Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • The Politics of Education Reform

    President Bush recently announced that he wants to expand federal funding for school services to help low-income children. Yet the $1 billion of his proposed new funds for these kids amounts to less than a single day of military spending. Regardless, the Los Angeles Times reported that such “education reform” is a “signature issue” backed by Democrats and Republicans.

    Political differences do exist, however. Some Democrats have responded that the president’s proposed funding increase for poor students falls far short of what’s needed. This qualifies as the understatement of the young new year.

    Both parties supported the No Child Left Behind Act that Bush signed on Jan. 8, 2002. The NCLBA partly allocates funds to low-income families to move their children from inferior to superior schools. The funding is also available to pay tutors for after-school instruction.

    Yet if educational opportunity was more than a word used to dupe the public, Congress and the president could have transferred tens of billions of taxpayer dollars from the Pentagon for Star Wars to public schools for smaller class sizes. But that was not to be. So goes the politics of education reform in the U.S.

    Puzzling? The nation’s political circles of power have their priorities. High on the list is fully funding the Pentagon, not public schools.

    The absence of evidence that military spending is more socially useful than education spending is evidence of the absence of critical journalism on these two subjects. To be sure, exceptions to this sorry state of affairs do exist. Regrettably, they are too few to shape public opinion much.

    Concerning the NCLBA, the LA Times article noted that, “Some critics have said that approach emphasizes standardized testing at the expense of instructional time and imposes unfair penalties on problem schools.” Bush disagreed, shifting the criticism to unchanging schools where teachers fail students. “Instead of getting excuses, parents will now get choices,” he said.

    Particularly, market choices are what await these parents. The Republican White House and Congress firmly back the competition of the marketplace as the path to social improvement. Presumably, the GOP’s mission to level the educational playing field by removing market fetters will unleash the untapped learning potential of poor students.

    Positive education results, we can be sure, will follow the mandatory math and reading tests, given annually by states, to needy students in the third through eighth grades under the NCLBA. This testing requirement begins in fall 2005. Then, states will be able to determine which students are (not) learning their lessons.

    Such testing is “the only way” to make accurate educational evaluations, according to the president. One standardized test fits all. More marketization of education means more standardization in public schools.

    The LA Times article also reported that the Bush administration has boosted total federal expenditures on public education to $22 billion, a 40 percent increase, for the current instructional year. Crucially, this overall amount of public school spending pales in comparison to the current Pentagon budget of about $400 billion. Here are two public programs that receive disproportionate amounts of tax dollars, but aren’t generally reported in relation to each other.

    The contrast between the two programs is stark. Accordingly, the political priorities are self-evident once people are informed. To this end, they need journalists with independent news media to buck the conventional wisdom and give the business of war more than a wink and a nod.

    Meanwhile, low-income households are being used as pawns by political power interested in scoring points around reform of the nation’s underfunded public schools. But the marketization of education is no more a solution to the substandard schools that poor U.S. kids attend than “smart bombs” are the tools to liberate the Iraq people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. Many in the U.S. would no doubt vote to transfer their taxes from the Pentagon to public schools if the politics of education reform was made clearer.
    *Seth Sandronsky is an editor with Because People Matter, Sacramento’s progressive newspaper.

  • Reflection of the New Year

    Reflection of the New Year

    The turning of a year is always a good time to take stock of where we are and to look for lessons of the past that may guide us into the future. Here are a few thoughts as we enter this New Year.

    We share a single, beautiful Earth, the only place we know of in the universe that supports the miracle of life.

    We are one people, one great humanity, capable of cooperating to turn this planet into a paradise for all.

    We may have different histories, but we share a common future. We will rise or fall together.

    By the greed and lack of care and vision that is integral to our current economic system, we are poisoning our Earth, destroying other species at a prodigious rate, and foreclosing possibilities for future generations of humans, including our own children and grandchildren.

    We have penetrated the power of the atom and created technologies capable of destroying most life on Earth, including human life. Our current world order, based upon nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” is not sustainable.

    Life has existed on Earth for some four billion years, and in just a matter of decades, hardly a tick on the geological clock, we humans have placed the continuation of life in jeopardy.

    Albert Einstein warned: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    And yet, we have chosen leaders myopic in vision and committed to military solutions that have placed humanity on a collision course with catastrophe.

