Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Dennis J. Kucinich

  • The Atomic Bomb, Then and Now

    Dennis Kucinich - Frank Kelly LectureThis article was originally published by the Huffington Post.

    Sixty-nine years ago, the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Japan — Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 — killing over a quarter of a million people.

    General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other government leaders said at the time that the atomic bomb was not necessary militarily and that Japan was already facing certain defeat by the US and the Soviet Union.

    Despite these warnings, the bombs were used and were wrongfully credited with ending the war. The atomic bomb ushered in an age of warfare that gave nations the ability to annihilate other nations and to commit environmental suicide, as Jonathan Schell related in his masterpiece The Fate of the Earth.

    The ability to split the atom also legitimatized a nuclear industry which poisons our land and our water as shown in the new documentary film Hot Water, produced by Liz Rogers and Elizabeth Kucinich, which will be released late 2014.

    Two years ago, Congress brought forward a proposal to create a new national park to honor those who developed the bomb. I opposed the bill because I felt the effects of the bomb were nothing to celebrate or glorify and was instrumental in the proposal’s defeat in the House in 2012. A transcript of the debate in the house can be found here. In the 2014 Congress, this bill (S. 507 by Senator Cantwell) passed the House, but is unlikely to pass the Senate.

    Our problem isn’t simply our nuclear past, but is our present addiction to nuclear weapons which threaten humanity’s future. Professor Francis A. Boyle observed that in 2013 the Obama administration changed the United States nuclear posture. The United States has historically positioned its nuclear arsenal for the purposes of “deterrence,” yet under President Obama’s administration they are for brandishing. “In today’s security environment” the United States now reserves the right to use nuclear weapons against any country (first strike policy).

    Lest anyone forget that nuclear is a big business, the United States is the leader in the global nuclear energy market. Nuclear energy technology is one of our biggest exports and is promoted as a boon to the environment, forget Fukushima. Forget that dozens of nuclear reactors in the US are operating way past their original licensing permits and that the aging reactor vessels are in late stages of embrittlement.

    Forget that nuclear utilities are pleading with Wall Street to give them a break. We have come full circle, back to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where the United States struck first with nuclear weapons. The most recent nuclear posture, the White House claimed, is necessary to eventually get rid of nuclear weapons! Read Professor Boyle’s analysis and the White House document.

    During this time of commemoration of man’s inhumanity, visited upon the people of Japan three generations ago, let us resolve that we shall demand leaders who will resist the impulse to solve political and security problems through weapons of mass destruction.

    Such leaders already exist in an organization known as the Parliamentarians for Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament, or PNND. Additionally, The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation promotes citizen action for nuclear abolition.

    We must work together to support all efforts to get rid of nuclear weapons, not through appeals to violence but through the instinct to celebrate life. Let us find a path to love so that we can dismantle the destructive forces within our own hearts, which paralyze any sense of compassion necessary for the survival of all life on this planet. Let us build technologies for sustainability, and peace.

  • Stop Calling the Iraq War a Mistake

    Dennis Kucinich - Frank Kelly LectureAs Iraq descends into chaos again, more than a decade after “Mission Accomplished,” media commentators and politicians have mostly agreed upon calling the war a “mistake.” But the “mistake” rhetoric is the language of denial, not contrition: it minimizes the Iraq War’s disastrous consequences, removes blame, and deprives Americans of any chance to learn from our generation’s foreign policy disaster. The Iraq War was not a “mistake” — it resulted from calculated deception. The painful, unvarnished fact is that we were lied to. Now is the time to have the willingness to say that.

    In fact, the truth about Iraq was widely available, but it was ignored. There were no WMD. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. The war wasn’t about liberating the Iraqi people. I said this in Congress in 2002. Millions of people who marched in America in protest of the war knew the truth, but were maligned by members of both parties for opposing the president in a time of war — and even leveled with the spurious charge of “not supporting the troops.”

    I’ve written and spoken widely about this topic, so today I offer two ways we can begin to address our role:

    1) President Obama must tell us the truth about Iraq and the false scenario that caused us to go to war.

    When Obama took office in 2008, he announced that his administration would not investigate or prosecute the architects of the Iraq War. Essentially, he suspended public debate about the war. That may have felt good in the short term for those who wanted to move on, but when you’re talking about a war initiated through lies, bygones can’t be bygones.

    The unwillingness to confront the truth about the Iraq War has induced a form of amnesia which is hazardous to our nation’s health. Willful forgetting doesn’t heal, it opens the door to more lying. As today’s debate ensues about new potential military “solutions” to stem violence in Iraq, let’s remember how and why we intervened in Iraq in 2003.

    2) Journalists and media commentators should stop giving inordinate air and print time to people who were either utterly wrong in their support of the war or willful in their calculations to make war.

    By and large, our Fourth Estate accepted uncritically the imperative for war described by top administration officials and congressional leaders. The media fanned the flames of war by not giving adequate coverage to the arguments against military intervention.

