Post by bot on Apr 8, 2004 2:23:56 GMT -5
From: Gandalf Grey (gandalfgrey@infectedmail.com)
Subject: Why Richard Clarke is a Hero
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Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater, alt.current-events.wtc.bush-knew, alt.impeach.bush, alt.politics, alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.liberalism, alt.society.liberalism, talk.politics.misc
Date: 2004-04-06 11:03:01 PST
story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=123&ncid=761&e=1&u=/uclicktext/20040404/cm_ucrr/whyrichardclarkeisahero
WHY RICHARD CLARKE IS A HERO
Sat Apr 3, 8:01 PM ET
By Richard Reeves
WASHINGTON -- Richard Clarke seems an odd duck, or perhaps I mean that you
probably would not want to go on a duck-hunting trip with him. He comes
across, in both appearance and in interviews, as arrogant, tough to get
along with, a loner who spent hours one early morning working out the
precise wording of his public apology to the families of Sept. 11 victims.
He is also smart as hell and is telling very unpleasant truth in a critical
whirl of many truths -- and many lies.
He is a national hero -- odd in that, too. There is no real American
tradition of resignation in protest or whistle-blowing. In Great Britain,
after all, which does have such an honorable tradition, two members of Prime
Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s Cabinet, Robin Cook and Clare
Short, resigned to protest that government's role in the Iraq (news - web
sites) war. Americans prefer team play, loyalty, patriotism as an end in
itself. My country, right or wrong.
The retribution for disloyalty is sure and usually swift. The most famous
U.S. government official to blow the whistle was Secretary of State William
Jennings Bryan, three times the Democratic nominee for president. He quit to
begin a lecture tour attacking his old boss, President Woodrow Wilson,
declaring that the president's slogans about keeping us out of war were a
fraud, that Wilson did plan to take the United States into the great
European war if he was re-elected in 1916. The crowds that once cheered and
cheered the old Boy Orator of the Platte booed and chucked rotten tomatoes
at Bryan until he went home to find a new line of work.
That's the way it usually works here, and that's how it will probably be for
Clarke when his celebrity or notoriety has passed. I laugh when I hear that
he is "profiteering," dissing the president to sell his book. He may make a
few bucks now, but he will surely lose a lot later. But whistle-blowers
don't do it for the money. More often than not they pay a high price
economically and in their private lives, losing friends and family. Who
hires the disloyal? Who can stand living with someone ducking scorn,
tomatoes and death threats?
Clarke, I would wager, did not speak out because he wants to own the world;
he was happiest running it from behind the curtains. That's the usual
profile of such dissenters -- or "squealers" in American jargon. They think,
or come to think, they are smarter or more righteous than compromising
bosses and adversaries living with official lies.
Profiteers are more like Karen Hughes than Richard Clarke. What is the word
for a woman who quits to spend more time with her children and then takes
off on $50,000-a-night lecture tours, writes about about how wonderful her
boss is, and then rejoins the team at the White House? "Real American," I
call her. "Public service" offers celebrity and deferred compensation. For
the talented, government salaries are low, but the visibility is high. Ask
George Stephanopoulos, or James Carville or Bill Clinton (news - web sites).
What Clarke has done, whatever his reasons or persona, is to break the chain
of secrecy. Thank you. More than 20 years ago, I wrote about what happened
to other angry men, heroes of mine, who rose up to say the emperor has no
clothes -- Curt Flood, the baseball player who questioned the old reserve
system, and a Pentagon (news - web sites) auditor named Ernest Fitzgerald:
"If you buck the system, you are almost inevitably going to be destroyed.
... To keep the rest of us in line, established power had to make brutal
examples of those who dared to challenge the order of things. In the end,
though, it wasn't sad. Because some of us would not bend, the rest of us had
the small measure of freedom that came with the tiny chance that we might be
the next one to stand up."
I still believe that, and this as well: Clarke is important because he is
revealing the secrets the government held before Sept. 11, 2001. If those
"secrets" -- threats and dangers, not intelligence procedures -- had been
shared with the American people by their leaders, there might not have been
catastrophic tragedy that day. We, 280 million of us, would have been aware,
awake, looking for bad guys, listening for danger.
It's not about connecting the dots; it's about connecting the people. The
price of freedom is vigilance, but our own government, hiding its secrets,
never let us know what we should have been looking for all those dangerous
years.
