Angry Letters to the One Member of Congress Who Voted Against the War on Terror
Barbara Lee was the lone dissenter in the post-9/11 vote authorizing military force. Many called her a traitor. But her constituents shared her concerns—and history has vindicated them.
OAKLAND, Calif.—The people here were out of step with America.
In the hours after the attacks of September 11, 2oo1, they were angry at the terrorists who flew planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. They wanted the attackers brought to justice. They mourned the victims, cheered the firefighters, felt united in sorrow with their countrymen, and dreaded more attacks. But in Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda, the ultra-liberal, historically anti-war East Bay communities, a significant bloc also feared how their country would react. They didn't trust the instincts of George W. Bush or the public that elected him.
The mistrust was mutual.
"The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war," Andrew Sullivan wrote that week in a Sunday newspaper column. "The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount a fifth column." The liberals of Berkeley and its environs had long been regarded as naive pacifists at best. There were, in fact, pacifists who lived there. For the most part, however, East Bay residents would favor hunting down the perpetrators of 9/11. What worried them, even as smoke rose from the ruins at Ground Zero, was that America's judgment would be clouded by fear, anger, and lust for vengeance; that we would lash out recklessly, killing innocents; and that we would strategize foolishly, overestimating the threat posed by terrorism and the degree to which foreign wars could reduce it. Majority opinion was calling for "unity" in a war on terror. East Bay liberals stood athwart history yelling, "Stop!"
"Why I Am Opposed To The Vietnam War"
Barbara Lee began representing the East Bay in Congress on April 7, 1998. She'd grown up in Texas and then California, a move owing to the job of her father,Garvin Alexander Tutt, a lieutenant colonel in the Army. She attended Mills College, a liberal-arts school in Oakland, where she volunteered with the Black Panther Party. She later earned a masters degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Her memoir describes both a divorce and an anguished decision to have an abortion. In red state nightmares, Congress is composed entirely of Barbara Lees.
Lee was 55 on the morning of September 11, 2001. As she fled the U.S. Capitol building, she saw smoke rising from what she later learned was the Pentagon. In the next 48 hours she voted for a number of bills. "One condemned the terrorist attacks," she recalled in her memoir, "extended condolences to victims and their families, commended rescue workers, supported the determination of the President—in close consultation with Congress—to find justice for the victims and to punish the perpetrators and sponsors." There was more: "We decreed September 12 a national day of unity and mourning and a second decree expressed the sense of the Congress that Americans should fly the American flag. A third sped the payment of benefits to families of public safety officers killed or injured in the attacks and a fourth provided tax relief to the victims of the attacks. We provided $40 billion in emergency funding for increased public safety, antiterrorism activities, disaster recovery efforts, and assistance for the victims."
Like most Americans, she felt a powerful sense of national unity. In her capacity as a legislator, she believed continuing unity with the president was desirable, even after the Bush administration sent legislators the text of an Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, that the White House wanted Congress to pass.
The final draft of the AUMF was just 60 words long:
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
Inside the Democratic caucus, legislators discussed what they regarded as the importance of emphasizing to the country "that we were united and nonpartisan," Lee states in her memoir. But she wasn't alone in worrying that the AUMF was too broad and could authorize military action far beyond anything Congress was anticipating at the time, much like the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Voting "yea" would, she felt, give President Bush and his successors "a blank check to attack an unspecified country, an unspecified enemy for an unspecified period of time." To vote nay would break the U.S. government's united front.
Lee anguished over how to vote. The Senate soon approved the AUMF 98 to zero. In the House, it passed 420 to 1. Lee was surprised and startled to be the only "nay," but she didn't doubt her decision. Years before, she'd fought to become the only black cheerleader at her college. In the California legislature, she cast one of the few votes against an extremely popular "three strikes" law, warning it would lead to over-incarceration and subject people to life in prison for minor crimes. She didn't consider reversing her position, even as colleagues warned her that she'd lose her seat over an objection that wouldn't even change the AUMF. A batch of death threats didn't faze her either—she'd gotten them before.
She explained her vote in remarks delivered on the House floor:
Lee would keep explaining her reasoning in greater detail many times in subsequent weeks, months, and years. A
recent episode of RadioLab features clips of her doing so in her own voice. Host Jad Abumrad mentioned in passing that the thousands of letters Lee received after her lone dissent are now archived at her alma mater, Mills College. I made an appointment and traveled to the Special Collections room at the school's F.W. Olin Library to see what the letters say.
They fill 12 file-storage boxes.
It isn't clear how many thousands of letters there are. No one has counted. But they're sorted as follows: seven boxes contain letters expressing support for Lee's vote; four boxes hold letters expressing disapproval; a final box contains some of each. (There is also an effort to note whether letters came from inside the district or not.)
A librarian gave me access to one box of supportive letters and one box of critical letters. They weren't otherwise sorted by content, so the sample I saw was theoretically random. In the five hours of access I had, I read as many as possible. As a condition of access, I agreed to refrain from publishing any names or addresses, and to protect identities I wasn't allowed to photograph or scan the correspondence, so I took notes, choosing representative passages as best I could. That part was easier than I anticipated. Obvious themes recurred in each box, though Lee's supporters and critics seemed to agree on just one thing: both predicted that her vote would cost her any chance at winning reelection to Congress.
They were both wrong—she's still there.
* * *
Surveying the letters from Lee's supporters, one prominent theme that emerges is opposition to harming or killing faraway innocents, whether in Afghanistan or the Muslim world generally. The core belief being expressed was that foreign nationals are endowed with an inalienable right to life that they do not forfeit just because someone who shares their religion or nationality perpetrated mass murder.
