Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • U.S., Iraqi Students Exchange Letters of Peace

    Originally Published by the Ventura County Star, CA

    Dear Friend, My name is Fahad. First I want to thank you about your nice feelings toward our people in Iraq. Here in Iraq we love all peoples in the world and we try to help them if we could. All people in the world must not believe everything bad said about us in programs made specially to produce bad facts about Iraq.

    My students received this pen-pal letter from a student at the Al-Markaziya School for Boys in Baghdad. Earlier this month, I visited Iraq to deliver pen-pal letters from students in my “Solutions to Violence” classes, and now a friendship between two warring nations has the opportunity to bloom.

    The lack of intercultural communication between students in the United States and students in Iraq is troubling. All we know of them via mass media is that all 24 million Iraqis are equated with their one leader. All they know of us are 12 years of economic sanctions and no-fly-zone bombings.

    When I watch your movies on our black and white TV, I have many dreams to have a color TV, to see your real colors. Do you have the same face that we have? Do you have the same heart?

    The high-school-aged students have most often crossed my mind. When teaching about Iraq, I inquire as to the age at which my students had their first memories. Most students say somewhere around 3 to 5 years old. My students, most of whom are 15 to 18 years old, have grown up knowing leisurely lives, free from bombings, free to watch what they want on television and to buy what they want in shopping malls.

    I ask them to stand in the shoes of their same-age counterparts in Iraq. Imagine that since conscious memory, all they have known has been war. It’s a powerful exercise in empathy.

    Friday is my holiday. I don’t go to school, but I study for hours and hours to get to the medical college. Because of the embargo on our country, there’s no medicine for diseases, and many newborn kids and children are dying.

    Even more troubling to me are the youngest children, those 12 years and younger. They were born after the sanctions and after the Gulf War. They have known no life other than war. And the saddest part? It’s not at all their fault. They are being held hostage under a dictatorship they did not choose, captive and deprived of basic nutrition and access to education.

    I would like to tell you that all Iraqi people are against the idea of war. We believe in peace and that we have the right to vote our own leader.

    UNICEF reports that 80 percent of schools in Iraq are in desperate need of repair. Eight-thousand schools lack basic infrastructure and the basics to support education: no new textbooks since 1989, no chalk, no classroom repairs. Teachers’ salaries prior to the Gulf War were approximately $500 per month. They now earn $5 per month. Students are sent home to use the restroom because those at school pose too great a health risk. And the rate of primary school-aged girls dropping out has increased to 35 percent in the past 12 years.

    According to UNICEF, education is the only sector in Iraq that has shown no improvement since the sanctions were imposed in 1990.

    As a teacher, I am deeply concerned about the connections between education and war-making. Every penny we spend on weapons of mass destruction, every dollar that is diverted from academic enrichment to daisy cutters and pre-emptive strikes deprive American students of the right to a quality education.

    How enraging that our military recruits disproportionately in poor communities of color. How egregious that my students who cannot afford higher education must join the military to pay for their studies. This classist, racist policy glares at the American public who are too blinded by war talk to notice. We are sending poor people to kill poor people. Where is the democracy in that?

    So we are a people who like the peace and work to get it. Because whatever I say I can’t describe to you how much Iraqi people suffered after the war.

    Currently, the pen-pal letter exchange program, supported by Voices in the Wilderness and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, is the only one of its kind. No study abroad programs exist. All diplomatic ties with Iraq have been severed since the early 1990s. It is even illegal to travel there.

    Knowing this, how can we expect the youth of America to know that “our quarrel,” as so many governments have said, “is not with the Iraqi people.” If we don’t make the distinction, how will they?

    Education is the key to ending wars. Through this simple outreach of American to Iraqi students, young people are changing the world.
    *Leah C. Wells, a Santa Paula teacher, serves as peace education coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara. She recently paid a second visit to Iraq and opposes the economic sanctions and no-fly-zone incursions on that country.

  • The Silent War: Iraq’s Women and Children are Casualties Amid Economic Sanctions

    Originally Published by the Ventura County Reporter

    Mohamed, a recently married Iraqi friend who works in the hotel where we stay in Baghdad, is expecting a child soon. Shortly before we left nearly three weeks ago, he approached some members of our seven-member peace delegation with troubling information about his wife’s pregnancy. She will need a Cesarean section—unfortunately, on his salary, Mohamed cannot afford the operation.

    Our team feels helpless listening to Mohamed’s story amid the millions of others like it in Iraq. Even so, it isn’t wise for us to get a reputation as problem-solvers. We do what we can, but working against the United Nations-imposed economic sanctions on Iraq can often be overwhelming.

    This Iraqi clasroom may soon gain over one-third new capacity. More than 35 percent of girls drop out of primary school due to the need to help support their families.

    As a woman visiting Iraq, I often have entrance into particular social situations unfamiliar to men, like holding hands or sitting next to mothers at the hospitals that tend their sick children. I grow particularly empathetic as I imagine myself in their shoes. I know the rage I feel here in the United States toward misguided economic policies meant to target Saddam Hussein but that directly affect the most vulnerable people in society: the women and children.

    In Iraq, life for women (especially mothers) was much better prior to the United Nations sanctions, imposed in August of 1990. From 1975 to 1985, the Iraqi government invested large amounts of money in social programs, such as education and health care. A program to eradicate illiteracy among Iraqi women was exceedingly successful, and women have traditionally enjoyed freedoms not found in other contemporary Arab and Muslim countries.

