Campaiging for the Truth

By Bill Durston, MD

Speech given by Dr. Bill Durston at his 2008 campaign kickoff event

Those of you who worked on the 2006 campaign probably already know the history of how I came to run for Congress. For those of you who are new to the 2008 campaign, I'll review the story briefly.

As most of you know, I'm an emergency physician, and I'm the past president of the Sacramento Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. PSR is the U.S. affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. PSR was very outspoken in opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In January of 2006, I was asked to chair a town hall forum in Sacramento calling for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. After the forum, a gentleman named Bob Richards, who was a member of small, ad hoc Democratic candidate search committee, approached me to ask if I'd consider running for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District against the incumbent, Dan Lungren. I was initially cautious about seriously considering Bob's offer, because I'd never run for political office.

I'd had some personal contact with Lungren as President of PSR/Sacramento. We'd asked him to vote for the SMART Security resolution introduced in Congress in 2005, based on a platform developed by PSR. SMART security is an acronym for sensible, multilateral, American response to terrorism. The SMART security resolution called for a halt to the belligerent, militaristic approach of the Bush Administration to the September 11 terrorist attacks, and instead, for a more rational and effective approach stressing international cooperation in intelligence gathering and law enforcement, uniform application of international law, and addressing the root causes of terrorism. Lungren refused to vote for the SMART Security resolution, claiming that the Bush Administration's approach was working.

Lungren avoided military service himself during the Vietnam war. His father was Richard Nixon's personal physician, and he got a medical deferment. I heard Lungren say at a town hall meeting in November 2005 that he knew what it was like for our soldiers in Iraq, because when he was California's Attorney General, he had to decide whether or not to ask for the death penalty in homicide cases. As a combat veteran of Vietnam, I thought to myself he has no idea what war is like.

When decorated Vietnam veteran Representative John Murtha came out against the Iraq war in November 2005, Lungren joined other Republicans in criticizing Murtha. In a press conference, Lungren likened Iraq to Vietnam, and he said that when he was a congressman from Long Beach, he could see in the eyes of his Southeast Asian constituents "the disappointment that America had left them behind" in Vietnam. I thought to myself, when I was on the ground in Vietnam, I saw in the eyes of the Vietnamese people that they did not want us there, and I believe the same is true today of the majority of the people of Iraq.

At another Town Hall meeting in Rancho Cordova, I heard Lungren say, with regard to the war in Iraq, "I'd rather be playing an away game than a home game." At the time that he said that, I'd just written a song, with the help of my daughter, Annie, called "War is Not a Game."

Though Lungren and I certainly had our differences on the issue of the war in Iraq, and war in general, I was still hesitant to accept Bob Richard's invitation to run for Congress. I think that most of us try to strike a balance between taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, while also trying to do something to help make the world a better place. In trying to decide whether or not to run for Congress, I thought about what I'd have to give up as an ER Doc. I feel privileged and honored to work as an emergency physician. Every day I go to work, I meet patients and family members who inspire me with their courage in dealing with injury and illness. Most of the time, I'm able to do something to help them. Once in a while, I'm even able to help save a life. On top of that, the job pays well. Who could ask for a better job than that?

I had often wondered, though, how I could be more effective in changing the direction of our country during these troubled times. It occurred to me that running for Congress just might be the most tangible and immediate thing that I could do. On top of this, the more I learned about Lungren, including his voting record on the environment, on education, on health care, on children's and seniors issues, on veterans issues, on issues important to working people, on women's reproductive rights, on civil rights, and on many, many other important issues, the more I felt it would be unacceptable to let him run unopposed. In February of 2006, I went back to Bob Richards and his committee and I told them that I would do it, I would run for Congress against Dan Lungren.

The 2006 campaign was an intensely memorable, and for the most part, rewarding experience. Like any campaign, it had its ups and its downs, with the biggest downer being the fact that we didn't beat Lungren in November. The best part, though, was meeting and working with wonderful people like yourselves, people who I consider to be the truly great and patriotic people of our country, in trying to restore our country to the principles upon which it was founded.

