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Thank the President for Waking the Sleeping Giant
CODEPINK issued an alert on Thursday, December 3, about the President's West Point speech on Afghanistan and his failure to respond to the many voices calling for peace. We asked people to email the White House to voice their concerns.
The alert had been out for three minutes when the phone rang. My assistant Mark answered, then turned to me and said, "The White House is calling."
I picked up the phone, and discovered it was Jayne in the President's Office of Public Engagement. "How did you feel about the President's speech?" she asked thoughtfully.
I told her I was feeling horrible, that I disagreed with almost everything he said. I said he didn't have the courage to be in his own body as he delivered the words that would cause the deaths of so many and that if he was willing to couch his position in so many untruths then I couldn't believe anything he said - even about why we were there. Really, we are going to send 100,000 troops, over 100,000 contractors and 100 billion dollars to deal with 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? It reminds me of an Afghan woman's tirade to me when I was there, "You want me to believe that the most powerful nation in the world is being held hostage by those skinny, lice covered, illiterate, dirty men in those craggy hills of this broken country?"
Jayne said, "I totally hear what you are saying." She indicated that the President has told them to stay open to all opinions and she understood I might feel that way. And then she came to the purpose of her call. "I want to keep our lines of communication open, but I can't do it if I can't work. I have an email from your list hitting my box every second and can't get any work done. Can you do something about that so our communication can be more productive? Can you send out another alert with a better address?"
I quickly looked at my computer to see how many emails had been sent out from our list and read the most recent:
You have failed the critical test of both a Commander-in-Chief, and of a man: In escalating our eight-year-long military effort to subdue or occupy Afghanistan you have demonstrated neither judgment and integrity nor courage. You have sentenced to death countless Afghans, Americans and others, on our side all duped over and over again by the cynical, high-powered sales pitch attached to our disastrous misadventures in the Middle East, a war which may well be fatal to the republic itself, all to save your political image. --Arthur Wagner
I was transfixed and couldn't help reading more and more of the heartfelt messages.
Obama. There's such a thing as being "too late," as MLK warned. Be now. Be courage. Be for us. Be not for corporate oil/gas/coal and defense machines. Be a father. Be for children, schools and universities. Be for parks and swimming pools. Be for jobs and living wages and food on the table. Be for roofs overhead and safe streets. Be for renewable energy and clean air. Be for fish and frogs, not poisoned by acid rain and pesticides. Be for children in dirt villages where U.S. tanks roam. Be for stopping cluster bombs. Be for returning Iraqi refugees to their homes. Be not for dominion. Be a peacemaker. --Sharon Rose
It was working! Impassioned CODEPINKers all over the globe were being heard inside the White House!
"There is nothing I can do," I told Jayne, "but maybe in your email program you could create a folder they all go to. I assume your system is that sophisticated." I kept reading the messages that continued to fly onto the web page.
We need this money at home. My husband has been unemployed for over a year and we'd have no health insurance except I have it through a job as a university professor, even though I'm retired and lost over a third of my retirement money in the last year. Still we are far better off than most of my fellow citizens. Take care of our own children, elderly, incapacitated, and the soldiers already wounded in these appalling wars--and don't get any other U.S. boys and girls hurt! --(Dr.) Sandra E. Drake
Jayne thanked me and says next time she will consult with us to make our communications work better.
Instead of sending 30,000 troops, how about sending 30,000 Peace Corps workers? That would employ some of our own, work on building up the Afghanistan infrastructure (helping create jobs, building schools and hospitals), and maybe the culture would move toward self-sufficiency and have less hatred of us. Fight hate and terrorism with love and constructive help! --Karen Snyder
I thanked her and said I hoped she would pass the passion of the CODEPINK members on to Obama.