    In an Oct. 1 New York Times article, Nicholas Kristof reported on the liberal attitudes toward women in Iraq. He wrote that women routinely serve in non-combat positions in the military. They pray, dine and swim together with men. Girls compete in sports as often as boys do.

    Compare these tremendous opportunities with those in neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia, where repressive attitudes cloister women from public life into sometimes dangerous situations. In March, a group of Saudi girls was incinerated, having been denied exit from a burning building because they were not covered by a hijab, or head scarf.

    Although more openminded in its attitudes, Iraq has become decidedly more dangerous for women and children since the Gulf War due to the breakdown in medical care and especially in preventive medicine. Mohamed’s wife knows this predicament all too well.

    In Basra, where much of the Gulf War fighting transpired, 25 of the 26 obstetrics and gynecology students are women. During my first visit to Iraq in August 2001, however, I spoke with a physician at the Basra Pediatric Hospital who said that 90 percent of the women in Southern Iraq suffered from severe anemia, a health indicator with serious implications for women and children.

    Severely anemic nursing mothers cannot provide their babies adequate nutrition. Thus, even breastfeeding has become problematic during the past 12 years of economic sanctions.

    A UNICEF document from April of this year states that many Iraqi mothers have stopped breastfeeding and that only 17 percent breastfeed during their baby’s first four months. Under the Oil for Food Programme of 1995, a food basket handout for Iraqi families contains powdered formula that mothers increasingly use.

    This is problematic for many reasons, among them that the formula requires water for preparation. Nearly 62 percent of women said they report giving their babies water in the first month of life, and nearly 32 percent of the children drink unboiled water—but the water in Iraq is severely contaminated. Many of the water purification, sewage treatment and electrical facilities were bombed during the Gulf War and remain largely unrepaired and are functioning at minimal capacity for a growing nation of 24 million.

    Last fall, Thomas Nagy, a Washington, D.C. professor, released a study called The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq’s Water Supply. In this paper, he details information in government documents from 1991 about how the Gulf War strategy included destroying Iraq’s civilian infrastructure, which violates Geneva Convention articles.

    “It notes,” Nagy reported, “that Iraq’s rivers ‘contain biological materials [and] pollutants and are laden with bacteria. Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis and typhoid could occur.’ Iraq will suffer increasing shortages of purified water because of the lack of required chemicals and desalination membranes. Incidences of disease, including possible epidemics, will become probable unless the population were careful to boil water.”

    Currently, the killer of children in Iraq is gastroenteritis, caused by drinking contaminated water. One in eight children do not see their first birthdays. Imagine the helplessness of being a mother in Iraq, knowing what life was like before the Gulf War and before economic sanctions, wanting nothing more than to be a good mother and provide a healthy, nutritious, safe life for her children.

    In a meeting with the chief medical officer at the Basra Pediatric Hospital, I inquired about the status of preventive health care for women in Iraq. His response was that there is none. This is quite remarkable for Iraq, which until 1990 had eradicated all childhood illnesses and had the most comprehensive health care system in the Middle East.

    While abysmally lacking resources and training programs, the medical field is nowhere as bleak as the education climate in Iraq, especially for young girls. More than 35 percent of girls drop out before the end of primary school due to the high price of school supplies and the need to help supplement the family’s income by going to work, likely begging.

    It seems we are condemning the women and children of Iraq to a fate similar to that of the 25 percent of American children who live in poverty, the 45 million people without health insurance and the 30,000 homeless in New York City alone.

    “Conflict is the last thing people in Iraq need,” UNICEF in Iraq reports. And when our group inquired about the potential effects of President Bush’s growing military campaign, an official at the World Food Programme office in Baghdad sighed: “The poorest people in Iraq will suffer the most.”
    *Leah C. Wells, a Santa Paula teacher, serves as peace education coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara. She recently paid a second visit to Iraq and opposes the economic sanctions and no-fly-zone incursions on that country.

  • Sin Las Mujeres, No Hay Movimiento. “Without the Women, There is no Movement.”

    For many years, women had played supporting roles within movements for nonviolence. They cared for the children and supported their men as they worked on the front lines and garnered the headlines, making public waves. They photocopied and typed behind closed doors, allowing their contributions to remain hidden and, sometimes, allowing men to take credit for their work.

    The farm worker movement is a notable exception to this paradigm.

    The late activist Cesar Chavez recognized the power of women in action when a group of them set up a prayer service and vigil at a ranch a vigil that lasted two months. The workers had been sanctioned by a judge against picketing at a farm. The prayer service began with eight women at noon; it grew to 50 by nightfall.

    Every day, the women maintained a nonviolent presence at the gates to the farm, singing spirituals, praying and signing authorization cards.

    A strong contingent of women activists thrives at Ventura’s PictSweet mushroom farm. They play key roles in policy and decision-making. They are organized, and they are proud. And their stories shape the future of the movement as their co-workers and children see the essential importance of their input in a shared victory.

    Within the first week of leaving her native town in Jalisco, Mexico in 1978, Lilia Orozco began her career at PictSweet. She sacrificed from the start, leaving her two children, ages 3 and 5, in the care of her mother while she joined her husband in Ventura.

    The history behind her strength runs deep.

    “In my town in Jalisco,” she said, ”the women wanted on president and the men wanted another. And the strength of the women won. We got our president elected.”

