Scott Ritter -- straight talk

I really liked this article in the San Diego City Beat. It's an an interview by David Rolland of Scott Ritter, the former Marine officer, advisor to Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War, U.N. weapons inspector and unflinching critic of Bush’s misadventure in Iraq and it's called American Patriot.

What I really like is his assertion that "Americans don’t know enough about anything to have a well-informed opinion; this is all superficial." He insists that citizenship carries an obligation to become informed and to hold elected officials accountable. Here's a sample but I strongly recommend that you read the whole thing here as it is wide-ranging and well worth the time.

Q: What is it about Americans that allows them to get so bent out of shape when you start questioning the government in a time of war?

SR: I’ll say ignorance. How many Americans have read the Constitution and know the Constitution, live the Constitution, breathe the Constitution, define their existence as Americans by the Constitution? Very few. And so what happens is, Americans have no concept of what citizenship is, what it is they’re supposed to serve. Many Americans have become so addicted to a lifestyle that I say they’re better consumers than they are citizens. And it’s these consumers who have wrapped themselves in a cocoon of comfort and who have basically abrogated their responsibilities of citizenship to the government, and as long as the government keeps them waddling down the path to prosperity, they don’t want to rock the boat. And they will go out and attack those who do rock the boat—those who challenge authority.

If you read the Constitution, you’ll be struck by the first words: “We the people of the United States.” And yet it sickens me where Americans will say, in the name of security, they will give up their constitutional rights. Warrantless wiretapping—it’s against the law! This is the sort of issue that should bring Americans streaming into the streets, saying, “Not on my watch.” If your definition of patriotism is blind subservience to governmental authority, then you’ve just defined those Germans who supported Hitler, the Italians who supported Mussolini.

You say people have failed at citizenship. But, playing devil’s advocate, people are really busy. You seem to be saying that people can’t trust mainstream media, but it’s a lot to ask people to seek out the truth from alternative sources. How can people know whom or what to trust as the truth? In a representative Democracy, shouldn’t they be able to trust their elected officials, and if they can’t, hasn’t our entire government structure failed?

It would be nice to trust [elected officials], but, you know, representative democracy isn’t a one-phase process, where you vote, and then—boom—somebody gets elected and now that’s it, you back off. There’s a thing called accountability. They’re still accountable to you, and you have to hold them accountable for what they do in your name. It’s a constant process. We have to supervise, because, remember, they work for us.

The other aspect of citizenship is to empower oneself with knowledge and information so that in the conduct of supervision of those whom we elect, we do so based on knowledge and information, on facts, as opposed to rhetoric, fiction and bald-faced misrepresentation of fact. It’s the citizen’s responsibility for this empowerment—no one else’s. And, yeah, it’s hard. God, I’m busy; you’re busy; we’re all busy—life’s a busy thing. But, you know what? I don’t want to hear that people can’t go out and gain access to the data necessary, because, you know what? I go to a bar on Monday night, and I watch baseball fans; I watch football fans—hell, I’m one of them. And they can give me the slugging percentage of every player coming up there. How do they know that? They spend hours reading the sports pages. If an American citizen has enough time to know all these sports statistics, they have enough time to learn about the world we live in and the role America plays and how their representatives are guiding us in this world.

So, no, I don’t accept the notion that life is too complicated for American citizens to be involved. I reject that 100 percent. Democracy isn’t meant to be easy.