Our war in the border regions is being fought by drone assassinations. A man at the control sits in front of a screen in Las Vegas, and fires when he has a certain shot. To a primitive mind (but not only to a primitive mind), this experiment on a country not our own has the trappings a video game played in hell. But the procedure was here embraced by the president in the antiseptic idiom of a practiced technocrat. He gave no sign of the effects of such killings by a foreign power out of reach in the sky. To assassinate one major operative, Baitullah Mehsud, as Jane Mayer showed in a recent article in the New Yorker, 16 strikes were necessary, over 14 months, killing a total of as many as 538 persons, of whom 200-300 were by-standers. The total number of Muslims killed by Americans in revenge for the attacks of September 11th now numbers more than a hundred thousand. Of those, few were members of Al Qaeda, and few harbored any intention, for good or ill, toward the United States before we crossed the ocean as an occupying power. --Brad Martin
There were more people protesting in the streets this week than we have seen in a long time: at least 80 communities rose up. I asked Jayne to thank the President for waking the sleeping giant and assured her that we will do all we can to make sure he does not get the money from Congress to escalate this senseless war.
Please do not send our children off to die. Would you ever do the same to yours? --Catron Booker
86 Comments so far
Show AllI will start to be impressed when tens of thousands [if not hundreds of thousands] of people march around the White House chanting:
"One, two, three, four
We don't want your rotten war"
and then see this massive demonstration being televised on the small screen. When that happens, then it might finally begin to have an effect on our resident warmonger-in-chief.
We've already done "hundreds of thousands" a few times through 2003 to 2005. We need millions - enough to cause a breakdown in the infrastructure and order. Then they will listen.
Everyone to Lafayette Park Dec 12, 11:00 AM.
All Progressive efforts to withdraw troops from the AfPak theater, all efforts to block escalation, have failed miserably.
The law that started this madness and drives it on and on continues to be ignored.
When will Progressive movements see the connection?
Peace can only be reached by dealing with Public Law 107-40.
Until then, any and all Progressive ministrations will fall on deaf ears.
locust,
Here is the Public Law, I think we need to read it if it is to be repealed.
Authorization for Use of Military Force
September 18, 2001
Public Law 107-40 [S. J. RES. 23]
107th CONGRESS
JOINT RESOLUTION
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and
Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and
Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and
Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and
Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force'.
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.
Approved September 18, 2001.
------
Well, are we doing what this law says or is the president going beyond this and what the war powers act allows?
I think this war is in many ways a violation of the Act itself.
" Instead of sending 30,000 troops, how about sending 30,000 Peace Corps workers"? Nice thought even if it is naive, to say the least, because American hegemony and hubris is about economic and strategic domination not peace. Blessed are the war mongers and the war profiteers! They have Obama as their plenary, quisling; no different than President Karzai in Afghanistan.
The tide is turning; a growing mass of people on the bottom of the economic / pollitical / social ladder are beginning to reallize that the system's intent is to only enrich itself. People, slowly, are beginning to perceive that old cliche's about 'right' and 'left,' 'Republican' and 'Democrat' are tools to foster divisiveness and powerlessness.
The system's greatest fear is an intelligent and well-organized electorate.
Thank you to CodePink! If I had a daughter I would want her to stand by your sides, hear your voices, share your vision.
I agree with you completely that most people are waking up to the real purpose of our America system. Unfortunately I think we have a long way to go before the majority of average Americans put aside the right and left divisiveness and come together to fight it. Too many people are just to irrational and so can be easily manipulated by the corporate media.
CodePink is an important service to the world in that it is a channel for a huge mass of rational people to bridge the gap to the lunatics in control. Viva CodePink!
I remember when a few code pinkers dressed in suits snuck into the the big RNC convention before Bush Jr. "election" #2 by way of blending in with the masses, and so avoiding the ominous and overt security presence, and then proceeded to tear off their clothing exposing pink negligees beneath with large black letters spelling out "Give Bush a Pink Slip" and "Cheney is a war criminal" or something of that nature...and were then promptly physically removed by brutish oafs with cords dangling from their ears and immediately arrested. I think their protests are often very fitting and satirical and exhibit immense creativity and bravery...
Posting on CD is a double edged sword.
I read so many incisive and intelligent posts.
