Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Uncategorized

  • Iraq and the Failures of Democracy

    There is no decision in foreign policy more serious than recourse to war. As the Bush administration prods the country toward an unpopular and illegal war with Iraq, it is a matter of national urgency to question whether our constitutional system of government is providing adequate protection to the American people against the scourge of war. Given the turbulence of the current world scene and considering America’s military primacy on the global stage, what the United States does affects the well-being, and possibly the survival, of others throughout the world. So we must question whether our system of representative democracy is currently working in relation to this momentous question of war or peace.

    Without doubt the events of September 11 were a test of the viability of our institutions under a form of stress never before experienced, the menace of a mega-terrorist enemy lurking in the concealed recesses of dozens of countries, including possibly our own. To respond effectively without losing our democratic identity in the process required wise and sensitive leadership. It required as well a display of political and moral imagination to devise a strategy capable of dealing effectively with mega-terrorism while remaining ethical and in keeping with our values as a nation. At this point, on the brink of a war against Iraq, a country that has not been persuasively linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11, it is impossible to conclude that our government is meeting this unprecedented challenge. Indeed, the Bush administration appears likely to intensify the danger while further widening the orbit of death and destruction.

    The American system of constitutional government depends on a system of checks and balances. Such checks and balances among the three main branches of government is a fundamental principle, and never more so than in relation to war and peace. At the very least, Congress has the responsibility of restraining a rush to war by engaging in serious public debate. To date Congress has only held low profile hearings some months back. No opponents of the approach taken by the Bush administration were invited to participate in the hearings, which almost exclusively analyzed the costs and benefits of the war option as applied to Iraq. There was no consideration of alternatives to war, no reflections on the dubious legality of the preemptive war doctrine, no discussion of the absence of urgency and necessity that undermined the argument that there was no time to waste in achieving “disarmament” and “regime change” in Iraq.

    Congress has so far failed in its constitutional responsibilities. In passing the USA Patriot Act shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress seriously eroded traditional American guarantees of freedom and privacy found in the Bill of Rights. The Act allows the government to conduct secret searches, provides for FBI access to extensive personal and financial records of individuals without court order or even probable cause of a crime, and creates a new, broad definition of “domestic terrorism” that could subject individuals who engage in public protest to wiretapping and enhanced penalties.

    The open-ended resolution of Congress authorizing the president to resort to force only accentuates its failure to uphold these responsibilities. It would seem that the patriotic mood that followed the terrorist attacks, along with shortsighted anxieties about challenging a popular president, has dulled the critical faculties of Congress as a whole despite the willingness of a small number of senators and congressmen to raise their voices in opposition. As a republic, the US Government cannot function properly if Congress fails to exercise its constitutional responsibilities in relation to the ultimate issues of war and peace, and simply gives spineless deference to the president.

    Closely connected with this institutional breakdown, is the lamentable behavior of the Democratic Party, particularly its leadership. They have failed in the role of an opposition party to raise issues of principle, especially when so much is at stake. The passivity of the Democratic Party in these circumstances can only be explained by its ill-considered opportunism with regard to domestic politics, including an inappropriate pretension of patriotism. Given the importance of the party system, our governing procedures cannot protect the citizenry against unacceptable policies if the opposition party becomes mute and hides in the face of anticipated controversy.

    These issues have been compounded by a compliant mainstream media, especially the corporate-owned news networks. The media has largely viewed its role in terms of promoting patriotic obedience to the government and mobilizing the country for war against Iraq rather than illuminating the debate about whether such a war is justified and necessary. The media has focused its attention on when the war will begin, how it will be fought, and what kind of occupation policy and exit strategy will be attempted. It has refrained from considering the question of why the US should or should not engage in war or from examining the many serious possible consequences to the Middle East and to the US itself of engaging in this war.

    There are numerous qualified critics among the American citizenry, as well as overseas, and yet their voices are virtually never heard in the mainstream media. The media tends to orient its analysis around compliant “military analysts” and conservative think tank policy wonks. Even when prominent military figures, such as General Norman Schwartzkopf or General Anthony Zinni, express doubts about the rush to war, their objections are given virtually no attention. This spectacle of a self-indoctrinated and self-censored media weakens our democratic fabric, depriving the citizenry of information and perspectives that are needed to reach intelligent conclusions as to support or opposition.

