McGovern and the Two Dwarfs

Dear Mr. President,

By all accounts you “won” the debate last night although there doesn’t appear to be a dime’s worth of difference between the two of you on foreign policy. Mitt agreed with you on drones, on Afghanistan, on Iran, on just about everything with a few minor exceptions. One right-wing columnist in the local paper this morning even chided him for coming off as a Peacenik: he congratulated you on “taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership in Al Qaeda” but added, “we can’t kill our way out of this mess.” In spite of your zinger about horses and bayonets and the one about aircraft carriers and gunboats, I think that remark of Mitt’s was the best line of the night for it held a glimpse of reality even though unintentional. Since I was watching the Giants and Cardinals battle for the National League pennant (Giants won 8-0), I don’t know what your response to that remark was and none of the papers bothered to mention it either, but it might have been the most revealing comment you made all night. As I read the papers this morning, I realized it’s that day again, Kill List Tuesday, and I wondered if Mitt will continue your weekly sessions if he’s elected, if every Tuesday he’ll gather in the Situation Room of The White House with his advisors and pore over “nominees” and decide who to send drones and teams of assassins after this week. But I also thought of George McGovern who died Sunday, a man of immense moral courage who never lost his way or sold out for power, wealth or the false god of glory. In 1970 he stood on the Senate floor and denounced his colleagues for killing his amendment to cut off funding for the Vietnam War, another American nightmare based on lies and political manipulation. “Every senator in the chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave…It does not take courage for a congressman or a senator or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for …their lives and their hopes. And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will someday curse us…” McGovern ran for president in 1972 and lost to Nixon but he remained a steadfast opponent of war and for many of us, the one light in a dark sea of venality and greed. We need more McGoverns and less Obamas, more truth, less lies, more compassion, less hate. We need politicians to stand up for peace and denounce damnable wars.