Now for Some American Voices

In the past two days, the Washington Post Style Section featured two Americans who dissent from BushCheney’s insane war.

The first is retired Colonel Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Colonel Wilkerson calls the Iraq war a “blunder of historic proportions”.

“...’This is really a very inept administration,’ says Wilkerson, who has credentials not only as an insider in the Bush I, Clinton and Bush II presidencies but also as a former professor at two of the nation's war colleges. ‘As a teacher who's studied every administration since 1945, I think this is probably the worst ineptitude in governance, decision-making and leadership I've seen in 50-plus years. You've got to go back and think about that. That includes the Bay of Pigs, that includes -- oh my God, Vietnam. That includes Iran-contra, Watergate.’..."

The second is historian William Blum, the obscure author of “Rogue State: A Guide to the Worlds Only Super Power”, the book recommended by Osama bin Laden in his most recent audiotape.

“...Blum's exact words? ‘If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism.’

...[H]e made clear that he deplores the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But he argues, as many other essayists have, that they were an understandable retaliation against U.S. foreign policy. ‘The thesis in my books and my writing is that anti-American terrorism arises from the behavior of U.S. foreign policy,’ he said. ‘It is what the U.S. government does which angers people all over the world.’

"I am totally against what they did. But we cannot view that as totally the acts of a bunch of madmen. If we do . . . we will continue making the same mistakes, and the so-called war on terror will be as doomed to fail as the war on drugs’..."

Two very different voices, two very different perspectives pointing in the same direction.