Ex-Marine, Top Analyst Calls For Humane Foreign Policy
Speaking to an audience of 350 at West Virginia State University Monday evening, former Marine and top intelligence analyst Scott Ritter gave an impassioned plea for the U.S. to adopt a more humane foreign policy.
“I am a hyper-patriot. I love my country,” Ritter said. “We live in a nation that espouses freedom.
“‘The Power of Pride’ is a very popular bumper sticker today. But this is not a nation built on pride. This is a nation built on the Constitution of the United States of America.
“What does ‘God Bless America’ mean? What does that tell all the other people in the world?” Ritter asked.
“There is nothing that makes us inherently better than any other human being. The definition of ‘hubris’ is to believe that 300 million Americans can dictate what happens to 6.8 billion other people on the earth.
“We have to learn to peacefully co-exist,” Ritter said.
“‘We the people’ means the Constitution does not belong to the president, to the Congress or to the Supreme Court. It belongs to the people,” Ritter said.
The Constitution also imposes obligations on citizens to inform themselves, study current events, become active politically and vote in elections, he added, noting only 38 percent of all adults vote in national elections today.
Ritter said he believes today’s federal government an “oligarchy, not a representative democracy; 98 percent of Americans cannot afford to run for political office. Power is concentrated in the hands of a few.”
Ritter, who was a top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, repeatedly said “evidence” for “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion was fabricated.
The Clinton administration shares in the blame for today’s problems, Ritter said, noting that Clinton also supported the philosophy of “regime change” in Iraq and other nations.
Bush’s two “National Security Strategy” plans, released in September 2002 and March 2006, re-asserted “pre-emptive military action as the preferred strategy,” a strategy Ritter believes “violates the Constitution.”
Ritter had special praise for Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., even though he disagrees with almost all of his domestic policies.
Citing Byrd’s respect for the Constitution, Ritter said, “He is the greatest American serving us today. We should populate the halls of Congress with people like that.”
Toward the end of his talk, Ritter said he believes there is an 80 percent to 100 percent chance that Bush will attack Iran.
“This administration has paved the way for an assault on Iran before next summer’s elections.
“But there is no evidence whatsoever that Bush is right about Iran’s nuclear program. If you look at International Atomic Energy Agency reports, there is nothing to say Iran has any nuclear weapons program.
“Some say Iran is 10 years away. Charleston, West Virginia is 10 years away. My hometown in New York is 10 years away. There is not a spot on the earth that is not 10 years away from having nuclear weapons if they spend the money.”
Ritter said he regrets how the international image of the United States has moved away from “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolets.
“Now it is a B-1 bomber, an F-15 fighter and a soldier. The Marine Corps, tragically, has become a symbol of oppression to people around the world.
“I support the troops with all my heart,” Ritter said. “But I am as anti-war as you can get. We love firefighters, but we hate fires.
“It is high time our society became a society of war preventionists. We should not glorify war. We need to condemn war. We need to prevent war,” Ritter said.
Seneca 2, a group of women activists, and West Virginia State’s Political Science Department co-sponsored Ritter’s talk.
© 2007 The Charleston Gazette
God Bless America means God Bless America. France can say God Bless France, Italy can say God Bless Italy, Germany can say God Bless Germany, etc. etc. etc.
This country is founded on the Constitution, but we can still pray that God will bless America.
Right now, we can ask God to bless not only America in general, but California in particular.
What’s your problem, Scott?
“God Bless America” is in the form of an imerative….a direction…Do you really have the gall to tell God what to do?
If there is a god, he/she will bless or damn to hell the USA based on its actions….and the way things are looking for you today, I would invest in some fire proof PJ’s
May God bless America by helping us realize were no better than any other other people on this planet!! I have come to loathe the United States its self-righteousness makes me want to puke! Canada is looking better all the time.
Blessing is the collective noun for a group of Unicorns.
We should not glorify war. We need to condemn war. We need to prevent war. These are the most powerfull words ever printed on this site or any other. It is past time for this concept to become universal. It is time for the common person around the globe to stand aginst governments and demand they stop killing us.
Well articulated and sound bites full of substance. Where’s the support? I know he’s not sporting a pink umbrella but come on. A few days ago the boards lit up with “code pink rocks!”. Are those with that disposition willing to say that Scott’s form of anti-war protest is effective… or is it not theatrical enough?