    President Obama didn’t start the Iraq War, but he has the opportunity now to tell the truth. That we were wrong to go in. That the cause of war was unjust. That more problems were created by military intervention than solved. That the present violence and chaos in Iraq derives from the decision which took America to war in 2003. More than a decade later, it should not take courage to point out the Iraq war was based on lies.

  • Restoring Hope for America’s Future Through Developing a Culture of Peace

    This is a transcript of the 12th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future, presented by Dennis Kucinich on February 8, 2013 in Santa Barbara, CA.

    In Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, just after the majestic opening of Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, a soaring sun splits the darkness, seemingly heralding the new Genesis, and next a man-ape uses a femur bone to dispatch the leader of another group in order to gain control over a water hole. It is a simple act of one mammal clubbing another to death. It is what Friedrich Nietzsche, in his novel Thus Spake Zarathustra, may have countenanced as “the eternal recurrence of the same.” Yet, Kubrick does not leave us stranded upon the darkling plain of brute violence, for emotion is admitted, and so exultant is the conqueror at the demise of his extent competitor that he flings the femur skyward in triumph and, through the match cut magic of movie-making, the femur tumbles end over end, high up into the heavens, where it is transformed – into a space station!

    We surf on Kubrick’s monolith into an evolutionary spiral across space and millions of years, now equipped with high technology, but burdened with the signal responses of our lower limbic system and its embedded fight-flight conflicts, ever ready to take up the electronic cudgel to drive contestants out of water holes or oil holes. Violence is. Its expression neither regressive nor progressive, it exists as a disconnection from our own divinity, a fall from the heavens, a departure from grace, a descent into the lower circles of that philosophical hell of dichotomous thinking, of us versus them, whoever they are. The invention of the other, the evocation of the outgroup, the conjuring of the enemy are the precedents of violence.  We hear the siren call. But what makes us answer the tocsin of rage clanging in our heads, in our homes, in our cities and in the world? Could it be the ripping of the moorings of our reality, the anxiety of separation shaking our core, the earthquake beneath our ground of meaning, dissecting through our bedrock beliefs when we learn that what we thought was true was indeed false? Peter Berger once wrote that reality is socially constructed and culturally affirmed. What happens when the sociopathic trumps the authentic?

    We cannot justify violence, but we must determine its roots.  Before Kubrick, before Strauss, there was Zarathustra, or Zoroaster himself. He confronted us with this moral proposition: That the central struggle of our existence is the determination of what is true and what is false. Is it our inability to strive for, to discern and to receive and to know truth which binds us to violence? Is what we see what we get? Are we bound to truth-shattering illusions? How do we know what we are told is true? Has the misuse of power in our society so distorted meaning that truth and lies are indistinguishable, or worse, morally relative? These are questions of import in our interpersonal relations, and the consequences of untruth grow geometrically when a major progenitor of perceptions in our society – the government – stumbles or seeks, and practices to mislead.

    To ponder that question, let us first look at another production called 2001: September 11 – the catastrophe of nearly 3,000 innocent souls perishing in waves of hate. That date is burned into our memories as one of the worst days we have ever known. We know the choices which our government made, acting with the tacit consent of we the people, to respond to the 9/11 crimes committed against our nation. But we seldom reflect on our government’s response, as though to do so publically is either impolitic or un-American. Is it rude to mention that, acting upon the color of crime and tragedy on September 11, 2001, we began a descent to officially-sanctioned mass murder called war, into the lower circles of the infernos of torture, rendition and drone assassination? We established an anti-democratic state of emergency which exists to this day, with its Orwellian “Patriot Act,” its massive spying networks, its illegal detention, its extreme punishment of whistleblowers, and its neo-police state, in violation of posse comitatus, which put MPs on the streets of Washington, D.C. during the recent Inaugural.

    We have cut and pasted the Constitution in the manner of a disambiguated Word Document through sheer casuistry, excising those sections which guarantee protection from unreasonable search and seizure, which protect an individual’s rights of habeas corpus, and due process, which prohibit any one person from simultaneously being policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner and coroner. Violence has enabled the government to grow and the republic to shrink.

    It was ten years ago next month that the United States, despite a massive peace movement that put millions in the streets protesting the upcoming invasion, launched a full-scale attack on the nation of Iraq. “Shock and Awe,” it was called. Hellfire was brought to the cradle of civilization, its people, its culture, its antiquities – in our name – for a war based on lies. In awe of our weapons, we shocked ourselves, vicariously, with their effects, never experiencing the horror visited upon the people of Iraq.
    When I say “we,” I mean all morally conscious Americans. Over a million Iraqis were killed in our name, for a war based on lies. In awe of our destructive power and its toll on innocent human life, we shocked ourselves and then returned to our normal lives. Trillions of dollars of damage was done to that country, in our name, for a war based on lies. Trillions more spent by the US taxpayers, for a war based on lies. In awe of the monetary cost of war, we shocked ourselves with massive deficits. Thousands of US troops were killed and tens of thousands wounded. In awe of the long-term, human cost of war, we shocked ourselves with broken lives, broken families, suicides, PTSD.

