Day Ten, April 3

After two days in a row composed of a lighter fare of content, I decided to pick up the pace and return to one of the core issues of this year's presidential election: the war in Iraq. In the past few months, trash-talking on the campaign trail has obscured this and other core debates that will play a major hand in determining the sway of non-aligned voters, and may swing enough weight to determine who's going to be calling the shots as commander-in-chief next year. Although he's been stressing it less than usual these days, Obama's fervant anti-war sentiment is a key issue that is swaying many voters to his side, as it is widely-acknowledged that the majority of Americans oppose the war and are looking for a timetable for troop withdrawal. Obama has been riding the platform of being the sole voice of reason in the three candidates, and the only person running today who didn't vote 'yay' in 2002 to give Bush the power to invade Iraq.

To be honest, I've heard him point out this position so many times now that I was beginning to get a little skeptical about just how strongly Barack opposed the war in the first place. After all, the U.S. was in a noticeably different state of mind just five years ago when the attacks on Iraqi soil were first launched. The horrific aftermath of 9/11 still fresh in our minds, America had taken on a 'kill-or-be killed' mentality in its early stages of the recently-declared 'war on terrorism'. It's no surprise to hear that the Senate voted 77-23 in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in October of 2002, effectively giving Bush the go-ahead for his war march. The majority of Americans believed that Iraq was developing WMD's, and action needed to be taken to oust Saddam Hussein in the interest of national security, human rights, or petroleum reserves. Barack himself has admitted that the case for entering the war was an effective one, and that he sympathizes with members of congress that were duped into voting for the war initiative. But has Obama always been as dead set as the war as he claims he is today? Or instead, if he were serving on the U.S. Senate in 2002, like Clinton and McCain were, would he have likely been swayed by the same evidence and convinced to authorize military action, like many of his colleagues swiftly did? I needed evidence to maintain my belief in this vital stance to Obama's integrity.

As I found out by reading Obama's speech from 2002, I believe the answer is no, he would have listened to his conscience, not Hans Blix or the swaying public opinion (as he has consistently done over the last six years, regarding the war). Barack delivered this speech on October 2, 2002, at the first prominent anti-war rally in Chicago, a little more than a week before the Iraq War Resolution was passed by Congress. This speech, having gained some relative fame since he delivered it on his campaign trail for the US Senate six years ago, is an example of Obama at his most passionate, his most courageous, his most controversial phase of politics so far. Instead of playing it safe and pandering to a war that--at the time--was seen as advisable, or at least permissible--by most Americans, and certainly most of Congress, Obama laid his political career on the line to speak out against a war he thought we should have stopped before it even got started. It is a rare speech that is both passionate and boisterous, but without a trace of hubris or political 'fluff' to be found. Instead of playing up his own hand, the speaker speaks plainly but eloquently in a furor to prevent an unjust war from happening. Here it is, a transcript Barack's 2002 speech on the impending Iraq War:


Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.

I don’t oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not – we will not – travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

Transcript compliments of Wikisource.