Patriot Acts
July 3, 2003

It came to me as an email attachment a few days after the fall of Baghdad to US troops. It was the now-famous photo of a grinning little Iraqi girl in a Baghdad hospital with her arms thrown around the neck of a U. S. soldier. The message to me accompanying the image was: Do you have the guts to admit you were wrong?

Moi? Heck I'm wrong all the time. I'm consistently wrong in my annual Oscar predictions, by which I embarrass myself year after year. Don't bet the rent if you're using my prognostications as a guide. I was wrong in high school when I let my brother con my girlfriend Tina out of the extra ticket to the Leon Russell concert, and it's haunted me ever since. And how about the time I got that dreadful Orphan Annie perm just before going back east to meet half the Aschbacher relatives for the first time? Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But I suspect this correspondent was referring to one or the other of my columns in this paper. True, I have occasionally made less-than-flattering observations about the present Administration and its meddling in Iraq.

Was my opinion wrong regarding US intervention in Iraq? For one thing, one sunny image—in journalism we call this a photo-op—is hardly an accurate gage of a situation this complex. Especially when for several days after this photo was beamed around the world, the headlines out of Baghdad were full of looters running amok in the streets terrorizing the citizens we were allegedly there to liberate. As the months wear on in the wake of an apparent U.S. "victory," and the Iraqi people continue to suffer with or without Saddam, I persist in thinking the whole episode could have been handled with more, political, practical, and diplomatic finesse.

Beyond that is the issue of what an opinion is. Whenever I'm invited to speak to journalism students about film criticism, I always explain that an opinion is never wrong if it honestly expresses a person's views. My opinion may not be the same as yours, but it's not wrong. Neither is yours. All of us are entitled to our own opinions, and every person's opinion is right for that person.

Maybe my email correspondent thought I was wrong to express my opinion. But expressing one's opinion is one of those rights guaranteed in the Constitution that supposedly makes our form of government better than those of our opponents. At this time of year as we celebrate American Independence, we need to remember that for an American citizen to express an opinion is not only a right, it should be considered both a privilege and an obligation. To call someone wrong for criticizing a political policy with which one disagrees follows the same specious reasoning by which those who dare to express a dissenting opinion are labeled unpatriotic.

In times of war and other national calamities (like the ongoing political fallout from the 9-11 terrorist attacks), nothing comes more freighted with emotional baggage than the idea of patriotism. But many people view patriotism in the most simplistic terms as blind support of one's government, no matter what. It's so much easier to follow the leader than to think for oneself. Remember that popular bumper-sticker from the '60s that popped up in opposition to the anti-war movement? "My Country, Right Or Wrong." Could anything be more chilling?

That's the problem with so much of this so-called "patriotism"— people don't bother to learn the facts when a catchy slogan will do just as well. A friend of mine joined the Mothers For Peace demonstrations down at the Town Clock back when the U. S. war on Iraq was just gearing up. She was amazed at the number of people who drove by shouting indignantly, "Don't you remember 9-11?" So many people thought—or simply assumed—that the war on Iraq was somehow in retalliation for the terrorist attacks, and by golly, that was good enough for them. Of course, the Administration blithely played off Americans' thirst for revenge by keeping its motives for invading Iraq suitably murky. (Whatever happened to those darn weapons of mass destruction, anyway?)

In the words of 26th US President Theodore Rooseveldt (hardly anyone's idea of a liberal firebrand): "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

You go, Teddy. There's more to patriotism than a flag decal in a car window, or burning a Dixie Chicks CD. It takes vigilance—not vigilantism. Blindly following a leader is for lemmings. Rabble-rousing naturalist Edward Abbey once wrote, "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government," and true patriotism is hard work. Patriotic citizens needs to pay attention to domestic legislation affecting their civil rights, and acts committed globally in their name, and speak out accordingly. Debate, not complacent silence, is the foundation on which our democracy is based. This is not a soccer match where one side has to "win." We're all in this together, locally and globally.