Kucinich holds up a necessary mirror
When I urged Dennis Kucinich to run for president, my voice mail snarled back at me with the kind of scorn I expected.
"What are you smoking?"
"What are you, around the bend?"
"Your memory is going. Don't you remember what kind of mayor he was?"
"The guy's a fruitcake and so are you. I'll never read your column again."
And so on and so forth.
None of it changed my mind. People who don't like Dennis can take comfort in the fact that he can't possibly win. People like me are glad he's in the race. I don't like his chances, but I like his mouth.
An honest mouth is hard to find. Dennis speaks from conviction. He always has. In a nation that has been deceived, swindled and lied to, Dennis doesn't turn in the political winds like a weather vane. He says what he thinks, even if what he thinks may sink him.
Contrast him with our current president: George W. Bush has deceived America, swindled us and lied to us. When you see him speak, you get the impression that he has been kindergarten- taught with little, Dick-and-Jane words and long-s words, like "terrisssts." That's his favorite word. Dennis' favorite word is "peace."
Like most people in this racket, I've spent most of my career as a cynic. Ten years ago, I would have sneered at Dennis' call to create a Cabinet-level Department of Peace and Non-Violence. I would have called it a Froot-Loop, Shirley MacLaine kind of pipe-dream.
Suddenly, it makes a great deal of sense. We are (according to us) the greatest nation on earth. In that role, why shouldn't we work hard for peace and use our leverage for the cessation of violence?
We haven't done that. We are the biggest arms suppliers to the world. We sell our weapons of mass destruction to anybody who will buy them, including our current enemy. Until 9/11, our unofficial motto was, "Who cares who kills anybody, as long as there is something in it for us." This is not a philosophy of peace. This is a lethal flea market.
But if we are the greatest nation on earth, don't we have a chance to be the greatest force for peace in the world? The best way to lead would be by example. But the current president, with some help from his puppeteers, has chosen the wrong example. He is waging war and calling it peace.
The world was with him after 9/11. All of us knew we had turned a page in the history of strife. The slaughter of Americans united our country, and there were no party lines. We wanted to find and punish the guilty. We wanted to cleanse the world to avoid a repeat of this massacre.
It could have been a new day for us and the world. But, in the hands of this president, it reverted back to the Stone Age. He was the tribal chief and he turned a rallying point into a cheap, opportunist chance for more bloodshed. Would I have liked Dennis' Department of Peace to speak out just then? You bet I would have.
Dennis is more of a pacifist than I am. I'm not a dove. After the Twin Towers, I wanted to kick somebody hard. But I cared who. And Saddam, for all his evil, didn't seem to be the guy.
But this president lied about that. Maybe in a court of law he would not be convicted of perjury. But his implication, and that of his coaches, was clear: Saddam and 9/11 were all tied together.
Now they are trying to put a spin on it.
The president's men are saying, "We never said Saddam was an immediate danger. We're saying that, unless we strike now, he may become one."
I didn't hear it that way, did you? The way I heard it, the Texan stood on the dusty street and, provoked, had to be the quickest on the draw. Now it turns out that the bad guy had no gun in his holster. That makes it a setup.
Our wounded and dead are trickling back from this setup.
The casualties mount every day. In the back of our paper we see pictures of our troops getting used to wearing the artificial legs they will walk on for the rest of their lives.
Dennis can't win. He knows that. But what he can do is shame the other candidates into a clear and frank view of their convictions on this war.
If he can do that, he will have served his country. He'll get scant credit for it. But he'll get it here.
Contact Dick Feagler at:
dfeagler@plaind.com
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