But when I am exposed to the general public or the MSM, I feel as the "stranger in a strange land".
It's enough to make your head spin and doubt your own sanity.
So true...
I hear you. I am really shocked when I read comments on Yahoo news articles or YouTube, especially with the level of racism I've seen. It is really crazy what people will say when given the anonymity of a screen name. It is also apparent that the right wing has notched up their rhethoric to fever pitch crazy in the last few months. Even on 'liberal' New York Times last week, you had many more comments from people who think climate change is a cooked up fantasy designed by Obama to destroy America than you did from any intelligent, half-informed people. That is not even taking into account the distress that I feel that a good portion of Internet using Americans are apparently nearly illiterate, unable to properly use punctuation, construct a sentence, or spell!
It's not really the right wing insanity that gets me most down, though. It's the real lack of outrage or sense of betrayal among everyone else. I feel somewhat on my own there. Sometimes I feel like the only person who actually feels upset that we are escalating in Afghanistan. If I comment on it on Facebook, the response is quite frequently silence...and that's among my friends! How can any sane person feel comfortable with such insanity?
"How can any sane person feel comfortable with such insanity?"
You can't. Then again, you probably shouldn't.
Its a bitch.
I didn't mean how can I learn to feel comfortable but rather, "how is everyone else walking around unperturbed by everything that's happening?"
They are still stuck in the American Dream and just keep hitting the snooze button.
There's humor in that, but I suspect you are onto something.
I actually have friends who are trying to buy houses right now. And it's really only because rent consumes so much of their income. People are being lulled into thinking everything will turn out Ok.
ZEA,
I hear ya. I post commentaries, blogs and CD articles on my Facebook all the time, and what response I get most is silence. Every now and then people post responses, but not often.
Glenn Ford
I agree. Yesterday a person about 70, whom I had met for the first time in my neighborhood, recommended that I go to a web site that I was unfamiliar with called PJTV. It turned out to be a site run by conservatives and libertarians and is composed of patriotic, flag waving videos. I clicked on one in which a young Caucasian male was mocking John Lennon for singing the song Imagine. In the clip this male conservative tells Lennon that some wars are worth fighting for. What came to my mind after watching this is how a person like the one featured in that video is so quick to advocate war while making sure that others do his fighting for them. Running into that person in my neighborhood and seeing that Pajamas Media web site can be cause for despair as one realizes, as Susan Jacoby points out in her book The Age of American Unreason, how very little critical thinking goes on in this country as Americans continually allow their emotions to overrule their brains.
Hi Glenn,
Internet blogging is completely segregated by ideology. Do we really want to talk to people who disagree with us, in a place where they are not completely surrounded and supported by ditto-heads? So we can win them over? Then we are going to have to go out on the streets and TALK to people. Demonstrations alone don't do it. The crowd at the demo already agrees with us, and the media either ignores us or mocks us. So who are we talking to at our demos?
Here's what a demonstration is good for. It is to organize people into affinity groups so they can go out together and talk to strangers in the streets and neighborhoods. When we have movement "leaders" who are less interested in hearing their own voices, and more interested in organizing action teams, THEN we will begin to change minds.
But there is a problem in organizing new people into action teams. It's this: It creates new leadership structures to compete with the old ones. Unless and until the left can solve its own ego problems, we will remain a tiny minority.
Have you all thought that we HAVE to keep the wars going to keep our vanishing economy afloat. Military hardware may be the only thing we manufacture and sell anymore. If so, we and the world are in deep s**t.
Yes, I have thought that. And it disturbs me.
Even George Carlin pointed that out in one of his routines: "We can't make a decent car anymore. We can't build a TV set or a VCR worth a f**k. But we can BOMB THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR COUNTRY ALL RIGHT!!"
The military is a big drain on our economy. We don't actually sell what we produce for the military anywhere; we give it to places like Israel and give them the cash and loan guarantees to buy it. A viable economy makes things that people can use, ideally use to make other things, but armaments simply get dropped, rocketed or otherwise destroyed in the destruction of other people and things. It is costing $1m for each soldier now being sent to Afghanistan and all we get is a bigger deficit. Think what we could do productively with that money if we invested it in our roads and bridges, schools and hospitals, a welfare state.
