[Peace-discuss] Fwd: 17 Days. Write your editor.

[Jay Mittenthal]

>Date: 19 Oct 2002 20:08:39 -0000
>From: "Peter Schurman, MoveOn PAC" <moveon-help at list.moveon.org>
>To: "Jay Mittenthal" <mitten at life.uiuc.edu>
>Subject: 17 Days.  Write your editor.
>X-MailScanner: Found to be clean
>
>Dear MoveOn member,
>
>Are you more secure now than you were a year ago?
>
>That question, and your own answer to it, are #17 in our daily lineup
>of reasons to take action in these final weeks before the elections.
>
>Are you any safer from terrorist attack?  The CIA says a war on Iraq
>will make terrorism more likely, not less.  The White House withheld
>news of the North Korean nuclear threat until after the Iraq war vote.
>The D.C. sniper and the villain who killed several people with anthrax
>are still at large.  Osama bin Laden has not been found.
>
>Is America's "freedom" any safer?  Attorney General John Ashcroft and
>others have launched a frontal assault on our fundamental civil rights.
>
>Is your job any more secure than it was a year ago?  Our economy shows
>little sign of recovery.  White House policies - from lax prosecution
>in the Enron, Harken Energy, and Halliburton scandals, to naming hands-
>off appointees to oversee the accounting industry and the stock market,
>are undermining confidence and delaying an economic recovery.
>
>Are you more secure?
>
>For too many of us, the answer to today's question is "no."
>
>The White House is counting on the news media to distract us from
>that question, with saturation coverage of its war plans.  Vice
>President Cheney, according to a recent Washington Post story, "has
>only four talking points: War, war, war and war."*
>
>Today we make it easy for you to fight back in the media by sending a
>letter to the editor of your newspaper.  Writing to your local
>newspaper is one of the most powerful ways you can influence the
>national conversation surrounding the elections.  One letter can help
>sway many people's votes.
>
>Below are a few sample letters.  They were contributed by one of our
>volunteers, David Keppel, and we think they're really great.  Your
>newspaper's letters page should give you an email address or fax
>number to use, or you can try this website:
>
>    http://congress.org/congressorg/dbq/media/
>
>But first, a few tips:
>
>(1) Your own words are always best.
>
>(2) The key to publication is to pounce on something specific you've
>seen in the newspaper -- especially an editorial or op-ed article.
>The art of a letter to the editor is to move quickly from a statement
>in the newspaper to your own point.  Use the letters below for ideas.
>
>(3) Be sure to include your name and address, and _especially_ your
>phone number when submitting your letter.  Editors need to call you
>to verify authorship before they can print your letter.  They don't
>print your phone number.
>
>(4) Please let us know when you've sent your letter, at:
>
> 
>http://www.moveon.org/iraqltes.html?id=822-1253932-k5MP11inqNu5%2FNq9JQlGZA
>
>Please take a few minutes to send a letter to your editor today.
>
>The countdown continues.
>
>- Wes, Eli, Joan, Peter, Doug and Carrie
>   for MoveOn.org PAC
>   October 19, 2002
>
>P.S. Another way to make our case in the media is to participate in
>call-in radio shows.  You can use the points raised in the letters
>below to bolster your argument.
>
>* The quote above is from:
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18257-2002Oct12.html
>
>
>LETTER #1: THE PUBLIC DECIDES
>
>To the Editor:
>
>The media have overlooked the most important body that has a vote on
>whether the United States attacks Iraq.  It is not the Congress, which
>-- in a profile in political opportunism -- gave President Bush a
>virtually blank check to make war.  It is not the United Nations
>Security Council, whose rubber stamp the Administration would merely
>like; President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have said the
>United States would feel free to act on its own.
>
>The most important vote is ours, when the American people go to the
>polls on November 5th.  The most influential member of the Bush
>Administration -- political mastermind Karl Rove -- will be watching
>this vote very closely.  Rove is reported to have counseled the
>President that he could use Iraq to distract the public from a failing
>US economy and the Administration's dirty linen in the Enron, Harken,
>and Halliburton scandals.
>
>A sharp rebuke in the midterm elections is the one message that the
>Bush Administration could not ignore.  It would tell Karl Rove (and
>George W. Bush) that an expensive and dangerous war is no substitute
>for addressing America's real problems.  They would have to think twice
>about investing all our resources 7000 miles from home.  Those who worry
>that attacking Iraq could unleash chaos in the Middle East and terrorism
>globally, should remember they still have a vote that could stop this.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>YOUR NAME
>YOUR ADDRESS
>YOUR PHONE NUMBER
>
>---
>
>LETTER #2: NORTH KOREA AND IRAQ
>
>To the Editor:
>
>Americans may be puzzled that the United States is preparing to attack
>Iraq, which doesn't have nuclear weapons, even as we discover that
>North Korea may have them.  One thing is clear: even if we defeat and
>occupy Iraq, we will have done little to slow the proliferation of
>weapons of mass destruction.  Indeed we may accelerate it, as other
>countries see that once they actually have nuclear weapons (like North
>Korea) they will be less likely to come under American attack.
>
>Though the Bush Administration says that critics of war want to "do
>nothing," the reverse is true.  This Administration has done less than
>nothing on the one track that could reduce this global danger.  It has
>renounced, scuttled or threatened virtually every significant arms
>control agreement, including the verification protocol of the
>Biological Weapons Convention, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the
>Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
>and the Outer Space Treaty.  These treaties represent years of work
>and wisdom by Presidents of both parties.
