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Dear Rabbi Davis, Dr. Krupp, and Director Goldberg:
I have purchased a ticket to the November 8 talk by Condoleeza Rice and hope that "unscripted question and answer session" truly means that, in that my military and spiritual experiences trouble me greatly regarding my country torturing and calling it something else.
I believe the Geneva Conventions mean what they say, as do the Old and New Testaments of the Scriptures, both of which summarize the Law as "Love the Lord God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself".
I was drafted in 1970 and served as an Army Medic.
I am currently honored to serve as President of Veterans for Peace local chapter 27, an organization of men and women from all wars, dedicated to finding forceful means other than violence
and killing to end terrorism and warfare in the world.
Vets for Peace is also one of the groups that felt compelled to peacefully demonstrate their concern outside Beth El Synagogue during the Rice talk because of our military training in Geneva Conventions.
I know there are some who bow to unwarranted and illegal pressure to violate the rules against torture and killing of civilians, but honorable soldiers are committed to refuse those atrocities in and out of the military, forever.
When I took my medic and military training, I was particularly struck by the dynamic presentation on Geneva Conventions.
My first reaction was, "You mean there are rules for something so horrendous as war", but that soon gave way to, "OK, some decency and humanity, from the start, is needed in such an inhuman enterprise".
The drill instructor forcefully presented the sanctions against torture and killing civilians, and then thundered, "We abide by these always. They (the enemy) don't".
That being said, I feel ashamed and dishonored as a Veteran by the way those rules were treated during
the Bush Administration. I also feel outraged that members of that administration be given star billing, and, I assume, substantial renuneration to speak publicly, especially in a place of worship.
My understanding is that Ms. Rice is on record saying things like, "The President instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside our legal obligations under the conventions of torture", and "We never tortured anyone", and "I never authorized anything.
I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency." It may seem a side issue, but I think not, that when I was drafted, it was almost impossible to get into the National Guard, which was a known way to avoid being sent to Vietnam and combat.
Thus Ms. Rice is speaking about serious authorization from a President who got into that Guard via privilege, when most could not, and then didn't even fulfill that obligation.
However, even if that situation were not there for people to argue about, the statements above cast the President as one who defines and interprets the law, not as a leader who lives by and inspires all of us to live by the law of the land.
Part of my medic time was spent in a Field Battalion Training unit in Germany. Because I was drafted, a private with a family, I had to find my own housing in the nearby community. I had learned German in high school, and so was able to speak with locals to help other medics living off base, as well as travel and interact profusely with the people of Germany, whom I found to be as kind and caring as anyone else I'd been around in my life.
That experience led me, upon discharge, to read Hitler's MEIN KAMPF to try to understand how a good people could get behind someone leading them thru the horrendous atrocities occurring under Nazi Germany. I was most horrified that the book read like any number of conservative Christian treatises I had devoured while growing up: "Because of this . . . and this . . . and that", the inflammatory book elaborated, "It is the will of God that we exterminate the Jews." I'm aware that
most Christian churches just went along, mainly out of fear of the consequences of standing
up and saying what their deepest gut feeling and training had to be telling them. I'm also aware that major resistance came from some churches, as well as from within the German Military -- people who were saying, "I don't care what they are saying officially. Everything I've been taught and know to be true says this is wrong".
Germany lost that war, so just about everyone, even most Germans, now accept the devastating evil of what happened, but I submit that any time we adopt rules, whether the 10 commandments (or their "Love God, Love Neighbor" summary) or the Geneva Conventions, we accept their binding power on everyone. Just because the President or Der Fuhrer says it's the will of God to do something different, doesn't make it so. It seems to be human nature for children and adults to try to twist the rules to get what they want, but I, and many others I know and respect, have total inability to respect leaders who twisted (or were complicit in the "new spin") the meaning of the Geneva Conventions we were so forcefully taught in the military.
If torture in "this situation" is not torture, then don't tell me we don't do it.
Tell me instead that we signed the Geneva Agreements, but we never really meant it.
Tell me we go to church or synagogue because it's a way to look respectable, but we don't intend to live by the teachings.
Tell me that enemy civilians and prisoners are not really people, and we have every right to do with and to them what we want, because THEY ARE THE ENEMY.
I still won't go along with you, but at least I won't feel like you lied to me in an environment fraught with talk of HONOR AND DUTY TO COUNTRY.
Larry Johnson
President, Vets for Peace Chapter 27
October 31, 2009
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