We don't actually sell what we produce for the military anywhere; we give it to places like Israel and give them the cash and loan guarantees to buy it.
According this article what you assert is partially true, but there are cash sales as well:
http://www.globalissues.org/article/74/the-arms-trade-is-big-business
I agree with you that it is certainly not cost effective, but it takes a lot of companies in a lot of places to produce military equipment. In comparison, look at where just about everything else--everything we need for ourselves--is made. How much of our economy, percentage-wise, is based upon military production and spending, does anyone know?
And while infrastructure investment would be much more beneficial, it cannot rescue our dying economy by itself; we must modify the trade agreements and begin rebuilding our industry, essentially plugging the drain that was opened during the Clinton administration. It is my feeling we must do this quickly if there is to be any recovery at all.
However, there seems little chance of this happening due to the fact that these very corporations presently control the government. The Titanic is sinking fast, and it's bow is already pointing toward the sky.
Thank the President for waking a sleeping giant. Well lets hope so. Until the American people wake up and realize they are all the screwees being screwed by the screwors nothing will change. From my perspective, what is needed is a broad coalition of the America people without labels. The screwors,screw the left, screw the right, screw the conservatives,screw the liberals! Until Americans wake up and realize that we are all the screwees being divided by the screwors we will continue to be screwed. The screwors love these labels as it is the old Roman dictum: divide and conquer. One good thing: Obomba has shown his spots with the Afghanistan escalation and many sheeple will no longer be fooled anymore.
That's a lot of screwing going on.
I know it isn't a laughing matter but your comment made me start thinking about sorting screws... http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-screws.htm (there are as many types of screws as there are nuts in this country....no pun intended)
And you so reminded me of my seven years working for a fastener company called TranSpec Fasteners. We had an in-plant store inside another company and were sort of a middle man between the manufacturer and the bigger companies. I really wanted our company to make their slogan, "If you want a screw, we've got your nuts."
Better yet - and I'm not making this up . . . our company bought items from both Quality Screw and The Climax Corporation.
Hard to believe with all that screwing going on that Americans can be still so tense.
But the crux of your argument is certainly valid, that the people are divided by labels and those labels have been knwoingly used to manipulate people's perceptions and hence behaviour.
Though there is one set of labels I very rarely see used by Americans, the CLASS label.
I wonder why? :wink:
This is a disgrace ! Is there anyone out there that we can trust anynmore?
May I suggest to start an immediate campaign asking for RETRACT THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE of President Obama!
He absolutely does NOT deserve such an honour !
a sad day for the whole world, indeed !
You know, the funny thing here is that if we the people actually DO get this war stopped, it will be just like Viet Nam was, and that along with Watergate are two of the big reasons why we saw the right wing war on Americans in the first place.
When we the people saw that the president was a crook and up to his stinking eyeballs in crimes against the country, we stood up and demanded that something be done about it. We succeeded in driving him from office, but no prosecutions of anyone higher than Liddy happened. The ultra rich at the time didn't like US demanding justice, and THEY knew FAR better what this country needed than we did.
When we demanded that this country get out of Nam, those same people (who were no doubt making money on it) saw we the people stopping something that they were FOR, and didn't like that, either.
They saw the civil rights movement not as being an opening of society for everyone, but as a shutting down of THEIR power. Same with the women's movement, the gay movement, etc, etc, etc.
They saw people who were comfortable enough to demand JUSTICE, and that worried them. So they set about to totally remove every vestige of actual security we had. And the guy they chose to lead that was Reagan. He came in, dropped taxes on rich people, put everything up for the for profit crowd (who were the only people who could afford to buy into such things), and started dismantling every social program that gave us any kind of a real life.