    When she and her husband separated, her single motherhood dictated her involvement in the movement. Whereas other women might have taken a quieter role in the struggle, Lilia stood at the forefront. When her sons joined her in the United States in 1980, she started taking them to the picket lines.

    “I made the struggle fit into my life,” she said. “You have to play so many roles mother, father, cook, doctor an dkeep up with their education, the housework, everything.”

    For Lilia, there was no question as to whether motherhood or work was more important. They were, and are, equal in her eyes.

    “We have to defend ourselves and our jobs,” she said. “If we give up, other scabs would have taken our jobs.”

    As the sole provider for her children, Lilia realized that if they were to survive in the United States, she had to continue to fight.

    When Lilia began working, the PictSweet farm was owned by West Foods. In 1981, just a few years after beginning her commitment to mushroom agriculture, the workers went on strike to renew their contract with West. The strike served to maintain a comprehensive benefits package that provided for the families’ medical needs.

    Lilia tells a story of better times at PictSweet, when dental and vision insurance were part of the benefits package, and when the medical plan included $5 prescription costs.

    For the past 23 years, Lilia has been working in the “bubble” department, cleaning the mushroom beds after they have been picked. It took her only two months on the job to find her place in the United Farm Workers union, and she has been a vocal supporter of labor representation ever since. This struggle helped her to find her voice and to stand up not only for her rights but also for the rights of others.

    “When a woman is by herself,” she said, “everyone wants to take advantage of her. You have to stand up for yourself. If I know that I’m right, I have to fight back.” Her conclusion: No one can do it for you.

    Lilia’s message to the union’s Farm Worker Committee “gets desperate” when she feels she has important information for them. Her sentiments are similar to those of a female Georgetown law student, who said, “Women want answers more quickly because we’re more often the victims, anda victims don’t want to wait for solutions.”

    She capitalizes on the value of women in the movement by talking to everyone at the mushroom plant. “More people will talk to women than men,” she says. “And when the men at work are talking badly about women, I remind them that their wives and mothers are women. When they talk badly about the union, I press the issue and ask what they really mean…what is behind their fear.”

    “At this time,” she said, “the struggle is more balanced. Women are playing more equal roles and are stronger, making more of a difference this time around.” She referred to the most recent struggle to gain a contract with PictSweet the movement was invigorated in 2000 with a massive boycott strategy.

    Alicia Torres’ experience is similar to Lilia’s: She came here from Mexico to be with her husband, bringing one child with her and leaving three behind with her family in Michoacan. For the past 15 years, she has been the breadwinner in her family because a brain disease has left her husband incapacitated and unable to work.

    In 1989, Alicia immigrated to the United States as a migrant worker, first picking strawberries and grapes in Lodi, then packing vegetables for Boscotich Farms. She lost her job there when she asked for some time off to raise her kids.

    “I signed papers with the forewoman for an arrangement that she would hire me back during the onion season,” Alicia sighed. “She said she’d call me for a job.” As onion season began in 2000, Alicia watched as many other women were hired back. She eventually was told she would not get her job as a packer back. After this disappointing incident, she found work at PictSweet.

    Alicia works in the brown mushrooms department, picking portabellas. Union organizing and contract efforts had begun by the time she arrived, and she decided to support the union because of her previous experience.

    As the union representative for the brown mushroom department, she says she has no fear: “How can we improve our conditions if not together?” she said. “The Union gives women many opportunities to succeed. God made women strong. Even when we’re sick, we work and struggle. Women work through the hard times!”

    She advises her daughters to be strong women as well, to “get a good education, to prepare themselves and stand up for themselves.”

    She also stresses cooperation: “Women could not run this campaign alone,” she explained. “We give the men courage. We are decisive when they say ‘it will happen later,’ we say ‘it will happen now!”

    The daughters of Jesus Torres, notable in the United Farm Workers campaign to win a contract with PictSweet, know the ropes of organizing already. Just 8 and 9 years old, they attend regular meetings with their father at the United Farm Workers office, often until late at night.

    “We come here,” they said, “because we want to hear more about the union. We have marched in Sacramento and Los Angeles because we want a contract for the workers,” the girls exclaim. “…and when we miss school because of the struggle, we bring souvenirs to our teachers, like pins and buttons.”

    These girls see for themselves how they want to contribute in society. Judit wants to be a teacher because “it’s fun telling kids how to learn.” At a young age, she is realizing that education also takes place outside the classroom.

    Lourdes wants to be an artist: “I want to draw the sea, sun, grass, sky…people.”

    The girls nod their heads enthusedly when asked if they’re proud of their dad.

    “It helps him for us to be here,” they said with a giggle. “He has his family supporting him.”

    Perhaps one day, the Torres girls will have children of their own supporting their place at the forefront of the struggle for workers’ rights.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Don’t Dump Nuclear Waste Way Out West

    Originally Published in the Daily Nexus

    Last Friday, four students left Santa Barbara and traveled the 420 miles to Mercury, Nev. I did not know exactly where I was going or what I was going to, but I did know that I had to go. What I ended up at was the Action for Nuclear Abolition Peace Camp on Western Shoshone Nation lands.

    I had thought that I was going to a protest against nuclear testing and dumping on the Shoshone land, but what the activists at the camp are involved in is more than just a protest; it is a nonviolent direct action. They are protesting the re-introduction of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site 65 miles north of Las Vegas as well as the takeover of the Shoshone land for the test site.