    Shock and awe, indeed. We attacked a nation which did not attack us and which had neither the intention nor capability of doing so. We attacked a nation which did not have the yellow cake to be processed into the substance fit for a nuclear warhead. We attacked a nation which did not have weapons of mass destruction. We visited upon the people of Iraq the equivalent of one 9/11 a day for a year and with it the irretrievable rending of families, of places to live, places to work, places to worship, ripping apart Iraqi society in a war which soon became so remote that it was finished off by unmanned vehicles. The mission that was “accomplished” was wanton destruction, ecocide, alienation, statecraft puppetry – and for what?

    What was it all about? It did not make us safer. It weakened our military. It killed and injured our soldiers. It seriously weakened our nation financially. The long-term cost of the post-9/11 wars of choice will run over $6 trillion. Want one reason why we have a $16 trillion debt? We borrowed money from China, Japan and South Korea to pursue wars while those countries built their economies and their infrastructures. We blew up bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan at such expense that we are now preaching austerity here at home, unwilling to face the fact that we have over $2 trillion in infrastructure needs in America which have not been met, unwilling to invest in America. All too willing to invest in wars, we became the policemen of the world and ended up being resented worldwide. We have fueled the fires of reactionary nationalism abroad, which are easily stoked by foreign occupation or invasion. We have helped further fundamentalism and made decisions which placed in positions of power those whose very existence supposedly drove us into conflict in the first place. What passes for our recent history is an acculturated, sleep-inducing lie from which we must wake up. We must awake from the stupor of our self-imposed amnesia or shock; we must shake off the awe which comes from the misuse of power on a global basis. We must always question governments whose legitimacy rests not upon accountability and truth, but upon force and deception. A government which assumes that we are neither intelligent enough, nor loyal enough, to know the truth about its actions a dozen years ago or a dozen hours ago is not worthy of a free people. We must bend the fear-forged bars which imprison the truth. We must seek the truth. And we must know the truth. For it is the truth that will truly set us free and lead to the wisdom which can rescue us from destruction, the wisdom which can reclaim America. America. The mere utterance of the word should set the pulse pounding with the excitement of discovery, of possibility, of love – not fear.

    We must demand that America, our nation, establish a fully-empowered Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, so that those responsible for misleading us into annihilating innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere be brought forward to a public accountability in a formal process of fact-finding, of inquiry, of public testimony, of admission, of confession. There is no way out of the moral cul-de-sac in which resides the monstrous crimes of mass murder, torture, kidnapping, and rendition, other than to have atonement: AT ONE MENT. It is in atonement that we will achieve what Blake called “the unity of opposites.” It is in reconciliation that the Blakean idea of the contrary nature of God, containing multitudes of humanity, causes us to understand the fragility of our social compact and the possibility that any of us could be murderer and victim. Lacking public expiation over the unbridled use of force, the wanton violence we have writ large in the world will replicate, perpetuate and be our ruin. This is the importance of a formal process of Truth and Reconciliation. We had and have a right to defend ourselves as a nation. But we went on the offensive, and the violence which we have visited abroad will inevitably blow back home. The violence we create in the world in turn licenses and desensitizes the wanton violence which is exercised in our streets and, unfortunately, in our homes. We must understand the causal links. What is outermost presses down upon what is innermost. What is innermost becomes outermost.

    Once a full process of Truth and Reconciliation has helped us to discern the truth of our experience of the past decade, equipped with the truth of our errant descent into errant wars, we must be prepared to forgive those who would be forgiven, and forgive ourselves for having participated with either our assent or our silence. Then we may move forward with the truth as the standard under which we organize a stronger, better America.

    We must think often of our nation, re-imagine it, reestablish it as the exemplification of our highest ideals. [We must think of] those lofty sentiments present at its founding, of its spiritual origins, ofAnnuit Coeptis, a US Motto: “He has favored our undertaking.” [We must think of] its transcendent purpose presaging human unity, E Pluribus Unum: out of many we are one. The paradox of multiplicity in singularity. Let us renew our faith in our nation. Let us unite so that the power of unity will lift up this nation we love. Let us declare our faith in each other, as it occurred so many years ago with that clarion call for the rights of “we the people!” Let us find that place within ourselves where our own capacity to evolve catalyzes the evolving character of America, where, through the highest expression of informed citizenship, we quicken the highest expression of informed nationhood: America for Americans for the World. Let the truth be our empire, the plowshare our sword, nature our textbook and let us once again celebrate the deeper meaning of what it means to be an American.

    Then, reimagining the town hall model, let us consider what America represented to each of us on September 10, 2001, the day before 9/11. Let millions of people in tens of thousands of places across our nation meet, rediscover and celebrate again our nation and its purpose and recapture the spirit of America which we know already resides in countless places. That spirit of America is always ready to be called forward with a sense of wonder and joy, which our children will in time come to understand as our capacity to rise from the ashes of our own suffering and disillusionment, a quality which becomes their civic inheritance.