    Most important of all, the Bush administration seems to be moving toward a non-defensive war against Iraq without providing a coherent account to the American public. It has presented evidence to the UN Security Council suggesting that Iraq retains unreported stocks of biological and chemical weaponry, but has provided no convincing proof of this and certainly no rationale on this basis for war. The American people need to realize that there are at least twenty countries with greater capabilities than Iraq with respect to such weaponry. A number of these countries are far more likely to be a conduit for such weaponry to pass into the hands of al Qaeda or other terrorist operatives, which is the greatest danger.

    It is also important for the American people to understand that in the course of an American attack on Iraq, its leadership would only then have an incentive, in their helplessness, to turn such weaponry as they possess over to al Qaeda or to use it against American troops. Without such an incentive, Iraq is likely to remain the most deterred country on the planet, fully aware that any provocative step involving deployment or threats of weapons of mass destruction would bring about the instant annihilation of the Baghdad regime and Iraq as an independent country.

    Under these circumstances, we must wonder why the Bush administration, with pro forma Congressional support, is plunging ahead with a war that seems so contrary to reason. There are two lines of explanation, both raising disturbing questions about the legitimacy of governance under the leadership of the Bush administration. The first explanation is that the shock impact of September 11 has upset the rationality of the policy process to such an extent that an unwarranted war is being undertaken. Part of this explanation is the frustration experienced by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the Afghanistan War. Not knowing what to do next has led the administration irrationally to treat Saddam Hussein as if he were Osama Bin Laden and to treat Iraq as if it were al Qaeda. Such irrationality overlooks the radical difference between responding to a terrorist network that cannot be deterred and dealing with a hostile and unpalatable minor state. War is neither needed nor acceptable in the latter case.

    The second line of explanation, the more likely in our judgment, is that the American people and the other governments of the world are not being told the main reasons behind the US war policy. From this perspective, the alleged preoccupation with Iraqi weaponry of mass destruction is largely diversionary, as is the emphasis on Saddam’s brutality. The real reasons for the war are oil and regional strategic control, a military beachhead in relation to the volatile Middle East. Such justifications for war make strategic sense if, and only if, America is pursuing global dominance to ensure that its current economic and military preeminence is sustained into the future. But it is undoubtedly impolitic for the Bush administration to reveal such motives for war. The American people are overwhelmingly unwilling to spill blood for oil or empire. And most of the international community would certainly oppose the war if Washington’s strategic goals were made explicit.

    The suspicion that the underlying reasons for war are not being disclosed is not based on adherence to a conspiracy theory of government. If we examine closely the worldview expressed years before September 11 by the Pentagon hawks and Vice President Cheney, this understanding of American goals in the world becomes more transparent. What September 11 did was to provide an anti-terrorist banner under which these grandiose schemes could be realized without public acknowledgement. Again, this is not a paranoid fantasy. President Bush explicitly endorsed this vision of America’s world role in his West Point commencement address last June, and more subtly, in the major document issued by the White House in September 2002 under the title The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

    We are left then with two related problems. The first is that of concealment from the American people, and the second is the substantive issue of whether the United States should initiate a war to promote this grand design of American power and empire. It seems reasonable to assume that the motives for concealment are connected with the administration’s assessment of the political unacceptability of their undisclosed motives for war. This double image of our democratic crisis is particularly troublesome in the face of the breakdown of our constitutional reliance on checks and balances.

    But all is not lost. There are many indications that opposition to the war is growing at the grassroots level in America, and has been robust all along among the peoples of the world. In the United States, polling information shows that more than 70 percent of the people do not support a unilateral preemptive war led by the United States. More than 70 city councils across the country have registered their opposition to a war against Iraq, and the number continues to grow. Recently over forty American Nobel Laureates went on record opposing a US preventive war against Iraq. More and more Americans are taking to the streets in opposition to the Bush administration’s plans for aggressive warfare. These numbers can be expected to grow and the voices of protesters become angrier as the administration moves ever closer to war.

    It seems doubtful that this resistance at the level of the citizenry can operate as a check in the short run on White House zeal, but perhaps it can both strengthen the resolve of Congress and the Democratic Party, and convey the wider message that we need to recover trust in government if our constitutional system is to uphold our security and our values as a democratic republic. Already in the US Senate, Senators Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd have introduced a resolution (S. Res. 32) calling on the president to provide full support to the UN weapons inspectors to facilitate their ongoing disarmament work and obtain a new resolution of approval by Congress before using military force against Iraq without the broad support of the international community.

