The courage of one’s convictions

Ann Wright is a pretty remarkable woman, what with 13 years of service in the Army/Army reserves and 16 as a diplomat in U.S. embassies as diverse as Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She retired from the Army with the rank of Colonel and in 2001 volunteered to re-open the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Like many Americans, she was incensed after the 9/11 attacks, and wanted to do her part in a lifelong service to her country.

But Col. Wright became increasingly troubled by the Bush administration’s run-up to the invasion of Iraq. She was deeply concerned about the government’s insistence on going to war without the UN’s authorization. On March 19, 2003, Wright submitted her resignation to then Secretary of State Colin Powell, becoming the third U.S. diplomat to quit over the decision for pre-emptive war.

Ann Wright spoke last Friday at Pomegranate Books, promoting a book she’s co-edited called Dissent: Voices of Conscience. The book features individual accounts of an alarming number of government insiders and active-duty military personnel who leaked documents, spoke out, resigned, or refused to deploy in protest of government actions they felt were illegal.

Ms. Wright is now a peace activist who has been arrested for civil disobedience at least 15 times in the last three years. In one unsettling story she told, she was stopped at the Canadian border and refused entry because her arrests popped up on a computer screen.

She also discussed a letter written by Coleen Rowley, Chief Counsel, FBI Minneapolis Field Office, to FBI Director Robert Mueller. Rowley questioned Mueller as to why FBI headquarters obstructed measures that could have helped disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. Mueller and other senior FBI officials consistently denied that the FBI had any information that Islamic terrorists might be planning an attack involving hijacked airplanes, despite information to the contrary obtained by Rowley’s office.

Amazingly, this was my first visit to Pomegranate, but any book store that has the courage to host a woman like Ann Wright is okay by me.  She’s no wacko anti-government, anti-American voice that can be easily dismissed, but rather a person with deep convictions who loves her country enormously. That’s what makes her story, and those she’s portrays in her book, so disturbing.

To learn more about author visits to Pomegranate Books visit www.pombooks.net.