Donald Knuth writes to Condi Rice

From Don Knuth's Stanford University website:

Dear Condi,

I'm 99.99% sure that my writing this letter will have no effect, but my conscience tells me to write it anyway. Danziger's cartoon has pushed me out of my lethargy.

[His cartoon shows her banging on a grand piano, saying "War! War! War!"]

When I knew you at Stanford I had the greatest admiration for your abilities and good sense. (And I was disappointed that we never were able to get together to play four-hands music.) But now I cannot help but express to you my chagrin that the warm feelings I once had have basically evaporated. I hope you can pause to try to understand why this might be the case.

Fundamentally I don't see how the government of my country has done anything whatsoever to address and correct the root causes of international terrorism. Quite the contrary; every action I can see seems almost designed to have the opposite effect --- as if orchestrated to maximize the finances of those who make armaments, by maximizing the number of people who now hate me personally for actions that I do not personally condone. How can I be a proud citizen of a country that unilaterally pulls out of widely accepted treaties, that refuses to accept a world court, that flouts fair trade with shameful policies regarding steel and agriculture, and that almost blindly supports Israel's increasingly unjustifiable occupation?

And worst of all, I find that my leaders, including you, are calling for war against a sovereign nation that we suspect to be corrupt, thereby (even if our suspicions are correct) undermining all precedents against unilateral action by other countries who might in future decide that our own policies are wrong. If we peremptorily strike country X, why shouldn't country X have a right to do the same to us, and to our children and grandchildren in future years?

On my trips to Europe all I can do is hope that my friends there can help their governments try to make somebody in my own government act responsibly.

Sincerely, Don Knuth

P.S. This is the second time in my life that I have written a letter to a U.S. government official. The first time was during the Vietnam war.

Comments

[dignam]

Well, maybe he should think about writing the government more often than at its lowest points. If more people told the government exactly what they thought of it before it got to be lawless, maybe it wouldn't get to a lawless state in the first place.

[bleep]

I agree with dignam; this whole mess started because of Don Knuth's failure to write to Washington more often.

[Winfield J. Abbe]

On the contrary to the above anonymous comments, it likely wouldn't have made any difference if Mr. Knuth had written a hundred letters to our unrepresentative and virtually totalitarian government, the results would have likely been the same. Just look at all the demonstrations against the war in Iraq, yet the war goes on. Our government leaders learned long ago that the power of citizens to end actions by the U.S. government is almost zero. We might as well be living in former Nazi, Germany or the Soviet Union or the former King of England. If the president of the U.S. shot someone in plain daylight in the street in front of many witnesses, I wonder if he would even be arrested, let alone charged with a crime. After over two centuries of two or more political parties isn't it time for another Boston Tea Party? Everyone should remember, both political parties voted for almost all "police actions" of our country against other countries.

[Louis Savoy]

Firstly,
I'd like to express my appreciation for Mr.Knuth's intelligent and concise articulation of sentiments felt not only by an increasing number of Americans, but citizens of all Western nations. The Western leader, the US, has become an ambassador at large of of self-interest and unilaterism. As Westerners our leaders toe its line, and we toe theirs', our heads hanging in shame, our consciences just hanging.

Secondly, I'd like to express my total lack of appreciation for Dignam and Bleep. Rationally speaking, I find them and their arguments at best imbecilic. Both their comments acknowledge a degree of wrong-doing by the US government, thus agreeing with Mr.Knuth, while simultaneously shifting the blame to him thus now disagreeing with Mr.Knuth, rendering him, the denunciator, the criminal.
That's comparable to inculpating the witness for the crime rather than the perpetrator.
Bleep, you claim had he written to Washington more often, this whole mess as you put would have been averted. How many letters would have been necessary in your opinion? Enough to weigh down the aircraft carriers currently on Iran's coast? Or simply enough build a wall of pressed paper around Iraq?

