[Dialogue] An Interview with Rev. William Sloane Coffin

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Saturday, October 22, 2005 by CommonDreams.org 


An Interview with Rev. William Sloane Coffin 


by Ralph Nader 


 


I recently spoke to Rev. William Sloane Coffin about the war in Iraq and
what concerned citizens can do to stop this illegal and unjust war. 

Rev. William Sloane Coffin was a leader against the war in Vietnam and is a
leading advocate for civil rights and opponent of nuclear weapons. Coffin
was an Army officer in World War II. He earned his Bachelor of Divinity
degree from Yale in 1956 and was ordained a Presbyterian minister. 

In 1977, he became senior minister at Riverside Church in New York City. He
currently resides in Vermont. 

My interview with Rev. Coffin follows. 

Ralph Nader: With the majority of Americans in poll after poll turning
against the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq, and with many retired Generals,
diplomats and intelligence officials opposed to the invasion in the first
instance why is the organized opposition not greater? What can be done to
turn this public sentiment into organized opposition? 

Rev. William Sloane Coffin: Sacrifice in and of itself confers no sanctity.
Even though thousands of Americans and Iraqis are killed and wounded, the
blood shed doesn't make the cause one wit more or less sacred. Yet that
truth is so difficult to accept when sons and daughters, husbands, friends,
when so many of our fellow-citizens are among the sacrificed. 

Because her son was killed Cindy Sheehan is not called unpatriotic. What the
rest of us have to remember is that dissent in a democracy is not
unpatriotic, what is unpatriotic is subservience to a bad policy. 

The war was a predictable catastrophe and we've botched the occupation.
However, I sympathize with those who are perplexed about what is best now to
do. Soon I hope people will heed the call to renounce all American military
bases in Iraq and to begin withdrawal of American troops. I think Bush has
it wrong: he says: "When Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down." More
likely its: when Americans stand down, then Iraqis will be forced to stand
up. The question is, "Which Iraqis and for what will they stand?" 

RN: Why do you think most of the anti-war groups stopped their marches in
2004 and became quiescent compared to 2003? 

WSC: Wars generally mute dissent, and Bush is given to silence criticism, to
keep problems hidden and ignored. Now that such tactics are no longer
possible, given the many setbacks to his war aims, the marches will soon
begin. 

RN: Any comparisons between the domestic opposition to the Iraq
War/Occupation with the domestic opposition to the Vietnam War? 

WSC: There are similarities. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was based on a
lie; so was the charge that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
And the lies continued: We were winning the Vietnam War, Iraqi oil would pay
for the costs of the war and of the occupation. 

I think the absence of a draft has much to do with the present lack of
student protest. On the other hand, I think the colossal blunders of the
Administration will quicken an antiwar movement faster now than during the
Vietnam War. After all, it was only after the Tet Offensive in 1968, not
originally in '62,'63 or '64, that the American opposition to the Vietnam
War became massive. 

RN: What should the U.S. government do now? 

WSC: The U.S. Government should realize that if we can't defeat the
insurgents, we have lost. The insurgents, on the other hand, have only not
to lose to declare victory. And to defeat the United States and its allies
might go a long way to assuage, to offset the humiliation and rage so many
Muslims presently feel. All of which indicates we should start to withdraw
our troops. What we shouldn't do is to believe President Bush when he says
that to honor those who have died, more Americans must die. That's using
examples of his failures to promote still greater failures. 

RN: What do you think should be done strategically and tactically by the
peace movement? 

WSC: I am very much in favor of well thought out non-violent civil
disobedience, of occupying congressional offices, telling lawmakers, "You
have to stop the slaughter, to admit mistakes and to right the wrong." 

Unfortunately, to get media attention, you have to sensationalize the
valuable. But town meetings, letters to the editor, flooding Washington with
protest letters and marches - all that is still very important if the
protest continues and gains momentum. 

RN: What advice do you have for strengthening our democracy and confronting
the concentration of power and wealth over the life sustaining directions
our country (with its impact on the world) needs to take? Please address any
specific reforms that demand priority. 

WSC: Something happened to our understanding of freedom. Centuries ago Saint
Augustine called freedom of choice the "small freedom," libertas minor.
Libertas Maior, the big freedom was to make the right choices, to be
fearless and selfless enough to choose to serve the common good rather than
to seek personal gain. 

That understanding of freedom was not foreign to our eighteenth century
forebears who were enormously influenced by Montesquieu, the French thinker
who differentiated despotism, monarchy, and democracy. In each he found a
special principle governing social life. For despotism the principle was
fear; for monarch, honor; and for democracy, not freedom but virtue. In The
Broken Covenant, Robert Bellah quotes him as writing that "it is this
quality rather than fear or ambition, that makes things work in a
democracy." 

According to Bellah, Samuel Adams agreed: "We may look to armies for our
defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state
should long remain free where virtue is not supremely honored." 

Freedom, virtue - these two were practically synonymous in the minds of our
revolutionary forbears. To them it was not inconceivable that an individual
would be granted freedom merely for the satisfaction of instinct and whims.
Freedom was not the freedom to do as you please but rather, if you will, the
freedom to do as you ought! Freedom, virtue - they were practically
synonymous a hundred years later in the mind of Abraham Lincoln when, in his
second inaugural address, he called for "a new birth of freedom." But today,
because we have so cruelly separated freedom from virtue, because we define
freedom in a morally inferior way, our country is stalled in what Herman
Melville call the "Dark Ages of Democracy," a time when as he predicted, the
New Jerusalem would turn into Babylon, and Americans would feel "the arrest
of hope's advance." 

Rev. Coffin or Ralph Nader can be reached through Kevin Zeese at
KZeese at DemocracyRising.US. The full interview with Rev. Coffin is available
at www.DemocracyRising.US. 

###

 

 

Peace,

Harry

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20051022/4061ffed/attachment.htm
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 6731 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20051022/4061ffed/attachment.gif