Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: terrorism

  • 2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush Invests National Treasure in Death and Destruction

    “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” Jesus said in Matthew 6:19-21. The United States, the most Christian nation on earth, has placed its treasure in destruction and death. As Associated Press’ Dan Morgan reports ( June 12 2004 , Tallahassee Democrat), the Pentagon “plans to spend well over $1 trillion in the next decade on an arsenal of futuristic planes, ships and weapons with little direct connection to the Iraq war or the global war on terrorism.”

    The 2005 defense budget – the word “defense” has become a joke in the post Cold War world – will reach $500 billion (counting the CIA), $50 billion higher than 2004. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next ten years, the armada of aircraft, ships and killer toys will cost upwards of $770 billion more than Bush’s estimate for long-term defense.

    Morgan reports that Bush wants “$68 billion for research and development –20 percent above the peak levels of President Reagan’s historic defense buildup. Tens of billions more out of a proposed $76 billion hardware account will go for big-ticket weapons systems to combat some as-yet-unknown adversary comparable to the former Soviet Union.”

    The mantra heard in Congress, “we can’t show weakness in the face of terrorism,” fails to take into account the fact that when the 9/11 hijackers struck, the US military–the strongest in the world–failed to prevent the attacks. So, logically one would ask, how does a futuristic jet fighter defend against contemporary enemies, like jihadists who would smuggle explosives into a train station or crowded shopping mall?

    Rather than face the nasty facts of cancerous corruption, which translates immediately as war profiteering in Iraq , the political class accepts defense uber alles as an axiom. Congress accepts this dubious assumption and then squanders the taxpayers’ money and America ‘s heart on useless weapons of mass destruction.

    Congress, following the President’slead, hardens the American heart by making weapons a priority over housing, health, education and jobs. The budget they pass each year awards billions to the swindlercorporations that produce the lethal instruments: General Dynamics, Lockheed and the other household names of mass weapons production. Think of the fortunes by the schnorrers who sold SDI to the late President Reagan! Or how Reagan took money from the hungry and homeless – “it’s their choice,” said Reagan – and handed it to the fakirs who pretended that could stop incoming missiles.

    The Bush presidency has taken military spending (wasting) to new heights (depths). More frightening, a military culture has emerged that includes military language in everyday speech – yes sir. The military that carried low social prestige until World War II has become a highly respected institution. Its recruiters have become as ubiquitous on high school and college campuses as ivy on the walls. At graduation ceremonies, some high school administrators don military garb alongside those with traditional black robes. But, wait a minute! In a republic, a professional military merits minimal status. Indeed, republics need citizens’ militias, not standing armies at a time when a foreign state poses no immediate threat to US security.

    Indeed, Vice President Dick Cheney, a warmonger, liar and draft dodger — “I had better things to do” than serve in Vietnam — represents the new heart of the nation. Without disclosing his evidence, he continues to insist that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda and keeps secret his minutes – executive privilege — with the dishonest Enron officials, one of whom laughs about overcharging “those poor grandmothers” in California. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who will use such evidence on tape to prosecute Enron officials for rigging energy prices to bilk Californians, claims “this is further evidence of the arrogance that was so fundamental to the business practices of Enron and the other energy pirates who acted so rapaciously” (Business Report, 6/06/04).

    For Cheney, rapaciousness is as American as apple pie. Indeed, Cheney belongs in Ripley’s Believe It or Not: he may be the first man who suffered several heart attacks and does not possess a heart. Cheney stands as an allegorical reference to the nation’s morality in the early 21st Century.

    Vice President Cheney, although he denies this, has looked out for the interests of his former company. As CEO of Halliburton, from 1995-2000, Cheney made his and the company’s fortune in the national security-energy arena, that shady area that has removed itself from accountability. Indeed, Congress does not have clear oversight over hundreds of billions of military dollars. $10 billion gets allocated simply for “missile defense.” Behind such an authorization, the military demands: “trust us.” The Founding Fathers would have scoffed at anyone uttering these two words – especially in reference to money.

    With the sounds of scandals of tens of billions of dollars still reverberating in the public’s ear, why would Congress cede its accountability function to the Pentagon? The military apparatus, a killing machine, stands for heartlessness by its very nature. And the Bush Administration and its military spokespeople have even given prevaricating a bad name. From the President down to key cabinet members, the Bushies link dissembling with heartlessness as if they were the proverbial horse and carriage. Under Bush, lying has grown deep institutional roots as well.

    On April 29, the State Department released a report on the “Patterns of Global Terrorism.” In it, Department researchers put forth the claim that in 2003 terrorist attacks had fallen to only 190, their lowest since 1969. In fact, as anyone who could count knew, the number of attacks had risen dramatically.

