Today's Story - Fly Like an Eagle
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President Hennessy, Provost Etchemendy, trustees, parents and most especially you, the Stanford graduates of 2004, thank you for the honor of inviting me to speak to you. In the midst of your celebration, I ask you to pause - for these are serious times.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid hero and head of South Africa's Truth
and Reconciliation Commission, tells a story - which inspired this talk - about
a farmer who raised chickens in his backyard.
Amongst this farmer's chickens, there was one that looked a little odd. It behaved
like a chicken. It walked like a chicken. It pecked away like a chicken.
One day a wise woman came along and said to the farmer:
"You know, that isn't a chicken. It is an eagle." The farmer said:
"No way. That is a chicken." And he looked at the odd bird and said: "Don't get any fancy ideas. You are a chicken."
"I don't think so," said the wise woman. She picked up the strange-looking
chicken, climbed up the nearest
mountain, stood at the edge of a precipice and waited until sunrise. Then she
turned the bird toward the sun and said:
"You are an eagle. You can soar. You can change your world. Go fly."
The strange-looking chicken shook itself and tentatively spread its wings. It looked up at the sky. It looked down - way down - to the bottom of the precipice. It took a few steps back in the direction of the other chickens, where it had been so comfortable, where it had a daily routine and food to eat.
"Sorry," it said to the wise woman, "I don't feel like an eagle. I feel like a chicken. And I don't think I can fly.
"That's your choice," the wise woman said softly. "But remember, you are responsible for the decisions you make. If you don't dare to fly, you will never be fully alive. You will never reach the sky. Even if you feel like a chicken, fly like an eagle.
That "strange chicken" comes to mind every time there is a choice between taking an easy path or making a trail where there is no road. The doctrine of "command
responsibility," the product of an American initiative enshrined in law
since the Nuremberg Statutes after World War II, affirms that civilian and military
leaders may be held legally accountable for abuses
committed by their subordinates - even when these commanders did not personally
order abuses, witness such abuses, have direct knowledge about them or conspire
to commit them.
This law recognizes the tremendous danger of abuse inherent in war and, in
tribute to the awful sacrifices of the Holocaust and those who died in two world
wars, it places the moral worth of each and
every person at the center of our international order.
Rather than permit leaders to turn a blind eye to abuse, it charges both military
and civilian authorities with an affirmative duty to prevent crimes, to control
their troops, to act when a crime is discovered and to punish those found guilty
of committing the actual crime - no matter how high
responsibility may reach in the chain of command.
Which brings me back to the precipice where we left the strange chicken. Our
country is at the edge of a precipice. Regardless of how the situation in Iraq
finally plays itself out, we are in the midst of one of the greatest and most
intractable global crises of modern times. 9/11 was an earthquake in the psyche
of America, and flying airplanes into buildings where
people work is a crime against humanity.
But the behavior depicted in the terrible photos of the hooded Iraqi led around
on a leash and the 37 homicides of prisoners in U.S. detention now under investigation
are also criminal acts. While the numbers
may not be the same and the ircumstances are different, U.S. law and international
law are clear: Both are crimes against humanity.
The simple truth, as Mark Danner tells us in The New York Review of Books, whether
we like to hear it ornot, is that since the attacks of September 11, 2001,
officials of the United States, from Afghanistan to Guantanamo to Iraq, have
been torturing prisoners.
They have done this with the institutional approval of the U.S. government
advised by memoranda from the president's own counsel, with official declarations
aimed at side-stepping the historic safeguards of the
Geneva Conventions, and with actual written policies permitting the use of "moderate
physical force" - policies that violate rulings by our courts, the
European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court and the Supreme Court
of Israel. By the military's own calculation, an estimated 80 percent of
prisoners subjected to this treatment are innocent of any wrongdoing.
