Hatfield Backs Bush

Via John Ray at Dissecting Leftism comes this surprising op-ed by former U.S. senator from Oregon Mark O. Hatfield, endorsing President Bush for re-election:

I know from my service in the Senate that Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of terrorism. He used weapons of mass destruction on innocent people and left no doubt that he would do so again. It was crucial to the cause of world peace that he be removed from power.



Having seen atrocious loss in World War II, I understand the devastation of armed conflict. We have paid dearly with American and Iraqi lives for our commitment, but we cannot afford the alternative. Nor can we afford a president who puts a wet finger in the air and turns over his decisions to pollsters.

Surprising because Hatfield was a well-known progressive Republican who consistently favored policies well to the left of the majority of his party, especially on national defense. He was an early opponent of the Vietnam war and was involved in the nuclear freeze movement in the 80s. (Though Hatfield, an evangelical Christian, has also been staunchly pro-life.)

Here’s an excerpt from an interview he did with the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners back in 1996:

Wallis: You were one of the earliest and strongest critics in either party against the war in Vietnam. The nuclear arms race, for you, was a deep matter of conscience, as were issues of hunger. How did you come to those convictions, which are not predictable for white, evangelical church people?

Hatfield: It wasn’t that I sat down and weighed all the arguments for and all the arguments against and then said, This is my position. They really were outgrowths of specific experiences that made indelible impressions.

I was in some of the bloodiest operations of World War II, including Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In 1945, we were sent up the coast of China, where we saw the bloated bodies of little kids along the roadways, not killed by bullets but by starvation. After that, we were sent in to occupy Japan. One month after the bomb, I walked through the streets of Hiroshima and I saw the utter devastation in every direction from nuclear power. All of those experiences were really the fundamental beginnings of my thinking about those specific issues, of Vietnam, war in general, nuclear power, and hunger.

Wallis: You became a pacifist or…

Hatfield: Not quite.

Wallis: …committed to nonviolence?

Hatfield: Nonviolence, yes. I can’t be a pacifist because I bore arms and wore a uniform. When people say, Are you a pacifist? I say, “No, I haven’t reached that level of thinking yet, but I’m very close.”