An Open Letter to Sen. Mark Dayton

by Mary Shepard, WAMM

As soon as you won your election, I tried unsuccessfully to get a meeting with you. I wanted to talk to you about foreign policy because I really did not know how you stood on certain issues. The media did not ask the questions that many of us are concerned about and your campaign had little to say beyond generalizations.

Years of congressional refusal to take responsibility for foreign policy, or to interfere with decisions made by the executive branch in that area, are hard to shake. So few reporters are genuine foreign correspondents. They do not know enough to ask candidates the right questions. Our foreign news does not come from the likes of William Shirer, who lived in Germany and spoke the language and knew the people, but from hand-picked "experts" who come from academia, the corporate elite, or the government. Thus, in the media a "conventional wisdom" is constructed that is hard to challenge, so candidates (who probably think they will have little power to change things anyway) avoid foreign policy issues.

This has given successive administrations free rein to do pretty much what they want. In World War II the slogan prevailed, "partisanship should stop beyond the water's edge." It is easy to see why successive presidents have preoccupied themselves with foreign affairs to the exclusion of domestic ones when their domestic initiatives go sour. They no longer have to deal with contentious congresspeople and laws that constrain their power. Our commander in chief has a huge military machine to back his foreign policy decisions.

Now it is our foreign policy that is driving everything else. It is bleeding dry our resources and destroying our ability to fund anything but war. It has become a backdoor means of influencing domestic policy, bypassing the legislative body. The administrative branch defines what are "American Interests" and thus orders our priorities. The cave-in by the legislative branch in allowing the executive branch to decide issues of peace and war without a debate and without a legislative vote is scandalous, not to mention unconstitutional. And the easy passage of the Patriot Act was frightening.

It is instructive to read of the "continuity of government" plans made by members of the executive branch to insure their safety in the event of a major disaster--plans made without regard for the other branches of government. I wonder if anyone has told our president that, with the death of the President and Vice-President, the next in line for succession is the Speaker of the House of Representatives. It is as if the legislative branch is, finally, irrelevant.

It is time some of our elected officials in Washington applied their right and duty to exercise the power given them by the constitution. They must make principled stands for justice in opposition to the administration.

I have been watching you as you were reeled into the Beltway culture where independent thinking regarding foreign policy issues is considered presumptuous or unpatriotic. Now we have two Senate leaders who seem to be willing to stand up to this weak president. Sen. Tom Daschle (Dem., SD) and Sen. John Kerry (Dem., MA) are at last questioning the cost of our perpetual-war economy. Please support them. The mainstream media will not. Unfortunately, they delayed until our young soldiers started coming home in body bags and now they will be accused of treason. A familiar scenario is being played out and threatens to be longer and more dangerous than Vietnam.