I'll have to admit that I was more disappointed than I expected about not winning the election, even though I knew it was a long shot going into it. And I was afraid that my supporters would feel that I had let them down. I was amazed, though, by the incredible amount of encouragement and expressions of appreciation I continued to receive well after the election. I remember, in particular, a quote someone sent by Abraham Lincoln: "The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."

Before deciding whether or not to run again in 2008, I watched with interest to see what the new Democratically controlled Congress would do in 2007. In the House of Representatives, in the first 100 hours, several important bills were passed, including implementation of the recommendations of the 911 commission, the first increase in 10 years of the federal minimum wage standards, a bill to provide for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use government purchasing power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for Medicare, lower interest loans for college students, and new restrictions on pork barrel earmarks. Not surprisingly, Lungren voted against all of these bills.

Though I was impressed with the legislation that the House passed in the first 100 hours in session in 2007, I was deeply disturbed that Congress subsequently voted to continue to spend $10 billion a month, or over $200,000 a minute, to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq, and to continue to place our young men and women in harm's way, with no timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. I also watched vote what I considered to be the wrong way on most major bills, including voting against renewing and expanding the state children's health insurance program, which would provide health care coverage to 12,500 low income children in our district. At the end of August last year, I decided I would run again, for the same reason I decided to run in 2006, to represent people I respect and admire, people like you, and to work with you toward a better future for our country and our planet.

The 2008 Campaign + Campaigning for the Truth

People have asked me, "What are you going to do differently in 2008 than in 2006." There are a few obvious things we're doing differently. At this time in 2006, I hadn't even decided whether or not to enter the race. Today, we've got over 1,800 supporters on our contact list. We didn't even have a treasurer at this time in 2006. Today, thanks to your generosity, we've raised over $100,000, which is a very respectable sum for this point in the campaign. We're designing a new and improved website which should be up soon, and thanks to Rich Hundrieser, we've got a new online newsletter. We're going to involve our tremendous group of grassroots volunteers more in campaign operations. We're not going to order quite so many extra, extra large T-shirts this year. Judging from the turnout today, though, I think we better reserve some extra, extra large meeting places for future events.

More important than the many things we're going to do differently, though, is one thing we're going to do the same. We're going to keep telling the truth.

I have a theory about the importance of the truth in closing the wide gap between our enormous advances in technology over the past millennium and our limited advances in developing political-social systems to peacefully resolve conflicts. Our advances in science and technology have allowed humans to fly comfortably through the air to places as far away as the moon, to control the environment of our residences and work places, and to instantly communicate with masses of people around the world. But today, we find our country involved in a war and occupation in the Middle East that harkens back to the Crusades of the Middle Ages. Our government has revoked a principle of law established in the 12th century, the right of habeas corpus, for prisoners in U.S. custody. We are debating whether "waterboarding," a technique of intentional near-drowning developed during the Spanish Inquisition, constitutes torture. And we are erecting a wall between the United States and Mexico that is not nearly as beautiful in design but that is just as primitive in concept as the Great Wall of China, built in 200 BC. Sadly, the same advances in science and technology that have allowed us to live more comfortably have also enabled us to kill our fellow humans and destroy our natural environment with greater efficiency.

I believe that we have moved forward in the fields of science and technology, because these fields are based on testable truths. Seeking the truth in political-social systems may be more difficult than in scientific experiments, because it's not as easy to control all the variables, but I believe that there are such things as political-social truths. Our country was founded upon truths that our forefathers held to be self-evident: "...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I believe that the reason that our political-social systems have not advanced at the same rate as our scientific technology is that the world has had too few leaders with the courage and vision to speak the truth. Instead, we have had too many leaders who tell people only what they want to hear, or even worse, leaders who exploit the politics of hatred, fear, and greed to fool people into voting or taking action that is ultimately against their own best interests. I also believe that not enough people have been educated and conditioned to recognize and demand the truth.

Mark Twain said it very simply: "When in doubt, tell the truth." These are times of great doubt, especially with regard to the direction in which the current leadership of our country is taking us. I believe that we can close the gap between our 21st century technology and our medieval governmental policies by speaking the truth ourselves and by demanding the truth of our elected leaders. I'd like now discuss the truth, as I know it, about some of the major issues facing our country.

