Fulbright
FULBRIGHT PEACE FOUNTAIN
WHAT DOES THE FULBRIGHT PEACE MEMORIAL MEAN?
Dick Bennett
Like the fountain outside Arkansas Union, the Fulbright
Peace Fountain expresses ancient meanings associated with water. But
the comparison ends there. For whereas the Union fountain is devoid
of further expressiveness, the Fulbright Fountain suggests potentially
everything in former Senator J. William Fulbright's life pertaining
to peacemaking. And his was an extraordinarily full and fruitful life
for peace. President of the University of Arknsas; author of five
books on foreign and domestic politics, many articles, and numerous
speeches, father of the Fulbright Exchange Abroad Program, Chairman
of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs for many years, opponent
of the Vietnam War, Fulbright provided our nation with strong, reasoned
dissent against reckless military interventions and imperialism. The
Fountain beckons.us to think. There were "two Americas," he argued
in The Arrogance of Power (the book I will draw from here)-that of
democratic humanism and that of puritanical intolerance. Out of the
former came the United States Constitution, Congress, the United Nations,
and men like Adlai Stevenson; from the latter came superpatriotic
militarism, the Spanish-American War and the Vietnam War, and men
like Theodore Roosevelt. "Again and again, in many parts of the world,
we have engaged in enormous exertions at enormous cost, not so much
for the sake of our greatness as for its shadow." And in that darkness,
that remnant, immense, unreasoning violence has blighted much of the
world no matter what the intention. The pathologies of militarism
have produced horrendous slaughters in the past, and now, with the
development of nuclear weapons and ballistics missiles, they threaten
the survival of the planet. Instead, Fulbright consistently urged,
it was the real "patriot's duty to dissent," to uphold a set of values
opposed to military force, an altogether different kind of force.
Fulbright denounced autocratic leaders and unjust U.S. wars; he defended
Vietnam War protesters, debate, and diversity of opinion; and he praised
universities as places especially reserved for the examination of
official and ancestral ideas. He extolled the values of toleration,
knowledge, cooperation, and diplomacy. He exhorted citizens to be
devoted not to country but to what the country might be. When they
pass the Fulbright Peace Fountain, I wonder how many students are
aware of what the bubbling water and the tower are saying?
THE ARROGANCE OF POWER
Fulbright's The Arrogance of Power Revisited: Against Puritanical
Militarism Dick Bennett "The American people have become more and
more accustomed to militarism, to uniforms, to the cult of the gun
and to the violence of combat." Militarism, U.S.A. by Col. James A.
Donovan "Since 1945 American presidents have wielded power over national
security and foreign policy far beyond the dreams of tyrants." The
Rockets' Red Glare by Richard Barnet "As we have developed into a
society whose most prominent business is violence, one of the leading
professions inevitably is soldiering." J. William Fulbright "…the
effect of war and the constant threat of war are carrying us toward
despotism." J. William Fulbright I. Fulbright's Analysis of Militarism
We know now how accurate former Senator J. William Fulbright was in
his analyses of U.S. militarism in its many guises. The following
are found In Fulbright's books and articles and speeches during the
1960s and 1970s, the former Senator from Arkansas and Chairman of
the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee identified these characteristics
of militarism: 1. Militarism reflects and in turn causes a fearful,
xenophobic society that constantly creates dehumanized enemies; 2.
It teaches the inevitability of war and reinforces the widespread
expectation of war in order to continually prepare for war; 3. Its
narrow point of view excludes political, social, economic, and moral
complexities; 4. It develops an enormous National Security State seeking
military superiority over other nations; 5. It has a powerful president
committed to war, violence, and armed force for solving international
problems; 6. It maintains a large officer corps dedicated to the business
of violence and competition for power; 7. It is interventionist and
imperialistic, invading sovereign nations unconstitutionally and illegally;
8. It is self-righteous, believing in U.S. virtue against worldwide
wrongdoers; 9. It turns the legitimate desire for national security
into an excuse and method for internal repression and external domination;
10. It weakens the Senate's constitutional authority over warmaking;
11. It gives the military the highest priority in access to national
resources, its budget and that of its accompanying military-industrial
complex are virtually sacrosanct; and the military is integrated into
the web of the country's economic life; 12. It has a massive, costly,
wasteful military bureaucracy; 13. It creates a military propaganda
machine to create favorable public and congressional opinion toward
an "honorable" and "comforting" military; 14. It raises patriotism
over criticism, individual autonomy, investigation, and dissent; 15.
It operates on a permanent war economy with enormous budgets going
to war industries placed throughout the nation 16. Consequently, it
is reinforced by the millions of self-interested, martial employees
who profit from the military-industrial complex throughout the US
web of grassroots militarism; 17. It is dominated by powerful military
corporations that spend billions of dollars to advertise, lobby, and
bribe for their economic interests; 18. It erodes national moral values
through war crimes, waste, bullying, and other anti-social behaviors;
19. Because of its many wars, it has countless veterans organizations
constantly lauding war heroism and expressing nationalism, patriotism,
chauvinism, and jingoism; 20. The military are beyond effective criticism
and control;few high ranking officers have been fired, and military
officers are among the most honored and popular people in the nation;
21. Its civilian leaders have embraced the military outlook and often
outdo the generals in the pursuit of goals through armed force; 22.
It disregards international laws and treaties that do not suit its
national interests; 23. It operates perhaps the largest propaganda
and conditioning center in the world-the corporate-military-White
House-mainstream media complex; 24. Deception and secrecy are accepted
as a normal fact of life; both presidents Johnson and Nixon hid their
unconstitutional and illegal actions from the public to increase and
prolong the war; 25. Civil liberties are significantly suppressed,
the Bill of Rights severely damaged; during the Vietnam War the US
had more political prisoners than any other country on earth, and
the FBI secretly resorted to countless illegal tactics to silence
dissenters. That Fulbright so strongly opposed militarism "as a system
of values [in] direct threat to our democracy" should surprise no
one who is familiar with his commitment to humanistic, internationalist,
generous, cosmopolitan, public-spirited, legal, rationalist, tolerant,
educational, cooperative, accommodationist, constitutionalist, diplomatic,
and dissenting values, and his opposition to imperialists, dictators,
right-wing extremists, fanatics, absolutists, bellicosity, lying,
ignorance, xenophobia, arrogance, and wars. What might not be familiar
is his analysis of the root cause of militarism: puritanical intolerance.
II. Intolerant Puritanism Fulbright's resistance to militarism issued
through the written and spoken word-through books, articles, speeches,
interviews, Senate committee hearings, and letters. A. Books The titles
of Fulbright's books refer to militarism, sometimes explicitly: Old
Myths and New Realities (1964), The Arrogance of Power (1966), The
Pentagon Propaganda Machine 1971), The Crippled Giant (1972), The
Price of Empire (1989). All of these books deal with the subject of
militarism, more or less. The Arrogance of Power illustrates the Fulbright
of the mid-1960s, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and nascent opponent of the Vietnam War. In the book's Conclusion,
Fulbright establishes a duality that will shape all of his public
utterances on U. S. militarism: the conflict between "democratic humanism"
of tolerance and accommodation, which Fulbright espouses, and "intolerant
puritanism," the root of U.S. militarism. These two principles, one
leading to international amity, the other to militarism and war, unify
paragraphs, chapters, parts, and the book as a whole. Fulbright would
persuade readers to imagine humanistic instead of puritan militaristic
foreign policy alternatives and to seek an empathy and magnanimity
even for enemies in order to embrace accommodation instead of slaughter.
The book is organized into three advancing parts, accompanied by an
introduction and a conclusion. The Introduction seeks a cause of militarism
and wars in the "arrogance of power," which he defines as the "psychological
need that nations seem to have in order to prove that they are bigger,
better, or stronger than other nations. Implicit in this drive is
the assumption…that [armed] force is the ultimate proof of superiority-that
when a nation shows that it has the stronger army, it is also proving
that it has better people, better institutions, better principles,
and, in general, a better civilization." Several features of militarism
are described here (self-righteousness, large military establishment,
empire). These pressures and pathologies, having produced horrendous
slaughters in the past, now with the development of nuclear weapons
and ballistics missiles threaten the survival of the planet. Traditional
militaristic expansion and domination are no longer tolerable. The
"tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities
with a universal mission" (the "missionary instinct") must end. This
is preeminently a United States problem since it is such a great power.
The time had urgently come for a re-examination of "'all the attitudes
of our ancestors." This task Fulbright assays in The Arrogance of
Power, his contribution to "the patriot's duty of dissent." Part I,
"The Higher Patriotism," defends dissent. In Chapter 1, criticism
is praised as "a higher form of patriotism," as opposed militarist
suppression of dissent, which Fulbright perceives to be hardening
in both corporations and government into "conformity with a barren
and oppressive orthodoxy." Here he defends Vietnam War protesters,
denounces unjust U.S. wars, and praises universities as places where
faculty and students are encouraged to examine official and ancestral
ideas, devoted not to country but to what the country might be. Chapter
2 extols the U.S. Congress and especially the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations similarly as a forum of diverse opinions and a channel
of communication between the people and their government. But he laments
the reduced role of Congress as the President's has strengthened,
so that the members of Congress were increasingly falling in line
with presidential absolutism (Cuban missile crisis, Dominican intervention,
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, bipartisan facilitation of wars). The structure
of chapters 1 and 2 are identical: the patriotic duty of dissent against
oppressive government leaders bent on war--and against their militaristic
language. He deplores the slogans of empire-the shot fired at Concord
heard around the world, manifest destiny, making the world safe for
democracy, unconditional surrender; the "voodoo" maledictions against
evil enemies as though "to ward off evil spirits"; the absolute commitments
"vital to a free world" no matter how unwise; the derision of ideas-mediation
as appeasement for example. Slogans, myths prevent unorthodox ideas;
they oppose democratic humanistic values in the practice of foreign
policy. In Part II, Fulbright rejects the messianic zeal of both the
Soviet Union and the U.S. that fuels militarism, as well as the imperial
impulse to intervene in all of the revolutionary and potentially revolutionary
societies of the world. Here he examines U.S. policies toward the
Soviet Union, the intervention of the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Vietnam,
and China, in each case pleading for understanding and generosity
as the basis of our foreign policy, instead of the fierce armed force
of puritanical bullying. Part III, "Reconciling Hostile Worlds," becomes
philosophical, concentrating on the humanist concern for human needs
and irrational human behavior. Fulbright explores how to create "a
state of mind in which neither side considered war as a likely eventuality."