    Twice a year for the last 14 years, on both Mother’s Day weekend and the week prior to and including Indigenous Peoples Day, organizations and individual activists from all over the country have converged on the Nevada Test Site. They join with the members of the Shoshone Tribe to protest and “cross the line” into the site as a symbolic way of showing that they consider that land Shoshone land. This year, the organization that I am involved in, UC Nuclear Free, and members from the Environmental Affairs Board decided to join the fight.

    On Saturday night, we joined with the other activists and walked down the highway from the peace camp to the entrance to the Nevada Test Site, cheering and chanting. When we arrived at the line separating the site from the Shoshone land, people spoke out against the dangers of nuclear testing and the movement of nuclear waste. As people continued to speak, others, with permits to be on the Western Shoshone land in their hands, began to walk across the line into the site and into the waiting hands of the police. I stood by and watched as the police began to drag people away, and I realized that this was not about getting arrested or about crossing a line; it was about saving lives.

    Over the last year the U.S. government has passed some alarming bills that will endanger the lives of not only the Shoshone people, but us all. In July the Senate approved the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump and committed to the shipment of over 50,000 “mobile Chernobyls” to the mountain on the Nevada Test Site. In January, the Pentagon released its “Nuclear Posture Review,” calling for increased spending on nuclear weapons, continued subcritical experiments and a possible resumption of full-scale nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site. In August, a defense official stated that full-scale nuclear tests will happen in the near future.

    We cannot keep quiet about this any longer. To protect the Native Americans who live in the area where the tests will happen, and to protect ourselves from the nuclear waste that is slated to travel through Santa Barbara on trains and barges, we need to speak out. I encourage all of you to attend the next protest at the Nevada Test Site on Mother’s Day weekend of this year and to get involved in the fight against nuclear development.

    For more information on the Nevada Test Site and the fight against it, go tohttp://www.shundahai.org.
    *Jacqueline Binger is a senior law and society major as well as a volunteer at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • A Few Troubling Questions in Troubling Time

    These are troubling times and I’m wondering about a few things.

    I wonder, if we attacked Iraq, what are the chances of killing Saddam Hussein? If we did kill him, would others who think like him come up in the ranks? How many of his forces and current government members would we have to kill? Would the people in his country who don’t support his rule stand up to oppose him, or would they join forces with him to repel our invasion? Would they have a choice? As collateral deaths mount and as property gets destroyed, where would their loyalties be?

    Would an attack by us deter or propel Saddam to use chemical or nuclear weapons, if he has them? I wonder how long we would have to commit troops and resources to Iraq if we thought we did kill him. I wonder how long we will be in Afghanistan.

    I’m also wondering, if we got rid of Saddam, to what degree would that hamper the operations of al-Qaeda? Wouldn’t more people join them when they see the United States attack Iraq? Would al-Qaeda be less or more inclined to take catastrophic retribution measures? How many foreign countries would we have to invade to try to route them out? Would the leaders of other “rogue nations” think, “we’re next,” and be motivated to launch a preemptive attack, perhaps even nuclear, on us? How long do we try to control who gets to be a nuclear power? Can we achieve it in the future, having been unable to do it in the past?

    I wonder why so much of the Arab world is angry with us. What do Bin Laden, Hussein and the rest of the “axis of evil” want from us? Are they all mad monsters, perverted by some mad interpretation of a religion? Even if they are, why do they have millions of Arab sympathizers? Why don’t our newspapers and TV news shows tell us their side of the story? Why does there seem to be a total blackout of the other side of the story?

    Why do they hate us? I wonder what “hate” is. We so readily use that word. What does it mean? Do I have any of it in me? What does it look like in me? How are those who hate us so totally different than us? I wonder if we in the U.S., representing 4% of the world’s population and consuming 30% of its resources, have a different world view. Do we want people to live like us, to consume seven times their share? We wonder why everybody can’t be like us. I wonder why we can’t be like everybody else.

    I wonder what causes “desperate” acts? “De” + “sperare” = away from hope, hopeless. When others commit hopeless acts, how do we respond? Do we respond to desperate acts with desperate acts? Do we give or take away hope from the world? I wonder what kind of response would give hope to the world.

    What is the most powerful thing that the President and elected representatives of the most powerful nation on earth can do to bring hope, to heal the planet? I wonder.

    P.S. I wonder if some people who read this will be upset. I wonder why these questions might be upsetting?

  • United Nations Launches Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education

    If disarmament and non-proliferation goals are to be furthered the public must be educated about these issues on a wide scale, particularly in areas of conflict. To help bolster such education efforts the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs launched the U.N. Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education Wednesday October 9 after two years of work and deliberations.

    In March 2000 a group of experts from around the world were appointed to examine existing disarmament and nonproliferation education and training programs, and to give recommendations for furthering such work, particularly through the U.N. system. The resulting analysis stems largely from consultations with non-governmental, academic, research and media communities from throughout the world.

    Though the study’s 34 recommendations are varied, they include specific actions that can be taken to increase the availability and distribution of disarmament education resources; to improve collaboration between organizations currently working on disarmament education; and to take advantage of appropriate education technology.

    The study emphasizes that there must be education efforts at all levels, from young school children to military personnel, and that different methods must be used to reach the public on all levels, with particular sensitivity to cultural and language differences

    The First Committee of the United Nations will now begin discussing the document, and it is hoped that the study will lead to an increase in the available resources for effective disarmament education initiatives.

