An Open Letter to Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Commentary by Martin Kelly
October 2, 2002

GLASGOW

9/30/02

Dear Senator Kennedy,

Nearly 230 years ago your fellow Bostonians struck a blow for liberty. In the dead of night, shivering, they stood at the harbours edge looking over their shoulders for fear of discovery but absolutely sure of the rightness of protesting the actions of an unjust government. Those gentlemen helped create the atmosphere that led to the establishment of the United States and they acted through a love of liberty and justice.

Sir, in the Iraq of today the citizenry suffers oppression and injustice, and can do nothing to free themselves. They need you and people like you to speak on their behalf. It was with a heavy heart that I read of your address at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where you stated that President Bush has not made the case for attacking Iraq.

Nobody doubts the level of commitment you have to good, compassionate government. Even impertinent foreign conservatives like myself would grudgingly admit that it takes a man of character and belief to subject himself to the constant carping of the press. The most important people in your career are not your brothers and ancestors, but the voters of Massachusetts; otherwise they wouldn’t have returned you so many times. As far as they’re concerned, you’re doing something right. The Iraqis don’t have a Senator Kennedy to speak for them.

They are mostly poor and weak, in a country that possesses fabulous mineral wealth. That mineral wealth could have ensured the existence of everything you have spoken for throughout your career; a comfortable standard of living; adequate social security provision; affordable (or free) healthcare; equal rights for women; accessible education. Instead, the wealth has been poured away into the desert, wasted on palaces and botulinum toxin. The Iraqi people will not be free for as long as Saddam is in power.

How to remove him? The United Nations failed to sanction his overthrow in 1991. Its Security Council passes resolutions against Israel while Israel’s enemy neighbour Syria sits on that Security Council. Is it impolite to point out that Syria has been in occupation of Lebanon for many years, and is one of Iraq’s major trading partners? As a lawmaker and law student, you will be aware of the concept of sovereignty. Sovereignty is a specifically Judeao-Christian/Anglo-Saxon concept derived in part from ancient Greece. The consensus of sovereign nations is apparently what gives the UN its authority. The representatives of oppression who enjoy the good life in the state your brother Robert represented in the US Senate proclaim their employers’ legitimacy as heads of sovereign governments, seeking to pick and choose those parts of legal tradition that suit them. They may be sovereign in international law, but their actions against their people carry very little legal authority, and no moral authority whatsoever.

Sir, the sanctions have not been enforced, whether through squeamishness or downright criminality. Millions of Iraqis have died as a result of Saddam’s behaviour. It is an unfortunate legacy of the action some elements attached to your brother President Kennedy’s administration attempted to take against Fidel Castro that the US intelligence community has for some years relied on electronic information gathering, which has had the effect of emboldening common street thugs and corner boys like Saddam. Nobody asks now, what would have happened if they had succeeded in killing Castro? It’s impossible not to believe that they would have helped to set the Cubans free, or at least given them a better chance. According to some reports, Cuba assists in gathering intelligence and providing military materiel for Saddam. When you deal with bullies, Sir, sometimes you have to speak to them in language they understand. Hard words and harder sanctions won’t cut it anymore. The spirit of liberty so alive in the Bostonians has been crushed under the weight of a terror machine that a medieval potentate would be proud of. It is perhaps now time to try and actively export that Bostonian spirit.

Sir, if my next remarks seem out of turn they are not intended to cause offence. As a lifelong observer of the House of Windsor, being well born with a famous name is a curse one couldn’t wish on a worst enemy. I’m sure that in some ways it will have blocked your path in life, as it will have eased your way in others. It may be possible that at times you will have yearned to have been someone else. It’s been your curse as much as your blessing. Yes, you are rich and well born, but you’ve had other loads to carry. Your critics mount attacks forgetting you’ve lost all your brothers in the service of the United States. They can’t imagine what it must be like to be the object of idle gossip and speculation simply because of the name you have, and above all else they don’t have your record at the polls. Forty years ago, President Kennedy stood in Berlin and proclaimed his unity with a citizenry where families were divided by a wall. Sir, physically that wall is long gone but the spirit that built it is alive and well in Baghdad. It goes by the names injustice and oppression. That spirit has been implacably opposed by every one of your family who ever went on the stump, and it’s now time to speak out again.

Sir, the only way to start the revolution the Iraqis need is to take the step the old men took and go back to the harbour’s edge. Please give the authority of your name and record to President Bush. Please don’t condemn the Iraqis to further suffering and deny them the social justice you have fought for all your adult life. In fifty years time, Sir, Iraqi schoolchildren may be taught about how they came to be free. They may be asked, “Who spoke for us?” Think what a legacy it would be if one child puts up their hand and says, “Senator Ted Kennedy spoke for us”. If that day ever comes, Sir, one can’t help but think that the shades of Boston’s gentlemen mutineers from all those years ago will quietly nod their agreement.

Yours faithfully,

M.E. KELLY, LL. B., Dip. L. P