    “It’s a very big mistake,” acknowledged Secretary of State Colin Powell on June 13 to ABC’sThis Week. “And we are not happy about this big mistake.” Powell predictably denied that political motives lay behind this rosy report, which could have served to support Bush’s claim that he was winning the “war on terrorism.” “Nobody was out to cook the books,” Powell said.

    But Powell had spewed a series of lies to the UN Security Council. On February 5, 2003 he presented a power point lecture of lies about the location of Iraqi WMDs, claiming incontrovertible evidence for every fib he uttered.

    The military demands of the Iraq and Afghan Wars have obscured the crying needs of this age. The arch Christian, George W. Bush, directs Congress to waste the nation’s treasury on destruction and death, while extolling the “value of human life” in his campaigns to prevent stem cell research and abortion. He offers little to nothing to alleviate starvation, homelessness and disease and he ignores or exacerbates the deterioration of the environment. How will the meek inherit the earth if they starve to death, die of exposure, bomb shrapnel or environmental toxicity? Or does Bush think inheriting the earth means getting buried six feet under it?

    Bush’s world means publicity for a macho man image, like landing a military jet on an aircraft carrier as he did in May 2003, when he grabbed his dress-up-as-pilot photo-op on the USS Abraham Lincoln. It means that he possesses an inherent right to imprison, torture or kill anyone he chooses, while selectively enforcing international law. He angrily explained that he had to use force against Iraq to implement UN Security Council resolutions, avoids even linguistic coercion to pressure Israel to abide by many UN resolutions relating to actions toward Palestinians and flaunts the Geneva Convention relating to anywhere the United States is involved.Bush presents himself in public as a decisive man, but one who does not read and reflect. He claims he is humble before God, but struts arrogantly before other men and women and has asserted unprecedented power — in the name of Jesus.

    Bush represents American empire, an era where military spending accelerates and social spending declines, where the President and the Attorney General assert the “might makes right” formula to circumvent basic liberties regarding “enemy combatants”–including US citizens – and international agreements. The first three words of the Golden Rule dictate Bush and Ashcroft’s policies: Do Unto Others. A good percentage of the public here and abroad, however, have begun to grow increasingly concerned about what others will now do to us. In Saudi Arabia , an American engineer has apparently been kidnapped in retaliation for the US treatment of Arab prisoners at Iraq ‘s Abu Ghraib prison.

    Such events may well color the voting public’s heart; it may decide it does not want to continue following Bush’s military treasure.

    Saul Landau’s new book is The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can Reverse the Trend. His new film is Syria : Between Iraq and a Hard Place,distributed by Cinema Guild (800-723-5522).

  • The United States Has Lost its Moral Authority

    Peoples the world around have a history of culture and religion. In the Mideast , the religion is predominantly Muslim and the culture tribal. The Muslim religion is strong, i.e., those that don’t conform are considered infidels; those of a tribal culture look for tribal leadership, not democracy. We liberated Kuwait , but it immediately rejected democracy.

    In 1996, a task force was formed in Jerusalem including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. They submitted a plan for Israel to incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Clean Break. It proposed that negotiations with the Palestinians be cut off and, instead, the Mideast be made friendly to Israel by democratizing it. First Lebanon would be bombed, then Syria invaded on the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. Afterward, Saddam Hussein was to be removed in Iraq and replaced with a Hashemite ruler favorable to Israel .

    The plan was rejected by Netanyahu, so Perle started working for a similar approach to the Mideast for the United States . Taking on the support of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Cambone, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld et al., he enlisted the support of the Project for the New American Century.

    The plan hit paydirt with the election of George W. Bush. Perle took on the Defense Policy Board. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith became one, two and three at the Defense Department, and Cheney as vice president took Scooter Libby and David Wurmser as his deputies. Clean Break was streamlined to go directly into Iraq .

    Iraq , as a threat to the United States , was all contrived. Richard Clarke stated in his book, Against All Enemies, with John McLaughlin of the CIA confirming, that there was no evidence or intelligence of “Iraqi support for terrorism against the United States ” from 1993 until 2003 when we invaded. The State Department on 9/11 had a list of 45 countries wherein al Qaeda was operating. While the United States was listed, it didn’t list the country of Iraq .

    President Bush must have known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq . We have no al Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorism from Iraq ; we were intentionally misled by the Bush administration.

    Which explains why President-elect Bush sought a briefing on Iraq from Defense Secretary William Cohen in January before taking the oath of office and why Iraq was the principal concern at his first National Security Council meeting – all before 9/11. When 9/11 occurred, we knew immediately that it was caused by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan . Within days we were not only going into Afghanistan , but President Bush was asking for a plan to invade Iraq – even though Iraq had no involvement.