    The stakes are extremely high. It is not only the prospect of war against Iraq, but it is the whole relationship of the United States to the world. Continuing down the path along which the Bush administration is leading is likely to produce a climate of perpetual fear and war. It is also likely to undermine further our security and our freedoms at home, even moving us in the direction of a police state. Already, American consulates around the world are warning Americans of the heightened dangers that they are likely to face in reaction to the Iraq War. At home, the color-coded alert system created by the Department of Homeland Security seems designed to keep Americans in a state of fear without providing them with any positive steps they can take to increase their security. With each passing week the government moves ahead with its claims to exercise sweeping powers that erode our civil liberties while arousing our fears that terrorists are poised to strike at the American heartland. We do not need to have such a future, but it will be difficult to avoid unless the American people exercise their democratic prerogatives and rise in defense of their civil liberties, as well as in support of peace, international law and constitutional government.
    *Richard Falk, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. David Krieger is a founder and president of the Foundation. They are the co-editors of a recent Foundation Briefing Booklet, The Iraq Crisis and International Law.

  • U.S. Diplomat’s Letter of Resignation

    The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling’s letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan.

    Dear Mr. Secretary:

    I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.

    It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.

    The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.

    The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

    We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.

    We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has “oderint dum metuant” really become our motto?

    I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?

    Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.

    I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.

  • War is Too Easy

    War is Too Easy

    If politicians had to fight the wars
    they would find another way.

    Peace is not easy, they say.
    But it is war that is too easy –

    too easy to turn a profit, too easy
    to believe there is no choice,

    too easy to sacrifice
    someone else’s children.

    Someday it will not be this way.
    someday we will teach our children

    that they must not kill,
    that they must have the courage

    to live peace, to stand firmly
    for justice, to say no to war.

    Until we teach our children peace,
    each generation will have its wars,

    Will find its own ways
    to believe in them.

  • Guernica

    Guernica

    Picasso’s passion for peace
    Symbol of war’s horrors
    Screams of death and agony
    Fallen man, fallen horse

    Nazi Luftwaffe bombs falling
    On small Basque village
    It was market day, market day
    The streets were jammed

    Nazis bombed and strafed
    Planes diving, machine guns firing
    The young Luftwaffe pilots
    Found the marketplace

    Screaming villagers and peasants
    Running for their lives
    As death blurted from the sky that day
    Seventeen hundred murdered and maimed

    Picasso shared his human outrage
    In his unforgettable Guernica
    The Guernica of screams and death
    Of fallen man, fallen horse

    Cowardly diplomats and generals
    Try to hide Guernica but they cannot;
    Cover Guernica and it emerges
    Starker, stronger, truer

    Guernica was painted for you
    Watch the ones who avert their eyes
    As they slink by in shame
    Planning new wars, new sorrow
    Guernica

    Guernica is a small Basque village that was brutally attacked by the Nazi Luftwaffe on April 27, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The attack on the unarmed inhabitants of Guernica left 1,700 villagers and peasants dead or maimed. It was still unusual at that time for an air force to deliberately bomb a civilian population.

    The tragedy and brutality that occurred at Guernica was immortalized by Pablo Picasso in his impassioned mural expressing his outrage at the murderous attack. It is one of Picasso’s masterpieces that is known throughout the world. It depicts the horrors of war, the silent screams of men and beasts.

    Of late, Picasso’s Guernica has been in the news. The tapestry reproduction of the famous mural that hangs outside the entrance to the United Nations Security Council was covered with a blue curtain on the occasion of US Secretary of State Colin Powell presenting his evidence to the Council for war against Saddam Hussein. UN officials said that the blue curtain was to provide a better background for the television cameras. Certainly it is a more comfortable background, far easier on the eyes and minds of those who plead for war than the twisted, tormented figures portrayed in Picasso’s Guernica.

    No leader should be protected from Picasso’s Guernica. The tapestry of Guernica hanging outside the Security Council is a reminder to leaders of the brutality of war. To cover such art is to hide from the truth, and is made all the worse when it is done to protect the sensibilities of leaders who would wage war.

    Those leaders who would promote war for any reason should at a minimum have the courage to look straight at Picasso’s Guernica. War should never be sanitized or made to appear heroic. There is nothing heroic about middle aged war hawks sending young men and women off to kill and die. It was not heroic at Guernica, and it is no more so today.

  • Let Us Use Our Strength in a Decade of Service to Humanity

    We the people of the United States are members of the most fortunate, most successful, most powerful nation that ever existed upon this planet. Recent outbursts of terrorism have frightened us into forgetting how strong we are, how many resources we have, what great things we can achieve if we decide to evoke the creative qualities of every human being on earth.

    This country was founded upon universal principles of freedom and equality. It offered possibilities and opportunities that drew millions of immigrants to its shores. It finally eliminated the scourge of slavery which marred its history. It has risen to tremendous heights of productivity and prosperity. It has friends and enemies everywhere.