He tries to understand how to treat national paranoiacs. He offers
a "golden mean" scale of national pride: too little (inferiority)
and too much (arrogance) both dangerous; the aim of all should be
balance and reason wherein lies safety. He extols the humanities for
their teaching empathy-seeing the world as others see it. As in Part
II, he urges the U.S. not to apply its ideology and practices to other
countries, but to assist them in their own development. One chapter
offers an alternative policy toward Vietnam that we now see clearly
would have prevented six more years of war and 2 million deaths. Another,
"Rebuilding Bridges," explains how to reconcile with the Soviet Union,
reunite with Europe, and redirect resources for the health and education
of US people. And another offers a new method of foreign aid away
from military intervention and toward greatly expanded economic aid
for the poor, with the stipulation that it drop bilateral for international
aid conducted as a community enterprise, through the UN and other
agencies. Here Fulbright's empathy with the feelings of foreign people
finds its strongest The Arrogance of Power actually seldom mentions
the word militarism. Fulbright's explicit and devastating analysis
and condemnation of the militarism of the U.S. military-industrial
complex-"its violence, its arms race, its enormous wealth, and its
benighting influence throughout U.S. society"-- comes in The Pentagon
Propaganda Machine. But that is the subject of another essay. After
describing and denouncing various Pentagon public relations brainwashing
programs, in the last, summative chapter, "Dangers of the Military
Sell," Fulbright packs a dozen manifestations of U.S. militarism into
ten pages: its narrow point of view that excludes political, social,
economic, and moral complexities; its resort to armed force for solutions
to international problems rather than to negotiation and diplomacy;
its imperialism-for example, its development of rapid deployment forces
trained and eager for foreign interventions and counterinsurgency;
its erosion of moral values (e.g. My Lai and other war crimes); its
violation of international laws and treaties (e.g. bombing neutral
Cambodia and Laos); the increasing presidential power and secrecy;
and on and on. His last book, repeats the structure of The Arrogance
of Power but in an angrier and gloomier tone. Written 14 years after
leaving public office, The Price of Empire again denounces the military-industrial
complex-owners, workers, and their elected representatives--for distracting
the nation from its human needs, and out of self-interest making violence
"the nation's leading industry." The military obsession was destroying
the nation by creating mammoth budget and trade deficits that replace
investments in education, health, and other urgent foundations of
true security; while the country's best brains worked for the complex,
instead of improving the lives of people. In this pessimistic book
the arrogance of power seems unable to change its old ways. The only
hope was in international education and a strong international organization.
If future generations of leaders can gain the experience of cultural
exchange, then a cooperative instead of a violent future is possible.
Fulbright grew less and less hopeful that US leaders and public would
embrace his peacemaking program. But in the year 2000 UNESCO's embraced
his principles for its Culture of Peace campaign: Active nonviolence;
mobilizing people to build understanding, tolerance, and solidarity,
instead of fighting an enemy; affirming democratic participation instead
of hierarchical power downward; instead of secrecy a free flow of
info; power sharing among men, women, and children; cooperative sustainability
of the environment. B. Articles Inevitably, the unifying principle
in Fulbright's books of democratic humanism in opposition to intolerant
puritanism, structures his articles as well "We have allowed our national
executive to acquire almost dictatorial powers in the field of foreign
policy," Fulbright complains in Look Magazine in 1969. Such power
has grown by accretion through presidential agreements which have
unconstitutionally bypassed the Senate yet are as binding as treaties.
Fifty thousand troops are in Thailand without consent of Congress,
yet "Congress, and Congress alone, has the constitutional power to
declare war." "The 'dog of war,' which Jefferson thought had been
tightly leashed to the legislature, has passed under the virtually
exclusive control of the Executive." But this aspect of militarism
can be checked if Congress will retrieve its constitutional power.
First, the U.S. must leave Vietnam. Then Congress should review all
foreign commitments, and each decade thereafter. "We must find ways
of liberating each new generation from the burden of fighting and
dying to honor the commitments-and obsessions-of other, earlier generations
[presidents]." If not, we will experience "chronic warfare, burgeoning
expense, and the militarization of American life. Our Government would
become what it is already a long way toward becoming, an elective
dictatorship." A much longer article in the New Yorker in 1972 opposes
four aspects of intolerant puritanism become militarism: 1) the philosophy
of "a permanent, purposeless struggle for power and advantage," particularly
fanatical anti-communism, 2) imperialism, the "Truman Doctrine and
its consummation in Vietnam," 3) the myth of a virtuous USA besieged
by evil enemies, 3) the "sham idealism of the 'responsibilities of
power.'" Because President Truman and his advisers did not believe
in the United Nations and hated the Soviet Union based upon the basest
of untested assumptions, they eviscerated the UN Charter within a
year and a half of its creation by launching The Truman Doctrine.
Here is where the critical intellect failed the nation by not stopping
Sovietphobia at its outset. But anti-communism had become a faith
like that of medieval theology that freed people from critical thinking.
The hatred for Hitler and Nazi Germany was transferred to the Soviet
Union and other communist nations and groups. Quickly, U.S. Cold War,
Truman Doctrine, anti-communism produced an alliance with a brutal
Greek dictatorship, a policy frequently repeated. Despite the willingness
of the communist states to negotiate, the pernicious ideological anti-communist
blindness, possessing almost the status of revealed truth, prevented
U.S. leaders and the populace at large from perceiving the distortions.
In this article, Fulbright further probes into the motives generating
enmity and empire. The desire to be Number 1 dominated presidents
Johnson and Nixon and uncounted millions. The national tendency to
extol competition instead of cooperation was influential. Fear of
losing the race explains why the nation "squandered twenty billion
dollars or more getting to the moon." The Vietnam War was the worst
example of the We Are No. 1 pathology. The policy-making elite was
"unable to distinguish between the national interest and their own
personal pride." Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton confessed
that we were at war in Vietnam 10% for the Vietnamese people, and
70% "to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat." And of course from Eisenhower
to Nixon, without examining the history of Vietnam or the history
of communism in Asia, U.S. leaders uncritically followed their erroneous
Cold War preconceptions of a worldwide communist conspiracy, despite
the horrendous destruction and slaughter and despite Ho Chi Minh's
many overtures for peace. By 1946 the U.S. had switched from supporting
national liberation to paying for the perpetuation of French colonial
domination of Indo-China. When the U.S. assumed command after the
French defeat, U.S. leaders followed the "ultimate illogic: war is
the course of prudence…until the case for peace is proved under impossible
rules of evidence-or until the enemy surrenders." Fulbright similarly
exposes the irrationality of U.S. handling of the Cuban missile crisis,
which weakened Kruschev and strengthened the Soviet military and political
hard-liners demanding a stronger military. U.S. new anti-"Red" China
policy, despite China's many accommodations, is also denounced. They
were communists, and that was all that mattered. And this fanatical
fear and hatred produced two awful, insane wars in Asia. As always,
Fulbright is aware of the power of myths and words: had North Vietnam,
North Korea, and China not been labeled "communist" neither war would
have occurred. Out of its "virulent sanctimoniousness," communist
countries were "lost" in hell. The analysis of intolerant puritanism
as the ruinous source of U.S. anticommunism predominates in the essay,
but the case for alternative democratic humanism, as always, is also
given voice. The U.S. might have supported Vietnam's independence,
as President Roosevelt did. It might have supported the United Nations
as the peacemaking leader it was meant to be, but the U.S. never treated
the U.N. as a "world security community," preferring its own self-righteous,
phobic, militarism and empire for security. C. Speeches, including
addresses to the Senate During the last years of 1969 and early 1970s,
Fulbright gave many speeches and lectures around the country to induce
the public to call its leaders to account for their actions. In "How
to Prevent Future Vietnams" (May 6, 1969), presented to Business Executives
for Vietnam Peace, Fulbright emphasizes two aspects of militarism.
Presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon were ignorant of Asia, an ignorance
that intensified bigoted anticommunism, and all lied and increased
secrecy. Simultaneously, Congress, abandoning its responsibilities
for foreign policy out of a corrupting patriotism, relinquished its
war-making power and turned it over to the usurping executives. How
prevent future Vietnams? Fulbright offers four remedies: 1) a better
informed public and Congress, both about the world and about the dysfunctions
of presidential power, 2) a greater focus on political language in
education to increase the number of critical minds able to distinguish
myths from realitis--.e.g, the "domino theory," "expansionist Chins,"
3) a Congress committed to Constitutional responsibilities, 4) a more
cautious attitude toward military involvement in wars, 5) greater
consideration of real U.S. national interests, which Vietnam was not.
Again, the twin humanist-puritan poles of Fulbright's world view directs
his argument. Fulbright's speech to the National War College May 19,
1969, "Dimensions of Security," brings his philosophy about ends and
means and humanism/puritanism into the den of officer-corps lions.