    While we were founded with the idea of striving for perfection, we were not a perfect nation by any means before 9/11, but I remember a greater sense of optimism, of freedom, of security, of control of our destiny. We need to come together now, in the town halls across America, to appreciate our common experiences, to share our narratives about the best that is America, about what it is that we love about this country, about our own journeys, our own miracles, about those things in our lives which directly connect us to what we have called the American Dream. And when we so share, we will know each other better and love our country even more.

    Violence today casts us in a psychological wilderness. There is a path out of the wilderness of violence in which so many of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen are lost. If we are to help them find that path, it would be helpful for us to look again to the origins of our nation and find the map.

    On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously declared the Independence of the 13 colonies, and the achievement of peace was recognized as one of the highest duties of the new organization of free and independent states. Peace at the Founding. Yes, [this was] the paradox of revolutionary war, but the destination was peace, articulated and enshrined.

    The drafters of the Declaration of Independence appealed to the Supreme Judge of the World, and derived the creative cause of nationhood from “the Laws of Nature” and the entitlements of “Nature’s God,” celebrating the unity of human thought, natural law and spiritual causation, in declaring: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The architects of Independence “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence” spoke to the activity of a higher power which moves to guide the Nation’s fortune and lends its divine spark to infuse principle into the structure of a democratic governance.

    The Constitution of the United States of America, in its Preamble, further sets forth the insurance of the cause of peace, in stating, “We the people of the United States, in Order to Form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” We must remember where we have been so that we can chart where we will proceed.  It is the sacred duty of the people of the United States to receive the living truths of our founding documents and to think anew to develop institutions that permit the unfolding of the highest moral principles in this Nation and around the world.

    Those words from the Constitution are included in the preamble of legislation I wrote in 2001. They form the basis of my understanding of the conceptive power of freedom. The Founders of this country gave America a vision of freedom for the ages and provided people with a document which gave this Nation the ability to adapt to an undreamed of future. What can we give back?

    When I first came to Congress I saw how easily we slipped into conflict. I saw how normally placid people could get swept up by war fever. It led me to study war. I learned that during the course of the 20th Century more than 100,000,000 people perished in wars. Today, violence is an overarching theme, encompassing personal, group, national and international conflict, extending to the production of nuclear, biological, chemical weapons of mass destruction, which have been developed for use on land, air, sea and space. Such conflict is taken as a reflection of the human condition without questioning whether the structures of thought, word and deed which the people of the United States have inherited are any longer sufficient for the maintenance, growth and survival of the United States and the world.

    Personal violence in the United States has great human and financial costs, costing hundreds of billions of dollars annually, not including war-related costs. Child abuse and neglect cost over $100 billion annually.

    We are in a new millennium and the time has come to review age-old challenges with new thinking wherein we can conceive of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness, of respect, trust and integrity, where we all may tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions which impel or compel violence at a personal, group, or national level toward developing a new understand of and commitment to compassion and love, in order to create a “shining city on a hill,” the light of which is the light of nations.

    It was this thinking, this articulation which I was privileged to bring forth on July 11, 2001, fully two months before 9/11, to introduce a bill, HR 808, to create a cabinet level Department of Peace, soon to be reintroduced by Congresswoman Barbara Lee as the Department of Peace Building.

    Imagine, coming from a position of love of our country and for each other, if we moved forward without judgment, to meet the promise of a more perfect union by meeting the challenge of violence in our homes, our streets, our schools, our places of work and worship, to meet the challenge of violence in our society through the creation of a new structure in our society which could directly address domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, gun violence, gang violence, violence against gays. This goes much deeper than legislation forbidding such conduct, or creating systems to deal with victims. Those are necessary but not sufficient. We need to go much deeper if we are to, at last, shed the yoke of violence which we carry throughout our daily lives.

    We know violence is a learned response. So is non-violence. We must replace a culture of violence with a culture of peace, not through the antithetical use of force, not through endless “thou shalt nots” and not through mere punishment, but through tapping our higher potential to teach principles of peace building, peace sharing at the earliest ages as part of a civic education in a democratic society.

    Carl Rogers, the humanistic psychologist, has written that “the behavior of the human organism may be determined by the external influences to which it has been exposed, but it may also be determined by the creative and integrative insight of the organism itself.” We are not victims of the world we see. We become victims of the way we see the world. If we are prepared to confidently call forth a new America, if we have the courage to not simply re-describe America, but to reclaim it, we will once again fall in love with the light which so many years ago shined through the darkness of human existence to announce the birth of a new freedom.

    Out in the void I can see a soaring sun splitting the darkness. Behold the dawn of a new nation, our beloved America.

    Dennis Kucinich was a member of the House of Representatives from 1997-2013.

