[Peace] News-Gazette Letter to the Editor | Duckworth breaks oath with vote

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letters-the-editor/2019-02-05/letter-the-editor-duckworth-breaks-oath-with-vote.html

Letter to the Editor | Duckworth breaks oath with vote
Tue, 02/05/2019 - 4:15am | The News-Gazette
<http://www.news-gazette.com/users/digitalmedia>

U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth's vote for S.1, the "Strengthening America's
Security in the Middle East Act," is a Constitutional disgrace.

This legislation will encourage state and local governments to restrict
Americans' right to free speech, a right that all members of Congress take
an oath to protect.

The time-honored sanction of boycotts was used in Montgomery, Ala., South
Africa and currently in Iran, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Syria and many
places around the globe — purportedly to pressure governments to become
more democratic and more humane, at least that's what successive
administrations and Congresses have told Americans.

Whether this is what our government should be doing (or actually is doing)
is left for other debates.

This letter asks: Why has Duckworth hypocritically voted to restrict
Americans' right to use boycotts to fight Palestinian oppression, the same
boycotts the U.S. uses across the globe?

Duckworth's support of S.1 demonstrates her contempt for democratic
freedoms. It violates her oath to uphold the Constitution.

How can Duckworth vote against the very freedoms at home that she
presumably fought for in Iraq?

Emma Lazarus, whose sonnet "The New Colossus" is engraved on the pedestal
of the Statue of Liberty, also wrote: "Until we are all free, we are none
of us free." Duckworth's vote is insensible to understanding freedom, or
she just doesn't care about some people, which amounts to racism.

She allows liberal use of sanctions everywhere but Palestine. This makes
her motives and actions suspect.

SHERI DALEY

Champaign

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Robert Reuel Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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