    After 15 months, Iraq has yet to be secured. Its borders were left open after “mission accomplished,” allowing terrorists throughout the Mideast to come join with the insurgents to wreak havoc. As a result, our troops are hunkered down, going out to trouble spots and escorting convoys.

    In the war against terrorism, we’ve given the terrorists a cause and created more terrorism. Even though Saddam is gone, the majority of the Iraqi people want us gone. We have proven ourselves “infidels.” With more than 800 GIs killed, 5,000 maimed for life and a cost of $200 billion, come now the generals in command, both Richard Myers and John Abizaid, saying we can’t win. Back home the cover of The New Republic magazine asks, “Were We Wrong?”

    Walking guard duty tonight in Baghdad , a G.I. wonders why he should lose his life when his commander says he can’t win and the people back home can’t make up their mind. Unfortunately, the peoples of the world haven’t changed their minds. They are still against us. Heretofore, the world looked to the United States to do the right thing. No more. The United States has lost its moral authority.

    Originally published in The State on June 23, 2004

  • The American Disaster in Iraq

    After the bloodiest week in the American occupation of Iraq, the same tired slogans about “seeing it through” and “staying the course” are about all that our leaders seem able to say. Such a paucity of moral and political imagination does not serve well the citizens of this country or of the world, and seems a recipe for a surefire descent further into the political inferno that Iraq is daily becoming. It is fine to wonder aloud whether 9/11 could have prevented by due diligence at the White House, but it is no excuse for not focusing on the least disastrous endgame for Iraq. Let us recall, as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated, that it took American leaders a decade of bloodshed to acknowledge in public the failure that they privately had come to recognize the Vietnam War to have been. It may be up to the American citizenry to shorten the learning cycle this time around, with so much more at stake.

    The steady descent into an American-led foreign policy whirlpool allows us to consider the worst features of the Bush approach to the challenges of world order.

    First of all, unilateralism with respect to waging war in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and international law, underscored by the American president’s arrogant assertion in the 2004 State of the Union Address: “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.”

    Secondly, the mission impossible associated with imposing democracy on a sovereign state by force of arms in defiance of national aspirations. This undertaking is being daily exposed as a recipe for policy failure in Iraq, a country beset by internal religious, ethnic, regional conflicts and a political tradition with zero receptivity to American-style democracy.

    Thirdly, the imperial claim that America embodies the only model for political and economic success. As expressed in the important White House document of September 2002, National Security Strategy of the USA: “The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom– a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.” All other political arrangements are illegitimate in the eyes of Washington, and it is some pathological version of this model that remains the blueprint for Iraq despite the overwhelming evidence that the Iraqis want to decide their future by themselves, and do not accept either prescriptions for their future whether issued as decrees by the occupiers or by their designated Iraqi representatives on the Iraqi Interim Governing Council.

    And finally, the obsessive preoccupation with the Middle East as the pivot of the American grand design for world domination. The neocons shaping the Bush presidency view strategic control of the region as vital for their conception of global security, which includes oil, safe havens for American private investment, and a lethal partnership with Israel. This was all made clear in their definitive planning document prepared in the months before George W. Bush came to Washington under the auspices of the Project for a New American Century. It is notable in this latter regard, that Israel’s approach to the Palestinians has inspired the tactics and structure of the American occupation of Iraq, with similar results of deepening indigenous resentments and gradually imposing on an oppressed people the stark choice between abject surrender and violent resistance. Also nightly more in evidence is the American use of tanks, missiles, and bombers against unarmed or lightly armed Iraqi resisters.

    As matters stand, there is no favorable endgame for this war. There is not yet in the American political or media mainstream, including the Kerry presidential bid, even a hint of withdrawal. The consensus in Washington is that the stakes are too large to admit failure, and that any hasty departure from Iraq would trigger a vicious civil war with adverse regional effects. At the same time, the much heralded transfer of sovereignty on June 30 seems like a fig leaf designed to disguise the realities of continuing military occupation, and is unlikely either to mean anything substantive about the exercise of authority in Iraq or to fool a single person in Baghdad. To begin with, how can the US Government transfer what it does not possess? Or put another way, if Iraqi sovereignty is a reality, what are American occupying forces doing in the country against the expressed will of the Iraqi people and their authentic representatives? And how are we to explain the current construction of 14 large military bases for US forces designed to accommodate a permanent military presence in the country? This is a terrain of American dreams, Iraqi nightmares!