  • Rep. Kucinich Calls for an End to the War on the Floor of the House

    Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), a leader in the opposition to the War in Iraq within the House, issued the following statement on the House floor:

    “Stop the war now. As Baghdad will be encircled, this is the time to get the UN back in to inspect Baghdad and the rest of Iraq for biological and chemical weapons. Our troops should not have to be the ones who will find out, in combat, whether Iraq has such weapons. Why put our troops at greater risk? We could get the United Nations inspectors back in.

    “Stop the war now. Before we send our troops into house-to-house combat in Baghdad, a city of five million people. Before we ask our troops to take up the burden of shooting innocent civilians in the fog of war.

    “Stop the war now. This war has been advanced on lie upon lie. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for any role al-Qaeda may have had in 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for the anthrax attacks on this country. Iraq did not tried to acquire nuclear weapons technology from Niger. This war is built on falsehood.

    “Stop the war now. We are not defending America in Iraq. Iraq did not attack this nation. Iraq has no ability to attack this nation. Each innocent civilian casualty represents a threat to America for years to come and will end up making our nation less safe. The seventy-five billion dollar supplemental needs to be challenged because each dime we spend on this war makes America less safe. Only international cooperation will help us meet the challenge of terrorism. After 9/11 all Americans remember we had the support and the sympathy of the world. Every nation was ready to be of assistance to the United States in meeting the challenge of terrorism. And yet, with this war, we have squandered the sympathy of the world. We have brought upon this nation the anger of the world. We need the cooperation of the world, to find the terrorists before they come to our shores.

    “Stop this war now. Seventy-five billion dollars more for war. Three- quarters of a trillion dollars for tax cuts, but no money for veterans ‘ benefits. Money for war. No money for health care in America, but money for war. No money for social security, but money for war. We have money to blow up bridges over the Tigris and the Euphrates, but no money to build bridges in our own cities. We have money to ruin the health of the Iraqi children, but no money to repair the health of our own children and our educational programs.

    “Stop this war now. It is wrong. It is illegal. It is unjust and it will come to no good for this country.

    “Stop this war now. Show our wisdom and our humanity, to be able to stop it, to bring back the United Nations into the process. Rescue this moment. Rescue this nation from a war that is wrong, that is unjust, that is immoral.

    “Stop this war now.”

  • The Bloodstained Path

    Originally Published in The Progressive

    Unilateral military action by the United States against Iraq is unjustified, unwarranted, and illegal. The Administration has failed to make the case that Iraq poses an imminent threat to the United States. There is no credible evidence linking Iraq to 9/11. There is no credible evidence linking Iraq to Al Qaeda. Nor is there any credible evidence that Iraq possesses deliverable weapons of mass destruction, or that it intends to deliver them against the United States.

    When Iraq possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, quite sad to say, it did so with the knowledge of, and sometimes with materials from, the United States. During the Administration of Ronald Reagan, sixty helicopters were sold to Iraq. Later reports said Iraq used U.S.-made helicopters to spray Kurds with chemical weapons. According to The Washington Post, Iraq used mustard gas against Iran with the help of intelligence from the CIA.

    Iraq’s punishment? The United States reestablished full diplomatic ties around Thanksgiving of 1984.

    Throughout 1989 and 1990, U.S. companies, with the permission of the first Bush Administration, sent to the government of Saddam Hussein mustard gas precursors and live cultures for bacteriological research. U.S. companies also helped to build a chemical weapons factory and supplied the West Nile virus, fuel air explosive technology, computers for weapons technology, hydrogen cyanide precursors, computers for weapons research and development, and vacuum pumps and bellows for nuclear weapons plants. “We have met the enemy,” said Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “And he is us.”

    Unilateral action on the part of the United States, or in partnership with Great Britain, would for the first time set our nation on the bloodstained path of aggressive war, a sacrilege upon the memory of those who fought to defend this country. America’s moral authority would be undermined throughout the world. It would destabilize the entire Persian Gulf and Middle East region. And it would signal for Russia to invade Georgia; China, Taiwan; North Korea, the South; India, Pakistan.

    The United States must recommit itself to the U.N. Charter, which is the framework for international order. We have a right and a duty to defend ourselves. We also have an obligation to defend international law. We can accomplish both without going to war with Iraq.

    There is a way out.

    It must involve the United Nations. Inspections for weapons of mass destruction should begin immediately. Inspectors must have free and unfettered access to all sites. The time has come for us to end the sanctions against Iraq, because those sanctions punish the people of Iraq for having Saddam Hussein as their leader. These sanctions have been instrumental in causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. Emergency relief should be expedited. Free trade, except in arms, must be permitted. Foreign investments must be allowed. The assets of Iraq abroad must be restored.

    And a regional zone free of weapons of mass destruction should be established.

    The only weapon that can save the world is nonviolence, said Gandhi. We can begin this practice today by calling upon the Administration in Washington to stop the talk of war, and stop the planning for war.

    In their heart of hearts, the American people do not want war on Iraq. The American people want peace.

