David
McReynolds
LEFT LETTERS
2008 April 17
pissed
off and sounding off on the "debate"
David
McReynolds was on the staff of the War Resisters League for many
years, and, as the Socialist Party candidate in 1980 and 2000, the
first openly gay person to run for the U.S. presidency. He lives with
two cats on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
I
watched the full debate last night. It isn't a secret that I'm both a
pacifist and a socialist, that I don't think Barak Obama is the
second coming of Christ, etc. but . . .
Bravo for him for not
wearing a flag pin and what in hell was George Stephanopolous
thinking of with questions such as whether Obama thought Rev. Wright
was patriotic enough? It is pretty clear from the TV coverage I've
followed today that ABC did a lousy job, and the two moderators
really screwed up. Yes, yes, Obama is the front runner, he is a fair
target, but at what point does the front runner get asked real
questions? And how in the name of God can Hillary Clinton, who, with
her husband, pulled down $100 million in income, get away with
calling Obama an elitist?
At what point (and Obama doesn't
dare say it) will someone explain to the public that while Rev.
Wright's choice of words, in that one endless loop, was not the best,
there was a great deal of truth in what he said, (and in what Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. said and which we have conventiently forgotten
as we sanitize him into a stamp and a statue, instead of the prophet
he was).
This country nearly destroyed Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos, causing the death of over three million people. (Yes, Virginia,
I know, that was a generation ago). We made possible the rise of Pol
Pot - the US backed Pol Pot in Cambodia to the very end. We have
backed Israel in the Middle East, funding it, arming it, and
remaining silent even during something as horrendous as the air
strikes in Lebanon, where Secretary of State Rice delayed the UN vote
to urge an end of the air strikes. We funded the death squads in
Central America. Bill Clinton is good friends with the political
leaders of Columbia, where trade union leaders are shot to death. We
have made a saint of Reagan, who was complicit in the Iran/Contra
affair - we are a nation living with a fictious memory.
When
will the religious leadership of America suggest that if you take the
full range of work that Wright has done in Chicago, and the fact he
is a respected leader within the Christian community, you need to
back off the relentless attacks on a pastor who spoke some painful
truths.
Bush wears a flag pin but never saw service. What he
has done is send hundreds of thousands of men and women into a combat
he himself never risked, and from which we will, for decades to come,
suffer the fallout of wounds of body and mind all in the name of oil.
Oil which, as Bush's term dribbles to an end, has now hit over $110 a
barrel! Enough of the bloody flag pins worn by rich boys, and Fox
commentators in the pay of the rich boys. Bush - the man who
destroyed a nation and indeed, the chickens are coming home to roost
as our wounded return. Those who should pay the bill, those who
should be on trial before an international court for crimes against
humanity, will retire with pay.
When will we stop making a
political football of Iran? I don't like what the President of that
country says, and I don't like the politics he represents. I think he
has made some very stupid statements. But have we forgotten that it
was the US which ousted the elected leader of Iran decades ago and
installed the Shah with his brutal secret police? It has been the US
which undercut, refused to deal with, humiliated, the various secular
movements in the Middle East - and should not be surprised at what
has emerged in Iran?
And who does Iran actually threaten? It
has been hundreds of years since Iran has attacked any neighbor. But
it was invaded by Iraq, a war that cost a million Iraqi and Iranian
lives - a war in which the US backed Iraq and encouraged him and
armed him. Israel has fought at least two wars that were without
question wars of aggression. Why are we making a football out of
Iran?
How did the Weather Underground even get into this
debate last night? What in the name of God does Bill Ayers have to do
with the price of a gallon of gas, a quart of milk, or the fact we
have more people in prison in this land of the free than any other
nation in the world?
I won't boycott ABC - it carries one of
my few favorite shows, Boston Legal. But it is a network which should
lower its corporate flag to half staff tomorrow.
Have a good
night.
David
was Socialist Party nominee (write-in) for Congress, 1958. Peace &
Freedom Party nominee for Congress, 1968. Socialist Party nominee for
President, 1980 and the Green Party candidate for Senate in New York
in 2004. National Co-Chair, Socialist Party, two terms. National
Committeeman, Socialist Party. Arrested over a dozen times for
participation in peace, civil rights, and labor demonstrations.