    The study calls for increased action by a number of actors, including municipal leaders; religious leaders and institutions; grassroots organizations; and a number of U.N. actors. While impact of some of its suggestions may be difficult to measure, any steps taken by the U.N. General Assembly, the Department of Disarmament and Public Information, U.N. affiliated organizations, U.N. member states, and international non-governmental organizations will be clearly visible.

    Disarmament education is a key step in moving towards a more peaceful and non-violent global environment. It is hoped that the study’s suggestions will be enthusiastically implemented.

    U.N. Undersecretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Jayantha Dhanapala and Director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, William C. Potter, stated, in a recent International Herald Tribune article:

    “Young people live in a world ravaged by conflict and awash in arms. In an age of weapons of mass destruction, they also must contend with the fear of total annihilation. As diplomats and educators we have a responsibility to provide them with hope founded on reality. Disarmament and nonproliferation education is an important but underused tool to accomplish that end.”
    *Devon Chaffee is the Research and Advocacy Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • A Bleak Day for America

    A Bleak Day for America

    Today is a bleak day for America, and for all Americans. Congress, in its fear and conformity, has voted to grant authority to the President to conduct a preemptive war against another nation. Congress has joined the President in assuming an imperial mantle, granting powers above and beyond our obligations under international and domestic law.

    Would that Congress had heeded its wiser and saner voices, such as Senator Robert Byrd, who cautioned restraint and warned that the vote to authorize the rush to war undermined our Constitution. Only Congress has the power to declare war under the US Constitution. It cannot legally give this power over to the president.

    “We are at the gravest of moments,” Senator Byrd told his colleagues. “Members of Congress must not simply walk away from their Constitutional responsibilities. We are the directly elected representatives of the American people, and the American people expect us to carry out our duty, not simply hand it off to this or any other president. To do so would be to fail the people we represent and to fall woefully short of our sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution.”

    International law, as imbedded in the United Nations Charter, allows for war under two tightly circumscribed conditions. First, a nation may engage in force for self-defense when an attack occurs or is imminent, but only if there is not time to take the matter to the United Nations Security Council and only until the United Nations Security Council assumes control of the situation. Second, a nation may engage in force when duly authorized by the United Nations Security Council after all efforts to secure the peace by peaceful means have failed.

    Despite the congressional vote of false authority to the President, neither of these conditions of authorization to engage in war has been fulfilled. There is no evidence that an attack by Iraq on the United States or any other nation is imminent. Nor have the peaceful means to resolve Iraq’s compliance with earlier Security Council resolutions calling for dismantlement of weapons of mass destruction been pursued since the United Nations, under pressure from the United States, pulled its inspectors out of Iraq four years ago. Iraq has indicated its willingness to resume inspections, but the Bush administration has been reluctant to take Yes for an answer and accept their offer of compliance.

    September 11th will be remembered in America as the tragic day terrorists made evident the vulnerability of even the world’s most powerful nation. October 11th should be remembered as the day that Congress meekly and uncourageously gave to the President of the United States the illegal authority to commit preemptive war. Such war, in the context of World War II called “aggressive war,” is what Nazi and Japanese leaders were held to account for at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials following World War II.

    Such war is far from the proud traditions of America dating back to its Declaration of Independence. This is not the way that America should be leading the world, for it will result in international chaos, instability and increased insecurity. Now it is up to ordinary Americans to take to the streets and by their presence make it known in Washington and throughout the world that the American public does not support putting the face of Saddam on the innocent children of Iraq; nor does it support high-altitude bombing and other of acts of aggressive warfare in the name of a false and Orwellian peace.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His latest book is Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age.

  • Vote “NO” On Iraq War Resolution US Statement by Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)

    Before the House of Representatives

    As the vote on whether or not this Nation goes to war approaches in this Chamber, a vote which most surely will come within a few days, I think it is important, Mr. Speaker, for us to be able to make the case to the American people as to why it is not appropriate for this country to go to war and to encourage the American people to call their Members to make sure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people does prevail.

    The Members who joined me today, Members for whom I have the greatest gratitude, include the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Capuano), the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner), the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver), the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Rivers), the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano), the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis), the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson), and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

    One after another they came before the national press to make their case as to why this Congress should vote against any resolution which would put us on a path towards war. And one after another, in front of the National Press Corps, they called out to the American people to tell the American people to make sure that they called their Members of Congress; that if they did not want war, these Members told the National Press Corps, that if the American people do not want war, to call their Congressman.

    So, Mr. Speaker, today, I intend to do a number of things. I intend to present to this Congress an analysis of the joint resolution which was offered to this Congress; and, after presenting that analysis, I want to put in perspective where we are in this moment in history.

    The resolution which this Congress is facing says: “Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq’s war of aggression against an illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq.”

    The American people need to know that the key issue here is that in the Persian Gulf War there was an international coalition. World support was for protecting Kuwait. There is no world support for invading Iraq.

    The resolution goes on to say: “Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

    “Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated.”

    But the key issue here that the American people need to know is that U.N. inspection teams identified and destroyed nearly all such weapons. A lead inspector, Scott Ritter, said that he believes that nearly all other weapons not found were destroyed in the Gulf War. Furthermore, according to a published report in The Washington Post, the Central Intelligence Agency, yes, the Central Intelligence Agency, has no up-to-date accurate report on Iraq’s capabilities of weapons of mass destruction.