Opening with a joke (a rare technique for Fulbright), he makes shrewd
use of it: the military is a hostage of politicians. His next move
also indicates the preparation for this special audience: he is there,
he says, to criticize the Vietnam War and militarism, not military
officers. Then Fulbright lays out his historical case of Vietnam as
a nationalist insurgency long engaged in a struggle for independence
under Ho Chi Minh. He explains how U.S. global commitments are undermining
U.S. democracy. He asserts the purpose of U.S. foreign policy to be
the "preservation of constitutional government," not the imitation
of totalitarianism. He reminds the officers that "fantasies of menace,"
threats of war, and wars increase the power of the executive branch
of government and prepares for despotism. For 30 years, he declares,
the country has erred on the side of military means while allowing
democratic ends to become enfeebled. This leads into a remarkably
dense deprecation of the price of empire. In short time and a few
pages, offers nine arguments for the officers' contemplation. He identifies
the U.S. as a power and as a society. A society creates and replenishes
economic, political, educational, medical, moral, and cultural resources;
they are its true wealth. A power, in contrast, uses the wealth. For
thirty years the U.S. has used and therefore has diminished U.S. wealth.
I will quickly touch upon the other expenditures of militarism, wars,
and the Vietnam War he exhibits to the officers: The governing elites
have increased authoritarian government by concentrating power in
the Executive, who now creates international "agreements" never ratified
by the Senate; that is, unconstitutionally. They have alienated the
youth by a war it does not believe in. They have not rebuilt cities,
not built schools and houses, not overcome poverty, not combated crime,
pollution, and urban ugliness. They are destroying the environment.
They have tremendously enlarged the military-industrial-labor-academic
complex," creating millions of citizens with a "vested interest in
an economy geared to war," so that every weapons system or military
installation has a constituency." They have created a potlatch policy
of defeating the Soviet Union by spending them into bankruptcy in
a competitive orgy of mutual waste and destruction. They have introduced
the military as "a vigorous partisan in our politics." And they have
created "chronic warfare and intervention." Such great concentration
of unregulated power threatens the nation with tyranny. If the U.S.
democracy is defeated, it will come from these sources, not from the
Soviet Union or China. It's a more lively and clever speech than the
one to the businessmen previously described, or at Denison University,
April 18, 1969, and certainly demanded close attention from the officers,
the criticisms flow so rapidly. And many sentences possess sharp point-e.g.,
"Mistakes are not liquidated with glory." This speech is Fulbright
at his most polemical, humanist best. D. Television Interviews The
sharp division between Fulbright's opposition to war, the Vietnam
War, and U.S. militiarism, and the policies and rhetoric of the ruling
elites is illuminated during television interviews. Under hawkish
questioning by Joseph Kraft on "Face the Nation," CBS (April 27, 1969),
Fulbright strongly criticized the U.S. on numerous levels: the president's
failure to agree to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the sanctity
of the military budget, military research in behavioral sciences (a
strong sign of militarism), military waste, failure to negotiate an
ABM treaty to deescalate the nuclear arms race, the U.S. as militaristic
as the S.U. (mirror images), U.s. leaders constantly making inflammatory
and provocative accusations of S.U. planning a first strike, of failure
to return to the principles of the 1954 Geneva agreement for free
elections in Vietnam for the people to determine their own future
(blocked by the U.S.), the war alienating and forcing the best young
people to leave the country (while "the raw material for the brownshirts
are staying"!), the madness of haggling over the number of nuclear
missiles and chemical and biological weapons when the capacity to
destroy life already exists manifold. A few times Fulbright shifts
into a verbal register seldom sensed in his writings-of sarcasm, as
when Kraft asked him about patriotic duty to defend the nation during
war, and Fulbright warns that there is a danger of criticizing the
U.S. since "everyone knows we're good people, that we are peace-loving,
that we've never fought a war that wasn't justified." It's a momentary
revelation of an angry Fulbright concentrated against the puritan
militarism he perceived to be destroying the democracy and humanism
he loved. E. Senate Hearings Fulbright's many years in the Senate
produced transcripts too numerous for easy generalization, but in
his biography of Fulbright, Randall Woods gives some brief accounts
and quotations. One example reveals Fulbright to be both an aggressive
prosecutor and public relations tactician. During hearings on Nixon's
antiballistics missiles (ABM) program, Fulbright pressed Assistant
Secretary of Defense David Packard to name one outside expert the
Department had consulted. After several evasions, Packard named Wolfgang
Panofsky. A half hour later, Panofsky phoned the hearing room to tell
Fulbright Packard had lied. The next day Fulbright held a news conference
to denounce the ABM program as a "political gimmick" (Woods 522).
F. Letters Of the letters I have read, all are brief and mostly ceremonial,
but one subject is new. Fulbright's disgust with the public appears
only in private letters, as in his 1972 letter to Arthur Schlesinger,
in which he refers to the Pentagon "brainwashing our poor, benighted
people." In his public statements, obviously with elections in mind,
Fulbright never depicts the public as unenlightened, but they are
always beset by Pentagon and White House propaganda. References By
Fulbright: Books: The Arrogance of Power. Vintage, 1966. The Crippled
Giant: American Foreign Policy and Its Domestic Consequences. Vintage,
1972. Old Myths and New Realities. Random House, 1964. The Pentagon
Propaganda Machine. Vintage, 1971. The Price of Empire. Pantheon,
1989. With Seth Tillman. Articles: "Foreign Relations and Constitutional
Government in America." Newsday "The Governance of the Pentagon."
Texas Observer (Dec. 25, 1970) 12-13. "The High Cost of Secrecy."
The Progressive (Sept. 1971). "Reflections: In Thrall to Fear." New
Yorker (January 8, 1972). "The Wars in Your future." Look (Dec. 2,
1969). Speeches, Lectures: "The Condition of American Society." Salvation
Army (Dec. 3, 1969). Critique of Vietnam War, empire, and militarism.
National War College, DC (May 19, 1969). "How to Prevent Future Vietnams."
Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace, Baltimore (May 6, 1969).
"Militarism and American Democracy." Denison U, Granville, OH (April
18, 1969). ??speech? "On the Sending of U.S. Aircraft to Spain" (Oct.
30, 1969). Report of speech by The Daily Princetonian (May 2, 1969)
(no text, F. spoke from notes) Withdraw from Vietnam. Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies (Sept. 25, 1969). Withdraw
from Vietnam. Washington University (Dec. 10, 1969). ??speech? "World
Peace Through World Understanding." Television Interviews: Misc. topics
(nonprolif. Treaty, military budget and waste, ABM, USSR). CBS Face
the Nation (April 27, 1969). Withdraw from Vietnam (Oct. 21, 1969).
Withdraw from Vietnam. ABC's Issues and Answers (June 22, 1969). Remarks
on Senate Floor or at Committee Hearing: On "Amendment of Foreign
Military Sales Act-Conference Report." Congressional Record (Jan.
2, 1971). CBS documentary "The Selling of the Pentagon." Cong. Rec.
(May 17, 1971). Denial of information to Congress. Cong. Rec. (Nov.
8, 1971). Draft and standing army. Cong. Rec. (June 2, 1971). "Question
Time on Laos." Cong. Rec. (March 30, 1971). Secret war in Laos. Cong.
Rec. (Oct. 4, 1971). "Vietnam on Its Merits" (Sept. 30, 1971). Withdrawing
troops from Germany. Cong. Rec., (Sept. 15, 1971). Letters: Arthur
Schlesinger (April 25, 1972), on Pentagon brainwashing the public.
(Thanks to Betty Austin, archivist of the Fulbright collection at
the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, for making these writing
easily accessible to me.) About Prose Style Bennett, James R. Prose
Style: A Historical Approach Through Studies. Chandler, 1971. About
Fulbright: Bennett, James R. "Peace Profile: J. William Fulbright."
Peace Review 11.4 (1999), 609-615. Powell, Lee. J. William Fulbright
and America's Lost Crusade: Fulbright's Opposition to the Vietnam
War. Rose, 1984. Woods, Randall. Fulbright: A Biography. Cambridge
UP, 1995. General on U. S. Militarism and Empire: Allman, T. D. Unmanifest
Destiny: Mayhem and Illusion in American Foreign Policy-From Monroe
Doctrine to Reagan's War in El Salvador. Dial, 1984. Bender, David.
The American Military: Opposing Viewpoints. Greenhaven, 1983. Bennett,
James R. Political Prisoners and Trials. McFarland, 1995. Blum, William.
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War
II. Common Courage, 1995. ____. Rogue State. Common Courage, 2000.
Bonner, Raymond. Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador.
Times, 1984. Brandes, Stuart. Warhogs: A History of War Profits in
America. Kentucky UP 1997. Caldicott, Helen. Missile Envy. Morrow,
1984. Chomsky, Noam. The Chomsky Reader. New York, Pantheon. ____.
9-11. Seven Stories, 2001. ____, and Edward Herman. The Washington
Connection & Third World Fascism. South End, 1979. Cook, Fred. The
Warfare State. Macmillan, 1962. Davis, Kenneth, ed. Arms Industry
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FULBRIGHT AGAINST MILITARISM (paper presented
at College English Association April 2002)
"J. William Fulbright Against Militarism." Dick Bennett
"The American people have become more and more accustomed to militarism,
to uniforms, to the cult of the gun and to the violence of combat."
Militarism, U.S.A. by Col. James A. Donovan "Since 1945 American presidents
have wielded power over national security and foreign policy far beyond
the dreams of tyrants." The Rockets' Red Glare by Richard Barnet "As
we have developed into a society whose most prominent business is
violence, one of the leading professions inevitably is soldiering."
J. William Fulbright "…the effect of war and the constant threat of
war are carrying us toward despotism." J. William Fulbright
II. Fulbright's Analysis of Militarism
We know now how accurate former Senator J. William Fulbright was in
his analyses of U.S. militarism in its many guises. The following
characteristics are found in Fulbright's books and articles and speeches
during the 1960s and 1970s. 16. Militarism reflects and in turn causes
a fearful, xenophobic society that constantly creates dehumanized
enemies; 17. It teaches the inevitability of war and reinforces the
widespread expectation of war in order to continually prepare for
war; 18. Its narrow point of view excludes political, social, economic,
and moral complexities; 19. It develops an enormous National Security
State seeking military superiority over other nations; 20. It has
a powerful president committed to war, violence, and armed force for
solving international problems; 21. It maintains a large officer corps
dedicated to the business of violence and competition for power; 22.
