I would not have thought of copying the Pentagon Papers,
risking a possible lifetime in prison, without the example of thousands of
young Americans who were doing everything they could(including non-violent
disobedience to the draft regulations(to oppose a wrongful, hopeless war. They showed civic courage, and I can attest
to its effectiveness; as a government consultant and former official, I felt
its power on my own life.
In the face of a president blatantly violating the law,
pursuing another stalemated, hopeless, wrongful war, and proclaiming his intent
to continue both, civic courage is needed today from those who can hold him and
his administration to account: members of Congress, journalists, potential
whistleblowers inside the government, prosecutors and judges. ‘Everything they can do,’ even at cost to
their positions and careers, is what is needed from those in such strategic
positions at this moment, and what we should demand of them, by our own
example. Nothing less is appropriate to
this constitutional crisis.
Courage is contagious.
One way members of the public can awaken courageous initiatives by such
people is by confronting them with the spectacle of masses of plain citizens
showing their faces together in public streets and squares to express their
outrage, their condemnation and rejection of official practices. Demonstrations
scheduled for this Saturday in Washington, D.C.
can, among other things, encourage Congressional representatives to use their
full powers in upcoming investigations to expose and curtail governmental
abuses (starting on Monday in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the blatantly
illegal and unconstitutional domestic spying by the administration.
Members of the Republican majority have taken the same oath
as Democrats and their official witnesses– to uphold the Constitution. Asking questions that meet with evasion, lies
or refusal to answer is not enough to fulfill that oath. Committee powers
include subpoenas for testimony and evidence and criminal citations for
contempt or perjury. Illegal practices must not only be identified and
condemned, but stopped, and officials who originated and persist in them must
be, at the very least, removed from office, and that before 2009. Candidates in primaries and elections this
year should be put on notice that their own ability to hold office will depend
on their willingness to investigate and to impeach and remove officials, from
the president and vice president on down, who endanger our freedom and
democracy.
There will be dozens of ways to do that. Demonstrating at the White House on February
4 is a good start.
Daniel Ellsberg made history when as a top Pentagon
official, he released the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the Vietnam
War, which exposed government lies going back 20 years. His act of resistance
helped galvanize opposition to the war and triggered the events leading to Watergate
and the downfall of Richard Nixon.