    With this leadership, we are abrogating our responsibility to humanity as a whole and to future generations.

    The challenge to humanity is to come together to end the great disparities and ill will that divide us and find a way that all individuals can live with dignity.

    We can start by recognizing that we are all citizens of Earth with corresponding rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and with corresponding responsibilities. Among these responsibilities are:

    • To end the continuing threat to humanity of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
    • To redirect scientific and economic resources from the destructive pursuit of weapons technologies to the beneficial tasks of ending hunger, disease, poverty and ignorance.
    • To break down barriers that divide people and nations and, by acts of friendship, reduce tensions and suspicions.
    • To live gently on the Earth, reclaiming and preserving the natural beauty and profound elegance of our land, mountains, oceans and sky.
    • And to teach others, by our words and deeds, to accept all members of the human family and to love the Earth and live with peace and justice upon it.

    Our starting point is to put aside our apathy, complacency and cynicism and to choose hope, hope that leads to engagement. It is only by our hope and in our actions that the world will change.
    *David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is the co-author of Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway Press, 2002).

  • The Art of Living: Santa Paula’s Xavier Montes Walks (and Teaches) the Talk

    Santa Paula native Xavier Montes remembers his ascent into social advocacy. A self-proclaimed “reborn Chicano,” he learned Spanish while visiting a relative in Mexico who challenged his limited vocabulary. While there, he extended his knowledge of culture and history by studying the meaning of traditional Mexican songs. His first attendance at a folklorico dance event in 1971 evoked feelings of awe—the sombreros looked like trophies, he said.

    A month later, he saw Teatro Campesino, with Chicano actors performing skits on controversial issues. From there, his transformation into a socially aware artist and musician was under way.

    And now, if you hear a harp at a community event, Montes is probably behind the strumming. If you see a mural in Santa Paula, chances are he had some input into the design. If you dine at Vince’s Café on Main and 8th streets, you’ll be surrounded by his acrylics.

    “My cultural heritage is filled with color and passion,” he tells the Santa Paula Society of the Arts. “It is in my veins and my heart. And so, like many other artists, I am compelled to creatively express what I feel, what I see and what I wish I could see.”

    And his commitment to his culture’s youth, in fact, stands as a work of art itself. In April, Santa Paula’s California Oil Museum will host Montes’ annual De Colores art exhibit for the ninth consecutive year. Montes views the show as a bridge between the community and the schools, two worlds he says need stronger ties: “How can you have cultural events,” he asks, “without students?”

    Montes, 50, views students as the lifeblood of community artwork. Students, he explains, are the ones who should care about their community, and the community should give them ample opportunities to become involved.

    On Montes’ wish list is a De Colores nonprofit organization to support year-round activities for students and community members. His greatest hope, though, is that Santa Paula will have a community art space for young people to develop their skills and talents.

    He has scoped a few windowfronts on Santa Paula’s Main Street, and he knows what the places would need: tables, chairs, art supplies, easels and personnel with the technical expertise to renovate and prepare the space. He adds that such a venture is especially important in the face of arts underfunding in high schools.

    “There are no painting classes in small high schools,” he lamented. “Those are for bigger schools.” Without this investment in creativity, he added, students develop their own means of expression that can result in the destruction of property.

    There’s a sadness and an irony involved, Montes said, when Mexican storeowners’ buildings are routinely defaced by young people of the same race and heritage (“How can they deface their own people’s property?”). He adds that he wants Santa Paula’s teenagers to take pride in the businesses their people have maintained through hard work and dedication.

    Montes, known to close friends as X, walks his talk. He takes his concern to the streets, working on murals with students and guiding them through the process of creating a public work of art. “I teach them techniques,” he said, “like how to blow up smaller images into larger ones using the grid method, planning it all out. The transformation starts with words on paper, ideas like love, pain, pride, future [and] family, and we narrow it down to a few ideas. Then we find symbols for those words, transferring the idea to a visual symbol. Next, we lay out the symbols, considering the viewership—what do we want people to notice first, how will they interpret the mural. This is a process, not a goal with an end point.”

    Montes has a degree in studio art and a teaching credential from UCSB. He serves as a mentor for the CalArts Visual Arts Program, helping to select young Latino and Latina artists who would benefit from summer classes.

