Bill Moyers: 'Soldiers Cannot Sustain In the Field -What Cannot Be Justified In the Constitution'

[kpete]

Message To West Point
Bill Moyers
November 29, 2006


This is an excerpt from the Sol Feinstone Lecture on The Meaning of Freedom delivered by Bill Moyers at the United States Military Academy on November 15, 2006.

.....................

I want to be clear on this: Vietnam did not make me a dove. Nor has Iraq; I am no pacifist. But they have made me study the Constitution more rigorously, both as journalist and citizen. Again, James Madison:

In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.

Twice in 40 years we have now gone to war paying only lip service to those warnings; the first war we lost, the second is a bloody debacle, and both rank among the great blunders in our history. It is impossible for soldiers to sustain in the field what cannot be justified in the Constitution; asking them to do so puts America at war with itself. So when the Vice President of the United States says it doesn’t matter what the people think, he and the President intend to prosecute the war anyway, he is committing heresy against the fundamental tenets of the American political order.

................

Finally, and this above all—a lesson I wish I had learned earlier. If you rise in the ranks to important positions—or even if you don’t—speak the truth as you see it, even if the questioner is a higher authority with a clear preference for one and only one answer. It may not be the way to promote your career; it can in fact harm it. Among my military heroes of this war are the generals who frankly told the President and his advisers that their information and their plans were both incomplete and misleading—and who paid the price of being ignored and bypassed and possibly frozen forever in their existing ranks: men like General Eric K. Shinseki, another son of West Point. It is not easy to be honest—and fair—in a bureaucratic system. But it is what free men and women have to do. Be true to your principles, General Kosciuszko reminded Thomas Jefferson. If doing so exposes the ignorance and arrogance of power, you may be doing more to save the nation than exploits in combat can achieve.


more at:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/29/message_to_west_point.php

[mike_c]

1. K&R-- wow, Moyers said this at West Point?! Wow!

eom

[stellanoir]

2. Yeah

I'd the same reaction. I read the whole thing. He couldn't have finessed the issue more adeptly than he did.

You know there is a movement to have him run for pres.

One more knowledgeable about history, culture, faith, and myth I think one would be hard pressed to find.

Can you imagine having a leader who as wise or eloquent as he?

To juxtapose his loquaciousness, common sense, insightfulness, to *'s obsessively repetitive deceitfulness , idiocy, and blather is mind numbing.

K & R'd

[blogslut]

3. Bill Moyers

is so wonderful. I love him

[RedEarth]

4. KR for Bill Moyers

[evilgenius602]

5. at the risk of finding out tomorrow he's a troll,

Bill Moyers is a moral fellow if ever there was one.

[L0oniX]

13. Did you know he professes to be a Christan?

Maybe he is a real one and not one of the millions of fakes who voted for Bush.

[midnight]

14. The way you say it, Bill Moyers professes to be a Christian,

makes it sound like being a Christian is synonymous with corruption,murder,greed. I feel the backlash against those of us who are or say we are Christians that we are stained by those who have done so much horror via hiding behind that cross.

[Laelth]

6. Moyers rocks, as usual.

k&r

:dem:

-Laelth

[Uncle Joe]

7. Bill Moyers is a class act

:patriot:

[TahitiNut]

8. There's something fundamentally pathological in a society ...

... that marginalizes Moyers and elevates the likes of Bush and Cheney and Limbaugh and...

:puke:

[Blackhatjack]

9. Think for a moment what a clear thinker & clear communicator could do as President

Moyers epitomizes what a President should be able to do.
George W. Bush epitomizes what you get when a President can do neither.

If we had a Moyers-type President for the last 6 years, everything would be different today.

[Scout1071]

10. Outstanding. K&R. nt

[civildisoBDence]

11. Moyers once called Sean Hannity "vile"

Hannity went on air and said, "Why doesn't he say it to my face???"

An arrogant schoolyard bully challenging a 70-year-old minister to a fight...

Hannity and Moyers could be the poster boys for the worst and the best in American journalism.

Newsprism

[L0oniX]

12. So Bush didn't have the power to declare war ...wtf happened then?

"the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

:wtf:

[SusanaMontana41]

15. I could listen

to Moyers forever. He speaks/writes with such eloquence. You never have to wonder what he meant ...

[VenusRising]

16. I could listen to him forever, too.

I really miss watching him every Friday night on NOW. I don't think I could possibly put into words the admiration and respect that I have for this man.

[indepat]

17. Committing heresy against the fundamental tenets of the American political order is the heart and

soul of what neoconitis is, holistically speaking. :patriot: