Issued: 9/22/2006 PDF (2.9M) MS Word (8M)

Yatvin, J. (2003, April 30). I told you so!: The misinterpretation and misuse of the National Reading Panel Report. Education Week, 22(33), 56, 44, 45. http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=136

Yatvin, J. (2002, January). Babes in the woods: The wanderings of the National Reading Panel. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(5), 364-369. http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0201yat.htm

Graduation Speeches—A Resource

Graduation speeches by notable people can be found at the following links, including some by George W. Bush:

Graduation Speeches at Yahoo

Kurt Vonnegut Commencement addresses on-line

Humanity.org Commencement Speeches

Stephen Colbert Commencement Address

John F. Kennedy: American University Commencement Address

Johns Hopkins University: Commencement Speakers (1974 to Present)

Present Bush at St. Vincent College, May 2007

Lyndon Johnson at Howard University, June 1965

John F. Kenneday at Yale University, June 1962

Hillary Clinton, May 2005