    Montes sighed with concern over the fact that many young Latinos are ashamed of their heritage and culture, recalling once having felt similarly. He continues to work patiently with his students, facilitating their growth process as artists and as human beings. Students from Renaissance High School give him high marks; they have even taken on their own independent muraling projects using knowledge and skills learned in his classes.

    His students’ murals often deal with the themes of Mexican musical history and the Mexican revolution, events their grandparents and great-grandparents experienced. And while the students are painting, they hear Montes’ voice.

    “The scenes involve positive thinking,” he said. “I talk about pride, brown skin and the rich history of the Mexican people. And I tell them that the only way to get ahead is through education. Ignorance is the reason for the ‘isms,’ like racism and hatred.”
    *Leah C. Wells, a Santa Paula teacher, serves as peace education coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara.

  • A Holiday Wish

    During the discussion period at a Catholic Relief Services public forum in Baltimore I was asked: “If you had ten minutes with George Bush what would you say about the pending war with Iraq?”

    The first thing that popped into my mind was “Let’s put a human face on it.” I suggested off the cuff that I would advise President Bush to form a delegation and travel to the Middle East. The delegation should be made up of three grandmothers and three children under the age of 10, accompanied by a Priest, an Imam, and a Rabbi, all U.S. Citizens. They should travel to Ramallah, Gaza, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, then onto Baghdad.

    The message would be simple.

    “These are the faces of who we are. The divide between all of us must be bridged. Too many of our children have died. We know this from September 11, 2001: The welfare of our children is tied to the welfare of your children. Let violence end and coexistence begin. Help us help you.”

    Some will say the leader of the most powerful nation of the world must show resolve. A visit of this kind is a sign of weakness. It is beneath a great leader.

    I beg to disagree. The decision to start a war with Iraq, gut wrenching as it is for our leaders, will remain in large part the choice of sending mostly young people to fight on foreign soils and the launching of stealth bombers and cruise missiles from ships to rain on the towns of people thousands of miles away whom we have never met. There is a form of courage required to make that decision. But it requires little imagination.

    Bettleheim once commented that violence is the choice of people who can imagine no other alternative.

    It takes a different kind of courage to walk unarmed to the land of the enemy. It is the courage of the moral imagination. To put a human face on war is the courage of last resort, the step taken before humanity is lost in the anonymous abyss of violence.

    This was the courage and imagination that marked the lives of Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. It is the simple courage of engagement and dialogue we hope to instill in our children at school when faced with a bully. It is the kind of courage I wish for in our leaders.

    For Christmas, 2002 I have a wish for a gift given from our generation to our great grandchildren, from the adults of this decade to the children of the end of this Century: Let this be the decade remembered as the time when the beginning of the end of human warfare happened.

    Imagine that historians in the year 2100, looking back at the preceding Century could write:

    “War became obsolete when global leaders committed themselves to The Universal Declaration of Human Preservation captured in two principles:

    1) No country will ever use its weapons for offensive or pre-emptive purposes; and

    2) the leaders of every nation commit themselves to make a personal visit prior to declaring war to the country where, should the war happen, their bombs will fall.

    This unexpected process started when a regional and potentially global nuclear war was averted in early 2003. Surprisingly, President George Bush with a delegation of grandmothers and young children visited the conflicted region of the Middle East, an event that so transformed the situation that the cycles of violence never escalated into war. The courageous act put a human face on the conflict. It resulted in a world summit that led to the greatest era of disarmament known in human history culminating in the complete elimination of weapons of mass destruction from the face of the earth. As we enter this new year of 2100, we are lucky to have been preceded by such leaders, for we are witnesses to the first decade in more than 150 years where our human community does not have a single nuclear weapon hanging as a cloud over our future.”

    A simple wish that only requires two things: A grain of imagination and a lot of courage.

    Let us find the courage of our faces before we push the buttons.
    *John Paul Lederach is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. He is also Distinguished Scholar in the Conflict Transformation Program, Eastern Mennonite University. (This Holiday Wish may be copied, printed, posted, edited for publication, forwarded, read in schools, churches, synagogues and mosques or used in anyway deemed helpful.)

