From Our Archives: A Time to Weep

Commencement speech at the New School University in New York on May 21, 2004

This is not a
speech. Two weeks ago I set aside the speech I prepared. This is a cry
from the heart, a lamentation for the loss of this country's goodness
and therefore its greatness.

Future
historians studying the decline and fall of America will mark this as
the time the tide began to turn - toward a mean-spirited mediocrity in
place of a noble beacon.

For me
the final blow was American guards laughing over the naked, helpless
bodies of abused prisoners in Iraq. "There is a time to laugh," the
Bible tells us, "and a time to weep." Today I weep for the country I
love, the country I proudly served, the country to which my four
grandparents sailed over a century ago with hopes for a new land of
peace and freedom. I cannot remain silent when that country is in the
deepest trouble of my lifetime.

I am
not talking only about the prison abuse scandal, that stench will
someday subside. Nor am I referring only to the Iraq war - that too will
pass - nor to any one political leader or party. This is no time for
politics as usual, in which no one responsible admits responsibility, no
one genuinely apologizes, no one resigns and everyone else is blamed.

The
damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months
and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer
lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon
us.

The stain on our credibility, our reputation for decency and integrity, will not quickly wash away.

Last
week, a family friend of an accused American guard in Iraq recited the
atrocities inflicted by our enemies on Americans, and asked: "Must we be
held to a different standard?" My answer is YES. Not only because
others expect it. WE must hold ourselves to a different standard. Not
only because God demands it, but because it serves our security.

Our
greatest strength has long been not merely our military might but our
moral authority. Our surest protection against assault from abroad has
been not all our guards, gates and guns or even our two oceans, but our
essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our
material wealth but our values.

We were
world leaders once - helping found the United Nations, the Marshall
Plan, NATO, and programs like Food for Peace, international human rights
and international environmental standards. The world admired not only
the bravery of our Marine Corps but also the idealism of our Peace
Corps.

Our
word was as good as our gold. At the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, President Kennedy's special
envoy to brief French President de Gaulle, offered to document our case
by having the actual pictures of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba brought
in. "No," shrugged the usually difficult de Gaulle: "The word of the
President of the United States is good enough for me."

Eight
months later, President Kennedy could say at American University: "The
world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of
Americans has had enough of war and hate ... we want to build a world of
peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just."

Our
founding fathers believed this country could be a beacon of light to the
world, a model of democratic and humanitarian progress. We were. We
prevailed in the Cold War because we inspired millions struggling for
freedom in far corners of the Soviet empire. I have been in countries
where children and avenues were named for Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin
Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. We were respected, not reviled, because
we respected man's aspirations for peace and justice. This was the
country to which foreign leaders sent not only their goods to be sold
but their sons and daughters to be educated. In the 1930's, when Jewish
and other scholars were driven out of Europe, their preferred
destination - even for those on the far left - was not the Communist
citadel in Moscow but the New School here in New York.

What
has happened to our country? We have been in wars before, without
resorting to sexual humiliation as torture, without blocking the Red
Cross, without insulting and deceiving our allies and the U.N., without
betraying our traditional values, without imitating our adversaries,
without blackening our name around the world.

Last
year when asked on short notice to speak to a European audience, and
inquiring what topic I should address, the Chairman said: "Tell us about
the good America, the America when Kennedy was in the White House." "It
is still a good America," I replied. "The American people still believe
in peace, human rights and justice; they are still a generous,
fair-minded, open-minded people."

Today
some political figures argue that merely to report, much less to
protest, the crimes against humanity committed by a few of our own
inadequately trained forces in the fog of war, is to aid the enemy or
excuse its atrocities. But Americans know that such self-censorship does
not enhance our security. Attempts to justify or defend our illegal
acts as nothing more than pranks or no worse than the crimes of our
enemies, only further muddies our moral image. 30 years ago, America's
war in Vietnam became a hopeless military quagmire; today our war in
Iraq has become a senseless moral swamp.

No
military victory can endure unless the victor occupies the high moral
ground. Surely America, the land of the free, could not lose the high
moral ground invading Iraq, a country ruled by terror, torture and
tyranny - but we did.