No amount of military power will make up for what we lose if the world at large
believes that, despite our years of rhetorical support for rights and democracy,
we are prepared to compromise them the moment our
own lives become threatened. The dreadful story told by these photographs -
and we have not seen the worst of them - has done enormous damage to our
moral standing, our strategic power and our spirit.
Today much of the world believes that there is a difference between what Americans
claim to stand for and what we actually do in the world. According to a
19-nation poll released last week, a majority now thinks that the United States
is having a negative influence on the world; only 37 percent judge our country
as having a "positive influence.
Listen to the countries polled: Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay, [Argentina] and Italy - and yes, the United States itself. This is an enormous change from the days after September 11 when a French newspaper proclaimed: "We are all Americans.
Today, we stand more alone in the world than we ever have.This decline in our
reputation is a decline in our security. Global problems, no matter how remote
they appear, will increasingly affect everything in our daily lives: from the
imperative transition from a fossil fuel energy system - which will happen in
our
lifetime - to the air we breathe, to the diseases we face, to the safety of
the cities we inhabit.
These problems cannot be solved with military might
alone. They cannot be solved within our borders. And
they cannot be solved without friends. Thus, we must
address the damage that has been done in our name -
no matter how far up the chain of command this
requires. For our spirit and our security, we must
demonstrate that we are a nation of law, democracy
and decency. We must show the world that we will
apply, at the very least, the same standards to our
own leaders.
Which brings me to you, the "strange birds" of 2004.
This is your precipice. What will you do about it?
What
will you do to awaken in yourselves and others a new
sense of responsibility for our country and for this
world? How will you fight to make your leaders conduct
themselves as if they were going to live on this earth
forever and be held accountable for its condition?
The question is not whether you will be chickens or
eagles. You have no choice. You are living in the most
powerful country in the world. You are graduating from
one of the best universities in the world. Tomorrow
you
will hold a certificate that does much to ensure your
place among the most fortunate of this world. You are
eagles. The choice you face is whether you will dare
to
fly.
Survey data on your generation as a whole is not very
promising. It says that you are primarily interested
in
acquisition, that you define yourself in terms of
possessions rather than "goods of the soul." You are
self-interested and care little for developing a moral
code, much less for assuming some type of global
political responsibility. You do not want to be eagles
at all, we are told, but rather successful chickens in
a very well ordered barnyard.
Our own security is intimately bound up with our
ability to use both our hearts and our brains, to
empathize as well as analyze. Crimes like 9/11 or the
torture of Iraqi prisoners can only occur when the
victims are defined as something less than human; they
can only be portrayed as permissible when all lives
are not valued equally. Their prevention rests on our
capacity to affirm the principles of equal respect,
and to expand, not contract, human rights protections
both at home and abroad.
Being an eagle means becoming citizens who are not
simply Americans but who are citizens of this earth.
It
means raising, not lowering, the bar. We are at a
turning point. For all of you who feel helpless, who
despair, who are cynical and who do not feel like
eagles, remember this.
"There are only two kinds of people who tell you that
you cannot change the world: those who are afraid to
try themselves, and more importantly, those who are
afraid that you may succeed.
Instead, think of Margaret Mead's well-known
phrase: "Never say that the actions of one, two or
three ordinary people cannot change the world. It is
the only thing that does.
Think of all those people who give a piece of
themselves every day, who speak out against the
brutality they see, who try to stop impoverishment and
the despoiling of our environment and who understand
that ultimately the world cannot be peaceful if some
have far too much and others far too little. Take
inspiration from these eagles.
Shake yourselves, spread your wings and lift off.
Whether you run a business or a community
organization, a clinic or a school, assume
responsibility for the long-range prospects of our
country and our troubled earth. Aim high for a world
without war and without genocide, a world of respect
for all, a world that is far greater than the one we
are handing to you. Because, as Eleanor Roosevelt
said, "The future belongs to those who believe in the
beauty of their dreams.
Congratulations, and may you fly!
~ The above speech was given June 12, 2004, by
Stanford Professor Terry Karl and is shortened from
the original.