Like I said on the code pink article’s post… there’s a time for those stunts and there’s a time for poised, articulated truth. The stunts can win some converts and Scott’s style of appealing to a larger audience can win some converts likewise. I’m impressed by Scott’s tactics because I believe, in this era of mass communication, people are begging for a well presented argument with factual backing… stuff that the msm doesn’t present. And if we have to use a guy in a suit or a woman in a suit to present it so be it… play the numbers. You’d be surprised at how many converts Bill Moyers has got.
The point is the need to form a strategy where both tactics can be utilized in a coherent strategy. Organization is the key and compromise and humbling… yes humbling of egos is needed to fight on a united front… and yes that will get attention.
Northern Sun has a great t-shirt. If I recall, it reads: “God bless all the world — no exceptions”.
I think that’s what Mr. Ritter was alluding to.
Properly understood, “God bless America” is an appeal for divine favour for a vast continent that contains 35 countries and that is home to nearly a billion people, most of whom speak Spanish or Portugures, which extends from Greenland and Canada in the north to Argentina and Chile in the south. There is no North America or South America. The continent is one solid piece of land. No body of water separates the northern part of this continent from its southern part (one cannot create a continent by digging a canal). It is bizzare, perverse and offensive to call the USA “America”. It is said that Christopher Columbus discovered America, and he is a national hero in the USA, with a holiday dedicated to him. But Columbus never went to the USA. He went to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, several other islands in the Caribbean, he went to Central America, Venezuela and Mexico. But he never set foot on any part of the USA. The habit of calling the USA “America” is the most egregious example of linguistic hubris that has ever existed.
Mark Marshall
Toronto
Canada
America
Thank you, Mark. I couldn’t agree more.
Try visiting Latin America and telling people you come from “America.” It’s ridiculous. And hubris it is.
So far it seems all the comments center of Ritter’s rhetoric about “God bless America.” But that was a small part of the speech. I went to that speech, and I’m sorry to say I was disappointed–Seneca 2 came up with a great topic, Preventing Fascism at Home and Imperialism Abroad, and he started out by saying he was a bit uncomfortable with that title. His speech was then too low-level for most of the audience–telling us what we already knew. The question and answer period was better, but revealed, in my opinion, some naivete. He dismissed someone’s worries that as a peace protester he might soon be subject to detention. No it hasn’t happened yet, but all the Bill of Rights protections that stand between us and fascism have been dismantled and why do you suppose that is? he also said that where HE lives, loads of gun-toting rednecks would defend us against fascism. I think if Cheney declares martial law, he will be sadly disappointed in how few of his neighbors protest when he’s dragged away. He replied to a question about corporations by saying we all needs jobs from corporations so what’s the issue? And he admitted to voting for Bush in 2000–because he was disgusted with Clinton’s warmongering–and then being surprised when Bush turned out to be a divider, not a uniter.
But when someone in the audience booed, he stopped dead and asked what the booing was for. “The anti-Zionism,” replied the voice. Ritter proceeded to demolisher the objection, talking about the four years he spent defending Israel as a Marine, his friends in Israel he would not like to see killed in reprisals against Israeli aggression–it seems that when it comes to things of which he has personal knowledge, he’s great. And disinclined to note which way the wind is blowing and keep his mouth shut. He’s a key reason I knew the war was based on lies before it started, and so did Congress.
“God Bless America means God Bless America. France can say God Bless France, Italy can say God Bless Italy, Germany can say God Bless Germany, etc. etc. etc.
This country is founded on the Constitution, but we can still pray that God will bless America.
Right now, we can ask God to bless not only America in general, but California in particular.
What’s your problem, Scott?”
“God bless America” has been a slogan that has been hijacked by the Neocons and it is imprinted in our collective memory like that. It is the equivalent of the “Sieg heil” in Nazi Germany.
My prediction is that there will be a time that the majority of Americans will be ashamed and have a problem with the expression, because they rather not remember the times when their nation stood around the world exposed as a fascist, war-mongering, torturing country.
Germany after the war has seen a very tempered form of Nationalism and still, even at soccer matches, Germany’s nationalism is tempered, shy almost. This is the impact of fascism on a nation in the long term.
For the rest, Germans are doing fine. Nationalism is not the greatest aspect of being part of some country. Good health-care, education, social spending, functioning democratic institutions, at least those are things that are of use for the average citizen.
There is a beautiful prophetic song from David Gray in 1999 titled “Birds without wings”
He sings about America:
“As I’m tearing off the fancy wrap, I find an empty package”
Really, Americans will be very fine without their overblown nationalism, and even though you may pray that God will bless America, you can do very well without hearing it every single minute.
If you cannot take pride in anything about yourself except the fact that you are American, you really have to start looking for something else…
I’m sure there must be something.