The Republicans want to blame it all on the trial lawyers. We liberal Democrats want to blame the Republicans for destroying American legitimacy in the world in their endless pursuit of Corporations first and their politics of being tough on national security. Keith Olberman on his show Countdown before the President’s speech said the major issue in the domestic politics of the last 100 years was whether our government was on the side of the Corporations or the people. The competing interests are clear, but it is not just domestic politics which illustrate the danger of choosing Corporate interests over people. In our so called “War on Terror” we chose Corporate warfare (or was that Welfare) versus lawyers.
Two detours on my career otherwise devoted to brain injury advocacy over the last two decades arose out of the events of September 11, 2001. The first, I became an outspoken critic of our first War on Terror and the invasion of Afghanistan. The second, I became part of the first lawsuit filed against the Airlines for 9/11. Those two footnotes to my career do illustrate why we need a lot more Civil Justice and a lot less Corporate first government.
My first public statement about the War in Afghanistan was spoken before my church congregation the Sunday after 9/11. I stood up, without an invitation, and reminded my fellow parishioners of our church’s commitment to peace during a Vietnam, a commitment that had shaped my thinking as a teen, had a major influence on who I became as an adult. I told them that you do not start a war to catch a criminal. Punishing a criminal is a job for laws and lawyers, not armies of crusaders.
I wrote these words about Afghanistan on October 30, 2001:
As the political consensus which propelled American into war starts to fade, the Republican’s and their talk show hosts, remind us of the promise of Bush and Rumsfeld that this would be a long war, that American’s will have to be patient.
I remember an amused arrogance when the Russians invaded Afghanistan circa 1979, somehow clearly remembering James Michener’s portrayal of the country. I am rereading Caravan’s (a James Michener novel copyright of 1963). It is quite prophetic. A passage worth reading with care:
“In Afghanistan, almost every building bears jagged testimony to some outrage. Scars still remained of Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn or Tamerlane or Nadir Shah of Persia. Was there ever a a land so overrun by terror and devastation as Afghanistan.”
Then later, his character, the Afghanie engineer with the runaway American wife, tells the narrator, an American diplomat, this story of the ancient oasis where they are spending a night.
“Genghis Kahn destroyed Afghanistan. In one assault on the City he killed nearly a million people. That’s not a poetic figure. It’s fact. In Kandahar the slaughter was enormous. Some refugees fled to this caravanserai… this room. They were sure the Mongols wouldn’t find them here, but they did.
“First Genghis erected a pole right through the roof. Then the Mongols took their prisoners and tied their hands. Laid the first batch on he floor over there and lashed their feet to the pole. All around. That’s why the pillar is twelve feet across.
“They just kept on laying the prisoners down, one layer on top of the other until they reached the roof. They didn’t kill a single person that day, the Mongols, but they kept soldiers stationed with sticks to push back the tongues when they protruded. And while the pillar of people was still living – those that hadn’t been pressed to death – they called in masons to plaster over the whole affair. If you’d scrape away the plaster you’d find skulls. But the government takes a dim view of scraping. Its a kind of national monument. The Caravanserai of the Tongues.”
“I tell you these things only to explain the terrible burdens under which Afghanistan has labored. Our major cities have been destroyed so many times. Do you know what I expect … seriously. When a thousand men like me have rebuilt Kabul and made it as great as The City once was, either the Russians or the Americans will come with their airplanes and bomb it to rubble. “
I wonder, does George W. Bush believe that we American’s can win a war of patience against such a people? Perhaps we can declare victory when we have evened the score by killing 5,001 Afghanies. If not, Osama bin Laden’s goal of an Islamic uprising, deposing all western leaning Arab monarchies, will be built upon a foundation of silenced but never forgotten Afghanie tongue.
What does this story have to do with Medical Malpractice reform and the Republican commitment to Corporate World? I will discuss further my actions as a lawyer in 2001 in my coming blogs, and the reader can decide whether the trial lawyers or the Republicans chart the course our country should follow. Know this though, our mess in Afghanistan is getting deeper and the liberal Democratic president of whom I am so proud is at a crossroads decision point to send another 30,000 troops their to pacify the country. If he listens to the politicians and generals and not the historians, our attempted occupation of the unoccupiable country, may be remembered in infamy as long as Genghis Kahn.
Next. You don’t start a war to catch a criminal. That is what the laws, lawyers and the Courts are for.