    The resolution that is presented to this Congress says: “Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998.”

    What the American people need to know, and the key issue here, is that the Iraqi deceptions always failed. The inspectors always figured out what Iraq was doing. It was the United States that withdrew from the inspections in 1998, and the United States then launched

    a cruise missile attack against Iraq 48 hours after the inspectors left. And it is the United States, in advance of a military strike, the U.S. continues to thwart, and this is the administration’s word, weapons inspections.

    Now, this resolutions, and what I am doing here obviously is stating the resolution as a point and then making the counterpoint so the American people can understand that this is a capsule summary of the debate that is going to take place in this House next week.

    In the resolution the administration contends: “Whereas, in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq’s continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened U.S. vital interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations and urged the President to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations.”

    The resolution says: “Whereas Iraq both possesses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations.”

    The American people deserve to know that the key issue here is that there is no proof that Iraq represents an imminent or immediate threat to the United States of America. I will repeat: there is no proof that Iraq represents an imminent or immediate threat to the United States. A continuing threat does not constitute a sufficient cause for war. The administration has refused to provide the Congress with credible evidence that proves that Iraq is a serious threat to the United States and that it is continuing to possess and develop chemical and biological and nuclear weapons.

    Furthermore, there is no credible evidence connecting Iraq to al Qaeda and 9-11, and yet there are people who want to bomb Iraq in reprisal for 9-11. Imagine, if you will, as Cleveland columnist Dick Feagler wrote last week, if after this country was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor in 1941, if instead of retaliating by bombing Japan, we would have retaliated by bombing Peru. Iraq is not connected by any credible evidence to 9-11, nor is it connected by any credible evidence to the activities of al Qaeda on 9-11.

    The resolution says, and I quote, continuing in this comparison point by point, the resolution says, that we will be voting on the administration’s resolution: “Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait.”

    The counterpoint, and what the American people deserve to know, the key issue here, is that this language is so broad that it would allow the President to order an attack against Iraq even though there is no material threat to the United States. Since this resolution authorizes the use of force for all Iraq-related violations of U.N. Security Council directives, and since the resolution cites Iraq’s imprisonment of non-Iraqi prisoners, this resolution could be seen by some to authorize the President to attack Iraq in order to liberate Kuwaiti citizens, who may or may not be in Iraqi prisons, even if Iraq met compliance with all requests to destroy any weapons of mass destruction. The resolution goes on to say: “Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against any other nations and its own people;

    “Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.”

    The counterpoint of this, Mr. Speaker, and the key issue here, is that the Iraqi regime has never attacked, nor does it have the capability to attack, the United States. The no-fly zone was not the result of a U.N. Security Council directive. Now, many people do not know that. They think the U.N. Security Council established the no-fly zone. It did not. The no-fly zone was illegally imposed by the United States, Great Britain, and France, and is not specifically sanctioned by any Security Council resolution.

    The resolution goes on to say, and I quote from the resolution: “Whereas members of al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, are known to be in Iraq.”

    Well, the American people need to know there is no credible evidence that connects Iraq to the events of 9-11 or to participation in those events by assisting al Qaeda.

    The resolution states, and I quote: “Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens.”

    The key issue here, and the counterpoint that the American people need to know, is that any connection between Iraq’s support of terrorist groups in the Middle East, Mr. Speaker, is an argument for focusing great resources on resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It is not a sufficient cause for the United States to launch a unilateral preemptive strike against Iraq. Indeed, an argument could be made that such an attack would exacerbate the condition in the Middle East and destabilize the region.

    The resolution states: “Whereas the attacks on the United States of America of September 11, 2001 underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations.”

    And, again, and I stress, the American people need to know that there is no connection between Iraq and the events of 9-11. However, this resolution attempts to make the connection over and over and over. And just saying that there is a connection does not make it so, because the Central Intelligence Agency has not presented this Congress with any credible information that indicates that there is in fact a tie between Iraq and 9-11, between Iraq and al Qaeda, or Iraq and the anthrax attacks on this Capitol.

    And if we are to go to war against any Nation, and I oppose us doing this in this case, we ought not be taking such action in retaliation, and ought not put it in a document like this in retaliation, attacking a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11.

    The resolution goes on to say, “Whereas Iraq’s demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself”; that is the assertion.

    The key issue here is that there is no credible evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. If Iraq had successfully concealed the production of such weapons since 1998, and let us assume that somebody has information they have never told Congress, they have never been able to back up, but they have this information and it is secret, and they secretly know Iraq has such weapons, there is no credible evidence that Iraq has the capability to reach the United States with such weapons, if they have them, and many of us believe no evidence has been presented that they do.

    In 1991, the Gulf War, Iraq had a demonstrated capability of biological and chemical weapons, but they obviously did not have the willingness to use them against the Armed Forces of the United States. Congress has not been provided any credible information which proves that Iraq has provided international terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

    Mr. Speaker, this resolution will be presented to this Congress to vote on as a cause of war. I am reading the exact quote from the resolution, and then I am making the counterpoint. In effect, this is the first step towards a debate on this issue on this floor.

    The resolution says, “Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949.”

