Editor’s Note: Ariel Dorfman is the author of “Death and the Maiden,” and more recently, the novel “Cautivos” and a children’s book, “The Rabbits’ Rebellion.” He and his wife live in Chile and in Durham, North Carolina, where he is a distinguished emeritus professor of literature at Duke University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.
“I hear you.”
Those words were pronounced by Joe Biden on Tuesday night after the results from the latest primaries had all but assured that he had clinched the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He was directing these particular remarks to the young people who have flocked to the cause of his primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.
But if they resonate deeply with me, a much older man, and give me some cautious hope for the future at this dire moment of dread and pestilence, it is due to my personal experience when I met the man who was to become Obama’s vice president.
It was my one and only face to face encounter with him, many years ago. But the memory of it is sufficient for me, a staunch, though also pragmatic, supporter of Sen. Sanders and the radical need to change the fundamental injustices prevalent in the United States, to believe Biden when he proclaims that he is willing to listen to those whose views have not always coincided with his own.
It was early March 2003 and I had been flown up to New York to appear on a panel on NBC’s “Today” show, as one of those who strongly opposed the upcoming invasion of Iraq. One of the other participants was then-Sen. Biden, who was there to explain why he favored the war and had voted, in October of 2002, to authorize sweeping war powers for President George W. Bush (who was claiming– falsely, we would learn-- that Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction).
When it came my turn to speak, I repeated the basic arguments that I had written in an oped in that Sunday’s Washington Post directly to an Iraqi man who was on the panel and who wanted his country to be free as soon as possible. I said that, as a Chilean dissident who had spent decades struggling to be rid of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, I understood his suffering and that of his compatriots, but that I thought that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by foreign forces would have terrible consequences for the world. It should be up to the people of Iraq, I argued, to oust their strongman.
It was necessary and urgent, I said, to end Saddam’s reign, but not at the price of so many innocent lives lost, so many years of foreign occupation, such a grievous loss of control of Iraqis over their own destiny.
After the appearance was over, as I was being relieved of my mike by a technician, Biden walked over and asked me to elaborate on my position a bit more. He seemed genuinely interested in what I had just said, leaned in toward me, touched my shoulder with sympathy.
I told him that it was with a heavy heart that I was asking Iraqi dissidents to oppose the war that could liberate them from the everyday terror that despots inflict on their people, that I felt I could say this to them because I knew full well what it meant for those who awaited the knock on the door, who feared they would be dragged to a cellar full of tortured prisoners, who would have to deal with a legacy of persecution and exile to postpone their deliverance so that all of humanity was not dragged into a maelstrom of chaos.
Biden asked me more about my past, whether I ever would have wanted the United States, for instance, to invade Chile to help depose Gen. Pinochet. And I said that, heaven help me, I would not have accepted a devilish compromise that would have subjugated my county, even if it meant that some of my very own comrades would die before being free.
Aides to the senator were hovering around him, suggesting important business elsewhere, but he paid them no heed, and continued to ply me with questions for several minutes. He was fully engaged, and particularly concerned about the anguish that I was feeling about having to urge a powerful country not to intervene militarily to purge a foreign land of its oppressor.
I felt that he wanted to alleviate my grief, that it echoed some deep agony inside his own existence (I knew nothing then about his own family history of loss). At the end of our exchange, he said I had not altered his reluctant approval of the war that was on the horizon (he said Saddam was a threat to mankind), but he thanked me warmly for my views and promised to think about them in the impending days.
And now, 17 years later, I gladly recall that brief conversation with the man whom I fervently hope will beat Donald Trump in November and begin to rebuild the United States as a land of justice and equality and, of course, basic human kindness and decency.
For that, our candidate will, in effect, have to listen to those of us who believe, as he often has not during his long career in politics, that it is time for major reforms to the systemic inequities that plague America (and I use that word “plague” quite deliberately).
He will have to listen to the millions who are certain that the current crisis forces us to dream of a country that cares more about the problems of the many than about the profits of the few.
“I hear you,” Joe Biden said Tuesday night. And added: “I know what’s at stake. I know what we have to do!”
I have reason to believe that he is sincere.
And hope, for the sake of all of us in these times of catastrophe, that I am right.