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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, page 58 Waging Peace John Nichols Addresses Iowa Citizens For Community Improvement
AUTHOR AND columnist John Nichols delivered a rousing keynote address at Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI)’s annual dinner before a standing-room-only crowd at the Hotel Fort Des Moines on July 18. “Dick Cheney is not a pleasant person,” said Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine, in response to a question from this reporter, “and it is kind of amazing to me that anybody treats this man seriously anymore, but there is simply no question that he is desperate to get one more war out of the country. He has been working very, very hard on this.” Nichols described a divide within the Bush administration between Cheney and his staff, who have pushed for war against Iran, and “realists” led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Condi Rice won in her fight with Cheney, and she got Bush to send a diplomat to Teheran,” Nichols pointed out. “This is a good thing.” Noting that the Bush administration has played politics with war, Nichols credited citizen activism and protest with having had a moderating influence on the Bush administration’s crimes and excesses. “I happen to believe that you people matter,” he explained. “The noise that you and the people across this country have made...has been just enough to keep this thing on the balance. “We are citizens 365 days a year,” he continued. “Citizenship demands that you not be distracted by the election, by the wonderful, fascinating, joyous process of an election, and take your eye off the prize and keep our sons and daughters from being sent off to an illegal, immoral, and unnecessary war in Iran. Send those letters, make those calls,” he urged. Nichols recalled that in January’s Iowa Caucuses it was Iowa progressives who put Sen. Barak Obama on the high road to the White House. Voters in pivotal Southern states, he added, who view Iowa “as a relatively White state…mostly farmers,” responded to the groundswell of popular support for Obama in Iowa. “The whole country noticed what you did,” he said. “It transformed our politics.…You are fundamental players in the politics of 2008.” —Michael Gillespie |
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