    There is no reason for war against Iraq. Stop the drumbeat. Stop sending troops and supplies to Kuwait and Qatar. Pull back from the abyss of unilateral action and preemptive strikes.

    We know that each day the Administration receives a daily threat assessment. But Iraq is not an imminent threat to this nation. Forty million Americans suffering from inadequate health care is an imminent threat. The high cost of prescription drugs is an imminent threat. The ravages of unemployment is an imminent threat. The slowdown of the economy is an imminent threat, and so, too, the devastating effects of corporate fraud.

    We must drop the self-defeating policy of regime change. Policies of aggression and assassination are not worthy of any nation with a democratic tradition, let alone a nation of people who love liberty and whose sons and daughters sacrifice to maintain that democracy.

    The question is not whether or not America has the military power to destroy Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The question is whether we destroy something essential in this nation by asserting that America has the right to do so anytime it pleases.

    America cannot and should not be the world’s policeman. America cannot and should not try to pick the leaders of other nations. Nor should America and the American people be pressed into the service of international oil interests and arms dealers.

    We must work to bring Iraq back into the community of nations, not through destruction, but through constructive action worldwide. We can help negotiate a resolution with Iraq that encompasses unfettered inspections, the end of sanctions, and the cessation of the regime-change policy.

    We have the power to do this. We must have the will to do this. It must be the will of the American people expressed through the direct action of peaceful insistence.

    If the United States proceeds with a first strike policy, then we will have taken upon our nation a historic burden of committing a violation of international law, and we would then forfeit any moral high ground we could hope to hold.

  • 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.

  • Peace and Nuclear Disarmament: A Call to Action

    Speech by Dennis Kucinich

    “. . . Come my friends, ’tis not too late to seek a newer world,” . . . Alfred Lord Tennyson

    If you believe that humanity has a higher destiny, if you believe we can evolve, and become better than we are; if you believe we can overcome the scourge of war and someday fulfill the dream of harmony and peace on earth, let us begin the conversation today. Let us exchange our ideas. Let us plan together, act together and create peace together. This is a call for common sense, for peaceful, non-violent citizen action to protect our precious world from widening war and from stumbling into a nuclear catastrophe.

    The climate for conflict has intensified, with the struggle between Pakistan and India, the China-Taiwan tug of war, and the increased bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians. United States’ troop deployments in the Philippines, Yemen, Georgia, Columbia and Indonesia create new possibilities for expanded war. An invasion of Iraq is planned. The recent disclosure that Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Libya are considered by the United States as possible targets for nuclear attack catalyzes potential conflicts everywhere.

    These crucial political decisions promoting increased military actions, plus a new nuclear first-use policy, are occurring without the consent of the American people, without public debate, without public hearings, without public votes. The President is taking Congress’s approval of responding to the Sept. 11 terrorists as a license to flirt with nuclear war.

    “Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war,” the President has been quoted as saying on March 13th 2002. Yet Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution explicitly requires that Congress take responsibility when it comes to declaring war. This President is very popular, according to the polls. But polls are not a substitute for democratic process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics or dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight belies reality: Spending $400 billion a year for defense is a political decision. Committing troops abroad is a political decision. War is a political decision. When men and women die on the battlefield that is the result of a political decision. The use of nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions, is a profound political decision. In a monarchy there need be no political decisions. In a democracy, all decisions are political, in that they derive from the consent of the governed.

    In a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives must be subordinate to the political process. Before we celebrate an imperial presidency, let it be said that the lack of free and open political process, the lack of free and open political debate, and the lack of free and open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy.

    We have reached a moment in our country’s history where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear through talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds are reshaping consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction thinks: war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace?

    Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum, which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world. It is also urgent that we find those places of war in our own lives, and begin healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so becomes the world.

    Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar of our daily lives. Which is why we should always take care to regard the power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action through time and space.

    Some of our leaders have been thinking and talking about nuclear war. In the past week there has been much news about a planning document which describes how and when America might wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review recently released to the media by the government:

    1. Assumes that the United States has the right to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
    2. Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons.
    3. Attempts to minimize the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.
    4. Promotes nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack.

    Some dismiss this review as routine government planning. But it becomes ominous when taken in the context of a war on terrorism which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically and literally. The President equates the “war on terrorism” with World War II. He expresses a desire to have the nuclear option “on the table.” He unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty. He seeks $8.9 billion to fund deployment of a missile shield. He institutes, without congressional knowledge, a shadow government in a bunker outside our nation’s Capitol. He tries to pass off as arms reduction, the storage of, instead of the elimination of, nuclear weapons.

    Two generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares. We feared and hated the Russians who feared and hated us. We feared and hated the “godless, atheistic” communists. In our schools, we dutifully put our head between our legs and practiced duck-and-cover drills. In our nightmares, we saw the long, slow arc of a Soviet missile flash into our very neighborhood. We got down on our knees and prayed for peace. We surveyed, wide eyed, pictures of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We supported the elimination of all nuclear weapons. We knew that if you “nuked” others you “nuked” yourself.

