Ford, Saddam and Some Troubling Moral Issues

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Much has been made of the integrity and decency of Gerald Ford and his service to the country as a healer after the bruises and lacerations of Watergate. Unquestionably he did perform that service. To me he was a figure you felt you could trust again at the head of government after two chief executives who played fast and easy with the truth — Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon over Watergate.

Yet I wonder how much Ford truly understood then or later about the dangers involved in Nixon’s efforts to subvert the processes of government. I will concede that Ford’s pardon of Nixon probably was in the country’s interest although it outraged me at the time. Moral and legal issues aside, this may have been the only way to get the matter out of the print and electronic headlines and avoid what Ford may have viewed as an orgy of self-destruction. But then to take pride in a friendship with Nixon, the man who came close to destroying the government, was a bit much.

Then there was Ford’s strong feeling against the Iraq war that he kept to himself except for an interview not to be disclosed until after his death. I respect the wish of a former president not to seem to lean over the shoulder of a successor, but on a matter so harmful to the national interest as an irrational course that led to a calamity in Iraq, I feel he had a moral duty to speak out. That might not have deterred Bush, but it might have had some influence on Bush’s conservative supporters.

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We can’t yet assess the full impact of the Iraqi government’s hasty execution of Saddam Hussein. Among those who know his record, there can have been very little sympathy for him. He was one of history’s great monsters. As an opponent of the death penalty, I wish other means had been taken to incarcerate him without possibility of parole or rescue.

Yet when I think to the degree that the United States was complicit in some of his crimes, I cannot but feel that we deserved some of the obloquy heaped on him. When he acceded to power after the murder of a previous dictator, Kassem, we were eager to come to terms with him. We encouraged him in the eight-year-long war he waged against Iran, feeding him crucial intelligence. We supplied him with poison gas and blinked at his use of it on his own people. We gave him reason to believe that we would not object to his invasion of Kuwait. Donald Rumsfeld, who so excoriated Saddam in the present war, had arranged much of the previous aid to the Iraqi dictator.

When and if a comprehensive and objective history of this war in which 3,000 Americans have died is written, it may be embarrassing to learn how much the United States has been on both sides of it.

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It must strain the memories of the oldest inhabitants to think of a time in the Tri-State corner when there was no snow on the ground on both Christmas and New Year’s Day. One guess is as good as another about the cause of the perverse weather; the proximate scientific reason seems to be the return of El Niño, bringing warmer ocean currents from the tropical Pacific Ocean, within a broader pattern of global warming and ice melting.

Yet the statistics about what we think of as "normal" weather are averages of extremes. When the pendulum swings far in one direction, it is likely to swing far in the other sometime soon. In other words, we may have to pay for the unusually warm winter with — who knows?— a cold or unusually wet summer. Keep your waders ready.

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Twice over the holidays, I was nearly clipped by a car speeding through the safety crosswalk on U.S. 44 in Salisbury village where pedestrians supposedly have the right of way. The first time, on Christmas Eve my wife and I halted and stood in the middle of the crossing when it became obvious that a westbound car traveling considerably in excess of the speed limit was not going to stop; I could see the driver with his eyes fixed ahead instead of glancing from side to side. The second time I was alone. I was already in the middle of the road when an eastbound car sped by behind me, not stopping as the law requires.

There is a lot of casual jaywalking in Salisbury and Lakeville, perhaps stimulated by the fact that the so-called zebra crossings are far apart. In my view there ought to be more of them, as in Great Barrington, and they ought to be better lighted. All vehicle travel through the downtown areas ought to be at slow speeds, and drivers ought to be ready at all times to stop quickly.

The basic problem is enforcement, which is difficult when there is only one resident state trooper. I have suggested the use of cameras at the edges of the villages which other communities have found useful in deterring truck speeding; there can be no arguing with photo clocking. But the prosecutors and courts also must cooperate. When an unobservant motorist knocked down and severely injured an elderly woman in a Salisbury crosswalk several years ago, as I remember the penalty was little more than a slap on the wrist. This is serious and potentially deadly business.