    The counterpoint and what the American people need to know is that the U.N. Charter, and we participate in the United Nations, we helped form the United Nations, we helped set up this international framework of law that is represented by the United Nations, that the United Nations Charter forbids all Member nations, including the United States, from unilaterally enforcing U.N. resolutions.

    We cannot do this on our own. We cannot decide that some nation is in violation of U.N. resolutions and we take it upon ourselves to render justice.

    The resolution states, that will be before this House as a cause of war, “Whereas Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) has authorized the President to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 612, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, 677”; and the point is the same.

    If those Security Council resolutions are not being implemented, that is up to the United Nations and the Security Council to take up the matter. It is not up to the United States to initiate unilateral action enforcing U.N. resolutions with military force.

    The resolution which is being presented to this House next week says, “Whereas in December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that it supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1), that Iraq’s repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region, and that Congress supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688.”

    Well, the counterpoint here is this, and what we are going to be asserting on the floor of this House is that this clause demonstrates the proper chronology of international process in contrast to the current march to war. In 1991, the United Nations Security Council passed the resolution asking for enforcement of its resolution. Member countries authorized their troops to participate in a U.N.-led coalition to enforce the U.N. resolutions. Now the President is asking Congress to authorize a unilateral first strike before the U.N. Security Council has asked its member states to enforce U.N. resolutions.

    If we believe in international law, then we ought to look to what this country did in 1991 when it joined the United Nations’ effort on this matter on global security and not go it alone, not initiate a unilateral action or attack or preemptive strike.

    The resolution here says, “Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.”

    Well, the counterpoint is this, and the American people should know this, this sense of Congress resolution which is referred to in that paragraph was not binding. Furthermore, while Congress supported democratic means of removing Saddam Hussein, and I voted for that, we clearly did not endorse the use of force contemplated in this resolution.

  • A Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Symposium on International Law and the Quest for Security

    As the future of the international legal order hangs in the balance in the United Nations Security Council, it is necessary for government officials, academics, activists and citizens to engage in constructive dialogue about the role that the global legal order is to play in global security. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation sponsored a symposium entitled International Law & the Quest for Security enabling such timely discussion to take place at the University of California at Santa Barbara on October 25, 2002.

    The keynote speakers were Richard Falk, professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton and Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, his Excellency Arthur N.R. Robinson, President of Trinidad and Tobago, and John Burroughs, Executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy. They were accompanied by a variety of panelists with varying backgrounds in international law. The resulting conversation was constructive and cutting edge as the participants proceeded to challenge one another’s assumptions about the future of the world legal order.

    Detoured or Derailed?

    Professor Falk set the tone for the first half of the symposium by expounding upon the crisis of security that the international community is currently suffering. He illustrated how US policies on Iraq challenge the very notion the territorial state and threaten to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council. Falk ended his initial remarks by posing the question of whether Sept. 11 and the events that have ensued have derailed or simply detoured the post-Cold War progress in fortifying a global legal order.

    The four members of the panel that followed, monitored by Professor Peter Haslund, Director of International and Global Studies Program, Santa Barbara City College, approached the issues addressed by Falk from a variety of perspectives. Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director of Western States Legal Foundation and a nuclear weapons abolition activist, drove home the severity of the US military’s enthusiasm for nuclear weapons by quoting from various military documents and speeches. She also urged the audience to organize around a set of values that differ from this militaristic approach instead of focusing on particular issues or weapon systems.

    Cecelia Lynch, an associate professor of political science at UC Irvine, commented on historical trends of social movements and described the tensions between the environmental, peace, humanitarian, and anti-globalization movements today. Professor Lynch also emphasized the need to increase the responsibility of the state for welfare and to decrease the emphasis on militarism.

    Though many of those at the symposium concentrated on evaluating recent US policy, particularly its aggressive stance against Iraq, Professor Manou Eskandari, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Santa Barbara City College, pointed out that, “unilateralism is not just an American problem.” Eskandari also criticized the Security Council as being less than a truly a global forum, and called for democratization of the United Nations.

    Marc McGinns, a senate lecturer in Environmental Studies at the UC Santa Barbara, took an environmentally-based approach to the issues of human and global security. McGinns addressed the tensions between manmade international legal systems and the law of nature claiming that “we are making war against the earth” with our consumption habits. Highlighting the stark inequalities in world consumption, and its destabilizing effects on world security, McGinns put forth the questions, “What’s it to be? Justice or just us?”

    Debating the International Criminal Court

    In the afternoon session of the Symposium the discussion focused on the International Criminal Court (ICC), the statute of the Court having come into force this past July.

    His Excellency President Robinson, who was instrumental in getting the ICC back on the U.N. agenda in 1989, started off the afternoon by delivering a powerful speech delineating his personal involvement in the struggle to establish the ICC. Identifying the Court as a means of establishing standards of behavior he stated, “it is necessary that rules must be devised whereby humankind can live with one another because, with the advances that will take place in science and technology, a new world war of this kind will result in the destruction of humanity.”

    Dr. Burroughs began his talk on opposition to the ICC by pointing out the accuracy of Professor Eskandari’s position that there are other nations besides the US the establishment of the Court. Burroughs pointed out that China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and the United States—the five most populated countries in the world—have not ratified the ICC statute. He then went through the major objections to the court that Marc Grossman, US Under secretary of State, has outlined, displaying the pitfalls of each objection.