The Truth About the War and Occupation in Iraq

I believe that there is overwhelming evidence that the Bush Administration knowingly led our country into the war and occupation in Iraq on false pretenses. The Center for Public Integrity recently released a report documenting 935 false statements concerning alleged weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda made by Bush and members of his cabinet in the two years following the September 11 terrorist attacks. I believe that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was correct when he wrote last year in his book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

The war and occupation in Iraq have already cost the U.S. over $480 billion. Nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed, over 60,000 U.S. soldiers have been injured, and according to the best medical estimates, between 150,000 and 650,000 Iraqis have died. And as for last year's "surge," 2007 was the deadliest year yet for U.S. forces in Iraq, with 899 soldiers killed.

Given these truths about the situation in Iraq, what do Dan Lungren and the Bush Administration propose that we do now? Send more troops and spend more money. General David Petraeus, our top military commander in Iraq, has himself said, "There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq."

In an op-ed submitted to the New York Times last year, 7 non-commissioned officers in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, who thought they were heading home within a week from Iraq, wrote about what they saw as the truth about their presence in Iraq: Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist militia and criminal violence.

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.

Tragically, two of these 7 soldiers were killed in Iraq during the week before they were due to come home, and one was shot in the head and evacuated to Germany.

My position on the war and occupation in Iraq is straightforward. I support the sacrifices our troops are making, but I do not support sacrificing our troops. As a U.S. Congressman, I will not vote for one cent for further U.S. military operations in Iraq unless that funding is tied to a prompt, orderly, and complete withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The Truth About the "War on Terrorism"

I'd like to talk briefly about the truth as I know it about the so-called "War on Terrorism." The mass murder committed on September 11, 2001, by 19 terrorists, armed only with box cutters and a fiendish plan to highjack commercial airliners and fly them into buildings, was a terrible tragedy. But September 12, 2001, presented a tremendous opportunity. On that day, virtually the entire world was in sympathy with the United States. In Iran, thousands of people were holding a candlelight vigil in their capital city of Tehran. We had an opportunity on September 12, 2001, to say to the world, "We will seek justice, we will seek security, but we will not seek revenge. The vicious cycle of violence will end here." But instead, in response to a mass murder committed by 19 men armed only with box cutters, the Bush Administration launched the biggest military buildup in the history of the world, invading two countries that never attacked us, alienating much of the rest of the world, and letting the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Osama Bin Laden, slip through our fingers.

History has shown that, conventional military force is not only ineffective, it is counterproductive in combating terrorism. It has been shown repeatedly in cases such as Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Basque region of Spain, Cypress, and Israel that a conventional military response to a terrorist attack typically results in a brief lull in terrorist activity, followed by a sharp upsurge. And we should now add Pakistan to the list of countries in which conventional military force has proved ineffective in stopping terrorism.

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government has given over $5 billion in military aid to Pakistan. And what have we gotten for our $5 billion. The New York Times reported on December 24, 2007, that Al Qaeda and pro-Taliban militants were more active than ever and last year mounted a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Three days later, a suicide bomber killed Pakistan's best hope for a return to a stable democracy, Benazir Bhutto, along with more than a dozen of her supporters.

I think that it's instructive to contrast the effects of our $5 billion in military aid to Pakistan with the accomplishments of one man, Greg Mortensen, a mountaineer who got lost returning from an unsuccessful attempt to climb K2 and who ended up, debilitated and exhausted, in a tiny village in remote northern Pakistan, the birthplace of the Taliban. The people of this tiny village nursed Greg Mortensen back to health, and in return, over the next 10 years, he set up a system of 50 schools for the girls in this region. Greg Mortensen's story is chronicled in the book, "Three Cups of Tea," by David Oliver Relin. Mr. Relin writes in the introduction to "Three Cups of Tea," "If we Americans are to learn from our mistakes, from the flailing, ineffective way we, as a nation, conducted the war on terror after the attacks of 9/11, and from the way we have failed to make our case to the great moderate mass of peace-loving people at the heart of the Muslim world, we need to listen to Greg Mortensen." George Bush and Dan Lungren have clearly not learned from the flailing, ineffective U.S. war on terror, nor have they learned from the earlier lessons of history in which other nations have taken similar, counterproductive military responses to terrorism. But this coming election, we will have the opportunity to elect both a new president and new members of congress who are aware of these lessons, and of the opportunity missed on September 12, 2001, and who realize that the way to prevent terrorism is to regain the admiration and empathy of the rest of the world.