Now, over 30 years later, they have succeeded in destroying the very fabric of society. They have ignored every part of the social agreement made decades before that, and went after us like WE were the real problem in this country. And they made sure that history was no longer taught in schools, because those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. And we are.
The funny thing is that they completely ignored history themselves, and are going to reap their own whirlwind from their injustice. We the people still have some power, and it's up to us to use it. Just like Yamamoto said, we ARE a sleeping giant, and the sooner we wake the hell up, the better.
I'm all for making those ultra rich scum bags sweat their shorts off. Protest, demand justice, and spit in the eye of the scum every chance we get. Bring back the 60s and 70s, and force feed them some reality. Money doesn't win forever, at some point those with a need for life MUST win.
All we need is a leader like Teddy Roosevelt, and we stand a chance. Too bad we don't have one.
WJM
"...It will be just like Viet Nam was..." Marilyn Young puts forth the idea in her classic work The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 that the reason that LBJ sent so many troops to Vietnam was that he was quite fearful that the right wing would attack him as being too soft on communism. The same argument can be made today regarding Obama's escalation in Afghanistan. Perhaps Obama is likewise in dread that those on the right will be quick to condemn him as being too soft on the never ending war on terrorism. Bill Kristol has praised Obama for what he is doing in that country. It would not be surprising if Obama welcomes Kristol's kind words and how Obama gratefully accepts what this neoconservative has to say about his foreign policy .
So much for any change emanating from the alleged agent of change.
A big part of the problem is it's not just being soft on communism, it's about being soft as a man that they will accuse him of and all around him will agree that he must not be that. That masculinist/militarist ethic is too accepted left and right to be challenged. It is the sacred religion of the warriors, married now to corporate greed, that endangers all life on earth in its prideful ultimate stupidity. We can begin to disarm it by naming it for what it is. Every president must spill blood to prove he is a man. That would go for Hillary too who had to act more hawkish in the campaign to be considered at all.
Artemix
Very well said. Your insightful comments are reminiscent of these quotes:
"The first accounts we have of mankind are but accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood."-Edmund Burke [1729-1797], Irish statesman and political theorist
"All ferocity is born from weakness."-Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger [ca. 4 BC-AD 65], Roman philosopher
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."-Issac Asimov [1920-1992], Russian-born American author
"There is a demand today for men who can make wrong appear right."-Terence [ca. 190-159 BC], Roman playwright
WJM
Excellent comment!
The sixties and seventies are gone and those tactics are unlikely to work again, but you are on the right track! And who knows, a leader like that may well indeed appear. They usually do.
"Protest, demand justice, and spit in the eye of the scum every chance we get."
Indeed sir!
"those ultra rich scum bags"
Note carefully that the entire upper 50% of society are not being harmed by the depressed economy, actually most are making out like bandits. Buying real estate for $.50 on the dollar, next year maybe $.30 on the dollar, buying gold like crazy and like the big banks and Wall Street going quite well.
For our enemy is not the 3% rich we easily out-number, but all those with a nice house and two nice cars in the garage. For they will not let the value of the dollar to go down, and until that happens the number of new jobs will not go up.
"all those with a nice house and two nice cars in the garage"
THIS is the enemy?
wjm we don't have leaders like that anymore! they are relegated to
the sidelines in dc ala kucinich etc. they won't allow them to run
an ernest presidential campaign nor debate. they quite frankly
won't allow a democracy any longer! we do need a 60's type of
movement to change but if people are preoccupied with keeping
the sheriff from foreclosing their home or to the other side
of the coin out shopping they aren't focused on this! the
powers in the world learned the hard way in the 60's that
when you have an educated population that it will cause
problems that they did not plan for. as a result of that
fiasco they proceeded to dumb down america. boy did that
work! we live among sheeple today.
As this item makes clear, the heartfelt sentiments of those quoted above will never be read by those on the receiving end--Shunt them off into a folder was the suggestion by Evans!!--and thus ease the situation for a whitehouse aide. Jayne is obviously oblivious--as all whitehouse stafferds are--to the blood she has on her own hands as she does Obama's dirty work.
