Silence of the Lambs

[dogday]

Forty years ago this week, Senator J. William Fulbright delivered a speech at Johns Hopkins University on “the arrogance of power.” Talk about a time bomb.

“The question I find intriguing is whether a nation so extraordinarily endowed as the United States can overcome that arrogance of power which has afflicted, weakened, and, in some cases, destroyed great nations in the past,” Fulbright said. “Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God’s favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations -- to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image.”

Many people believe the Bush administration’s foreign policy is misguided, arrogant, and headed for disaster. But few were making that argument back when George W. Bush was still in college. Of course, the context of Fulbright’s speech was not Bush’s virtuous unilateralism or the divine summons to Iraq; it was President Lyndon Johnson’s deepening engagement in Vietnam. But it’s doubtful anyone in Congress today has delivered a more thoughtful critique of Bush’s foreign policy. What’s even more striking from this vantage point, however, is that Fulbright delivered his broadside against a sitting president of his own party.

Johnson was still a commanding and fairly popular figure in 1966 -- the Vietnam War, remember, did not lose majority support until spring 1968 -- when Fulbright rose to fulfill what he called “the patriot’s duty of dissent.” The White House, Senate, and House were all controlled by one party, as they are today. There were plenty of hacks around, then as now. But the White House was at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and Congress was at the other. The Capitol was not lodged in the presidency like a lamb bulging from the midsection of a python.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11437

[acmavm]

1. A shame nobody responded to your thread. It's a great read.