The Truth About Nuclear Weapons

I'd like to now return to the issue of nuclear weapons which I mentioned briefly in discussing the history of PSR. I believe that existence of nuclear weapons is the single greatest current threat to humankind. One of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb, the British Physicist, Sir Joseph Rottblat, quit the program as soon as it became clear that Nazi Germany would be defeated before developing an atomic bomb itself. Sir Joseph spent the rest of his life working on nuclear disarmament. An interviewer asked Sir Joseph, at the age of 90, what his goals were at that point in his life. Sir Joseph responded that he had two goals. His short-term goal was to abolish nuclear weapons. His long term goal was to abolish war. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 92 before he could accomplish his goals. These days, we hear about nuclear weapons mainly in the context of the so-called "Axis of Evil" nations allegedly trying to develop them. We are now hearing from the Bush Administration the same drumbeat to war against Iran that we heard during the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, with one of the main arguments being that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran's nuclear scientists were trained during the 1960's at MIT, at a time when our government was promoting the development of peaceful nuclear energy in Iran. The claim that Iran is actively pursuing the development of nuclear weapons is disputed by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaredei, and it was also recently disputed by our own intelligence experts in the National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. At present, there is no credible evidence that Iran is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. I believe there is overwhelming evidence, though, that a U.S. invasion of Iran would be even more foolhardy and disastrous than the invasion of Iraq.

With the political instability in Pakistan and the known terrorist threat there, we have heard surprisingly little about the fact that Pakistan is estimated to possess about 60 nuclear warheads. And we hear almost nothing about the ongoing threat of terrorists getting hold of unsecured nuclear warheads and materials in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

We also hear very little these days about the ongoing threat of accidental nuclear war. Most people of my generation know how close we came to nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Very few people know, though, that we were within minutes of a nuclear exchange in 1995 when the Soviet Union mistook the launch of a Norwegian weather satellite as an incoming ballistic missile. The Soviet Premier, Boris Yeltsin, was awakened from his sleep in a panic by Soviet military officials and came within minutes of activating a nuclear counter-attack against the United States before it was recognized that the rocket was veering away from Moscow. Finally, we hear virtually nothing about the threat of a "homegrown" nuclear terrorist attack. We assume that our nuclear warheads are kept under tight security. The Air Force admitted in September of last year, though, that six nuclear warheads on cruise missiles were carried by mistake on a routine flight from North Dakota to Louisiana by a crew that had no idea that there were nuclear weapons on board.

I believe that the truth about nuclear weapons is that their existence anywhere on our planet make us all less safe. In 1970, 178 countries, including the United States, signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, under which it was agreed that no new countries would acquire nuclear weapons, and in return, the 5 countries that already had them (the United States, the Soviet Union, France, China, and Britain) would work toward nuclear disarmament. Thirty-eight years later, most of the countries of the world have kept their part in this bargain, but the 5 original nuclear powers, including the U.S., and a few others have not. It's time that every country on earth abide by the NPT. I believe like Sir Joseph Rottblatt, that our first priority must be to abolish nuclear weapons, and next, to abolish war.

The Truth About the Economy

I've talked a lot about war so far. If you ask a political pundit what single issue is most important in influencing the way people vote, they'll tell you, "It's the economy, stupid." I think everyone here knows that the economy isn't doing very well right now. Most economic experts believe we're heading into a recession. Foreclosures on home loans are at a record high. Job growth, new home starts, and consumer confidence are declining. The share of total income going to the richest 1% of the U.S. population is at record highs, while the share of income going to the middle class and poor is going down. The stock market is dropping, and so is the value of the dollar. Gas prices have more than doubled since Bush took office, and the Bush Administration has taken us from a $128 billion surplus during the last year of the Clinton Administration to record budget deficits as high as $400, billion. Since Bush took office, the national debt has almost doubled, from $5.6 trillion to more than $9 trillion, and the interest on the national debt is $250 billion a year.