This item makes it clear that email is the wrong sort of letter to send. The physical presence of Bags upon Bags of mail that cannot be convienently shunted into a folder need to make their appearance. And while it's likely those many letters will also go unread, at least they will take-up physical space that cannot be ignored.
"conveniently shunted off into a folder"
That's likely what they already do with all emails from the public. By the way, it's the junk mail folder and they use the "empty folder" command once a day to clean it out.
Don't follow CodePINK. This little article illustrates they see the president as a good guy being bullied into bad things and their role is to help the president by protesting. A group with this sort of delusional reading of the president, his administration, and our government cannot be trusted to help sustain a real movement. The same is true for MoveOn and all other groups that have shown their allegiance to the Democratic Party.
Don't give CodePink, MoveOn, or ANSWER your time, energy, or money. Look for other ways to organize and participate. UFPJ and SDS seem to be less attached to the Democratic Party.
Clear thinking!
This is what I wrote my congressman:
"I was very disappointed with Barack Obama's speech at West Point this week asking for an additional 30,000 in Afghanistan. While it is true that President Obama campaigned on this issue, it is also true that the conditions on the ground and here at home are different enough than a year ago to warrant a change in policy.
Our deficit doesn't allow us to waste any more of our scarce resources except for the needs of the American people here at home. Every dollar wasted in Afghanistan, is a dollar that could have been used here in America to rebuild our country.
For this reason, and as as one of your constituents, I am writing to ask you to support, and hopefully co-sponsor, Rep. Barbara Lee's H.R. 3699: "To prohibit any increase in the number of members of the United States Armed Forces serving in Afghanistan."
Write your Congress person and tell him/her to support H.R. 3699.
WJM sez: "When we the people saw that the president was a crook and up to his stinking eyeballs in crimes against the country, we stood up and demanded that something be done about it."
***
"The people" SAW the president was a crook because you still had the media then.
It has since gone over to the other side.
There is no longer anything to see, people. Move along ...
Kudos to Code Pink to the extent that it has awakened the sleeping giant of anti-war protest. That said, the imagery of the sleeping giant for a dormant social movement is all too redolent of the last big sleeping giant awakening in the U.S.: that of the immigrant rights movement in 2006; and we see what has happened to THAT. In a word, it fell victim to savage persecution of "illegal immigrants" as people were taken in daylight forays in their work places and night-time raids on their homes, to be dragged away for "detention" under the very eyes of their workmates or their family members. The result was that the giant was intimidated and put back to sleep and "immigration reform" (even the faux reform of "path to citizenship") has gone to the back of the country's political agenda. If mass demonstrations---even mass assaults on White House "communications" systems that don't allow their P.R. people to "work"---could easily get demonstrators denounced and persecuted as disorderly, or even as terrorists with the familiar "detention" experience of political dissidents and undocumented immigrants. Not to say this should discourage such action: only to say that the demonstrators must be ready with the courage of an MLK or a Nelson Mandela to experience heavy consequences for their actions.
Here's the link to the petition that is filling that inbox:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/424
/t/8834/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2188
When you enter a comment on the petition, it is sent as an email to the White House.
Jodie, nice to see at least one authentic progressive organization who is holding Obama accountable and not watering down their rhetoric to assuage the wimps like Move On who continues to spin tall obfuscations and retractions while holding Obama's hand in his march to war on the backs of margianl populations.
Please add me to your mailing list: I would be proud to donate to the cause:
soulcenteredbdywork @ gmail DOT com.
It is as if the White House can't afford to get another email box.
All the responses are automated anyway.
Obama was in the bathroom, shaving, when yet another ambitious young aid from the Office of Communication By Email From The Duped stuck his head through the door and told The Sun King he was getting a lot of critical email from the duped about his West Point speech. The Sun King frowned and waved a hand dismissively. "Fuck 'em all", he barked and went back to shaving.
Darn, you're good!!
But its fiction, and how can you prove truth with fiction?