It is interventionist and imperialistic, invading sovereign nations
unconstitutionally and illegally; for example, Guatemala in 1954;
23. It is self-righteous, believing in U.S. virtue against worldwide
wrongdoers; 24. It turns the legitimate desire for national security
into an excuse and method for internal repression and external domination;
25. It weakens the Senate's constitutional authority over warmaking;
26. It gives the military the highest priority in access to national
resources, its budget and that of its accompanying military-industrial
complex are virtually sacrosanct; and the military is integrated into
the web of the country's economic life; 27. It has a massive, costly,
wasteful military bureaucracy; 28. It creates a military propaganda
machine to create favorable public and congressional opinion toward
an "honorable" and "comforting" military; 29. It raises patriotism
over criticism, individual autonomy, investigation, and dissent; 30.
It operates on a permanent war economy with enormous budgets going
to war industries placed throughout the nation 16. Consequently, it
is reinforced by the millions of self-interested, martial employees
who profit from the military-industrial complex throughout the US
web of grassroots militarism; 19. It is dominated by powerful military
corporations that spend billions of dollars to advertise, lobby, and
bribe for their economic interests; 20. It erodes national moral values
through war crimes, waste, bullying, and other anti-social behaviors;
19. Because of its many wars, it has countless veterans organizations
constantly lauding war heroism and expressing nationalism, patriotism,
chauvinism, and jingoism; 26. The military are beyond effective criticism
and control; since Pres. Truman cashiered Gen. MacArthur for gross
insubordination few high ranking officers have fired, and military
officers are among the most honored and popular people in the nation;
27. Its civilian leaders have embraced the military outlook and often
outdo the generals in the pursuit of goals through armed force; 28.
It disregards international laws and treaties that do not suit its
national interests; 29. It operates perhaps the largest propaganda
and conditioning center in the world-the corporate-military-White
House-mainstream media complex; 30. Deception and secrecy are accepted
as a normal fact of life; both presidents Johnson and Nixon hid their
unconstitutional and illegal actions from the public to increase and
prolong the war; 31. Civil liberties are significantly suppressed,
the Bill of Rights severely damaged; during the Vietnam War the US
had more political prisoners than any other country on earth, and
the FBI secretly resorted to countless illegal tactics to silence
dissenters. Fulbright discerned how thoroughly these influences, woven
into the fabric of U.S. society, undermined democracy. That Fulbright
so strongly opposed militarism "as a system of values [in] direct
threat to our democracy" should surprise no one who is familiar with
his commitment to humanistic, generous, cosmopolitan, public-spirited,
legal, rationalist, tolerant, educational, cooperative, accommodationist,
constitutionalist, diplomatic, and dissenting values, and his opposition
to imperialists, dictators, right-wing extremists, fanatics, absolutists,
bellicosity, lying, ignorance, xenophobia, arrogance, and wars. What
might not be familiar is his analysis of the root cause of militarism:
puritanical intolerance. II. Intolerant Puritanism Fulbright's resistance
to militarism issued through the written and spoken word-through books,
articles, speeches, interviews, Senate committee hearings, and letters..
F. Books The titles of Fulbright's books refer to militarism, sometimes
explicitly: Old Myths and New Realities (1964), The Arrogance of Power
(1966), The Pentagon Propaganda Machine 1971), The Crippled Giant
(1972), The Price of Empire (1989). All of these books deal with the
subject of militarism, more or less. The Arrogance of Power illustrates
the Fulbright of the mid-1960s, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee and nascent opponent of the Vietnam War. In the book's Conclusion,
Fulbright establishes a duality that will shape all of his public
utterances on U. S. militarism: the conflict between "democratic humanism"
of tolerance and accommodation, which Fulbright espouses, and "intolerant
puritanism," the root of U.S. militarism. These two principles, one
leading to international amity, the other to militarism and war, unifies
each Part and each Chapter and the book as a whole. Micro- or stylistic
characteristics of The Arrogance of Power range from smaller organizing
methods to paragraph design, to language, and to syntax. To emphasize
his arguments within his central dualism of the "two Americas," Fulbright
draws upon numerous historical figures from Adlai Stevenson (a democratic
humanist) to Theodore Roosevelt (a puritanical, superpatriot imperialist).
The heaping up of argument and evidence and the drawing upon historical
and literary analogies and examples are ancient tactics in controversy.
For example, in Chapter 1 the pathology of militarism and empire is
illustrated rapidly by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Spanish-American
War of 1898, and WWI of 1914. Or in Part II, separate chapters discuss
the militarism motivating the US invasions of the Dominican Republic
and Vietnam, and US hostility toward China. Fulbright also draws upon
the rich heritage of U. S. literature-from Mark Twain and Horatio
Alger to Archibald MacLeish. And the book contains many figures of
speech; e.g., the US as a gambler in Vietnam. And a frequent device
is irony; I mean his constant recognition of the ironies of US foreign
policy, the discrepancies which vitiate its effectiveness; e.g., the
giving or selling arms as causing wars, as with Pakistan against India
in 1965, which was stopped by the Soviet Union's mediation. Many paragraphs
are constructed very effectively. In the following paragaph example
Fulbright demonstrates how well he understands the effectiveness of
an opening, short, rhetorical question, followed by a long sentence
composed of accumulating clauses which gradually lengthen before dropping
back in conclusion (sentence 2 clausal word length: 5, 5, 6, 14, 16,
11), and of repetition ("men" five times, and the book proves that
repeated gender allegation!)(p. 248, the entire paragraph is admirable):
"Who are the self-appointed emissaries of God who have wrought so
much violence in the world? They are men with doctrines, men of faith
and idealism, men who confuse power with virtue, men who believe in
some cause without doubt and practice their beliefs without scruple,
men who cease to be human beings with normal preferences for work
and fun and family and become instead living, breathing embodiments
of some faith or ideology." And by the way, in these two sentence
is the book in microcosm, rational humanism challenging fanatical
puritanism. And numerous individual sentences possess trenchancy;
e.g., " Again and again, in many parts of the world, we have engaged
in enormous exertions at enormous cost, not so much for the sake of
our greatness as for its shadow" (199). All of these techniques, drawn
from the humanities, contribute to Fulbright's central aim to persuade
readers to imagine humanistic instead of puritan militaristic foreign
policy alternatives and to seek an empathy and magnanimity even for
enemies in order to embrace accommodation instead of slaughter. The
book is organized into three advancing parts, accompanied by an introduction
and a conclusion. The Introduction seeks a cause of militarism and
wars in the "arrogance of power," which he defines as the "psychological
need that nations seem to have in order to prove that they are bigger,
better, or stronger than other nations. Implicit in this drive is
the assumption…that [armed] force is the ultimate proof of superiority-that
when a nation shows that it has the stronger army, it is also proving
that it has better people, better institutions, better principles,
and, in general, a better civilization." Several features of militarism
are described here (self-righteousness, large military establishment,
empire), and its roots found in the pressures of pride and pain and
the pathologies of hopes and fears. These pressures and pathologies
have produced horrendous slaughters in the past, but now, with the
development of nuclear weapons and ballistics missiles, they threaten
the survival of the planet. Traditional militaristic domination is
no longer tolerable. The "tendency of great nations to equate power
with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission" (the
"missionary instinct") must end. This is preeminently a United States
problem since it was such a great power. The time had urgently come
for a re-examination of "'all the attitudes of our ancestors." This
task Fulbright assays in The Arrogance of Power, his contribution
to "the patriot's duty of dissent." Part I, "The Higher Patriotism,"
is about dissent. In Chapter 1, criticism is praised as "a higher
form of patriotism," as opposed to the militarist intolerance of dissent,
which Fulbright perceives to be hardening in both corporations and
government into "conformity with a barren and oppressive orthodoxy."
Here he defends Vietnam War protesters, and denounces unjust U.S.
wars, and praises universities as places where faculty and students
are encouraged to examine official and ancestral ideas, devoted not
to country but to what the country might be. Chapter 2 extols the
U.S. Congress and especially the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
similarly as a forum of diverse opinions and a channel of communication
between the people and their government. But he laments the reduced
role of Congress as the President's has strengthened, so that the
members of Congress were increasingly falling in line with presidential
absolutism (Cuban missile crisis, Dominican intervention, Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution, bipartisan acceptance of wars). The structure of
chapters 1 and 2 are identical: the patriotic duty of dissent against
oppressive government leaders bent on war. And Fulbright attends to
the language of militarism too. He deplores the slogans of empire-the
shot fired at Concord being heard around the world, manifest destiny,
making the world safe for democracy, unconditional surrender in WWII;
the "voodoo" maledictions against evil enemies as though "to ward
off evil spirits"; the absolute commitments "vital to a free world"
no matter how unwise; the words of ideas acceptable only in derision-appeasement
for example. All to prevent unorthodox ideas. All opposed to Fulbright's
democratic humanistic values in the practice of foreign policy. The
messianic zeal of both the Soviet Union and the U.S. that fuels militarism
are rejected, as is the imperial impulse to intervene in all of the
revolutionary and potentially revolutionary societies of the world.
Here he examines U.S. policies toward the Soviet Union, the intervention
of the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Vietnam, and China, in each case
pleading for understanding and generosity as the basis of our foreign
policy, instead of armed force. Part III, "Reconciling Hostile Worlds,"
becomes philosophical, concentrating on the humanist concern for human
needs and irrational human behavior. Fulbright explores how to create
"a state of mind in which neither side considered war as a likely
eventuality." He tries to understand how to treat national paranoiacs.