  • Security in the Post 9/11 World

    Security in the Post 9/11 World

    The Bush administration’s approach to security in the post 9/11 world is built on military strength, and is composed of the following elements: increased military expenditures, the pursuit of global military dominance, indefinite reliance on nuclear weapons, the development and deployment of missile defenses and the threat to initiate preemptive wars in the name of security. There was a time, when nations fought nations and armies battled against armies, when this strategy might arguably have been relevant, but in the post 9/11 world it is a dysfunctional strategy that is certain to fail.

    Military force is too blunt an instrument for providing security against terrorists. One need only look at the results of the US-led war against Afghanistan. Military force could topple the Taliban regime, but it could not capture or kill the leading terrorists purported to have initiated the 9/11 attacks. In the process of prevailing over the Taliban, which hardly required the world’s most advanced military force, many innocent civilians were killed, undoubtedly resulting in new sympathies and new recruits for the terrorist forces aligned in their hatred toward the policies of the United States.

    Mr. Bush has named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an Axis of Evil, certainly a provocative statement which, combined with Bush’s stated willingness to engage in preemptive war, is likely to elicit steps by these nations to protect themselves against possible attacks by US forces. The Bush administration is already well advanced in its plans to wage war against Iraq. It is worth contemplating that such a war against Iraq would be the first war ever fought for nuclear disarmament, ironically pursued by a country with 10,000 nuclear weapons against a country with no demonstrated nuclear weapons.

    Would a war against Iraq make US citizens more secure? There is every reason to believe that it would make US citizens far less secure. Such a war, rightly or wrongly, would be perceived in the Arab world as reflecting the double standards that allow the US to turn a blind eye to Israel’s arsenal of some 200 nuclear weapons while being willing to attack an Arab country for pursuing the same path. A US-led war against Iraq would require a bloody battle to topple Saddam Hussein, and would undoubtedly result in more hatred and determination by terrorists, old and new, to attack US citizens where they are most vulnerable.

    A war against terrorism is not a war that can be won on the battlefield because there is no battlefield. It is not a war that can be won by throwing more money at the military or by building the most dominant military force in the world (we already have that). Nuclear weapons certainly will not be able to deter terrorists, particularly since they are virtually unlocatable. Nor will missile defenses be of any value against terrorists, who will use low-tech stealth approaches to go under the high-tech missile defenses. And the threat of preemptive war by the US will only provoke other countries to seek clandestinely to develop their own deterrent forces.

    In sum, the Bush administration’s approach to providing security in the post 9/11 world is a strategy not only destined to fail, but to make matters far worse than they already are. Achieving security in a world of suicidal and determined terrorists requires a new approach, something other than the Rumsfeld doctrine of “find and destroy the enemy before they strike us.”

    This new approach to security must be built on the power of diplomacy and aid rather than on military power. It must be built on policies that reverse inequities in the world and seek to provide basic human rights and human dignity for all. These policies must adhere to international law, and end the double standards that have helped to produce extreme misery in much of the Arab world. In the 21st century there must be dignity for all, or there will be security for none.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is the editor of The Poetry of Peace (Capra Press).

  • Recruiting Law Under Question

    Kelly Mendoza, a mom with two kids in high school, has no problem with military recruiters who come onto campus at lunchtime to talk with kids who might want to join the armed forces.

    But a new federal law requiring schools to give military recruiters the names, addresses and phone numbers of students has her worried.

    Her main misgiving: the law makes it easier for recruiters to go to students, rather than have students come to them.

    “Kids are too young in high school to be solicited over the phone,” said Mendoza, an Oxnard resident. “The military is a tough choice now; we could go to war any day. We have to protect our country, but it’s hard to think about your child going to war.”

    The new requirement, part of the No Child Left Behind Act passed in January, allows parents and students to request that schools not release personal information. But even with that provision, the law has some school officials uneasy about privacy issues.

    “As an administrator, I’m uncomfortable with giving out students’ phone numbers,” said Cliff Moore, principal of Oak Park High School. “When something’s mailed, kids have the opportunity to just throw it in the trash. But with a phone call, (recruiters) have a little more leverage.”

    Still, school officials throughout Ventura County say they intend to comply with the requirement, telling parents about it by letter in the next few weeks or in handbooks sent home at the start of the school year.

