Heroism and Cowardice

[Time for change]

Heroism is a commitment to do what is right and decent, without regard to personal gain, (or even without regard to substantial personal risk). A few months ago, as an example of that, I posted a story on DU about how Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, exposed horrendous torture and other human rights abuses in Uzbekistan – while simultaneously exposing the support for those policies by the U.K. and the U.S. in pursuance of George Bush’s “War on Terror”.

In telling this story I quoted liberally from Amnesty International award winning investigative journalist Stephen Grey’s “Ghost Plane – The True Story of the CIA Torture Program”. Grey, who was himself instrumental in exposing the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, summarized Murray’s mode of action and his legacy:

Murray showed no concern for the polite conventions of diplomacy: He was a passionate individual prepared to abandon form and euphemisms, and ready to speak forcefully and publicly about what he believed. From almost the day he touched down in the capital of Uzbekistan, Murray had been battling from the inside to expose what he saw as a scandal – the West’s support of a ruthless regime… Murray would throw a spotlight on a thorny dilemma like no one else: how, in fighting for the goal of spreading global freedom, the West had ended up extending support for some of the world’s least free regimes… The CIA’s traffic, he said, contained information obtained using torture…

Craig Murray had chosen to force not only his government but the hand of the United States… He opened a window on another frontier of the rendition system, and showed how a dictator would share evidence obtained under torture with Western intelligence agencies for his own political purposes to secure international support or acquiescence for his own ruthless clampdown on the dissidents who oppose him. He had exposed to the world a very uncomfortable alliance: between a superpower that proclaimed the importance of human rights and an unreformed Communist who boiled his prisoners alive. Steve Crawshaw, UK Director of Human Rights, remarked, “Craig Murray may not have been a good ambassador; that’s not for me to judge. But the abuses he pointed to were real, horrific.” If this was the war on terror, many would ask, was it really worth fighting.

My post was titled “Tribute to a Hero: Craig Murray”. I was gratified and very surprised to find that Craig Murray himself was the first person to respond to that post. In his response Murray said that he didn’t feel like a hero. He explained that Bush’s support for Uzbekistan originated in a meeting between Bush, Ken Lay and the Uzbek ambassador (guess what subject?) and he referred me to his new book, “Murder in Samarkind”.

I subsequently bought and read Murray’s book, which mainly emphasized his reactions to the Uzbekistan torture regime in his role as British Ambassador there.


Some memorable quotes from the conclusion of Murder in Samarkind

The last few paragraphs of Murray’s book are among the most poignant, insightful, wise and important endings to a book that I’ve read – as well as eerily relevant to today’s world. While claiming that he is not a hero, Murray describes in those paragraphs precisely what a hero does:

I will never forget those who still suffer needlessly in Uzbekistan, in Iraq and in so many other places on this spinning globe. I am not an especially good man, but I tried to stay true to basic values of human decency. If you cross the path of tyranny, or incipient tyranny, I believe there is a duty to fight it, be it in Tashkrent, Washington or London.

Some of the symptoms of tyranny are torture, imprisonment without proper trial, government figures being above the law and the censorship of books. The thing with tyranny is, that if you don’t try to fight it when it starts, it very quickly gets too strong for you.

If you achieve a voice that will be heard, you should use it to speak up for the voiceless and oppressed. If you possess any power or authority, you must try to use it to empower the powerless. Sadly, public life in the West has come to be dominated by those driven by arrogance and corporate greed and personal acquisitiveness. We must strive to return some integrity to public life.

As I hope this memoir has made clear, I am not a hero but a very fallible man. Yet when I heard of men, women and children being tortured, I had no doubt that the only and overriding duty of any representative of the British people must be to stop it. Government must have some principles of conduct, and not torturing people is a fundamental one. For me, that came before my personal career.

How have we come to this, that integrity in public life is now so rare that some consider me a hero just for exhibiting the most basic human decency?

Indeed, how have we come to this point? But Murray is wrong to say that he’s not a hero for exhibiting human decency. That is precisely what heroes do.


Some other examples of heroism

With apologies to the many whom I leave out here, I would like to note 20 other of my favorite well known examples of heroism (mostly political) that are especially relevant to today’s world (Please feel free to add your own examples):

Abraham Lincoln* was a hero when he ended slavery in the United States by executive order.

FDR was a hero when he took on powerful financial interests in our country in his fight to end the Great Depression and provide opportunity for millions of Americans.

Harry Truman was a hero when he integrated the U.S. military by executive order.

Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg* was a hero when he attempted to put a stop to the most massive human carnage the world had ever known.

John F. Kennedy* was a hero for his attempt to terminate American involvement in Vietnam and to end the Cold War (both which likely would have been highly successful if not for his premature death).

George McGovern and Mike Gravel were heroes for their persistent leadership, as U.S. Senators, in attempting to end the Vietnam War.

John Kerry was a hero for his leadership role in resistance against the Vietnam War.

Martin Luther King* was a hero for his leadership in the Civil Rights movement.

Raymond Lemme* was a hero for attempting to expose election fraud targeted at the 2004 presidential election, originating at the highest levels of the U.S. government, associated with electronic vote machines.

Paul Wellstone* was a hero for his intense opposition to George Bush’s Iraq War.

Cynthia McKinney was a hero for insisting upon a full investigation of the 9-11 attacks on our country, including the role of the Bush administration in those attacks.

Barbara Boxer was a hero for being the only U.S. Senator to challenge the results of the 2004 Presidential election, thereby forcing Senate debate on the subject.

Keith Olbermann is a hero for his numerous fearless commentaries on the crimes of the Bush administration.

Russ Feingold was a hero for being the only U.S. Senator to vote against the U.S. PATRIOT Act, which did so much to limit our civil liberties.

Sybil Edmunds is a hero for blowing the whistle on the prior knowledge held by the U.S. government regarding the 9-11 attacks on our country.

Al Gore is a hero for his leadership role in combating global warming.

Dennis Kucinich is a hero for being so forthright in his explanations to the American people about the real reasons for the Iraq War.

John Edwards is a hero for making the eradication of poverty in our country his primary campaign issue.

Ron Paul is a hero for being the primary Republican opponent of the Iraq War and the Constitutional abuses of the Bush administration – defying his own Party in the process.

* -- Of the 20 examples of heroes that I provide here, 6 died prematurely, either assassinated or in circumstances highly suspicious of assassination. I believe that all 6 were assassinated because of their heroic acts (though that assertion is controversial for most of these cases).


One example of abject cowardice

I’ll give just one example of cowardice here. One thing that is very common to cowardice is tough talking, which is often used to hide one’s cowardice. It is not a certain sign, since heroes also sometimes find the need to talk tough. But when a person uses tough talk to give the appearance of bravery, while serving only to jeopardize the lives of other people, that is cowardice.

The perfect example is when a man, surrounded by body guards, and speaking of people on the other side of the world, boasts “Bring ‘em on”, thereby jeopardizing the lives of soldiers whose safety he is responsible for, while posing no risk to himself whatsoever.

I talk more about the cowardice of that man and his cohorts in this post.


Some final thoughts on the importance of courage in today’s world

Doing what is right and decent is what courage is all about. When the German people of the 1930’s, in a climate of fear generated by their Fuhrer, acquiesced to and were even accomplices to his demands, they failed to do what is right and decent. And when today’s “journalists” report as “news” what they are told by the most dishonest and corrupt presidential administration in the history of our country, without even questioning it, they are failing to do what is right and decent. These are the kinds of actions that led to Nazi tyranny in Germany and they are the kinds of things that will lead to fascist tyranny in the United States if they continue.

It is not right and decent that thousands of men are incarcerated indefinitely, without charge or trial, many of them to be tortured day after day – under the auspices of the United States government. Our country has gone a long way towards tyranny in the past 7 years. It will take courage on the part of the American people in order to end that process or reverse it.

[WilliamPitt]

1. K and likewise R

:toast:

[Time for change]

3. Thank you

As I was reading your Ron Paul thread I was thinking that there might be some controversy over my listing Ron Paul here as a hero. But I can admire his principled opposition to the Iraq War and to Bush's Constitutional abuses while still disagreeing with most of his policy views. :toast:

[WilliamPitt]

4. Hey, ya know,

Nixon created the EPA, so go figure. ;)

If we cannot find a way to respect those with opposing beliefs, especially if they are able to defend and explain the basis for those beliefs, we might as well give the whole thing up. The single best human being I have ever known, my grandfather, was a full-bore rock-ribbed conservative Catholic who still despised FDR fifty years after the man had died, and had more than a little bit of Jeffersonian "avoid entangling alliances" isolationism running through his veins.