He offers a "golden mean" scale of national pride: too little (inferiority)
and too much (arrogance) both dangerous; the aim of all should be
balance and reason wherein lies safety. He extols the humanities for
their teaching empathy-seeing the world as others see it. As in Part
II, he urges the U.S. not to apply its ideology and practices to other
countries, but to assist them in their own development. One chapter
offers an alternative policy toward Vietnam that would have prevented
six more years of war and 2 million deaths. Another, "Rebuilding Bridges,"
explains how to reconcile with the Soviet Union, reunite with Europe,
and redirect resources for the health and education of US people.
And another offers a new method of foreign aid away from military
intervention and toward greatly expanded economic aid for the poor,
with the stipulation that it drop bilateral for international aid
conducted as a community enterprise, through the UN and other agencies.
Here Fulbright's empathy with the feelings of foreign people finds
its strongest expression, as he asks readers to imagine themselves
in the place of recipients of US aid, or imagine receive aid from
foreigners. Here also is a strong attack on foreign aid as military
intervention, and an equally strong suggestion that the US and USSR
join together in cooperative fiscal aid to the needy world. But The
Arrogance of Power seldom mentions the word militarism. Fulbright's
explicit and devastating analysis and condemnation of the militarism
of the U.S. military-industrial complex-"its violence, its arms race,
its enormous wealth, and its benighting influence throughout U.S.
society"-- comes in The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. After describing
and denouncing various Pentagon public relations brainwashing programs,
in the last, summative chapter, "Dangers of the Military Sell," Fulbright
packs a dozen manifestations of U.S. militarism into ten pages: its
narrow point of view that excludes political, social, economic, and
moral complexities; its resort to armed force for solutions to international
problems rather than to negotiation and diplomacy; its imperialism-for
example, its development of rapid deployment forces trained and eager
for foreign interventions and counterinsurgency; its erosion of moral
values (e.g. My Lai and other war crimes); its violation of international
laws and treaties (e.g. bombing neutral Cambodia and Laos); the increasing
presidential power and secrecy; and on and on. His last book, repeats
the structure of The Arrogance of Power but in an angrier and gloomier
tone. Written 14 years after leaving public office, The Price of Empire
again denounces the military-industrial complex-owners, workers, and
their elected representatives--for distracting the nation from its
human needs, and out of self-interest making violence "the nation's
leading industry." The military obsession was destroying the nation
by creating mammoth budget and trade deficits that replace investments
in education, health, and other urgent foundations of true security;
while the country's best brains worked for the complex, instead of
improving the lives of people. In this pessimistic book the arrogance
of power seems unable to change its old ways. The only hope was in
international education and a strong international organization. If
future generations of leaders can gain the experience of cultural
exchange, then a cooperative instead of a violent future is possible.
Fulbright grew less and less hopeful that US leaders and public would
embrace his peacemaking program. But in the year 2000 UNESCO's embraced
his principles for its Culture of Peace campaign: Active nonviolence;
mobilizing people to build understanding, tolerance, and solidarity,
instead of fighting an enemy; affirming democratic participation instead
of hierarchical power downward; instead of secrecy a free flow of
info; power sharing among men, women, and children; cooperative sustainability
of the environment. G. Articles Inevitably, the unifying principle
in Fulbright's books of democratic humanism in opposition to intolerant
puritanism, structures his articles as well "We have allowed our national
executive to acquire almost dictatorial powers in the field of foreign
policy," Fulbright complains in Look Magazine in 1969. Such power
has grown by accretion through presidential agreements which have
unconstitutionally bypassed the Senate yet are as binding as treaties.
Fifty thousand troops are in Thailand without consent of Congress,
yet "Congress, and Congress alone, has the constitutional power to
declare war." "The 'dog of war,' which Jefferson thought had been
tightly leashed to the legislature, has passed under the virtually
exclusive control of the Executive." But this aspect of militarism
can be checked if Congress will retrieve its constitutional power.
First, the U.S. must leave Vietnam. Then Congress should review all
foreign commitments, and each decade thereafter. "We must find ways
of liberating each new generation from the burden of fighting and
dying to honor the commitments-and obsessions-of other, earlier generations
[presidents]." If not, we will experience "chronic warfare, burgeoning
expense, and the militarization of American life. Our Government would
become what it is already a long way toward becoming, an elective
dictatorship." A much longer article in the New Yorker in 1972 opposes
four aspects of intolerant puritanism become militarism: 1) the philosophy
of "a permanent, purposeless struggle for power and advantage," particularly
fanatical anti-communism, 2) imperialism, the "Truman Doctrine and
its consummation in Vietnam," 3) the myth of a virtuous USA besieged
by evil enemies, 3) the "sham idealism of the 'responsibilities of
power.'" Because President Truman and his advisers did not believe
in the United Nations and hated the Soviet Union based upon the basest
of untested assumptions, they eviscerated the UN Charter within a
year and a half of its creation by launching The Truman Doctrine.
Here is where the critical intellect failed the nation by not stopping
Sovietphobia at its outset. But anti-communism had become a faith
like that of medieval theology that freed people from critical thinking.
The hatred for Hitler and Nazi Germany was transferred to the Soviet
Union and other communist nations and groups. Quickly, U.S. Cold War,
Truman Doctrine, anti-communism produced an alliance with a brutal
Greek dictatorship, a policy frequently repeated. Despite the willingness
of the communist states to negotiate, the pernicious ideological anti-communist
blindness, possessing almost the status of revealed truth, prevented
U.S. leaders and the populace at large from perceiving the distortions.
In this article, Fulbright further probes into the motives generating
enmity and empire. The desire to be Number 1 dominated presidents
Johnson and Nixon and uncounted millions. The national tendency to
extol competition instead of cooperation was influential. Fear of
losing the race explains why the nation "squandered twenty billion
dollars or more getting to the moon." The Vietnam War was the worst
example of the We Are No. 1 pathology. The policy-making elite was
"unable to distinguish between the national interest and their own
personal pride." Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton confessed
that we were at war in Vietnam 10% for the Vietnamese people, and
70% "to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat." And of course from Eisenhower
to Nixon, without examining the history of Vietnam or the history
of communism in Asia, U.S. leaders uncritically followed their erroneous
Cold War preconceptions of a worldwide communist conspiracy, despite
the horrendous destruction and slaughter and despite Ho Chi Minh's
many overtures for peace. By 1946 the U.S. had switched from supporting
national liberation to paying for the perpetuation of French colonial
domination of Indo-China. When the U.S. assumed command after the
French defeat, U.S. leaders followed the "ultimate illogic: war is
the course of prudence…until the case for peace is proved under impossible
rules of evidence-or until the enemy surrenders." Fulbright similarly
exposes the irrationality of U.S. handling of the Cuban missile crisis,
which weakened Kruschev and strengthened the Soviet military and political
hard-liners demanding a stronger military. U.S. new anti-"Red" China
policy, despite China's many accommodations, is also denounced. They
were communists, and that was all that mattered. And this fanatical
fear and hatred produced two awful, insane wars in Asia. As always,
Fulbright is aware of the power of myths and words: had North Vietnam,
North Korea, and China not been labeled "communist" neither war would
have occurred. Out of its "virulent sanctimoniousness," communist
countries were "lost" in hell. The analysis of intolerant puritanism
as the ruinous source of U.S. anticommunism predominates in the essay,
but the case for alternative democratic humanism, as always, is also
given voice. The U.S. might have supported Vietnam's independence,
as President Roosevelt did. It might have supported the United Nations
as the peacemaking leader it was meant to be, but the U.S. never treated
the U.N. as a "world security community," preferring its own self-righteous,
phobic, militarism and empire for security. H. Speeches, including
addresses to the Senate During the last years of 1969 and early 1970s,
Fulbright gave many speeches and lectures around the country to induce
the public to call its leaders to account for their actions. In "How
to Prevent Future Vietnams" (May 6, 1969), presented to Business Executives
for Vietnam Peace, Fulbright emphasizes two aspects of militarism.
Presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon were ignorant of Asia, an ignorance
that intensified bigoted anticommunism, and all lied and increased
secrecy. Simultaneously, Congress, abandoning its responsibilities
for foreign policy out of a corrupting patriotism, relinquished its
war-making power and turned it over to the usurping executives. How
prevent future Vietnams? Fulbright offers four remedies: 1) a better
informed public and Congress, both about the world and about the dysfunctions
of presidential power, 2) a greater focus on political language in
education to increase the number of critical minds able to distinguish
myths from realitis--.e.g, the "domino theory," "expansionist Chins,"
3) a Congress committed to Constitutional responsibilities, 4) a more
cautious attitude toward military involvement in wars, 5) greater
consideration of real U.S. national interests, which Vietnam was not.
Again, the twin humanist-puritan poles of Fulbright's world view directs
his argument. Fulbright's speech to the National War College May 19,
1969, "Dimensions of Security," brings his philosophy about ends and
means and humanism/puritanism into the den of officer-corps lions.
Opening with a joke (a rare technique for Fulbright), he makes shrewd
use of it: the military is a hostage of politicians. His next move
also indicates the preparation for this special audience: he is there,
he says, to criticize the Vietnam War and militarism, not military
officers. Then Fulbright lays out his historical case of Vietnam as
a nationalist insurgency long engaged in a struggle for independence
under Ho Chi Minh. He explains how U.S. global commitments are undermining
U.S. democracy. He asserts the purpose of U.S. foreign policy to be
the "preservation of constitutional government," not the imitation
of totalitarianism. He reminds the officers that "fantasies of menace,"
threats of war, and wars increase the power of the executive branch
of government and prepares for despotism. For 30 years, he declares,
the country has erred on the side of military means while allowing
democratic ends to become enfeebled. This leads into a remarkably
dense deprecation of the price of empire. In short time and a few
pages, offers nine arguments for the officers' contemplation. He identifies
the U.S. as a power and as a society. A society creates and replenishes
economic, political, educational, medical, moral, and cultural resources;
they are its true wealth. A power, in contrast, uses the wealth. For
thirty years the U.S. has used and therefore has diminished U.S. wealth.
