GUESS I'D BETTER DO IT WHILE I'M HERE

As one who voted to re-elect Gerald Ford in 1976, partly because his pardon of President Nixon helped America recover from the trauma of Watergate, I am saddened by revelations of his public silence on our disastrous Iraq war while he was alive.

Within a day of his death, Bob Woodward revealed that Ford spoke privately of his dismay over the mistakes which brought on this disaster, but required that his thoughts be kept private until after his death. Ford should have gone public with his views while alive when they may have made some impact on the administration's ruinous war policies.

That is precisely why we who seek peace must continue to speak out about the senseless policies that will doom hundreds, maybe thousands of our courageous soldiers to an early and unnecessary death and inflate our bloated budget deficit, all for the inevitable defeat that awaits us.

President Ford's public silence on such an urgent matter should remind us all that we live on borrowed time. And we can't speak out against the lies that cause such needless death when we're gone.

Originally published in Daily Herald, January 3, 2007
Also published in Chicago Tribune, January 11, 2007

MR. ROSKAM GOES TO WASHINGTON

On January 4, 2007, Peter Roskam begins his congressional career representing the voters of the Illinois Sixth Congressional District.

He comes to office at a momentous time in America’s history. We are bogged down in the senseless and utterly failed Iraq war. We are approaching three thousand dead soldiers and twenty-three thousand wounded soldiers. The Iraqi nation has been demolished by our brazen attempt to dictate how the Middle East must be governed. The Iraqis have voted with their feet as nearly two million have fled their neighborhoods or their country altogether in a desperate attempt to survive. Hundreds of thousands are already dead or wounded.

Yet, during his campaign, the Iraq war was the issue that dare not speak its name. Roskam, brilliant person and politician that he is, spent most of his time and money mis-representing his opponent’s position on illegal immigration. The strategy worked, allowing him to snatch a narrow four thousand vote victory out of nearly 170,000 cast in an overwhelmingly Republican district.

He arrives in Congress with an opportunity to take the correct and moral position of working to cut off funding for this immoral and self-destructive war. He needs to join his colleagues John Murtha (Dem. PA) and Dennis Kucinich (Dem. OH) and speak out against the lies and delusion that have brought on this disaster.

During the campaign, when forced to discuss Iraq, candidate Roskam said that he had no strategy to win in Iraq, just the goal of having it end well. Congressman Roskam needs to realize that every day he continues to run from this great moral issue of our time, it does not end well for the two American soldiers who die and the dozen or so who are broken in body and mind for the folly of their leaders.

And the 82,701 anti-war voters of the Sixth District last November 6, along with thousands of others who will join their ranks, will be watching their congressman for signs of greatness.

Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn, IL, 630-858-3419

Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, January 3, 2007