August 21, 1998

However you wish to interpret and react to Thursday's announced attack against terrorist bases in the Sudan and Afghanistan, and most Americans support action against terrorist wherever they are found, there was at least one unnoticed connection to the Lewinsky affair. The President noted in his remarks to the nation that this attack was necessary, for among other reasons, to uphold "the rule of law". Ironic isn't it.

Ironic that the first sitting President in history, hanging by a thread from being publicly charged with flaunting directly the "rule of law", is justifying this country's actions with that same phrase. And it's important to note that it is "this country's actions" that we saw on Thursday. We acted against terrorism, and it is certain that others of us will pay in the weeks and month's ahead as terrorist exact their revenge for our actions. Yet American citizens and, to a lesser degree, American interest must be defended.

That said, it is most distasteful to see and hear this American President cover himself with the glory of the phrase while so clearly debasing the principles on which it stands. How can a man make such a morally based decision, attacking terrorism, while so clearly hairsplitting the legality of his role in this scandal? To stare into the faces of his fellow Americans, and with passion and intensity….lie. Lie boldly and, as we saw Monday night, with not a hint of regret or remorse. This is only the kind of man who may remain in his office, but only because the American people wish not to further defile the high office of President by running him from it.

If this President still insists that he has the high standing to dispatch American men and women into harm's way, then he must stretch himself to see the level of shame he has personally brought to that high office. And in that see the only course to begin its restoration, he must resign.

Ultimately to uphold the rule of law is to uphold the center of civilization, to do otherwise is to bring us to the point of Yeat's poem:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Resign Mr. President, for the good of all.

Glenn Jackson