I will quickly touch upon the other expenditures of militarism, wars,
and the Vietnam War he exhibits to the officers: The governing elites
have increased authoritarian government by concentrating power in
the Executive, who now creates international "agreements" never ratified
by the Senate; that is, unconstitutionally. They have alienated the
youth by a war it does not believe in. They have not rebuilt cities,
not built schools and houses, not overcome poverty, not combated crime,
pollution, and urban ugliness. They are destroying the environment.
They have tremendously enlarged the military-industrial-labor-academic
complex," creating millions of citizens with a "vested interest in
an economy geared to war," so that every weapons system or military
installation has a constituency." They have created a potlatch policy
of defeating the Soviet Union by spending them into bankruptcy in
a competitive orgy of mutual waste and destruction. They have introduced
the military as "a vigorous partisan in our politics." And they have
created "chronic warfare and intervention." Such great concentration
of unregulated power threatens the nation with tyranny. If the U.S.
democracy is defeated, it will come from these sources, not from the
Soviet Union or China. It's a more lively and clever speech than the
one to the businessmen previously described, or at Denison University,
April 18, 1969, and certainly demanded close attention from the officers,
the criticisms flow so rapidly. And many sentences possess sharp point-e.g.,
"Mistakes are not liquidated with glory." This speech is Fulbright
at his most polemical, humanist best. D. Television Interviews The
sharp division between Fulbright's opposition to war, the Vietnam
War, and U.S. militiarism, and the policies and rhetoric of the ruling
elites is illuminated during television interviews. Under hawkish
questioning by Joseph Kraft on "Face the Nation," CBS (April 27, 1969),
Fulbright strongly criticized the U.S. on numerous levels: the president's
failure to agree to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the sanctity
of the military budget, military research in behavioral sciences (a
strong sign of militarism), military waste, failure to negotiate an
ABM treaty to deescalate the nuclear arms race, the U.S. as militaristic
as the S.U. (mirror images), U.s. leaders constantly making inflammatory
and provocative accusations of S.U. planning a first strike, of failure
to return to the principles of the 1954 Geneva agreement for free
elections in Vietnam for the people to determine their own future
(blocked by the U.S.), the war alienating and forcing the best young
people to leave the country (while "the raw material for the brownshirts
are staying"!), the madness of haggling over the number of nuclear
missiles and chemical and biological weapons when the capacity to
destroy life already exists manifold. A few times Fulbright shifts
into a verbal register seldom sensed in his writings-of sarcasm, as
when Kraft asked him about patriotic duty to defend the nation during
war, and Fulbright warns that there is a danger of criticizing the
U.S. since "everyone knows we're good people, that we are peace-loving,
that we've never fought a war that wasn't justified." It's a momentary
revelation of an angry Fulbright concentrated against the puritan
militarism he perceived to be destroying the democracy and humanism
he loved. E. Senate Hearings Fulbright's many years in the Senate
produced transcripts too numerous for easy generalization, but in
his biography of Fulbright, Randall Woods gives some brief accounts
and quotations. One example reveals Fulbright to be both an aggressive
prosecutor and public relations tactician. During hearings on Nixon's
antiballistics missiles (ABM) program, Fulbright pressed Assistant
Secretary of Defense David Packard to name one outside expert the
Department had consulted. After several evasions, Packard named Wolfgang
Panofsky. A half hour later, Panofsky phoned the hearing room to tell
Fulbright Packard had lied. The next day Fulbright held a news conference
to denounce the ABM program as a "political gimmick" (Woods 522).
F. Letters Of the letters I have read, all are brief and mostly ceremonial,
but one subject is new. Fulbright's disgust with the public appears
only in private letters, as in his 1972 letter to Arthur Schlesinger,
in which he refers to the Pentagon "brainwashing our poor, benighted
people." In his public statements, obviously with elections in mind,
Fulbright never depicts the public as unenlightened, but they are
always beset by Pentagon and White House propaganda. The Stylistic
Tradition: Some Familiar Generalizations In The Rise of Modern Prose
Style, Robert Adolph declares the "chief aim" of nonfiction prose
to be "useful public communication," made to seem "rational." As a
linguist, Adolph tries to gain precision by classifying styles into
four categories: 1) normal collocations, normal grammar; 2) unusual
collocations, normal grammar; 3) normal collocations, unusual grammar;
and 4) unusual collocations, unusual grammar. Speaking very roughly,
the development of nonfiction prose from the Elizabethan era to the
Restoration is from the 4th category to the first. Fulbright clearly
writes in the first, or Restoration tradition as it became increasingy
"normal" or "correct," plain and utilitarian. Yet we cannot fully
compare Fulbright's writing to that of Addison in the 18th century,
whose style was described as "always equable, and always easy, without
glowing words or pointed sentences," for as we have seen, Fulbright
often expressed his indignation about intolerant puritanism in trenchantly
indignant sentences and words. But neither leave the reader in the
dark with their lucid ordering of ideas easily understood, and this
is even more true of Fulbright's shorter sentences. References By
Fulbright: Books: The Arrogance of Power. Vintage, 1966. The Crippled
Giant: American Foreign Policy and Its Domestic Consequences. Vintage,
1972. Old Myths and New Realities. Random House, 1964. The Pentagon
Propaganda Machine. Vintage, 1971. The Price of Empire. Pantheon,
1989. With Seth Tillman. Articles: "Foreign Relations and Constitutional
Government in America." Newsday "The Governance of the Pentagon."
Texas Observer (Dec. 25, 1970) 12-13. "The High Cost of Secrecy."
The Progressive (Sept. 1971). "Reflections: In Thrall to Fear." New
Yorker (January 8, 1972). "The Wars in Your future." Look (Dec. 2,
1969). Speeches, Lectures: "The Condition of American Society." Salvation
Army (Dec. 3, 1969). Critique of Vietnam War, empire, and militarism.
National War College, DC (May 19, 1969). "How to Prevent Future Vietnams."
Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace, Baltimore (May 6, 1969).
"Militarism and American Democracy." Denison U, Granville, OH (April
18, 1969). ??speech? "On the Sending of U.S. Aircraft to Spain" (Oct.
30, 1969). Report of speech by The Daily Princetonian (May 2, 1969)
(no text, F. spoke from notes) Withdraw from Vietnam. Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies (Sept. 25, 1969). Withdraw
from Vietnam. Washington University (Dec. 10, 1969). ??speech? "World
Peace Through World Understanding." Television Interviews: Misc. topics
(nonprolif. Treaty, military budget and waste, ABM, USSR). CBS Face
the Nation (April 27, 1969). Withdraw from Vietnam (Oct. 21, 1969).
Withdraw from Vietnam. ABC's Issues and Answers (June 22, 1969). Remarks
on Senate Floor or at Committee Hearing: On "Amendment of Foreign
Military Sales Act-Conference Report." Congressional Record (Jan.
2, 1971). CBS documentary "The Selling of the Pentagon." Cong. Rec.
(May 17, 1971). Denial of information to Congress. Cong. Rec. (Nov.
8, 1971). Draft and standing army. Cong. Rec. (June 2, 1971). "Question
Time on Laos." Cong. Rec. (March 30, 1971). Secret war in Laos. Cong.
Rec. (Oct. 4, 1971). "Vietnam on Its Merits" (Sept. 30, 1971). Withdrawing
troops from Germany. Cong. Rec., (Sept. 15, 1971). Letters: Arthur
Schlesinger (April 25, 1972), on Pentagon brainwashing the public.
(Thanks to Betty Austin, archivist of the Fulbright collection at
the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, for making these writing
easily accessible to me.) About Prose Style Bennett, James R. Prose
Style: A Historical Approach Through Studies. Chandler, 1971. About
Fulbright: Bennett, James R. "Peace Profile: J. William Fulbright."
Peace Review 11.4 (1999), 609-615. Powell, Lee. J. William Fulbright
and America's Lost Crusade: Fulbright's Opposition to the Vietnam
War. Rose, 1984. Woods, Randall. Fulbright: A Biography. Cambridge
UP, 1995. General on U. S. Militarism and Empire: Allman, T. D. Unmanifest
Destiny: Mayhem and Illusion in American Foreign Policy-From Monroe
Doctrine to Reagan's War in El Salvador. Dial, 1984. Bender, David.
The American Military: Opposing Viewpoints. Greenhaven, 1983. Bennett,
James R. Political Prisoners and Trials. McFarland, 1995. Blum, William.
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War
II. Common Courage, 1995. ____. Rogue State. Common Courage, 2000.
Bonner, Raymond. Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador.
Times, 1984. Brandes, Stuart. Warhogs: A History of War Profits in
America. Kentucky UP 1997. Caldicott, Helen. Missile Envy. Morrow,
1984. Chomsky, Noam. The Chomsky Reader. New York, Pantheon. ____.
9-11. Seven Stories, 2001. ____, and Edward Herman. The Washington
Connection & Third World Fascism. South End, 1979. Cook, Fred. The
Warfare State. Macmillan, 1962. Davis, Kenneth, ed. Arms Industry
and America. Donovan, James. Militarism U.S.A. Scribner's, 1970. Dunn,
Timothy. The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992.
Austin: U of Texas, Center for Mexican-American Studies, 1996. Farhang,
Mansour. U.S. Imperialism. South End, 1981. Galbraith, John. How to
Control the Miliary. Doubleday, 1969. Gerson, Joseph. The Deadly Connection:
Nuclear War & U.S. Intervention. New Society, 1986. Goldstein, Robert.
Political Repression in Modern America. Schenkman, 1978. Gross, Bertram.
Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America. Evans, 1980. Halperin,
Morton, and Daniel Hoffman. Freedom vs. National Security, Secrecy,
and Surveillance. Chelsea, 1977. Hammond, William. Reporting Vietnam:
Media and Military at War. UP of Kansas, 1998. Hendrickson, Paul.