    We the people can put this giant nation under a new course – a course which can transform the world. It is true that God blessed America. Let us share our blessings as we did when we helped many nations recover from the ravages of World War II. We helped our former enemies to shake off totalitarian systems and reach heights they had never known before. We helped to create the United Nations and other international organizations which have brought benefits to people on every continent. Now the time has arrived for us to take the lead in launching a Decade of Service to Humanity.

    It is time for all of us to adopt the personal policy described by Albert Einstein many years ago: “A hundred times a day I remind myself that my life depends on other people living and dead, and that I must invest myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving….” The strength we have acquired came to us through other human beings – and we must use that strength by opening our hearts and reaching out to others across all boundaries.

    When the World Trade Towers were destroyed in September of 2001, people from eighty countries dies in the wreckage. There was a huge surge of compassion from people in the United States and many of those countries. People invested themselves in countless ways to help the victims of that attack and their families. People everywhere realized “a hundred times a day” that their lives depended upon other people living and dead. The repercussions from those who died penetrated the consciousness of all the millions who saw the towers exploding. The memories were implanted forever.

    The creation of a Decade of Service to Humanity, sponsored by people in America, will have impacts upon people of all generations. It could bring giant strides to eliminate poverty and disease, to link people together in cooperative efforts in every field – just as people worked together to cope with the effects of the terrible explosions in the Trade Towers.

    The launching of a Decade of Service would not require a declaration by the United Nations. It would not require action by the Congress of the United States. It would not have to be sponsored by any of the governmental or nongovernmental bodies existing in the world today.

    It would simply require a state of awareness by every human person of the connections on which every life is based. It would demand a universal circulation of the statement made by Dr. Einstein: “A hundred times a day I remind myself that my life depends on other people living and dead….” That statement could be placed on the bulletin boards in every school and church, in every business office, in every courtroom, in every place where human beings gather.

    What would be the effects of reminding ourselves “a hundred times a day” that we are supported and sustained in countless ways by those who labored to build our civilization, who enabled us to produce enormous quantities of food and clothing, wide networks of roads and highways, enormous harbors filled with ships, huge airports crowded with planes, enormous broadcasting systems and internet webs of electronic communication? What would be the effects of realizing that people in every part of the world, people from the East and the West, the North and the South, people of every color and every religion, people from Africa and Asia, from Europe and Latin America, from Japan and China and Iran and Iraq, from Brazil and Poland and Germany and Spain, are important in our personal lives?

    If we kept these facts steadily before us, we could take part in a Decade of Service to Humanity. We would insist that our representatives in Congress, the President and his advisors, the ambassadors at the United Nations, would have to recognize and fulfill the needs of human beings for a decent, satisfying life. President Truman said once that every person had a right to such a life.

    The statement of Albert Einstein came from one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived. His thinking about the structure and potential energies of the atom led to the release of nuclear energy, the most revolutionary event of the twentieth century. He declared that the release of that energy changed everything for humanity, whether human beings realized it or not.

    In this Nuclear Age, when thousands of weapons of mass destruction exist in our country and in other nations, we live with the possibility of annihilation at any time. We seldom realize that human beings have the power to wipe out all life on earth. If we brought a realization of that awesome possibility into our minds every day, we would have an additional motivation for using our strength to serve humanity – and all the forms of life connected with us.

    “We the people” have achieved many worthy goals in the past. Millions of us are engaged today in lives of service in many fields. Many of us know that serving one another brings the deepest rewards, the most enduring happiness that we can enjoy. The idea of being a Public Servant motivated many of our most admired leaders – Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess and Harry Truman, Rosalyn and Jimmy Carter, Jonas Salk, Earl Warren, Lady Bird Johnson, John Kennedy, Philip and Daniel Berrigan, and many others. All nations have produced men and women whose services to humanity have inspired millions of people from all generations.

    A Decade of Service to Humanity might be followed by a noble era of humanity’s development – an era that could stretch for centuries or eons. The earth could become a place of everlasting peace, a place filled with the signs of love shining far into the future.

    We the people of America can lead the way. Let us start now!
    *Frank K. Kelly is the senior vice president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His fields of service include human rights – he was vice president of the Fund for the Republic and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions – and public affairs. He was a speech writer for President Truman, a noted journalist, a war correspondent, and author of many books on American history. In the 1950s, he was a special assistant to Majority Leaders of the U.S. Senate. He lives in Santa Barbara.

  • The Politics of Education Reform

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Reflection of the New Year

    Reflection of the New Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Recruiting Law Under Question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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