Lynndie England and Free Speech
Lynddie England and Free Speech
Originally posted at In Harmonium
Yesterday, Friday August 14th, was to have seen a talk given by Lynndie England at the Library of Congress on her new biography Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World. The talk, however, sparked a very strong reaction from Morris Davis, a veteran and employee of the Library of Congress that was posted at the SWJ Blog here.
The post itself is in the genre of “Shocked and Appalled” style, letter to the Editor. Davis notes that:
Thousands and thousands of honorable men and women have and are serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. They don’t get book deals and invited to lecture at the Library of Congress. Most of them would be happy with a thank you and a chance at an education or a decent job when the mission is over. It’s a disgrace that the dishonorable profit and that we use government property and resources to glorify the gutless. If you attend the lecture on Friday, don’t save me a seat.
Now, regardless of what one thinks about England’s actions, this letter to the editor is now being credited with instigating a series of “threats” to the organizers that have resulted in the cancellation of this talk and several future ones (source). In particular, David Moore, another employee at the LoC and a veteran as well, notes:
David Moore, a Vietnam War veteran and German acquisitions specialist at the library who organized the event, said he received several e-mails threatening violence and shared them with police and the library’s inspector general.
He said he was disappointed by the cancellation but supports the decision because of safety concerns. “We can’t have an event here that’s going to develop into a brawl like a town hall meeting,” he said.
He added, “Free speech in America is pretty well dead.”
He blamed an essay decrying the event on the Small Wars Journal blog for stirring up much of the opposition. The site focuses on war politics and strategy.
In a response to this, Dave Dilegge posted a notification of the cancellation here which has sparked a s*** storm of reactions that truly bother me. Anyone who takes the time to get to know Dave knows that he is one of those people who supports free speech even if he disagrees with what is being said. The line for him, and for the Small wars Council as a whole, is whether or not the process of discussion / debate remains “civilized” in the sense that people can agree to disagree and are (relatively) polite — the ROE is “Attack the message, not the messenger”.
One of the more interesting, and ominous, references in the AP article was Moore’s comment that “[w]e can’t have an event here that’s going to develop into a brawl like a town hall meeting”. What I find ominous about it is that this lack of “civilized” behaviour is permeating the US town hall meetings on health care reform and spilling over into all sorts of other issues and destroying the habit of reasoned debate and disagreement, replacing that with yelling matches and the threat of “direct action”. As Bill Nagle, publisher of the Small Wars Journal noted
I would not join David Moore in saying that free speech is dead. Yet I believe I can speak for many of us here in saying that, as much as we oppose the event, we are appalled the outcome is the result of safety concerns arising from threats of violence. Thuggery is unacceptable — over there, and especially over here. Small Wars Journal, and I am confident Moe Davis, a man of great principle, do not stand for that.
And that is the word for it — Thuggery.