In the early 1970s, he wrote and delivered a speech denouncing abortion that has since become one of the bedrock documents of the movement's ideology. The only Democrat he ever voted for was Kennedy. He was aide to Admiral Husband Kimmell, the fleet commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated, broken and destroyed oiver the attack. My grandfather represented him at the inquest, and spent the next 60+ years of his life working to clear Kimmell's name and have his rank restored. Three weeks before he died, my grandfather convinced Senator Kennedy to attach an amendment to the 2000 budget officially clearing Kimmell of blame and restoring his rank. When he passed, that amendment and the pen Clinton signed it with were on his mantle.

He was anti-choice, very GOP, entirely conservative, and fairly isolationist to boot...and I was never once able to even put a dent in his reasoning and defenses for these beliefs. His ideology was entirely seamless, and I have always respected a person who is able to do that because of him. He was the smartest, most moral, most loyal, most reliable, and funniest man I have ever known.

So. Disagreement is good. Sometimes. :)

[Time for change]

6. That's a great story

[puebloknot]

12. Moving story about your grandfather and Admiral Kimmell! nt

[puebloknot]

11. Kudos for including Ron Paul in your list.

It's easy to get a knee-jerk reaction when you even mention the man's name here at DU, but the man has a certain integrity, and deserves respect for it. On some issues, I'm totally turned off by him, and cannot envision voting for him -- even if he were a Democrat or an Independent. But I think we have to weave our national cloth out of the best ideas and people we can put together, and personal integrity, which I think Paul has, whether we can agree with him on all things or not, should be at the top of our list of priorities. I suspect that ethic lies at the heart of the recent controversy occurring from Elizabeth Kucinich's comments about her husband and Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is a Texan, as am I, and I know at soul-deep level what goes into shaping the attitudes people from that area hold toward government, women, anyone who does not adhere to the religious views so prevalent in that part of the country. I consider myself lucky that Pearl Harbor came along (as perverted as that may sound) and took my soldier father, and by association, me, out of Texas when I had just begun to live. When I have visited Texas, as an adult, I've felt, as I once explained it to my daughter when she was twelve, that I was doing an anthropological field study, whilst visiting the relatives! :) That Ron Paul has had the integrity to speak out against the Bush regime, as something of a "native son," in a variety of ways, makes him a hero, I agree.

What hero can we think of who did not have flaws?

Another really informative article. I appreciate your doing the work so I can just sit and take it in!

[Time for change]

13. I feel very much like you do about this.

I can respect people, like Ron Paul, who see things differently than I do. But what really bothers me about the leadership of today's Republican Party is the blatant hypocrisy/lack of integrity. People of good will should be able to work things out with each other despite different beliefs. But I don't see much good will among most Republicans in Congress, and espeically not in the Bush administration. At least, that's the way I see it at this time.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. seconded

thanks.

[Time for change]

5. Thank you -- Murray's words at the end of his book

were some of the most inspiring that I've ever read.

[tomreedtoon]

7. One quibble; I believe you're wrong about Kennedy.

MY book about the subject, Gary Wills's "The Kennedy Imprisonment," says this:

The unhappy later progress of the Vietnam war made Kennedy's defenders claim he would have withdrawn from the contest after committing 16,500 troops to it. The only positive evidence that is offered for this view is Kennedy's assurance to Senator Mansfield that he would have to get out of Vietnam sometime after the 1964 election. But the year intervening between his death and that election would have involved further commitments of the sort that President Johnson (despite his initial distaste for the idea of a larger war) made, on the advice of Kennedy's most trusted counselors. And Kennedy's "commitment" would have been even more binding." (Page 280, hardbound edition)

There is no way of knowing what President Kennedy might have done had he lived. Could he have withdrawn from Vietnam without losing face? He thought he could not trade Turkish missiles for Cuban without being impeached, so necessary was it to keep America's hawks happy with his toughness. Would he have disowned his own policies and advisers in Vietnam, and done it in time to leave any choice in the matter? Perhaps; there is no knowing. But he did not live - and the lessons of power, the men of power, the examples of power he left behind him gave us the war in Vietnam. (Page 285, hardbound edition)

I don't believe Kennedy was the hero that many people adore. His brother Robert was more the hero; he was the one who stood up in Harlem the night after Martin Luther King was killed, and spoke to black people who probably never saw a white politician talk to them before. That was a better example of heroism than any Kennedy has shown before, or since.

I think the rest of your list, though, checks out pretty well.

[Time for change]

8. I don't believe that what I said about Kennedy is wrong

Wills' book was copyrighted in 1981, as far as I can tell -- unless there were later additions.

This excerpt is from the link I provided in the OP:

The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?

At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?

The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.

But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.