    Officials who don’t comply stand to lose federal money, which in some Ventura County school districts, such as Oxnard Union High, amounts to $2 million a year. The law also applies to private schools that receive federal funds.

    In addition to privacy concerns, the new law raises questions of just what information schools release and to whom.

    Up to now, some school districts, including Las Virgenes Unified and Santa Paula Union High, released basic information on students to military and college recruiters only if parents gave them written permission.

    Many others, though, including Fillmore, Oak Park and Oxnard Union, already give recruiters some students’ names and addresses, unless parents sign forms saying they don’t want that information released.

    The key, officials said, is that recruiters, whether they’re universities, employers or the armed forces, get the same access.

    “If you let the UCLA recruiter in, you have to let the military recruiter in, too,” said Donald Zimring, deputy superintendent for Las Virgenes.

    Military recruiters argue the new law means students will become aware of options they might not otherwise have considered.

    “This will open a lot of kids’ eyes,” said Gunnery Sgt. Milton Andrews, a Marine recruiter in Simi Valley. “A lot of kids come in and they don’t join. But at least they’ve looked at the option.”

    And while students may find calls from recruiters annoying, most are perfectly capable of figuring out whether the military is right for them, said Matt Lee, a junior at Newbury Park High School.

    “I’m not too concerned about this being used to brainwash students who wouldn’t otherwise want to join,” Lee said. “It’s a good way to spread information. If students really don’t want to join the military, then that’s their right.”

    Still, local educators and parents aren’t the only ones with privacy concerns.

    Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to school superintendents across the state, advising them to make it as easy as possible for parents to keep student information from being released.

    The letter reads in part: “(The law) subjects students and their families to unwanted release of personal information to outside entities as a condition of exercising the right — and obligation — to attend school. These concerns are magnified when the recipient of the information is the military.”

    Citing similar concerns about privacy, the Conejo Valley Unified School District is taking the opt-out option allowed under the law and flipping it.

    That means that Conejo Valley parents must sign a form specifically requesting the district to provide information about their children to military recruiters. If parents don’t return the form, the district assumes they don’t want their child’s phone number, and so forth, released.

    Conejo officials will still not provide student information to college and business recruiters, again citing privacy concerns.

    The district sent 3,000 letters to parents of juniors and seniors last month , informing them of the new requirement and asking them to return a short form if they want information released to the military. So far, it has received about 50 responses.

    “We are not taking any kind of pro or con stand on military recruiting,” said Assistant Superintendent Richard Simpson. “We want students to have access to that information, but we want that access to be because they’re interested in it.”

  • No Child Unrecruited: Should the military be given the names of every high school student in America?

    Sharon Shea-Keneally, principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont, was shocked when she received a letter in May from military recruiters demanding a list of all her students, including names, addresses, and phone numbers.

    The school invites recruiters to participate in career days and job fairs, but like most school districts, it keeps student information strictly confidential. “We don’t give out a list of names of our kids to anybody,” says Shea-Keneally, “not to colleges, churches, employers — nobody.”

    But when Shea-Keneally insisted on an explanation, she was in for an even bigger surprise: The recruiters cited the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush’s sweeping new education law passed earlier this year. There, buried deep within the law’s 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student — or face a cutoff of all federal aid.

    “I was very surprised the requirement was attached to an education law,” says Shea-Keneally. “I did not see the link.”

    The military complained this year that up to 15 percent of the nation’s high schools are “problem schools” for recruiters. In 1999, the Pentagon says, recruiters were denied access to schools on 19,228 occasions. Rep. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana who sponsored the new recruitment requirement, says such schools “demonstrated an anti-military attitude that I thought was offensive.”

    To many educators, however, requiring the release of personal information intrudes on the rights of students. “We feel it is a clear departure from the letter and the spirit of the current student privacy laws,” says Bruce Hunter, chief lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators. Until now, schools could share student information only with other educational institutions. “Now other people will want our lists,” says Hunter. “It’s a slippery slope. I don’t want student directories sent to Verizon either, just because they claim that all kids need a cell phone to be safe.”

    The new law does give students the right to withhold their records. But school officials are given wide leeway in how to implement the law, and some are simply handing over student directories to recruiters without informing anyone — leaving students without any say in the matter.