    The splitting of the atom for destructive purposes admits a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking of Us vs. Them, the dichotomized thinking, which spawns polarity and leads to war. The proposed use of nuclear weapons, pollutes the psyche with the arrogance of infinite power. It creates delusions of domination of matter and space. It is dehumanizing through its calculations of mass casualties. We must overcome doomthinkers and sayers who invite a world descending, disintegrating into a nuclear disaster. With a world at risk, we must find the bombs in our own lives and disarm them. We must listen to that quiet inner voice which counsels that the survival of all is achieved through the unity of all.

    We must overcome our fear of each other, by seeking out the humanity within each of us. The human heart contains every possibility of race, creed, language, religion, and politics. We are one in our commonalities. Must we always fear our differences? We can overcome our fears by not feeding our fears with more war and nuclear confrontations. We must ask our leaders to unify us in courage.

    We need to create a new, clear vision of a world as one. A new, clear vision of people working out their differences peacefully. A new, clear vision with the teaching of nonviolence, nonviolent intervention, and mediation. A new, clear vision where people can live in harmony within their families, their communities and within themselves. A new clear vision of peaceful coexistence in a world of tolerance.

    At this moment of peril we must move away from fear’s paralysis. This is a call to action: to replace expanded war with expanded peace. This is a call for action to place the very survival of this planet on the agenda of all people, everywhere. As citizens of a common planet, we have an obligation to ourselves and our posterity. We must demand that our nation and all nations put down the nuclear sword. We must demand that our nation and all nations:

    Abide by the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
    Stop the development of new nuclear weapons.
    Take all nuclear weapons systems off alert.
    Persist towards total, worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.

    Our nation must:
    Revive the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.
    Sign and enforce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
    Abandon plans to build a so-called missile shield.
    Prohibit the introduction of weapons into outer space.

    We are in a climate where people expect debate within our two party system to produce policy alternatives. However both major political parties have fallen short. People who ask “Where is the Democratic Party?” and expect to hear debate may be disappointed. When peace is not on the agenda of our political parties or our governments then it must be the work and the duty of each citizen of the world. This is the time to organize for peace. This is the time for new thinking. This is the time to concieve of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness. This is the time to concieve of peace as respect, trust, and integrity. This is the time to tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness which compels violence at a personal, group, national or international levels. This is the time to develop a new compassion for others and ourselves.

    When terrorists threaten our security, we must enforce the law and bring terrorists to justice within our system of constitutional justice, without undermining the very civil liberties which permits our democracy to breathe. Our own instinct for life, which inspires our breath and informs our pulse, excites our capacity to reason. Which is why we must pay attention when we sense a threat to survival.

    That is why we must speak out now to protect this nation, all nations, and the entire planet and:
    Challenge those who believe that war is inevitable.
    Challenge those who believe in a nuclear right.
    Challenge those who would build new nuclear weapons.
    Challenge those who seek nuclear re-armament.
    Challenge those who seek nuclear escalation.
    Challenge those who would make of any nation a nuclear target.
    Challenge those who would threaten to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations.
    Challenge those who would break nuclear treaties.
    Challenge those who think and think about nuclear weapons, to think about peace.

    It is practical to work for peace. I speak of peace and diplomacy not just for the sake of peace itself. But, for practical reasons, we must work for peace as a means of achieving permanent security. It is similarly practical to work for total nuclear disarmament, particularly when nuclear arms do not even come close to addressing the real security problems which confront our nation, witness the events of September 11, 2001.

    We can make war archaic. Skeptics may dismiss the possibility that a nation which spends $400 billion a year for military purposes can somehow convert swords into plowshares. Yet the very founding and the history of this country demonstrates the creative possibilities of America. We are a nation which is known for realizing impossible dreams. Ours is a nation which in its second century abolished slavery, which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation where women won the right to vote, which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation which institutionalized the civil rights movement, which many at the time considered impossible. If we have the courage to claim peace, with the passion, the emotion and the integrity with which we have claimed independence, freedom and, equality we can become that nation which makes non-violence an organizing principle in our society, and in doing so change the world.

    That is the purpose of HR 2459. It is a bill to create a Department of Peace. It envisions new structures to help create peace in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and in our nation. It aspires to create conditions for peace within and to create conditions for peace worldwide. It considers the conditions which cause people to become the terrorists of the future, issues of poverty, scarcity and exploitation. It is practical to make outer space safe from weapons, so that humanity can continue to pursue a destiny among the stars. HR 3616 seeks to ban weapons in space, to keep the stars a place of dreams, of new possibilities, of transcendence.

    We can achieve this practical vision of peace, if we are ready to work for it.
    People worldwide need to be meet with likeminded people, about peace and nuclear disarmament, now.
    People worldwide need to gather in peace, now.
    People worldwide need to march and to pray for peace, now.
    People worldwide need to be connecting with each other on the web, for peace, now.