Subject: Why Richard Clarke is a Hero
This is the only article in this thread
View: Original Format
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater, alt.current-events.wtc.bush-knew, alt.impeach.bush, alt.politics, alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.liberalism, alt.society.liberalism, talk.politics.misc
Date: 2004-04-06 11:03:01 PST
story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=123&ncid=761&e=1&u=/uclicktext/20040404/cm_ucrr/whyrichardclarkeisahero
WHY RICHARD CLARKE IS A HERO
Sat Apr 3, 8:01 PM ET
By Richard Reeves
WASHINGTON -- Richard Clarke seems an odd duck, or perhaps I mean that you
probably would not want to go on a duck-hunting trip with him. He comes
across, in both appearance and in interviews, as arrogant, tough to get
along with, a loner who spent hours one early morning working out the
precise wording of his public apology to the families of Sept. 11 victims.
He is also smart as hell and is telling very unpleasant truth in a critical
whirl of many truths -- and many lies.
He is a national hero -- odd in that, too. There is no real American
tradition of resignation in protest or whistle-blowing. In Great Britain,
after all, which does have such an honorable tradition, two members of Prime
Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s Cabinet, Robin Cook and Clare
Short, resigned to protest that government's role in the Iraq (news - web
sites) war. Americans prefer team play, loyalty, patriotism as an end in
itself. My country, right or wrong.
The retribution for disloyalty is sure and usually swift. The most famous
U.S. government official to blow the whistle was Secretary of State William
Jennings Bryan, three times the Democratic nominee for president. He quit to
begin a lecture tour attacking his old boss, President Woodrow Wilson,
declaring that the president's slogans about keeping us out of war were a
fraud, that Wilson did plan to take the United States into the great
European war if he was re-elected in 1916. The crowds that once cheered and
cheered the old Boy Orator of the Platte booed and chucked rotten tomatoes
at Bryan until he went home to find a new line of work.
That's the way it usually works here, and that's how it will probably be for
Clarke when his celebrity or notoriety has passed. I laugh when I hear that
he is "profiteering," dissing the president to sell his book. He may make a
few bucks now, but he will surely lose a lot later. But whistle-blowers
don't do it for the money. More often than not they pay a high price
economically and in their private lives, losing friends and family. Who
hires the disloyal? Who can stand living with someone ducking scorn,
tomatoes and death threats?
Clarke, I would wager, did not speak out because he wants to own the world;
he was happiest running it from behind the curtains. That's the usual
profile of such dissenters -- or "squealers" in American jargon. They think,
or come to think, they are smarter or more righteous than compromising
bosses and adversaries living with official lies.
Profiteers are more like Karen Hughes than Richard Clarke. What is the word
for a woman who quits to spend more time with her children and then takes
off on $50,000-a-night lecture tours, writes about about how wonderful her
boss is, and then rejoins the team at the White House? "Real American," I
call her. "Public service" offers celebrity and deferred compensation. For
the talented, government salaries are low, but the visibility is high. Ask
George Stephanopoulos, or James Carville or Bill Clinton (news - web sites).
What Clarke has done, whatever his reasons or persona, is to break the chain
of secrecy. Thank you. More than 20 years ago, I wrote about what happened
to other angry men, heroes of mine, who rose up to say the emperor has no
clothes -- Curt Flood, the baseball player who questioned the old reserve
system, and a Pentagon (news - web sites) auditor named Ernest Fitzgerald:
"If you buck the system, you are almost inevitably going to be destroyed.
... To keep the rest of us in line, established power had to make brutal
examples of those who dared to challenge the order of things. In the end,
though, it wasn't sad. Because some of us would not bend, the rest of us had
the small measure of freedom that came with the tiny chance that we might be
the next one to stand up."
I still believe that, and this as well: Clarke is important because he is
revealing the secrets the government held before Sept. 11, 2001. If those
"secrets" -- threats and dangers, not intelligence procedures -- had been
shared with the American people by their leaders, there might not have been
catastrophic tragedy that day. We, 280 million of us, would have been aware,
awake, looking for bad guys, listening for danger.
It's not about connecting the dots; it's about connecting the people. The
price of freedom is vigilance, but our own government, hiding its secrets,
never let us know what we should have been looking for all those dangerous
years.