This is attributed to Lao Tzu (also referred to as Lao Tse) and comes from the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 31:
Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the “Commander-in-Chief threshold” and whether each of the candidates has met that standard yet. It seems that the threshold is based loosely on whether or not a Presidential candidate has the experience and the willingness to send American forces to war. But in my view, the threshold, if we assume there is one, should not be about anyone’s willingness to deploy troops in combat. If it means anything at all, it should mean whether a potential President has the courage and the judgment needed to recognize that war is a “last resort” and is able resist the easy and popular urge to go to war when it is unnecessary. For that is what the Tao Te Ching teaches us — that peace is the highest virtue, and that war is not, and never should be, the first solution to any problem we have with another nation.
In this regard, two of the candidates in the current field have had experience in making a decision about whether or not the United States should go to war. Those two were Senators McCain and Clinton, and in my view, both of them failed the test. They took the easy path and voted for an aggressive war when they gave George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq. Despite what some say now, they knew their vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq was a vote for war. They knew President Bush intended to go to war. Everyone with half a brain knew that the rhetoric being employed by the administration in the days leading up to that vote was for spoken for the purpose of making the case to invade Iraq. They knew or should have known, that it was a mistake, if only because there was no imminent threat to our country. Yet both of them took the easy, but crooked path, and voted for a war that should never have been. Both of them failed to meet the standard of what we should be looking for in our next President, our next “Commander-in-Chief.”
Some would argue that politically they had no choice, or that the information provided to them by the administration misled them as to the intentions of President Bush, but that is a canard. Not everyone acted blindly and without consideration for the consequences of granting this most bellicose of leaders carte blanche to wage war against Iraq. Let me quote you what Senator Byrd of West Virginia had to say at the time regarding the Iraq War authorization:
(cont.)
A sudden appetite for war with Iraq seems to have consumed the Bush administration and Congress. The debate that began in the Senate last week is centered not on the fundamental and monumental questions of whether and why the United States should go to war with Iraq, but rather on the mechanics of how best to wordsmith the president’s use-of-force resolution in order to give him virtually unchecked authority to commit the nation’s military to an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation.
How have we gotten to this low point in the history of Congress? Are we too feeble to resist the demands of a president who is determined to bend the collective will of Congress to his will–a president who is changing the conventional understanding of the term “self-defense”? And why are we allowing the executive to rush our decision-making right before an election? Congress, under pressure from the executive branch, should not hand away its Constitutional powers. We should not hamstring future Congresses by casting such a shortsighted vote. We owe our country a due deliberation.
I have listened closely to the president. I have questioned the members of his war cabinet. I have searched for that single piece of evidence that would convince me that the president must have in his hands, before the month is out, open-ended Congressional authorization to deliver an unprovoked attack on Iraq. I remain unconvinced. The president’s case for an unprovoked attack is circumstantial at best. Saddam Hussein is a threat, but the threat is not so great that we must be stampeded to provide such authority to this president just weeks before an election.
Why are we being hounded into action on a resolution that turns over to President Bush the Congress’s Constitutional power to declare war? This resolution would authorize the president to use the military forces of this nation wherever, whenever and however he determines, and for as long as he determines, if he can somehow make a connection to Iraq. It is a blank check for the president to take whatever action he feels “is necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” This broad resolution underwrites, promotes and endorses the unprecedented Bush doctrine of preventive war and pre-emptive strikes–detailed in a recent publication, “National Security Strategy of the United States”–against any nation that the president, and the president alone, determines to be a threat.
We are at the graves of moments. Members of Congress must not simply walk away from their Constitutional responsibilities. We are the directly elected representatives of the American people, and the American people expect us to carry out our duty, not simply hand it off to this or any other president. To do so would be to fail the people we represent and to fall woefully short of our sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution.
We may not always be able to avoid war, particularly if it is thrust upon us, but Congress must not attempt to give away the authority to determine when war is to be declared We must not allow any president to unleash the dogs of war at his own discretion and or an unlimited period of time.
Yet that is what we are being asked to do. The judgment of history will not be kind to us if we take this step.
Members of Congress should take time out and go home to listen to their constituents. We must not yield to this absurd pressure to act now, 27 days before an election that we will determine the entire membership of the House of Representatives and that of a third of the Senate. Congress should take the time to hear from the American people, to answer their remaining questions, and to put the frenzy of ballot-box politics behind us before we vote. We should hear them well, because while it is Congress that casts the vote, it is the American people who will pay for a war with the lives of their sons and daughters.
Senators McCain and Clinton failed their in their oath to protect the Constitution when they gave Bush the unfettered ability to wage war. They failed their duty to their country when they set in motion the series of events that has led to the catastrophe in Iraq, where thousands have died, thousands more have been wounded or maimed and millions have been made homeless. In short, at the only time it mattered, when their voices should have been raised, and their votes cast, in opposition to the greatest single strategic mistake in the history of our country, they failed to lead. They failed to meet the threshold of what I require from the President of the United States. Whether out of party loyalty, political expediency or simply the exercise of poor judgment they both failed, and authorized a war that should never have been fought.
I do not know what Senator Obama would have done had he been in the Senate in October of 2002. All we know is that he spoke out against the war at the time. However, we do know that the “experience” of Senators McCain and Clinton was of little benefit to them. They chose to go to war, an aggressive war, a war that was illegal under international law. It is no excuse now to say that everyone was misled by President Bush at the time, for as Senator Byrd’s statement in October 2002 makes clear, that was simply not true.
No, if anything, Senators Clinton and McCain have shown us all that their “experience” and their inability to learn from the mistake they both made does not qualify them for the high office they seek. At the very least, in my opinion, it shows that whatever the “Commander in Chief threshold” is, neither of them has met that standard.