Why do some have so much difficulty accepting that their own governments can perpetrate repugnant and illegal actions? Being the well-intentioned citizen of an ill-intentioned government does not render you ill-intentioned. Why then, defend the government by condemning the very people who speak of its crimes, especially if those crimes are so blatantly obvious. I remind Bleep and Dignam that there being no weapons of mass destructions found in Iraq, and supposed intelligence having been proven disastrously mistaken, in no way is deterring the US from mounting another preventive war, against Iran. I add that for the second Iraq war, again launched on an alleged pretext proven grossly erroneous, no apology was ever emitted. Even the very tiny minimum of diplomatic curtousy was never rendered.

I add... who could not add something here? Everything from Bush's election to office to the War-policy makers being a clique of draft -dodging oil executives to WOMD which never could have even conceivably existed...why? because the US concentrated forces around Iraq before invading it. Would you concentrate your forces in attainable areas if you suspected your enemy had the potential capacity to obliterate them? No. That would be real war, and even war-mongers don't want that. But I exhale and digress and stick to the subject of Mr.Knuth rather than US military/Corporation action, albeit they are here intertwined.

So I add one last thing. The second Iraq war was started on false pretenses; even enthusiastic proponents of the war can't disagree with this reality. Fact is no weapons were found and the search called off. Hypothetically, were the present or a later Iraqi government to subpoena the US to World Court for terrorism, unlawful use of force, murder and doubtless more criminal counts, would the US, defender of human rights and justice, even attend the hearings, let along accept a verdict condemning it of a crime it tacitly already avows? Or would it pull another Sandinista on the world and refuse World Court jurisdiction as it did to Nicaragua in 1986?

Then again, perhaps that was Mr.Knuth's fault as well.
L.

[A Citation Seeker]

Where is this on Knuth's personal site? I looked but didn't see it.

[Abbas Raza]

Sorry about that.

Knuth's letter is here.

[Scott Ahlf]

Well, taking a good look around, reformist politics doesn't seem effective. Earth is in a Mass Extinction (last one was 65 million years ago), global temperatures are rising, wealth is being transfered up and being concentrated, and the Second law of Thermodynamics is about
to have the last word--
Sending a letter to Condi seems futile--
Maybe we should take Lenin's advice and hang the capitalists after they sell us the rope to do it with--
Reformist action seems futile.

[date guy]

Kuth's letter was mailed September 2002? I wonder what he would say today?

[Dave]

Savoy: bleep was being sarcastic

[JonJ]

Yes, reformist action is futile, but the only thing more futile is trying to foment a revolution under the present circumstances, leaving entirely aside the question of the morality of revolution.

So what is to be done? Even after a serious movement developed against the Vietnam War, including strong rebellion within the military and mass noncooperation with the draft, it took years to get that war stopped, and basically the U.S. forces only withdrew because their situation became hopeless.

The same thing might be true in Iraq; the Bush Administration will probably start withdrawal only when the situation on the ground forces them to. And before then they may have decided to widen the war to Iran, and what will happen then?

The best thing we can do, I think, is to keep explaining to the public what is wrong with Bush's policies and try to build a long-lasting memory of the present disaster in the country. After all, this disaster happened because too many people forgot what a disaster Vietnam was, and bought the line that "we could have won if only we hadn't been stabbed in the back by the peaceniks."

Basically, patriotism is a very powerful emotion in almost all countries in the world, and as long as it is not replaced by internationalism, wars will start over and over. And once they start, it's damned hard to stop them until they grind to a halt on their own. Whether you live in a democracy or not, stopping a war in mid-course is about the most difficult political task there is, so I'm not at all surprised that, even after the Democrats' victory last November, they are going at it so slowly.

[Louis Savoy]

Dave: I think you're right about Bleep, but short of rebounding the discussion to him, it takes nothing away from my argument concerning thinkers like Dignam. But thanks, I like your point.

[Say "Ten"]

Um...I think bleep is being sarcastic, folks.

[Randolph Fritz]

"If more people told the government exactly what they thought of it before it got to be lawless, maybe it wouldn't get to a lawless state in the first place."

A lot of people did--I was one of them.

No, that's not what went wrong.