Days of Shame

Days of Shame


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November 1, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Days of Shame
By BOB HERBERT

Overseas, our troops are being mauled in the long dark night of Iraq - a war
with no end in sight that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,100
American troops and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of innocent
Iraqis.

At home, the party of the sitting president is systematically stomping on
the right of black Americans to vote, a vile and racist practice that makes
a mockery of the president's claim to favor real democracy anywhere.

This will never be seen as a shining moment in U.S. history.

There is a hallucinatory quality to the news as Americans prepare to vote
tomorrow in what is probably the most critical election the country has
faced since 1932. Osama bin Laden made his bizarre cameo appearance on
Friday, taunting the president who once promised to get him dead or alive.
Commentators have been compulsively reading the tea leaves ever since,
trying to determine who was helped by the video, George W. Bush or John
Kerry.

On Saturday, as if to take our minds off the sideshow, nine more American
marines were killed in the Iraq slaughterhouse. It was the deadliest day for
U.S. forces in six months. The death toll for Iraqis, which the U.S.
government has tried mightily to keep from the American people, is flat out
horrifying. Unofficial estimates of the number of Iraqis killed in the war
have ranged from 10,000 to 30,000. But a survey conducted by scientists from
Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Al Mustansiriya University
in Baghdad compared the death rates of Iraqis before and after the American
invasion. They estimated that 100,000 more Iraqis have died in the 18 months
since the invasion than would have been expected based on Iraqi death rates
before the war.

The scientists acknowledged that the survey was difficult to compile and
that their findings represent a rough estimate. But even if they were off by
as many as 20,000 or 40,000 deaths, their findings would still be chilling.

Most of the widespread violent deaths, the scientists reported, were
attributed to coalition forces. "Most individuals reportedly killed by
coalition forces," the report said, "were women and children."

That people are dying by the tens of thousands in a war that did not have to
be fought - a war that was launched by the United States - is mind-boggling.

Also mind-boggling is the attempt by Republican Party elements to return the
U.S. to the wretched days of the mid-20th century when many black Americans
faced harassment, intimidation and worse for daring to exercise their
fundamental right to vote. A flier circulating extensively in black
neighborhoods in Wisconsin carries the heading "Milwaukee Black Voters
League." It asserts that people are not eligible to vote if they have voted
in any previous election this year; if they have ever been found guilty of
anything, even a traffic violation; or if anyone in their family has ever
been found guilty of anything.

"If you violate any of these laws," the flier says, "you can get ten years
in prison and your children will get taken away from you."

In Philadelphia, where a large black vote is essential to a Kerry victory in
the crucial state of Pennsylvania, the Republican speaker of the
Pennsylvania House, John Perzel, is hard at work challenging Democratic
voters. He makes no bones about his intent, telling U.S. News & World
Report:

"The Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in
Philadelphia. It's important for me to keep that number down."

That's called voter suppression, folks, and the G.O.P. concentrates its
voter-suppression efforts in the precincts where there are large numbers of
African-Americans. And that's called racism.

These are days of shame for the United States. No one writing a civics text
for American high school students would recommend this kind of behavior for
a great and mighty nation. We have to figure out a way to extricate
ourselves from Iraq and rebuild a truly representative democracy here at
home. Right now we have a mess on both fronts.

It was Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, who said that "America's leadership
and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches
and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world
peace and human betterment."

That's as good a thought as any to carry with you into the voting booth
tomorrow.


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