Book opposing war available soon
Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/News/56160/
BENTONVILLE A book she co-wrote will be available soon, antiwar activist and former Bentonville resident Ann Wright said Wednesday.
Wright graduated from Bentonville High School in 1964 and went on to be a diplomat in the U. S. State Department. She resigned her position in 2003, citing her opposition to the war in Iraq and to other Bush administration policies.
The book, Dissent: Voices of Conscience, by Wright and Susan Dixon, was until recently under review by the State Department, Wright said. Wright and other diplomats agree to let the government review books they write.
This book grew out of her effort to find and learn about other people who also opposed the war, Wright said.
I started kind of tracking who else was dissenting, and I started collecting tons of stuff. It really turns out that there have been a lot of people who have had their criticisms of the administration, to the extent that they either were fired for or went to jail for it in some cases for example, if they were in the military. One section of it is dissenters from the civilian side of our government, and another section is dissenters in the military active-duty men and women who were court-martialed rather than going to Iraq, or generals after they retired, not while they were on active duty. They went ahead and fulfilled their time, and then after that they started speaking out. Im glad theyre speaking out now, but I wish they had done it a little earlier, she said.
The book also contains stories about war resisters who chose to go to Canada, and other things, Wright said.
I do put in a little profile on each of us from the State Department who resigned, and then our letters of resignation. Part of this is also putting in the statements of conscience that various people who are in the book have written. As I was collecting all of these, it was really the statements of conscience that really grabbed me, she said. These statements are in there with most of the profiles.
Wright served 15 years as a diplomat and was deputy chief of mission in U. S. embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She also had assignments in Somalia, Uzbekistan, Krgyzstan, Grenada and Nicaragua.
Before being a diplomat, Wright served in the U. S. Army, rising to the rank of colonel.