    Burroughs’ remarks were followed by an engaging discussion of the value of the ICC as a new element of international law. While panelists such as Judge Paul Egly supported the ICC as a “wonderful document,” Professor Lisa Hajjar, assistant professor of the Law and Society Program at UC Santa Barbara, challenged the ICC approach to international criminal law. Hajjar favored the use of universal jurisdiction in national courts, such as was used in the case against ex-Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. She described this approach as being a more decentralized and democratic and suggested that the establishment of the ICC could actually impede the pursuit of universal jurisdiction in national courts.

    In his remarks, Stan Roden, a practicing attorney from the local community, described how the ICC was consistent with the rights guaranteed in the US constitution. Professor Eskandari questioned this somewhat nation-centric approach asking if the ICC would be any less legitimate if it did not adhere to US constitutional rights.

    Dr. J. Kirk Boyd, a Visiting Professor at UC Santa Barbara, spoke mainly about the Bill of Rights Project, which is working to create an international composition of human rights, consolidating existing documents. Boyd described this project as part of an effort to prevent crimes such as those to be tried under the ICC, creating an international environment where such crimes would become less likely.

    As the symposium wound down, participants enthusiastically welcomed an unexpected appearance by Daniel Ellsburg, releasing the Pentagon Papers to the press during the Vietnam War. Ellsburg voiced his opinion that we are at much risk of nuclear weapons going off in the next weeks or months than we were during the Cold War, emphasizing the need for a long-term approach to weapons proliferation.

    The symposium was wrapped up with the conclusions of David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Richard Falk who synthesized the varying points made throughout day. Falk also left the audience with the hopeful idea of “politics as the art of the impossible,” reminding participants of the importance of continuing to engage in dialogue and action to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts in the face of extreme militarism.
    * Devon Chaffee is the Research and Advocacy Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • The Bush Administration’s Assault on International Law

    The Bush Administration’s Assault on International Law

    Originally Published in World Editorial & International Law

    A war initiated by the United States to oust Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq under the present circumstances, and without U.N. Security Council authorization, would be tantamount to a “war of aggression,” an international crime for which high-ranking leaders of the Axis countries during World War II were held to account at the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo.

    The chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson, described such war as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Thus, the seriousness of the international law violation that such a war would entail would exceed the seriousness of the Iraqi violations that the Bush administration has cited to justify it. Such a war would also symbolize the complete reversal of official U.S. policy toward international law since World War II.

    In the immediate aftermath of the allied war against Nazi and Japanese aggression, the United States led other nations in establishing the United Nations Charter “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” and in founding the United Nations “to maintain international peace and security,” “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace,” and “to bring about by peaceful means” settlements of international disputes.

    A war against Iraq at this time, whether initiated by the United States alone or with authorization from the U.N. Security Council, would violate these founding U.N. principles by permitting an unprovoked major war to occur, most likely with massive loss of life and the threat of wider conflict and conflagration.

    Furthermore, because the law of the U.N. Charter is less than ideal—reserving permanent Security Council membership to the great powers, including the United States, with veto authority over the council’s resolutions—a U.S.-imposed Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq would highlight and exacerbate the U.N.’s weaknesses, and would constitute a major setback to its fundamental goals and aspirations.

    If noncompliance with U.N. resolutions and secret weapons programs were legitimate grounds for the Security Council to authorize force, then the United States, if it were consistent, would be preparing a force-authorizing resolution for its own invasion, as well as for invasions of other permanent members of the council, and of Israel, India, Pakistan, and others.

    If the Security Council, however, manages to withstand U.S. pressure to authorize an invasion, and if, as it has threatened, the Bush administration invades Iraq without such authorization, the damage to international law would be equally great, given that the United States would be demonstrating its contempt for the U.N. Charter and the United Nations in the clearest possible terms.

    As the chief architect of the U.N. Charter, and as the world’s most powerful nation—militarily, economically, and politically—the United States has a special responsibility to uphold the founding principles of the United Nations, and to lead the world, not repeatedly to war, but in setting international precedents and developing global models for the peaceful resolution of conflict consistent with the rules, principles, and procedures of the U.N. Charter.

    With such leadership, the world could then turn its attention to broader applications of international law to other areas of profound concern, including global warming, preserving the oceans, protecting human rights, raising standards of living for the world’s poor, ending global starvation, ending the global arms bazaar, ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a just solution, and ending the threat of nuclear war—issues for which the Bush administration has shown only hostility. The alternative is international anarchy, irreversible environmental degradation and destruction, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps also a proliferation of wars unconstrained by the principles of a peaceful world order that the United States helped establish a half-century ago. Even the Bush administration’s efforts to reduce the terrorist threat to the United States would likely be damaged by an unprovoked war against an Arab state in the Middle East.

    International law is essential in the twenty-first century because powerful technologies and integrated economies cannot be constrained by national boundaries. The adverse effects of pollution, disease, and weapons of war are uncontrollable without standards contained in law. The sanctity of the earth’s biosphere, including human survival, has become dependent upon the strengthening of these standards. Sadly, however, the United States under the Bush administration has initiated an intense assault on international law in order to pursue short-term and short-sighted interests that avoid, evade, ignore, or violate the standards painstakingly developed by the international community, including the United States, over many decades.

    If the United States continues to shirk, even denounce, its responsibilities to uphold international law across a range of global problems and concerns, it will tear open the fabric of world security and international cooperation, and leave the future of the human race, including the United States, in extreme peril.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book isChoose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age.