The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost
War. Knopf, 1996. Heise, Juergen. Minimum Disclosure: How the Pentagon
Manipulates the News. Norton, 1979. Herman, Edward. The Real Terror
Network. South End, 1982. Hooks, Gregory. Forging the Military-Industrial
Complex. U of Illinois P, 1991. Hunt, Michael. Ideology and Foreign
Policy. Yale UP, 1987. Jewett, The Captain American Complex. Keen,
Sam. Faces of the Enemy. Harper, 1986. Knoll, Erwin, and Judith McFadden,
eds. American Militarism 1970. Viking, 1969. Lens, Sidney. The Day
Before Doomsday. Beacon, 1977. ____. The Forging of the American Empire.
Crowell, 1971. ____. The Military Industrial Complex. United Church,
1970. Manno, Jack. Arming the Heavens: The Hidden Military Agenda
for Space, 1945-1995. Dodd, 1984. McCarthy, Eugene. First Things First:
New Priorities for America. Signet, 1968. McMaster, H. R. Dereliction
of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. HarperCollins, 1997. Melman, Seymour.
The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline. Simon &
Schuster, ____. Pentagon Capitalism. McGraw, 1970. McNamara, Robert.
Argument without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy.
Public Affairs, 1999. Mollenhoff, Clark. The Pentagon: Politics, Profit,
and Plunder. Putnam, 1976. Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. War Against the
Poor: Low Intensity Conflict and Christian Faith. Orbis, Prados, John.
Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World
War II Through Iranscam. Morrow, 1986. Quigley, John. The Ruses for
War: American Interventionism Since World War II. Prometheus, 1992.
Raymond, Jack. Power at the Pentagon. Harper, 1964. Reardon, Betty.
Sexism and the War System. Teachers College P, 1985. Sanford, Nevitt,
et al. Sanctions for Evil. Jossey-Bass, 1971. Schultz, Bud and Ruth.
It Did Happen Here. ____. The Price of Dissent Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration
Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860.
Wesleyan UP, 1973. Swomley, John, Jr. Press Agents of the Pentagon.
NCAC, 1953. VanDeMark, Brian. Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and
the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Oxford UP, 1991. Waddell, Brian.
The War Against the New Deal: World War II and American Democracy.
Northern Illinois UP, 2001. Wickert, David. "U.S. Soldiers Learn Ins,
Outs of Combat in Urban Areas." Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (January
26, 2000).
A PROFILE OF J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT published
in Peace Review
"The J. William Fulbright Peace Memorial and J. William Fulbright,"
James R. Bennett
The recent killings of children and teachers at schools in Jonesboro,
Arkansas, Littleton, Colorado, and elsewhere have caused a clamor
of diagnoses and denunciations over the origins of school violence
and our national violence. Drugs, guns, parents, schools, television,
and video games are blamed. Even children are condemned, and a cry
has arisen to prosecute youth as adult criminals. From President Clinton,
who declared that "killing is wrong," to the general citizen, the
nation is aroused over the violence. One context has been omitted-the
reinforcement of violence through the pervasive presence and even
glorification of war and warriors. Everywhere images of war and preparation
for war define masculinity through war. From the constant advertisements
of the war industries, the enormous war budgets, and consequent proliferation
of weapons (the U.S. the arms merchant of the world), to the reenactments
of Civil War battles, the Rambo and countless other combat films,
and war toys (lasers, tasers, swords, bazookas, fighter aircraft,
bombers), video games ("Duke Nukem" giving a bonus for the murder
of female characters), and the easy availability of guns, we live
in a system of violence in which boys and men learn that violence
is the best solution to many problems, a lesson taught particularly
by war. The conditioning works: a 1998 Gallup Poll indicated that
the military establishment was the most valued program for federal
funding. Our history and present system are part of a global condition,
in which since 1945 over 100 wars have slaughtered some 30 million
people. But we play out our lives within the legacy of 400 years of
national violence, and the international violence does not obscure
or exculpate the U. S.contribution to world disorder, with its two
dozen illegal invasions and bombings since the end of World War II.
U. S. participation in global aggression-from the President down to
school children-is awakening citizens to the necessity of finding
non-violent alternatives to shooting and bombing. Throughout the country,
hundreds of national and local organizations and their thousands of
members write, speak, and march for peace, and hundreds of memorials
to nonviolent peacemaking and peacemakers offer imagery alternative
to the pervasive memorialization of war. Recently, the University
of Arkansas at Fayetteville dedicated the state's first memorial to
a nonviolent peacemaker-The J. William Fulbright Memorial Peace Fountain
and Statue of Fulbright. Located between the former library and Old
Main at the center of the campus, the Memorial is not only a momentous
event for the University and Arkansas, but also for the nation and
the world, with its hope in a world without war. By signalling the
urgent need for understanding other nations and cultures, for diplomacy
and international law, and cooperation, and for rejection of arrogant
aggression, unjust wars, and militarism, the memorial and the University
radiate the message of peace. The memorial is composed of two structures--a
fountain (flowing water and bronze sculpture symbolizing a jet) and
a life-size statue of Fulbright. At the central base of the fountain
a circular pool of water flows upward and outward evenly, like an
artesian well, and then downward over concentric circles of granite,
to an outer circular collection pool. This base of flowing water measures
twenty-four feet, four inches in diameter at its widest circumference.
The sculpture, three feet square, soars thirty-six feet and eight
inches high above the central pool of water. Together, fountain and
"gushing" sculpture rise 40 feet from ground level, "giving confidence
and inspiration," in the words of Dean Bernard Madison, "to generations
of students to come, while honoring the life's work of Senator Fulbright."
This design is an old orthogonal favorite with Fay Jones, the co-designer
(with Maurice Jennings). Forty-seven years ago he designed a simpler
version for the entrance to a planned community near Hot Springs,
Arkansas. There the sculpture rises from the center of a large pool
amid eight jets of water, with one jet inside reaching the top of
the sculpture. A miniature version of the sculpture resides in his
own yard. According to Jones, the Fulbright sculpture is "an abstract
fountain," a symmetrical "geometric abstraction" made up of a "multiplicity
of pieces" to represent "multiple drops of water as in a water fountain."
This bronze spout-like sculpture "will be subject to many lighting
conditions" and "shadow patterns at different times of the day" for
an "ever changing array of patterns." It is lit at night by five lights,
four just outside the sculpture under water and the fifth at the center
inside the sculptured "spout." Delight was his intention--the pleasant,
unifying sound and sight of water falling at the base, the infinite
play of light on the ascending sculpture, the balance and four-sided
symmetry of the sculpted design containing infinite variety of detail.
Jones expressed his sense of congruence between the order and multiplicity
of his design and the Fulbright Exchange Program--its ideal of world
harmony through knowledge and cooperation among all the nations and
institutions of the world. Near the fountain-sculpture, eastward toward
Old Main, between the two arms of the building, will stand a life-size
statue of the senator looking westward. The politics of raising the
money for such an expensive project offers a daunting lesson to all
who would build a memorial. Total project cost is $898,367, which
includes about $649,000 for the fountain-sculpture, $150,000 for the
statue, and $97,000 in architects' fees. The memorial was financed
entirely from private funds, with donations ranging from $300,000
from Saudi Arabia, $200,000 from Mr. Dietrich Hoener of Germany, and
$100,000 from Oman, to $50,000 from the Peoples Republic of China,
$20,000 from Tyson's, $10,000 from Vietnam, $5,000 from Slovenia,
$500 from Portugal, and $25 from Lithuania, and many small donations
from individuals. raise sufficient money and for construction. Dedication
of the Memorial occurred on October 24, 1998, UN Day, a suitable day
for the ceremony a local reporter wrote, in honor of a man "who advocated
peace through education." Members of the Fulbright family, politicians,
University of Arkansas Trustees, and various donors attended. Bill
Bader, keynote speaker, praised Fulbright's international exchange
program. Water and fountain appropriately commemorate Fulbright the
peacemaker. According to one dictionary of symbols, a fountain suggests
"erudition, healing, life, refreshment, purification, renewal, spiritual
awareness, truth." Recalling Fulbright's civil liberties and rights
records, one might deny such praise. The issue is complicated. In
the 1950s he supported repressive anti-communist legislation: for
example, the Mundt-Nixon Internal Security Act (establishing the Subversive
Activities Control Board), the MaCarran-Walter Immigration and Naturalization
Act, and the McCarran Compulsory Testimony Act (designed to circumvent
the Fifth Amendment). Yet in the same decade he cast the lone vote
against an appropriation for Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations,
he stopped giving security information to the FBI, and in his "greatest
single contribution to American freedoms," according to I. F. Stone,
he "exposed the State Department's bill to restrict foreign travel
in all its bureaucratic and totalitarian nakedness." Fulbright's civil
rights record is similarly mixed. He voted for the poll tax in 1943,
worked against the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1945-6,
and voted against both the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1968 Civil
Rights Bill. He signed the Southern Manifesto affirming segregation.
According to Randall Woods in Fulbright: A Biography, "That J. William
Fulbright was a racist is indisputable" (115). But Woods devotes many
pages to specifying exactly what "racist" means when applied to Fulbright.