    “I think the privacy implications of this law are profound,” says Jill Wynns, president of the San Francisco Board of Education. “For the federal government to ignore or discount the concerns of the privacy rights of millions of high school students is not a good thing, and it’s something we should be concerned about.”

    Educators point out that the armed services have exceeded their recruitment goals for the past two years in a row, even without access to every school. The new law, they say, undercuts the authority of some local school districts, including San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, that have barred recruiters from schools on the grounds that the military discriminates against gays and lesbians. Officials in both cities now say they will grant recruiters access to their schools and to student information — but they also plan to inform students of their right to withhold their records.

    Some students are already choosing that option. According to Principal Shea-Keneally, 200 students at her school — one-sixth of the student body — have asked that their records be withheld.

    Recruiters are up-front about their plans to use school lists to aggressively pursue students through mailings, phone calls, and personal visits — even if parents object.

    “The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman,” says Major Johannes Paraan, head U.S. Army recruiter for Vermont and northeastern New York. “Or maybe if the kid died, we’ll take them off our list.”

  • Deploy First. Develop Later? Why Bush’s Plan to Deploy Flawed Missile Defense Meets Little Resistance

    On December 17, the Bush administration announced that the President has directed the Secretary of Defense to proceed with fielding an initial set of missile defense capabilities in 2004. According to military officials, these capabilities will likely include ground-based interceptors at Fort Greeley, Alaska, Aegis warship-based missiles and possibly ground-base interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force base. This announcement has provoked much criticism concerning the lack of reliability of system, the increased amount of funds necessary for this rushed deployment to occur and the destabilizing effect of the system on the international community. However, even given these significant problems, international and domestic opposition seem unlikely to be strong enough to prevent the planned deployment from occurring.

    Deploying an Unproven System

    In normal U.S. military procedure all systems are tested and demonstrated to be operationally effective before any new weapon is deployed. Yet this practice seems to have been side stepped, as pointed out by Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in Bush’s haste to deploy a missile defense system in less than two years. Levin was quoted by the New York Times as saying that Bush’s plan, “violates common sense by determining to deploy systems before they have been tested and shown to work.”

    Representative Tom Allen and Reprehensive Edward J. Markey joined Levin’s criticism of the system in a letter addressed to President Bush also signed by prominent Nobel Laureates. The letter referred to the deployment plan as being “little more than a political gesture,” given the technological hurdles that have yet to be overcome.

    There has, in fact, been little to no assurance that this initial missile defense will be effective. Bush’s announcement of deployment in 2004 follows a recent unsuccessful $80 million test on December 11, where the interceptor failed to separate from its booster rocket, missed its target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere. According to defense analysts from the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), none of eight ground-based interceptor tests have adequately simulated reality.

    Increased Cost

    Bush’s recent deployment commitment is accompanied by a rise in cost of missile defense development, adding to existing concerns that missile defense is taking valuable resources away from more pressing federal programs. Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predicts that the new missile defense deployment plan, “will cause missile defense budget to grow by over 10 percent to over $9 billion, making it the largest single weapon program in the budget. “

    Increased missile defense spending means fewer resources for public health and education, as well for other defense programs that actually address existing terrorist threats, particularly nonproliferation efforts through the Nunn-Lugar Comprehensive Threat Reduction programs.

    The Tempered Response

    Regardless of these many considerable flaws in Bush’s deployment plan, opposition in Congress remains weak. Most Democrats are offering only muted criticism of the missile defense programs and Democrat Joseph Lieberman broke with party leaders to give a full endorsement of Bush’s announcement of the 2004 deployment commitment.

    There was some international negative feedback concerning Bush’s missile defense announcement. Russia’s Foreign Minister announced that U.S. missile defense efforts have entered a “new destabilizing phase.” In general, however, the Minister’s comments were hardly severe.

    Though there has been significant opposition in Greenland to the proposed use of Thule Air Base for the missile defense system, officials from Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, and Great Britain appeared open to increased involvement in the future of missile defense deployment. France gave no response to the missile defense announcement, and the overall international reaction to Bush’s announcement was tempered, particularly among European allies.

    Why no fuss?

