Angry Letters to the One Member of Congress Who Voted Against the War on Terror

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/the-vindication-of-barbara-lee/380084/

?nbwpdd

OAKLAND, Calif.—The people here were out of step with America.

In the hours after the attacks of September 11, 2oo1, they were angry at the terrorists who flew planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. They wanted the attackers brought to justice. They mourned the victims, cheered the firefighters, felt united in sorrow with their countrymen, and dreaded more attacks. But in Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda, the ultra-liberal, historically anti-war East Bay communities, a significant bloc also feared how their country would react. They didn't trust the instincts of George W. Bush or the public that elected him.

The mistrust was mutual.

"The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war," Andrew Sullivan wrote that week in a Sunday newspaper column. "The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount a fifth column." The liberals of Berkeley and its environs had long been regarded as naive pacifists at best. There were, in fact, pacifists who lived there. For the most part, however, East Bay residents would favor hunting down the perpetrators of 9/11. What worried them, even as smoke rose from the ruins at Ground Zero, was that America's judgment would be clouded by fear, anger, and lust for vengeance; that we would lash out recklessly, killing innocents; and that we would strategize foolishly, overestimating the threat posed by terrorism and the degree to which foreign wars could reduce it. Majority opinion was calling for "unity" in a war on terror. East Bay liberals stood athwart history yelling, "Stop!"

* * *

Barbara Lee began representing the East Bay in Congress on April 7, 1998. She'd grown up in Texas and then California, a move owing to the job of her father, Garvin Alexander Tutt, a lieutenant colonel in the Army. She attended Mills College, a liberal-arts school in Oakland, where she volunteered with the Black Panther Party. She later earned a masters degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Her memoir describes both a divorce and an anguished decision to have an abortion. In red state nightmares, Congress is composed entirely of Barbara Lees.

[BlueJazz]

1. "They didn't trust the instincts of George W. Bush or the public that elected him. "

Now THAT'S the kind of people I'd like to live with on some other earth-like planet.
We'd have to name it something like IntelligentLand or maybe even Paradise.

[marmar]

2. Barbara Lee 9/14/01

[gratuitous]

3. And 13 years later, not much has changed

Being right or wrong matters less than a fart in a frying pan; the United States has to go to war.

[valerief]

6. Rich people must get richer and stupid people will give up their lives

for this to happen.

Insanity reigns.

[kag]

4. I read this in one of the "hate" letters she received...

"History has shown that zealots who believe they have a manifest destiny to rule can be stopped only by force. We don't have to look too far back to see that—Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito. Peaceful negotiations meant nothing to these men, and they will mean nothing to the terrorist leaders who killed thousands on Tuesday."

And all I could think was that the writer, in listing those despots who perpetrated genocide because they believed they had a "manifest destiny", forgot to include the U.S. government in the 19th century who very nearly annihilated the natives of our country because they believed in "manifest destiny."

[world wide wally]

5. Let's face it. If people can't see the evil of Bush and Cheney just 6 years after leaving office,

there is no hope for this country.

[Fred Sanders]

10. I think they can see it, just that the mass media will never let the nation know about them.

The polling on Obama and ISIS shows folk solidly behind his strategy, but look how the mass media spins it, it is outrageous how they treat the calm one.

[clg311]

7. A real American hero. NT

[JEB]

8. The only one not playing into the hand held by Osama.

[Fred Sanders]

9. These dissident folks were what I like to call, right. They were right, the rest of America was

wrong, the pacifists predictions proved corrected and the fear injected masses and mass media were incorrect.

Yet who does the mass media bring on today to talk about another war and make recommendations and predictions. but the same old wrong people and pundits making identically inept demands and predictions?

America, wake the fuck up, the war mongering mass media is not your friend, have you learned nothing from recent history?

Fucking nothing?

[Martin Eden]

11. "strategize foolishly"

"overestimating the threat posed by terrorism and the degree to which foreign wars could reduce it"

"The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts ...." were spot-on with their concerns!

[joeybee12]

12. Unfortunately being right in politics is never helpful...

You just get d-bags like Sullivan expalinging they weren't wrong, people like Lee and those of us in the fifth colum were simply too hasty...he's scum...knr for Barbara.