    We are in a new era of electronic democracy, where the world wide web, numerous web sites and bulletin boards enable new organizations, exercising freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, to spring into being instantly. Thespiritoffreedom.com is such a web site. It is dedicated to becoming an electronic forum for peace, for sustainability, for renewal and for revitalization. It is a forum which strives for the restoration of a sense of community through the empowerment of self, through commitment of self to the lives of others, to the life of the community, to the life of the nation, to the life of the world.

    Where war making is profoundly uncreative in its destruction, peacemaking can be deeply creative. We need to communicate with each other the ways in which we work in our communities to make this a more peaceful world. I welcome your ideas at dkucinich@aol.com or at www.thespiritoffreedom.com. We can share our thoughts and discuss ways in which we have brought or will bring them into action.

    Now is the time to think, to take action and use our talents and abilities to create peace:
    in our families.
    in our block clubs.
    in our neighborhoods.
    in our places of worship.
    in our schools and universities.
    in our labor halls.
    in our parent-teacher organizations.

    Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize and take action to create peace as a social imperative, as an economic imperative, and as a political imperative. Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize, march, rally, hold vigils and take other nonviolent action to create peace in our cities, in our nation and in the world. And as the hymn says, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

    This is the work of the human family, of people all over the world demanding that governments and non-governmental actors alike put down their nuclear weapons. This is the work of the human family, responding in this moment of crisis to protect our nation, this planet and all life within it. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. As we understand that all people of the world are interconnected, we can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. We can accomplish this through upholding an holistic vision where the claims of all living beings to the right of survival are recognized. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace through being a living testament to a Human Rights Covenant where each person on this planet is entitled to a life where he or she may consciously evolve in mind, body and spirit.

    Nuclear disarmament and peace are the signposts toward the uplit path of an even brighter human condition wherein we can through our conscious efforts evolve and reestablish the context of our existence from peril to peace, from revolution to evolution. Think peace. Speak peace. Act peace. Peace.

  • How Can We Justify This?

    by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), February 2002

    Let us pray that our nation will remember that the unfolding of the promise of democracy in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why we must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?

    How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?

    How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?

    How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?

    How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?

    How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?

    We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it. We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant. We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups. We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.

    We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance. We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy. The Attorney General recently covered up a statue of Lady Justice showing her bosom as if to underscore there is no danger of justice exposing herself at this time, before this administration.

    Let us pray that our nation’s leaders will not be overcome with fear. Because today there is great fear in our great Capitol. And this must be understood before we can ask about the shortcomings of Congress in the current environment. The great fear began when we had to evacuate the Capitol on September 11. It continued when we had to leave the Capitol again when a bomb scare occurred as members were pressing the CIA during a secret briefing. It continued when we abandoned Washington when anthrax, possibly from a government lab, arrived in the mail. It continued when the Attorney General declared a nationwide terror alert and then the Administration brought the destructive Patriot Bill to the floor of the House. It continued in the release of the Bin Laden tapes at the same time the President was announcing the withdrawal from the ABM treaty. It remains present in the cordoning off of the Capitol. It is present in the camouflaged armed national guardsmen who greet members of Congress each day we enter the Capitol campus. It is present in the labyrinth of concrete barriers through which we must pass each time we go to vote. The trappings of a state of siege trap us in a state of fear, ill equipped to deal with the Patriot Games, the Mind Games, the War Games of an unelected President and his unelected Vice President.

    Let us pray that our country will stop this war. “To promote the common defense” is one of the formational principles of America. Our Congress gave the President the ability to respond to the tragedy of September the Eleventh. We licensed a response to those who helped bring the terror of September the Eleventh. But we the people and our elected representatives must reserve the right to measure the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the response, and to correct the response.

    Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.

    We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.

    We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.

    We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.

    We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.

    We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.

    We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas corpus.

    We did not authorize assassination squads.

    We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.

    We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.

    We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.

    We did not authorize national identity cards.

    We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our cities.

    We did not authorize an eye for an eye.

    Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan.

    We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases.

    We did not authorize war without end.

    We did not authorize a permanent war economy.

    Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy. The President has requested a $45.6 billion increase in military spending. All defense-related programs will cost close to $400 billion. Consider that the Department of Defense has never passed an independent audit. Consider that the Inspector General has notified Congress that the Pentagon cannot properly account for $1.2 trillion in transactions. Consider that in recent years the Dept. of Defense could not match $22 billion worth of expenditures to the itemsit purchased, wrote off, as lost, billions of dollars worth of in-transit inventory and stored nearly $30 billion worth of spare parts it did not need.

    Yet the defense budget grows with more money for weapons systems to fight a cold war which ended, weapon systems in search of new enemies to create new wars. This has nothing to do with fighting terror. This has everything to do with fueling a military industrial machine with the treasure of our nation, risking the future of our nation, risking democracy itself with the militarization of thought which follows the militarization of the budget.

    United States Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio)
    Email responses to Dkucinich@aol.com