"IRRITATION AND COUNTER IRRITATION"

Currently on Yahoo news there is a story running about a recent poll of Americans, attempting to gauge US awareness of the death toll of Iraqi civilians, and sound the depths of US support for criticism of the war in Iraq in the face of those numbers:  

http://news.yahoo.com/...

I read this story and became very, very angry. I was incensed because the part of the poll that asks whether one is more or less likely to support criticism of the war in Iraq if one has had an Iraq-related military death in the family or if one has a servicemember currently in Iraq seemed disingenuous at best (poorly worded on the part of the poll preparers) and, at worst, a manipulative leading of respondents down a path of ahistorical and unAmerican superficiality in the matter of our first amendment rights.

The poll seems to assume that if x percentage of Americans don't think it's right to criticize the Iraq war, then the other x percentage should think better of it out of respect for those Americans who, having loved ones on the field of battle, don't want to speak out.  

Follow me below the fold.

I'll re-word that to emphasize my horror at what the poll seems to imply:  introducing the element of personal war dead and wounded into the question of support of criticism of the war, has the effect, on those questioned, of suggesting to them that it is disrespectful to disagree with those who have military connections and don't want to criticize the war.  

What makes me horrified is that the major media and major polling outfits are carrying water for the White House propaganda on the war, circulating, in poll questions, the idea-- one promoted by the White House constantly-- that somehow it's "disrespectful" to criticize Bush and the Iraq war.  

The question is, does it matter whether or not it's "disrespectful" to criticize the war?  Before opening one's American citizen mouth to speak one's mind, should one consider limiting one's speech on the basis of whether other people will be irritated by, or not appreciate, what one might say?  

Why did our founding fathers even think to provide for protection of some sort of "freedom of speech"?

Congress is to make no law abridging freedom of speech, or of the press.  It's right there in the first amendment to the US Constitution.  It's explained well by the First Amendment Center: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/...

It is a right that Americans who wish to abolish injustices, right wrongs, or simply work for change in US society have put to good use since the first decades of our country's history.  But this is key:  the first amendment guarantees on paper that Americans have freedom of speech, but it is impotent unless Americans put it to use, and speak out when they see fit to criticize.  The right to freedom of speech is inherently tied to the realm of action in the public sphere; it implies citizen activism and it guarantees citizens the uses of their voices in activism for what they perceive to be just causes.  It does not imply that Americans will be worried about what others might "feel" or consider "disrespectful"; on the contrary, it implies that Americans should take to heart the right to speak even in the face of disapproval from other citizens and especially in the face of disapproval from one's government.

Frederick Douglass, in 1847, eloquently reminded listeners that Americans have a right to criticize their government:  "But it is asked, 'what good will this do?' or "what good has it done?'  'Have you not irritated, have you not annoyed your American friends, and the American people, rather than done them good?'  I admit that we have irritated them.  As it is in physics, so is it in morals:  there are cases which demand irritation, and counter irritation.  The conscience of the American public needs this irritation."
----http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1101

The conscience of the American public needs this irritation.  Douglass does not understand the right to freely critize US government policy concerning slavery, as something he shouldn't do because it might offend the President or "send the wrong message to the world."  He doesn't understand the right to freely critcize the government's policies concerning slaves, as something he should refrain from if x percentage of the American public, when polled on the matter, were to express their lack of support of such criticism.  As he points out, Americans, even if they are reluctant to criticize government policy, NEED to enter into debate and be exposed to, engage in, "irritation of their conscience."  It's something we NEED TO DO AS AMERICANS, SO AS TO FULLY BECOME AMERICANS.

Perhaps those among the poll who, due to their military connections, were reluctant to express support for criticism of the war, were speaking out of a generalized confusion concerning what is and is not permissible, under the UMCJ, for enlisted to do as concerns criticism of the CIC or of the government.  It is after all a complicated issue, and the UMCJ has various articles that without careful reading might seem to indicate that all military personnel must leave at the doorstep their right, as Americans, to first amendment-guaranteed critcism. Such a misperception, such a superficial reading of the UCMJ, is promoted by the current POTUS and VPOTUS:  they've decided to portray Bush as a supreme leader, a decider who has the ultimate right to determine what citizens should or should not do; and they've decided actively to bully and threaten citizens who might decide to criticize government policy on the Iraq war. No wonder military families, to a higher percentage of responses, believe that they shouldn't support criticism of the war.  

But, as Dean G. Fulvey explains in an essay on "The limits of free speech in the military," from the 1950s until now, Congress has lmiited article 88 of the UMCJ to apply to officers but not enlisted personnel.  "The primary purpose of Article 88 should be to prevent active military officers from meddling in politics-- a persistent problem in other republics, both ancient and modern" writes Fulvey.  As Fulvey eloquently observes, "in a democracy, to deny conscripts the right to voice criticism of their own civilian leadeers-- very often the same ones who sent them to fight and die-- seems grotesque."  

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/...

What a grotesque four years we've lived through under this President, then.  Under Bush, Americans no longer feel that they are wise to exercise the very right to freedom of speech that in the past helped them achieve the glories of the very democracy in which they live-- abolition of slavery, the right to vote for all, the right to equality in education, the right to pursue personal happiness.  A recent CBSNews article (from 2/24/07) notes that support for the First Amendment is "slipping" among Americans:  

http://www.cbsnews.com/...

"Support for the first Amendment is slipping?"  

Isn't that something like saying "support for the right to vote is slipping"?  Or, "support for the right to own property is slipping"?  

Isn't it grotesque, indeed, when the President of the United States actively threatens citizens who exercise their first amendment rights to criticize an unprovoked war he began, tars them with the brush of being "unpatriotic" and feathers them with the label of "supporting the Al-Qaeda strategy"?  No wonder "support for" one of Americans' most basic rights-- THE FIRST ARTICLE IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS!!!!-- is "slipping"!

Our first amendment (notice well) does not state "The President of the US is to bully those criticizing him into limiting their freedom of speech just because he doesn't want to hear it."  Nor does it say "The Press shall parrot the President's talking points on Americans who exercise their rights to free speech."  The amendment, in its wise brevity, does not even state "Americans will have right to the exercise of free speech only up to the point where the President decides they should have it, and no further."

It does not state such things because the first Amendment is not intended to urge Americans to avoid "irritation and counter irritation," as Douglass put it, when it comes to the precious right to battle over questions of right and wrong, morality and justice.

It does not state such things because the founding fathers never could have predicted the ascension to the highest office in the land of as corrupt a ruler as George Bush, who in his State of the Union message last year (January 2006)(BEFORE the November 2006 elections that swept Republicans OUT of office and Democrats INTO office as a corrective to Bush's overreaching and anti-American corruption), had the gall to say to United States citizens "there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure."  

http://www.whitehouse.gov/...

Is the only criticism that Americans are supposed to express, criticism that "aims for success?"  Whose success?  The success of which policies?  Does the First Amendment stipulate that Americans only have the right to express their opinions if those opinions coincide with what the government is currently defining as "success"?  

What would Frederick Douglass have answered to such questions, I wonder, in the face of such a massively-entrenched and widespread institution (slavery), the abolition of which required, indeed, criticism that aimed for slavery's very "failure"?  

Answer in the poll, and God bless and keep us all during this time of terrible iniquity in the White House and in Bush's administration.