>
>America has a choice.  President Bush -- as outlined in his National
>Security Strategy -- wants to give up on global efforts to limit
>nuclear and biological proliferation, and then attack potential enemies
>one by one.  (That's called "counter-proliferation.")  On this path,
>war on Iraq may be only the first of a series of American attacks.
>Other possibilities include Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and even
>China.  Or we can recognize that only comprehensive limits will have
>the legitimacy to win the global support they need to be effective.
>As many experts including former Strategic Air Command commander
>General Lee Butler have recognized, another world -- free of nuclear
>weapons -- is both necessary and possible.  Citizens who recognize
>that should use the mid-term elections as a referendum on Mr. Bush's
>futile and dangerous strategy.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>YOUR NAME
>YOUR ADDRESS
>YOUR PHONE NUMBER
>
>---
>
>LETTER #3: TERRORISM AND CHAOS
>
>To the Editor:
>
>When Americans go to the polls on November 5th, they should ask
>themselves whether they are more secure than they were a year ago.
>Yes, the United States defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan.  But
>Afghanistan itself is sinking into chaos.  Neighboring nuclear-armed
>Pakistan and India -- both wracked by terrorism -- are closer to a
>disastrous war.  Al Qaeda appears to have revived -- witness the recent
>bombing on Bali and in the Philippines.  Even the suburbs of
>Washington, DC have been terrified by a sniper.  Americans fear not
>only for their lives but also for their jobs and their savings.
>
>Will President Bush's plan to attack and occupy Iraq make us more
>secure?  Only days before Congress voted to authorize war, CIA Director
>George Tenet undermined the Administration's case by saying that war is
>the one circumstance that would make Saddam Hussein likely to use
>unconventional weapons or transfer them to terrorists.  Virtually all
>our allies have repeatedly warned us that attacking Iraq will throw the
>Middle East into chaos and promote global terrorism.  Yet the Bush
>Administration has scorned practical alternatives, from global arms
>control to domestic gun control.  As we prepare to spend two hundred
>billion dollars fighting Iraq (and much more in years of occupation),
>we can find less and less for health and education.  Who remembers that
>George Bush campaigned as "the education President"?
>
>With their past in oil and arms industries, President Bush and Vice-
>President Cheney are willing to ask the nation to pay any price to
>conquer Iraq, which has the world's second largest oil reserves.  They
>are also involving the United States in oil-rich Colombia's tragic
>civil war.  Yet they have short-changed alternatives, such as wind,
>solar, fuel cells, and enery-efficiency,  that could make us less
>dependent on imported oil.  If America neglects these, we will find we
>are no longer technologically competitive in a world that takes climate
>change seriously.  And we will face storms, drought, and political
>turbulence from global warming.
>
>Dropping bombs will not solve our real problems.  Voters who know this
>should drop candidates who don't.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>YOUR NAME
>YOUR ADDRESS
>YOUR PHONE NUMBER
>
>---
>
>LETTER #4: DEMOCRACY
>To the Editor:
>
>President Bush named the war on terrorism "Operation Enduring Freedom."
>(An earlier name, "Operation Infinite Justice," was hastily withdrawn.)
>Now the Administration is on the brink of attacking Iraq, supposedly so
>that we can bring democracy to Baghdad.  Yet war will bring little
>democracy to Iraq -- and make it ever more elusive here at home.
>
>The Bush Administration has not asked the Iraqi people whether they see
>bombing and invasion -- which may kill tens of thousands of civilians
>-- as liberation.  But it has become increasingly clear that we don't
>trust the Iraqi people to govern themselves.  Plans to install a
>government run by London-based exiles have been scrapped in favor of
>rule by US General Tommy Franks.  The real problem is that Iraq is
>naturally fragmented into Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites.  The Shiite
>majority -- with ties to Iran -- is the one we trust least.  These were
>the considerations that led US policy makers to support Saddam Hussein
>for more than twenty years.  They make it unlikely that his successor
>will be any democrat.  Instead, we will be returning to naked
>colonialism -- and no doubt increasing terrorist resistance.
>
>The Administration's "war for democracy" is in fact a war on democracy
>-- including democracy here at home.  Presidential spokesman Ari
>Fleischer ominously warned the press, "Watch what you do, watch what
>you say."  Attorney General John Ashcroft has thrown thousands of
>immigrants into detention without due process of law.  Even citizens
>can be stripped of their rights if the government terms them "enemy
>combatants."  Surveillance has increased.  When Congress began to
>investigate the Administration's poor record in preventing September
>11th, it found it was itself under investigation -- a tactic practiced
>by J. Edgar Hoover, not to mention classic dictators.  It is clear that
>John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney always considered real democracy a
>handicap; it is best used chiefly as a self-congratulatory slogan.
>
>But if democracy does not respect dissent, it is no longer democracy.
>Without dissent, we can not hope to understand a complex and changing
>world. We are likely to stumble into adventures that win us only hate.
>
>Americans have a chance to defend democracy -- not by bombing Iraq, but
>by casting ballots on November 5th. Voters should use the day to let
>neo-authoritarians taste the finest democratic privilege: electoral
>defeat.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>YOUR NAME
>YOUR ADDRESS
>YOUR PHONE NUMBER
>
>---
>
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