I didn't read that book, but I did read "House of War" by James Carroll, which is very recent, and depicts a JFK who was hell bent on peace. In this post I discuss that in detail and provide excerpts from JFK's "peace speech", a couple months before he died, at the height of the Cold War, which was much more pro-peace than anything you'll hear today, except maybe from someone like Dennis Kucinich:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=320350

Indeed, JFK was even making plans to reach an accomodation with Castro:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB103/index.htm

I think that there is a concerted effort to keep these things out of sight of the American public, by the same people who don't want us to know who killed JFK. If it was widely known that JFK intended to withdraw from Vietnam, or if it was widely known the extent to which he was willing to seek accommodation with Communists, that would put a whole different perspective on the Cold War, which the war hawks don't want us to have.

[roxnev]

9. That left out all Republicans

[Time for change]

10. I didn't leave out Republicans

I mentioned Lincoln, Ron Paul, and George Bush (in the section on cowardice).

[Time for change]

14. The most cowardly act of all

The most cowardly act that I can think of would be for the leader of a very powerful country to preemptively attack another country, in the process killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, when non-violent and non-destructive and more appropriate alternatives were available to deal with the perceived problem. Such an act would demonstrate an extreme indifference to the lives of other people, as well as a pathological need on the part of the leader to prove his manliness.

In the mind of such a coward, such a wantonly destructive act would earn him a legacy as one of the great conquerors of all time. The deaths of millions of fellow human beings would mean nothing to him. In fact, he might even get a kick out of it. And it would be so easy for him. All he would have to do is give the order and it’s done. It would be almost as if he was God. Or as if he was carrying out the wishes of God. And it would preclude the need for all those messy negotiations – for which he has no competency anyhow.

[hfojvt]

15. it seems to me that Mike Huckabee is a coward

I saw him on a PBS interview and he was promoting his compassionate conservatism, and making a fair amount of sense. They mentioned how he had expanded SCHIP as Governor and on some economic issues he seemed kinda liberal. But then, for some reason, he twisted around and used some tortured and dishonest arguments in defense of Bush and the recent veto of the bipartisan SCHIP legislation. He was caving to pressure or some sort of party loyalty instead of standing up for what he really believed in. It is also odd how so many of Bush's associates have been cowardly, from Powell, to Whitman, to Diulio, etc. They criticized after the fact, and then later recanted of even that criticism.

Interesting how Murray seemed to feel that a "hero" needs to be perfect, and it seems to be a label that people always want to deny even after they have done something heroic. Perhaps they are correct in that one heroic act does not a hero make, but they are heroes for that day, just as a home run hitter is a sports hero for that inning. It's more heroic to not let your status goto your head.

[Time for change]

18. Murray's efforts to expose the torture in Uzbekistan and the support of that torture by the US & UK

extended over several years.

What you say about Powell and Whitman, etc. is very true IMO. Powell really let us down the one time that he was needed most.

[Thothmes]

16. Abraham Lincoln

President Lincoln did not end slavery with an executive order. He issued the emancipation proclamation, which only freed slaves in the territory controlled by the Confederate government. It did not apply to the slaves in Maryland, Kentucky, or Missouri. Slavery was effectively ended in the the South when it was overrun by the Union Army. It ended in the United States with the adoption of the XIII Amendment to the Constitution Dec 6, 1965.

[Time for change]

19. What you say is technically true

But there are a lot of factors to consider that make it reasonable to say that the emancipation proclamation ended slavery:
-- The good majority of slaves were under control of the Confederacy at the time.
-- It facilitated slaves leaving the plantations to join the Union Army, which 200,000 did.
-- It very likely substantially increased the likelihood of the Union winning the war
-- It set the stage for the 13th Amendment

Thus the Emancipation Proclamation substantially facilitated the complete abolition of slavery, and without it slavery probably would have lasted a lot longer than it did.

[Thothmes]

20. technically true

I will disagree with two of your for statements. What facilitated slaves leaving the plantation was the absence of 400,000 white southern males in the Confederate army. What set the state for the XIII amendment was #1 the Union Army winning the war and #2 the SCOTUS Dred Scott Decision, which is why the amendment was written in the first place to get around a valid court decision. It could be arguable that by the spring of 1864 (When USCT started to join the army in some numbers) the South had lost the war but had refused to recognize that fact. The issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln was a calculated political move. Lincoln had stated many times that he would allow the institution of slavery to continue in some form if the South rejoin the Union. What proclaimed the end of slavery in the United States was the death or injury of about 500,000 Union soldiers and a victory hard won by force of arms.

[ThomWV]

17. Heroism is not a committment, it requires an action