    The source of the political will for the Bush administration to deploy the missile defense system is clear. Such deployment will allow Bush to run for president in 2004 having fulfilled his campaign commitment to deploy a missile defense. It is also clear that large special interest contractors that benefit from missile defense and that annually contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to both Republican and Democratic federal campaigns are encouraged by the deployment. As reported in the Boston Herald on Wednesday, December 18th, Raytheon Co., a major missile defense contractor that has recently been suffering from a drop in stock value, warmly welcomed the President’s announcement to deploy in 2004.

    It is, however, startling that the announced deployment of an ineffectual, unreliable, exorbitantly expensive, and potentially destabilizing missile defense system has met such little resistance from U.S. and foreign policy makers. The lack of international response may stem from the system’s lack of promise in being effective in countering any potential opponent’s offensive systems. If the system is not effective, there is little reason for nations outside of the United States to voice strong opposition to the initiative and risk any political costs that would result from coming into conflict with the Bush administration.

    This is, however, the very reason that domestic leaders should be up in arms due to lack of independent oversight of the system, and the potential insecurity that could arise due to the inclusion of an ineffectual defense system within our defense strategy. But there seems to be a lack of commitment among U.S. policy makers to exert any significant control or oversight on the expanding missile defense. Though this lack of opposition is illogical from the stand point of sound spending and national security, from a political cost-benefit perspective it is clearly understandable. Opposition efforts could lead to enemies within the Bush administration, loss of campaign funding from contractors and possible loss in public support in exchange for little more than a clean conscience.

    This lack of political will and incentive indicates that in order to bring elected officials back in line, U.S. citizens and citizens around the world must step up their efforts to let their officials know that they will not tolerate irresponsible spending and premature weapons deployment. If a severe increased sense of public accountability is not soon created within the U.S. Congress regarding missile defense spending, there is little hope that the administration will be prevented from wasting an increased amount of federal funds on the deployment of an ineffectual missile defense system.

  • No Child Left Alone By Military Recruiters

    The No Child Left Behind Act which went into effect last week has some surprising implications for high school students. Buried deep within the funding benefits is Section 9528 which grants the Pentagon access to directories with students names, addresses and phone numbers so that they may be more easily contacted and recruited for military service. Prior to this provision, one-third of the nation’s high schools refused recruiters’ requests for students’ names or access to campus because they believed it was inappropriate for educational institutions to promote military service.

    This portion of the Department of Education’s initiative to create better readers, testers and homework-doers is a departure from the previously federally guaranteed privacy protections students have traditionally known. Until now, schools have been explicitly instructed to protect the integrity of students’ information – even to guard students’ private information from college recruiters. Students must consent to releasing their personal data when they take college entrance exams.

    However, since September 11th , educational institutions have slid down the slippery slope in doling out student information when solicited by the FBI and now the Pentagon. Only one university – Earlham in Indiana – declined to release student data when approached after the terrorist attacks last fall.

    The No Child Left Behind act paves the way for the military to have unimpeded access to underage students who are ripe for solicitation for the military. This blatant contradiction of prior federal law is not only an invasion of students’ privacy but an assault on their educational opportunities as well. Too many students are lulled by the siren songs of military service cooing promises of funding for higher education. Too many students have fallen between the cracks due to underfunded educational programs, underresourced schools and underpaid teachers. They are penalized in their educational opportunities for the systemic failure to put our money where our priorities ought to be: in schools.

    It is critical that students, schools and school districts have accurate information regarding this No Child Left Behind Act in preparation for the forthcoming military solicitation. First, the Local Educational Agency (LEA), not individual schools, may grant dissemination of student information. When recruiters approach individual schools, the administration should refer them to the school district office where they are supposed to visit in the first place.

    In some cases, the recruiters on site have coerced employees at individual schools to sign previously prepared documents stating that in refusing to release student information, they are not in compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act and risk losing federal funding. All requests for student information should be referred to the school district’s office and not left to the discretion of individual school employees. School boards, Parent-Teacher Organizations and Student Council/ASB groups can mobilize to support the administrations who are not willing to distribute private student information.

    Second, students or their parents may opt themselves out of this recruitment campaign. So as not to be in violation of the previous federal law which restricts disclosure of student information, the LEA must notify parents of the change in federal policy through an addendum to the student handbook or individual letters sent to students’ homes. Parents and students can notify their school administration and district in writing of their desire to have their records kept secret.

