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I don't think being a Bonesman will determine Kerry's position on the Iraq
War -- although certainly other Bonesman have an influence on each other.
Per a report on skull and Bones on the net FROM [EMAIL PROTECTED],
(www.geocities.com/CapitalHill/8425/)
Yale professor Gaddis Smith wrote:
"Yale has influenced the Central Intelligence Agency more than any
other university, giving the CIA the atmosphere of a class reunion."
And that report also provides a partial list of Skull and Bones members
who were in government intel:
"F. Trubee Davison (Skull and Bones '18), was Director of Personnel at
the CIA in the early years. Some of the other Bonesmen connected with
the "intelligence community" are: William Sloane Coffin, Jr. ('49); V.
Van Dine ('49); James Buckley ('44); Bill Buckley ('50); Hugh
Cunnigham ('34); Hugh Wilson; Reuben Holden; Charles R. Walker;
"Yale's unofficial Secretary of War," Robert D. French ('10);
Archibald MacLiesh ('15); Dino Pionzio ('50), CIA Deptuy Chief of
Station during Allende overthrow; William and McGeorge Bundy; Richard
A. Moore ('3?); Senator David Boren ('63); Senator John Kerry; and of
course George Bush. Bush "tapped" Coffin, who, tapped Buckley."
Looking at this list you will notice that one of the most popular clergy
of the 60s-70s for his opposition to the Vietnam War, is on there as a
Bonesman. I met William Sloane Coffin, Jr. in the 80s at a War Resisters
League annual meeting in Raleigh, N.C. and found him to be a dedicated and
committed anti-war activist. I also knew him from SANE, where he was
president when I was a member.
"People in high places make me really angry -- the way of corporations
now are behaving, the way the United States government is behaving,"
Coffin says. "What makes me angry is that they are so callous, really
callous....When you see uncaring people in high places, everybody
should be mad as hell." (William Sloane Coffin)
"Coffin initially became famous at Yale University in the 60's for his
opposition to the Vietnam War. He was jailed (the first of many times)
as a civil rights Freedom Rider," indicted by the government in the
Benjamin Spock conspiracy trial, and is president emeritus of
SANE/FREEZE: Campaign for Global Security. He fought in World War II,
worked for the CIA for three years, and has been immortalized as
Reverend Sloan in the Doonesbury comic strip. He is a prolific writer
and has penned several books including ONCE TO EVERY MAN: AN
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, THE COURAGE TO LOVE, LIVING THE TRUTH IN A WORLD OF
ILLUSIONS, A PASSION FOR THE POSSIBLE, THE HEART IS A LITTLE TO THE
LEFT and CREDO (Westminster John Knox Press, November 2003). He
credits Arthur Miller and his English professor at Yale for helping
him hone his writing skills." (Bill Moyers - NPR)
This is what Wikipedia, (internet
encyclopedia) says about William Sloane Coffin:
(QUOTE)
Dr. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (born June 1, 1924) is a radical
clergyman and long time peace activist.
Upon graduating from Yale University in 1949, Coffin entered the Union
Theological Seminary, where he remained for a year, until the outbreak
of the Korean War reignited his interest in fighting against
communism. He joined the CIA in 1950, spending three years in Germany
contacting anti-Soviet Russian refugees and training them how to
undermine Stalin's regime. After leaving the CIA, he enrolled at Yale
University Divinity School and earned his bachelor's degree in 1956,
the same year he was ordained a Presbyterian minister.
The Reverend Coffin became Chaplain of Yale University from 1958 until
1975. He was in early opposition to the Vietnam War and became famous
for his anti-war activities and his civil rights activism. He had a
prominent role in the "freedom rides", challenging segregation and the
oppression of black people
While chaplain at Yale in 1964 he was introduced to student George W.
Bush and remarked "Yeah, I know your father, and your father lost to a
better man." The reference was to George H. W. Bush, who had just lost
his run for the Texas Senate. Coffin later said he didn't recall
saying such a thing, and that if he did, it was said in jest. Coffin
had been a friend of George H. W. Bush since his youth, as they both
attended Phillips Academy (1942) and Yale together. It was Bush, in
fact, who brought Coffin into the exclusive Skull and Bones secret
society at the university.
In 1967, Coffin increasingly concentrated on preaching civil
disobedience and supported the young men who turned in their draft
cards. That October, he raised the possibility of declaring Battell
Chapel at Yale a sanctuary for resisters, or possibly as the site of a
large demonstration of civil disobedience. School administration
barred the use of the church as a sanctuary. Coffin later wrote, "I
accused them of behaving more like 'true blues than true Christians.'
They squirmed but weren't about to change their minds.... I realized I
was licked." And so, on January 5, 1968 Coffin, Dr. Benjamin Spock
(who was also a Phillips Academy alumnus), Marcus Raskin, Michael
Ferber, and Mitchell Goodman were indicted by a Federal grand jury for
conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet draft resistance. All but Raskin
were convicted that June. The government eventually decided to drop
the charges.
Coffin remained chaplain of Yale until December 1975 when he retired
to become senior minister at the Riverside Church in New York City.
In the 1980s he was a leader in the movement against nuclear weapons.
He became president of the SANE/FREEZE campaign for global security,
the largest peace and justice organization in the United States. He
retired as president emeritus in the early 1990s, and since then has
taught and lectured across the United States and overseas. He has
cautioned that we are all living in "the shadow of Doomsday," and has
urged that people turn away from isolationism and become more globally
aware.
Coffin lost his son in a car accident.
Note: the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, merged with the Nuclear
Freeze group The Freeze in the 1980s and was renamed SANE/FREEZE; it
was renamed Peace Action in 1993. William Sloane Coffin's name is
spelled "Sloane" with an "e".
