Monday morning “deadline” day – This is the morning that I look at my list of stories I’m supposed to write for the July 9 edition and make phone calls to get remaining interview data for the articles, make sure I have all the pictures I need for the articles, and begin writing. Although we (the writing staff) have until noon Tuesday to finish writing all assigned and/or breaking articles, much if not most of it gets done today.
I’m thinking, because of the 233rd anniversary of our republic and having spent the July 4th holiday with my family in the Channel Islands area of Oxnard, how important it is to live in a country where dissent is tolerated and sometimes celebrated and police do not, as a general practice, raid homes and haul family members off to prison for speaking out against certain practices of the government.
When I practiced law as an international attorney, a practice that centered on federal law, I had many Iranian clients. This was immediately after the 1979 Iranian revolution and my clients included many Iranian Bahais, Jews, members of the Shah’s military and their families, and a cross section of Iranian dissidents. I met many of them in Pakistan where they had paid to be “smuggled out” of Iran, through the desert, by professional smugglers. The deprivations they suffered in the trip were often serious. One man, who was smuggled out with his wife and young daughter, lost his mental faculties on the trip and arrived in Karachi a burnt out and wasted man, virtually useless to his family. It was heartbreaking to see.
I think of these many good Iranians with whom I dealt over a ten year period until the continent hopping and often dicey situations I experienced forced me to rethink my then career. Like the crowds in Berlin, Prague, and Bucharest prior to the fall of Communism, cities I in which I often appeared representing clients seeking entry into the U.S. and freedom from oppression, I think of the crowds in Teheran who bravely stood up to the recent post election repression and brutality. And even though the protests have been effectively put down, each night they still chant “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) from their windows and balconies in protest against the growing repression of their regime. I hope for them that they too will gain some measure of political freedom. Since most of the Iranian population was born after the 1979 revolution, there is hope that those not bound by the doctrinaire rigidity of their theocracy, will lead a new generation to enjoy what it is we in the United States so often take for granted – the freedom to believe, speak, gather, associate and dress as they wish, and not be assailed as enemies of the state for so doing.
Monday, July 6, 2009
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I love the statement that "freedom is not free"! I abhor war. I detest violence and the wanton destruction of human life that has been mankind's "footprint" since we left "the garden". However, when faced with evil in the form of tyrants who would steal our lives, liberty, and ability to pursue happiness, we have an obligation to deal EFFECTIVELY with such tyrants.
ReplyDeleteIt's very easy to look upon the German people of the 1930's and '40's, on the Cambodian people of the 1970's and '80's, the Chinese and Middle Eastern people through the ages and believe that they were simply weak or too easily cowed and frightened to deal with the tyrants in their midst. We Americans like to throw our chests out and believe that we're made of sterner stuff. Certainly, in being called to the task, thousands of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, have stepped up to the plate with their lives. Have we, as a nation, always been right in doing so? Perhaps not. But, doing nothing, in the face of overt aggression and mass murder and genocide puts us right there with the cowed Germans and Cambodians and Chinese and Iranians and Iraquis. And, when was the last time any of us was thrown in prison for speaking or writing our personal opinion on a political subject or for criticizing our governmental leaders? "Never! Not in American!" you may respond, but think carefully about how easily a tyrant might take over and change that. No, indeed, freedom is NOT free! It costs us dearly.
My father served on shipboard with the Navy during WWII and participated in the Normandy landing. To his dying day he spoke with pride of that service and what he knew his small contribution was worth in the larger effort to stop German and Japanese aggression against the rest of the world.
My husband served 20 years in the Marine Corps, the first half-dozen in and out of Vietnam, including helping removed thousands of "boat people" after the fall of Saigon. He speaks with pride of his small contribution to a war that he still believes could have ended much differently if not for the political upheaval within the U.S. that allowed such armchair quarterbacking to enter into the management of the military efforts. How differently thousands of South Vietnamese lives might have been if the soldiers and sailors had been allowed to do their jobs. Were there instances of unnecessary killing of civilians by our military personnel in Vietnam? Perhaps, but when you're trying to stay alive yourself in a place where the small child standing beside the road could easily be hiding an explosive device in the bag slung over his shoulder, you lose your ability to quickly and easily define who your enemy is - and nearly everyone becomes your enemy.
Did we accomplish anything positive in Vietnam? Or at The Bulge, on San Juan Hill, or Bunker Hill, or Okinawa, in Tehran, or....the list goes on and on. Should we have refused to engage in any of those battles? We might still be giving our allegiance to Queen Elizabeth rather than whomever we've elected to sit in the Oval Office if you truly believe war is always wrong and fighting for freedom is not worth the cost. Consider carefully as you criticize our leaders for engaging our troops in violent conflicts. Can you believe that ANY American President has sent the youth of our nation into battle without shedding private tears for those he knew would not come home?
I invite anyone reading this who would leap to the conclusion that I may be a "war lover" to read it again and understand that, for some of us, abhorring war and seeing it as a necessary evil in the fight against larger evil at work in the world is the dichotomy we accept even as we seek a more peaceful solution to such evil.