    The San Francisco School District has maintained a policy of non-recruitment by the military and is leading the nation in their efforts to educate parents and students on their right to privacy. As advocates for their students, the district is sending home individual letters to parents outlining their options for protecting their child’s information.

    At the heart of this argument over students’ records and privacy is the true purpose and meaning of education. Is the goal of education to provide a fertile field of students ripe for the picking by the military which will send them to the front lines of battle, potentially never to return? Is the essence of education to dichotomize the availability of quality education between those with ample finances and those with no financial mobility?

    Or is education meant to develop students’ minds, hearts and talents through self-discovery and academic exploration? Does education aim to promote critical thinking skills, empathy for others, understanding of individual roles in community service, and a sense of global connectedness? Was education designed to be an equitable opportunity for all students?

    A newspaper from the U.K., The Scotsman, recently interviewed a young American woman on an aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Eighteen-year-old Karen de la Rosa said, “I have no idea what is happening. I just hear the planes launching above my head and pray that no one is going to get killed. I keep telling myself I’m serving my country.”

    But is her country serving her?

    The relationship between militarism and education is evident. The current Department of Education budget proposal for 2003 is $56.5 billion. The recently-approved Department of Defense budget is $396 billion, nearly seven times what is allocated for education, and more than three times the combined military budgets of Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Sudan and Syria. An escalated war in Iraq could add more than $200 billion to the defense budget as well.

    Students are continually guilted into shouldering the burden of responsibility when they do not succeed in school and all too often accept as inevitable their fate of being sucked into military service. The Leave No Child Behind Act is a wake up call to students to reclaim their privacy, to reinvest their energy into demanding quality education and to remind their leaders that stealing money from education to pay for military is unacceptable.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. December 10th, Human Rights Day, serves as the platform to challenge the No Child Left Behind Act. NAPF encourages students to get informed and become active in asserting their right to privacy and to quality education. For more information, visithttps://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/new/getinvolved/index.htm.

  • Bush Calls on Henry Kissinger

    Bush Calls on Henry Kissinger

    In 1973 the Nobel Peace Prize was tarnished when it was awarded to Henry Kissinger for his role in negotiating the end of the Vietnam War. The duplicitous and secretive Kissinger had also been involved in sabotaging peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese five years earlier. He eventually helped conclude the war, after some one million more Vietnamese and 20,000 more Americans had died, on substantially the same terms that he sabotaged in 1968. Kissinger was also deeply involved in conducting the secret and illegal US bombing of Cambodia and Laos, and of withholding information from the US Congress on this broadening of the war.

    Add to Kissinger’s work in Southeast Asia his role in undermining East Timor and the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and there is a strong case to be made that Kissinger is one of the 20th century’s most egregious criminals. This is the case that has been made by Christopher Hitchens in his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. The book also forms the basis of a new documentary called The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Both the book and documentary are important for anyone wanting to understand why Henry Kissinger is wanted for questioning in so many countries. He is a walking, talking advertisement for why an International Criminal Court is so critical to upholding human rights in the future from national leaders like Kissinger who place their view of national interests above human rights.

    Mr. Bush has recently attempted to resuscitate Kissinger by appointing him to chair a “Blue Ribbon” Commission to investigate the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. This is a bit like appointing Al Capone to investigate the Mafia, or Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, to investigate corporate wrongdoing.

    Mr. Kissinger, always a ruthless power seeker and broker, even keeps secret the client list at his power brokerage firm, Kissinger Associates. One wonders how Kissinger could possibly be even-handed in this important investigation when he may be called upon to investigate his secret clients. He and Mr. Bush seem to be operating on the assumption that what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them. While this is one way to shove conflicts of interest under the rug, it is an exceedingly dangerous assumption in an already dangerous world.

    With Kissinger leading the investigation, we can be sure that the public will hear only what Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Bush want them to know. In an editorial on 29 November 2002, the New York Times wrote: “It seems improbable to expect Mr. Kissinger to report unflinchingly on the conduct of the government, including that of Mr. Bush. He would have to challenge the established order and risk sundering old friendships and business relationships.” It is likely that Mr. Kissinger will flinch only when one of the countries wanting to investigate him for murder and other high crimes actually gets him into the defendant’s docket.