And if a political pundit were to ask me, "What's the single biggest reason for the problems with the U.S. economy," I would reply, "It's the war, stupid." It's a commonly held fallacy that war is good for the economy. This is true only if you're in the business of making weapons of war, and thankfully, most of us in this room are not. You'll find the political action committees of the corporations profiting from the war in Iraq prominently listed, though, among Dan Lungren's more generous campaign contributors.

In President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech in 1960, he warned:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

More than half of the entire U.S. Federal budget is devoted to military spending. The United States spends as much on its military as the next 10 militarized countries of the world, combined. This cannot be construed as defense spending. This is war-profiteering by the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about. No country from Ancient Greece to the former Soviet Union has been able to devote massive resources to war and preparation for war without crumbling from within. It would be foolhardy to think that the United States will be an exception to this rule. Think for a moment, what we could have accomplished, how much stronger our economy would be, how much more the rest of the world would respect us, and how many more patriotic young men and women would be alive and healthy today, if instead of wasting almost 4,000 lives, nearly $500 billion, and untold man hours in a war and military occupation in Iraq, we had instead directed that money and human effort into developing renewable sources of energy; improving public transportation; cleaning up our air, water, and soil; educating our children; making our own neighborhoods safer; and providing peaceful assistance to disadvantaged people around the world. That's the kind of surge that I will support as a U.S. Congressman.

The Truth About Health Care

I want to talk briefly about one other issue, and that is health care. The truth about the U.S. health care system is that we are the only western, industrialized country in the world that does not provide some form of universal health care for all its residents. Because so many people in our country have limited access to medical care, on overall measures of quality of care, we rank in the bottom half to bottom third among other industrialized countries. As an emergency physician, it has always been my belief that access to necessary medical care is a basic human right, not a privilege based upon one's ability to pay. People say to me, well universal health care coverage would be nice, but how can we pay for it? The fact is, we're already paying for it, we're just not getting it. In the U.S., we already pay more than twice as much per capita as most of the other western, industrialized countries for health care. One of the main reasons why we're not getting the high quality universal health care we're paying for is that, unlike the governments in the other democratic industrialized countries of the world, our government does not use its purchasing and regulatory powers to leverage down health care costs and prevent us from being gouged by the for-profit health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry. And yes, along with the war profiteers, you'll find representatives of the for-profit health insurance and pharmaceutical industries among Dan Lungren's big donors. The undue influence of the for profit health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies on our legislators is part of a larger problem. We have a government controlled by special interests, not by people like ourselves. But we can change that. Working together, we can take back our government from the special interests that presently control it and restore government of, by, and for the people, people like us here today.

Conclusion

There are many, many other important issues to talk about, but let's save them for another day. I want to give Lloyd and his band a chance to play some more tunes, and all of you a chance to dance some more.

I want to end by answering another question that I get asked frequently. People often ask me, "What's it like being a grassroots candidate running against a career politician like Lungren." The best analogy I can think of is that it's kind of like being the rider on a front seat of a tandem bicycle, racing against someone in a Hummer. Now at first glance, it might seem that the tandem bicycle rider doesn't stand a chance. But if you look under the hood of that Hummer, you'll see that it's powered by the worn out politics of hatred, fear, and greed, which should have been discarded long ago. And if you kick the tires, you'll find out that they go flat when confronted with the truth. Our tandem bicycle, on the other hand, has plenty of seats and pedals for everyone the desire to work toward a healthier, safer future for our country and our planet. Our road map is the truth, and if I start to stray from the truth, I hope you'll point that out and help get me back on course. Can we win this race? Absolutely. We just need to get enough people to hop on this tandem bicycle and all pedal in the same direction. There are going to be some hills, and there are going to be some curves, and we may even take a spill or two, but if you've taken a trip on a tandem bike, you know it's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun, and it leaves you with a great feeling at the end.

So grab your helmets. We're going to ride this tandem bicycle all the way to Washington D.C.