Quotes by Coffin
(After 9/11): The U.S. government should have vowed "to see justice
done, but by the force of law only, never by the law of force."
"It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only
arena where risks are, [for] all of life is risk exercise. That's the
only way to live more freely, and more interestingly."
"The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for
anything but love."
Books
* Credo Westminster John Knox Press, December 2003, ISBN 0664227074
* The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality
Dartmouth College, 1st edition, October 1999, ISBN 0874519586
* The Trial of Dr. Spock, William Sloane Coffin, Michael Ferber,
Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin, by Jessica Mitford, New York,
Knopf, 1969.
(END QUOTE)
There were many on the right who did oppose the war in Vietnam. It was a
mixed bag as I recall and opposition came from many quarters, apparently
also from Bonesman.
Initially, like now, --- during the Vietnam War there was very little
opposition to the war and only a few senators were speaking out against
it, like I recall when I was with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and MAAG
forces (Assistance forces) were being sent to help out the South
Vietnamese and before we had any kind of real infusion of troops. My job
was providing secure crypto communications and other security in the War
Room at the Pentagon where all the decisions were ultimately analyzed from
a military perspective and orders sent to the various U.S. forces in SE
Asia and elsewhere.
The Vietnam War was merely a brushfire in those years 63-64, which was
also the time I was thinking about leaving the military after my stint in
helicopter school proved to be a bust. I had washed out after failing to
meet the physical requirements due to corrected vision and that probably
saved my life.
And it didn't take long from 64 to 67 for the war to really heat up, which
also influenced my decision to leave after almost 8 years -- including my
awakening to the fact that it was just plain wrong and upon leaving the
army my full conversion to the Left -- first through a personal friend, a
judge who headed the ACLU in Miami, and then the influence of my mentor,
Michael Harrington which led to my joining the organization he
established, DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) as a charter member.
It wasn't until years later that I met William Sloane Coffin and I didn't
know Kerry although I also attended several demonstrations and while Kerry
had posh quarters to work on his speeches when he wasn't sleeping in the
Mall, I slept on the floor of a church.
In 1967 there were about 365,000 American troops in Vietnam and almost
7,000 dead Americans, a figure which would grow to about 58,000 by the end
of that conflict. Most of the public were still favoring the war and
supported whatever president was the war president at the time. Those who
opposed the war were considered traitors but gradually the mainstream
press began to report the truth. I remember an expose in the Philadelphia
Bulletin, a newspaper which no longer exists, which was among those which
began to tell the truth about the war and really inspired many to join the
Peace Movement.
I remember that by the late 60s, especially in 1967, because at that time
I was also in the mountains of North Carolina trying to subdivide some
land and watching the events on television and arguing with a partner who
was on far right and by then I was just as far to the opposite end of the
political spectrum -- and when the development business was doing so
well, his hatred for civil rights manifested itself in his hatred for me
and our split came when on his motorcycle he said to me: "Heil Hitler"
and "too bad the Germans didn't kill more of you." It was a very bad time
and the country was a divided as it is now. Hatred was explosive.
It was a time of civil rights marches also and the entire country seemed
to be in as much upheaval as I have read it experienced with the American
civil war.
But interestingly, also on the national front, both Democrats and
Republicans were joining together in opposition to the war -- as much as
they were divided over civil rights, which was a far more partisan affair.
Racism would take much longer to erase and never completely.
Mark Hatfield, a republican won a seat in the Senate as an outspoken
critic of the war. Johnson was the Democratic president and many
Republicans were beginning to speak out against that war. And Johnson was
also losing Democratic support for the war by then in spite of the 1964
fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident - which of course they did not know at
the time was a lie.
Johnson who gave us the "Great Society" was on the losing side and
Democratic governors and in the congress were expressing their opposition.
These vocal critics included New York's Nelson Rockefeller and
Pennsylvania's William Scranton, and in the Senate from majority leader
Mike Mansfield (Montana), J. William Fulbright (Arkansas), George McGovern
(South Dakota), and Robert and Edward Kennedy (New York and Massachusetts)
and Senator Eugene McCarthy (Minnesota) announced that he would be a
candidate for president in 1968 on an anti-war platform. When Kerry spoke
out against the war in the early 70s there was already a lot of opposition
to it from both sides of the political spectrum. Kerry was swinging with
the wind (even though Eugene McCarthy lost his bid for president).
McCarthy was considered very much to the left and even though Kerry was
opposing the war, he was a war hero and considered by everyone in and out
of the movement as a --- "moderate" ---- anti-war activist. He is still a
moderate compared to Bush - but not really a radical.
While speaking for the Vietnam Veterans Against War, John Kerry said:
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?
"It is not patriotism to ask Americans to die for a mistake."
In my opinion, if opposition shifts away from the war in Iraq, John Kerry
will say the same things again. He will say the right (which will be the
left0 things. BUT, if U.S. opinion continues to support the war or
considers the war in Iraq to be part of the war on terrorism John Kerry
will likely stay the course.
If John Kerry is elected president IT IS UP TO US to convince him that the
U.S. must withdraw in order to save American and Iraqi lives. Kerry is not
a radical. He has said so. During his opposition to the war in Vietnam he
said:
"I'm not a radical in any sense of the word, I guress I'm just an angry
young man."
He may not even be as informed as we would like. He was influenced once by
"The Winter Soldier," when he heard testimony of atrocities against the
Vietnamese people. John Kerry can be persuaded if he hears the truth.
He must become as angry over this war as he was over the Vietnam War.
Hank Roth
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