For example: Fulbright "was no racist in the Vardaman-Talmadge-Bilbo
tradition….On a personal level he judged people by their manners,
personal cleanliness, and education, not by their skin color; but
he did not feel compelled by Christian duty or social conscience to
use the power of the state to….legislate equality of opportunity"
(115). In doubting the power of legislation to alter morality, he
was a typical Southerner. Fulbright was a flawed hero. But by his
reverence for the Constitution and its balance of powers, his defense
of the Senate's role of advice and consent, his abhorrence of an imperial
presidency and of dictators and right-wing extremists, his exchange
program, his pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union and resistance
against Cold War, Sovietphobic fanaticism, his early and sustained
support of a strong United Nations capable of restraining nationalisms
(and his opposition to Security Council veto power), his advocacy
of arms control, his opposition to the Vietnam War and other imperial
wars, and his opposition to militarism, Fulbright gained a place with
other heroes for peace. Uppermost in the minds of Dean Madison and
the architects, was Fulbright's international scholar, teacher, and
student exchange program, which Fulbright hoped would produce "public-spirited
rationalists who would understand that war is the ultimate folly of
Homo sapiens" (Woods 136). In a published interview, Madison praises
particularly his educational contribution: "'Fulbright will be long
remembered as a statesman of rare insight. The Fulbright Exchange
Program reflected one of Fulbright's strongest beliefs in the power
of education: that through international exchange, people around the
world would not only learn about other cultures, but, more importantly,
also become more tolerant and aware of our common humanity.`" Just
as his exchange program stressed the necessity of understanding other
people's perspectives by living with them, Fulbright decried U.S.
ignorance of Southeast Asia's history and culture as a major cause
of the disastrous war. "You have to learn what they see, how they
view the world," Madison said, "before you can make decisions about
whether they are right or wrong. And that's a very important lesson.
It means you have to educate yourself, which makes education the key
to international peace." This idea of studying and teaching abroad,
of sharing knowledge in order to preserve peace by breaking down the
barriers of ignorance, prejudice, nationalism, and especially of xenophobia
became one of the most popular and lasting peace initiatives in history.
By 1996, the Program's fiftieth anniversary, 235,106 individuals had
enjoyed its study abroad. But Fulbright's commitment to peace was
exhibited not only by his commitment to education for peace but in
his opposition to war. He supported a United Nations empowered to
control national depredations and the arms race. The root principle
underlying his opposition to U. S. military interventions abroad (the
Dominican Republic, Vietnam), to U. S. military support of foreign
dictatorships (Greece), and to the continued nuclear buildup and threatening
was his commitment to constitutional democracy. On the one hand, he
decried the arrogance of dictators and of presidents who usurped constitutional
prerogatives in order to make war; on the other, he praised the patriotism
of dissenters and the role of Congress as a balance of power, particularly
the Senate's war-making powers. He arrived at his opposition to the
Vietnam War gradually. In contrast to fellow Senators Morse and Gruening,
early opponents of involvement in Vietnam, as late as 1964 Fulbright's
position on Vietnam was indistinguishable from President Johnson's-that
a strengthened military position was needed to assure a non-Communist
South Vietnam to defend our "vital interests" in the region (in contradiction
of the Geneva agreement calling for elections to let the people decide).
But even in that year he gave a speech in which he declared U. S.
involvement a mistake in the first place (Woods 362). And events of
1965 and 1966 (including Johnson's bellicosity and lying) further
changed his mind from support to resistance. Inseparable from his
profound, early commitment to education as a preventive of wars and
his later opposition to the Vietnam War was Fulbright's abhorrence
of dogmatism, either-or, black-white thinking--especially as exhibited
by xenophobia. According to Lee Powell in J. William Fulbright and
America's Lost Crusade, "Fulbright believed that the most destructive
of all the American xenophobias was the hatred of the Soviet Union
and communism....In Fulbright's view, emotional super-patriots who
constantly played upon popular fears and hatred of communism and Russia
only revealed the weakness of their faith in the American system"
(15). Ignorance, fear, hatred, dogma--this recipe for disaster Fulbright
examined in The Crippled Giant and other of his books. A consequence
of this devil's brew was militarism. On November 9, 1970, on "Face
the Nation" Fulbright indicted the Pentagon for replacing the State
Department in making foreign policy. With $80 billion a year to spend
"selling and implementing policy," the Pentagon "'controls and influences
everything that goes on in our government'" (Woods 589-90). A month
earlier, Fulbright's new book was published, The Pentagon Propaganda
Machine, "a devastating attack on the military-industrial complex"
(590). Like The Arrogance of Power, this book brought together what
Fulbright had been saying publicly and privately. In a speech in 1966,
Fulbright described a worse side of the United States: "The nation's
aggressive, militaristic spirit had in part been responsible for the
Vietnam War" (Woods 416). On June 19, 1969, Fulbright warned that:
"If Congress refused to rein in the executive and especially the Pentagon,
the country would continue down the path toward 'elective dictatorship'"
(513). In the spring of 1970, Fulbright "mounted the stump to warn
his countrymen of the menace posed by the new militarism," its violence,
its arms race, its enormous wealth, and its benighting influence throughout
U.S. society (Woods 506-07). Part of the problem was the officer corps,
which Fulbright believed to be "an under-educated, isolated, overly
professionalized body of men dedicated to creating a mission for themselves"
and "generally ignorant of foreign cultures" and "American society"
(506). He even dared to address the officers at the National War College,
where he explained his opposition not to the military but to militarism,
which was alienating young people (4000 student political prisoners
arrested in 1969) and politicizing the armed forces, and whose expenditures
for a national security state and permanent war were undermining the
nation's "education, welfare, health, and housing" and dangerously
strengthening the power of the presidency to wage war (Woods 513-514).
"Dangers of the Military Sell," the final chapter of The Pentagon
Propaganda Machine, is even more urgently prescient today, after almost
sixty years of military expansion, than it was in 1971. Let me give
his own words. [If], as time goes on, our country continues to be
chronically at war, continues to neglect its domestic problems, and
continues to have unrest in cities and on campuses, then militarism
will surely increase. (142) As we have developed into a society whose
most prominent business is violence, one of the leading professions
inevitably is soldiering. (143) [A] large, standing professional army
has no place in this Republic. (144) When war was abhorrent to the
American people, the military was considered only as a tool to be
used if needed. Today, with our chronic state of war, and with peace
becoming the unusual, the military has created for itself an image
as a comforting thing to have around. In reality, however, it has
become a monster bureaucracy. (149) It is my generation who must halt,
then turn back the incursions the military have made in our civilian
system. These incursions have subverted or muffled civilian voices
within the Executive branch, weakened the constitutional role and
responsibility of the Congress, and laid an economic and psychological
burden on the public that could be disastrous. (157) Our Amos, our
Cassandra: the Department of "Defense" chronically at war (illegally
bombing over twenty nations since 1945, ready now to fight two wars
simultaneously), and with popular support, air war-and bombing civilians--
having become familiarly acceptable as part of our business of violence.
Calling national power and prestige and its military arm "arrogant,"
and condemning the connection between our culture of violence and
militarism, seldom makes one popular. Sometimes deluged with hate-mail,
his life directly threatened several times, Fulbright shared the dangers
of all who challenge the usually hidden roots of popular power. But
these hostilities never diminished his advocacy of dissent. The Arrogance
of Power contains one of his strongest blessings on the independent
critic of misused power. "There are two Americas," he wrote, one of
"intolerant puritanism" and "superpatriots," the other of "democratic
humanism" (x). The latter provides the critics, and criticism is "a
higher form of patriotism": "To criticize one's country is to do it
a service and pay it a compliment" (25). Fulbright's exaltation of
critical autonomy ironically parallels Martin Luther King, Jr.'s critique
of the U. S. during his last years-King's opposition to the Vietnam
War and his opposition to the structures of the country which caused
poverty. The conservative Humanist and the conservative Christian
stood against the long, cruel, wasteful slaughter in Vietnam. And
both later experienced censorship of their more radical criticism-of
militarism by Fulbright and capitalism by King. Because many people
prefer less controversial heroes, the more comfortable aspects of
their careers have received primary attention--Fulbright's Exchange
Program and King's Civil Rights campaign. Some lines from a poem by
Carl Himes, Jr. written for King following his assassination apply
equally to Fulbright: Now that he is safely dead Let us praise him
build monuments to his glory sing hosannas to his name. Dead men make
such convenient heroes: They cannot rise to challenge the images we
would fashion from their lives And besides, it is easier to build
monuments than to make a better world. Let us hear the caution in
these words. Because the Fulbright Memorial in its designed abstractness
may not remind us of the Fulbright who enraged two imperial presidents
and countless warriors and xenophobes, let us call upon future guardians
of the memorial to keep alive the radical peacemaking of this inconvenient
hero, who quoted Camus approvingly: "'No, I didn't love my country,
if pointing out what is unjust in what we love amounts to not loving,
if insisting that what we love should measure up to the finest image
we have of her amounts to not loving'" (Arrogance 26). How might remembrance
of the Peacemaker Fulbright be ensured? 1) Keep ever accessible for
sale in paperback all of Fulbright's writings for nonviolent, constitutionalist,
cosmopolitan peacemaking and against ignorance, chauvinism, absolutism,
xenophobia, war, militarism, and arrogant empire (the University of
Arkansas Press and the Fulbright College should support the reprinting
of his out-of-print books, surely no great problem for a school which
raised almost $1 million for a memorial). 2) Fund research that applies
the troublesome and disturbing ideas of Fulbright to imperial aggressions-for
example, the U. S. since 1983: Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Panama, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia-with the aim of replacing
military violence with diplomacy and international law. 3) Encourage
scholars in the humanities and social sciences to explore the relationship
between domestic violence, hatred, and anger-the school shootings
at Jonesboro and Littleton presently in mind--and war's maimings and
killings. 4) Encourage media departments and professional journalists
to study and cover peace comprehensively, by treating all parties
to conflicts, including civilians, equally, and all peace iniitiatives
as legitimate subjects. 5) Find ways to engage the leaders of the
nation with Fulbright's vision, so that when a politician declares
killing wrong, he's not speaking cant. 6) Build more memorials to
nonviolent peacemakers, both in public places and at homes. With sculpture,
statue, books, life, and college at the center of its campus, illuminating
a Fulbright who challenges the comfortable images we would fashion
of his life, the University of Arkansas must nurture peace in the
world.