Instead
of isolating Saddam Hussein - politically, economically,
diplomatically, much as we succeeded in isolating Khadafy, Marcos,
Mobutu and a host of other dictators over the years, we have isolated
ourselves. We are increasingly alone in a dangerous world in which
millions who once respected us now hate us.

Not
only Muslims. Every international survey shows our global standing at an
all-time low. Even our transatlantic alliance has not yet recovered
from its worst crisis in history. Our friends in Western Europe were
willing to accept Uncle Sam as class president, but not as class bully,
once he forgot JFK's advice that "Civility is not a sign of weakness."

All
this is rationalized as part of the war on terror. But abusing prisoners
in Iraq, denying detainees their legal rights in Guantanamo, even
American citizens, misleading the world at large about Saddam's ready
stockpiles of mass destruction and involvement with al Qaeda at 9/11,
did not advance by one millimeter our efforts to end the threat of
another terrorist attack upon us. On the contrary, our conduct invites
and incites new attacks and new recruits to attack us.

The
decline in our reputation adds to the decline in our security. We keep
losing old friends and making new enemies - not a formula for success.
We have not yet rounded up Osama bin Laden or most of the al Qaeda and
Taliban leaders or the anthrax mailer. "The world is large," wrote John
Boyle O'Reilly, in one of President Kennedy's favorite poems, "when its
weary leagues two loving hearts divide, but the world is small when your
enemy is loose on the other side." Today our enemies are still loose on
the other side of the world, and we are still vulnerable to attack.

True,
we have not lost either war we chose or lost too much of our wealth. But
we have lost something worse - our good name for truth and justice. To
paraphrase Shakespeare: "He who steals our nation's purse, steals trash.
T'was ours, tis his, and has been slave to thousands. But he that
filches our good name ... makes us poor indeed."

No
American wants us to lose a war. Among our enemies are those who, if
they could, would fundamentally change our way of life, restricting our
freedom of religion by exalting one faith over others, ignoring
international law and the opinions of mankind; and trampling on the
rights of those who are different, deprived or disliked. To the extent
that our nation voluntarily trods those same paths in the name of
security, the terrorists win and we are the losers.

We are
no longer the world's leaders on matters of international law and peace.
After we stopped listening to others, they stopped listening to us. A
nation without credibility and moral authority cannot lead, because no
one will follow.

Paradoxically,
the charges against us in the court of world opinion are contradictory.
We are deemed by many to be dangerously aggressive, a threat to world
peace. You may regard that as ridiculously unwarranted, no matter how
often international surveys show that attitude to be spreading. But
remember the old axiom: "No matter how good you feel, if four friends
tell you you're drunk, you better lie down."

Yet we
are also charged not so much with intervention as indifference -
indifference toward the suffering of millions of our fellow inhabitants
of this planet who do not enjoy the freedom, the opportunity, the health
and wealth and security that we enjoy; indifference to the countless
deaths of children and other civilians in unnecessary wars, countless
because we usually do not bother to count them; indifference to the
centuries of humiliation endured previously in silence by the Arab and
Islamic worlds.

The
good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently
self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders
can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes
can be reversed.

When,
in 1941, the Japanese Air Force was able to inflict widespread death and
destruction on our naval and air forces in Hawaii because they were not
on alert, those military officials most responsible for ignoring
advance intelligence were summarily dismissed.

When,
in the late 1940's, we faced a global Cold War against another system of
ideological fanatics certain that their authoritarian values would
eventually rule the world, we prevailed in time. We prevailed because we
exercised patience as well as vigilance, self-restraint as well as
self-defense, and reached out to moderates and modernists, to democrats
and dissidents, within that closed system. We can do that again. We can
reach out to moderates and modernists in Islam, proud of its long
traditions of dialogue, learning, charity and peace.

Some
among us scoff that the war on Jihadist terror is a war between
civilization and chaos. But they forget that there were Islamic
universities and observatories long before we had railroads.

So do
not despair. In this country, the people are sovereign. If we can but
tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of
self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness.
In particular, you - the Class of 2004 - have the wisdom and energy to
do it. Start soon.

In the words of the ancient Hebrews:

"The day is short, and the work is great, and the laborers are sluggish, but the reward is much, and the Master is urgent."