    So far, the American political leadership has not faced up to the failure of its Iraq policy, and so is paralyzed, caught in a cycle of escalating violence that recalls Vietnam. Because of the strategic importance of Iraq, many think the better analogy is the French prolonged inability to acknowledge defeat in Algeria. It took all the prestige and patriotic credibility of Charles DeGaulle to extricate France, and even then France came perilously close to self-destructing in the aftermath. We here in the United States need to be asking ourselves and others, with a sense of urgency, what will it take to bring the Iraqi disaster to closure.

    On the broader front, the warnings and opportunities associated with the Madrid train bombings of March 11th are instructive. The Spanish citizenry immediately opted in its general elections three days later for an anti-war opposition party, and responded to their 9/11 with the slogan “No to terrorism! No to war!” If only America had displayed such political wisdom. Although it is late, it is not too late. A change in presidential leadership in November, although unlikely to offer much immediate prospect of change, will create some needed political space for moving in new, more constructive directions, and will at least rid the United States and the world of the current extremist worldviews that have given rise to the tragic ordeal of Iraq.

  • Terrorism Has Altered The Nuclear Equation Forever

    LOS ANGELES: Fifty years ago this month President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his Atoms for Peace proposal at the United Nations. This seminal event laid the groundwork for much of the nuclear enterprise that we see around the world today. It also generated a nuclear Trojan horse.

    Countries around the world greeted the prospects of the atom with glee: nuclear power plants would be too cheap to meter and nuclear isotopes would generate a renaissance in science, medicine and industry. While the atom contributed to some of these laudable objectives, it unwittingly booby-trapped the landscape with nuclear mines that terrorists can now set off.

    The world is littered with possibilities. Dirty-bomb ingredients are ubiquitous. They are in hospitals and industry. They are transported through cities as nuclear waste to storage sites. They cannot just disappear. Nuclear power plants are vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Nuclear weapons derived from the peaceful atom reside in such unstable countries as Pakistan and North Korea. In more stable regions, countries insist on recycling weapons useable plutonium which can be diverted.

    Booby-trapping the world certainly was not Eisenhower’s intention. Anguished by the accelerating nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, he sought a way out. His solution was to reduce the capacity of the superpowers to produce nuclear weapons by conveying their “normal uranium and fissionable materials” to an atomic energy agency. The new organization would house and distribute the stocks for peaceful purposes.

    While an international “bank of fissionable material” never came about, the Atoms for Peace address broke the American inhibition against spreading nuclear knowledge and technology to the rest of the world. In 1955, Washington initiated the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. Twenty-five thousand scientists descended on Geneva to take advantage of the declassification of documents that held many of the secrets of the nuclear age.

    Washington did not proceed down this road naïvely. It knew that Atoms for Peace was not risk-free. But it faced a conundrum: if the United States did not promote the atom, it could not control it either. Knowledge is universal; inevitably, the rest of the world would catch up. The challenge was to build dikes to curtail the negative implications of the spread of nuclear technology. In 1957, the International Atomic Energy Agency was created to promote and monitor global nuclear markets. The 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty sought to halt the ambitions of nations to get the bomb in return for the peaceful nuclear assistance. Domestic and international controls over nuclear and dual-use exports followed. Most recently, Washington gathered several nations together in a Proliferation Security Initiative to intercept nuclear contraband.

    The dikes were not enough to prevent seepage. Israel used the “peaceful” atom provided by a French research reactor to develop the bomb. India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iraq and South Africa followed. At the same time, the United States beat back the temptations of Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, West Germany and Taiwan. When regimes changed in Belarus, Ukraine, South Africa and now Iraq, nuclear weapons programs were abandoned.

    As the international community reinforced its dikes against proliferation, it continued to build its peaceful nuclear infrastructure oblivious to another risk: nuclear terrorism. During the early nuclear era, terrorism as we know it today had not raised its ugly head. When it did emerge in the 1970’s, terrorists seemed mindful about the political costs of taking too many innocent lives.

    Nonetheless, even from the beginning of the nuclear age, the creators speculated on the risks of nuclear terrorism. In 1944, scientists at University of Chicago working on the Manhattan Project conjectured that a political group could unleash a nuclear blitzkrieg by smuggling an atomic weapon into the United States on a commercial aircraft. The terrorism of the 1970’s prompted public policy groups, many driven by a phobia of all things nuclear, to demand that weapons-useable plutonium and highly enriched uranium no longer fuel nuclear power and research reactors. The Europeans, Russians and Japanese resisted. America wavered. Then, many of these same groups began asking questions about the vulnerability of nuclear plants to terrorist attack. American officials took umbrage.

    As the 20th century ended, the absence of any serious act of nuclear violence convinced officials that nuclear terror would remain to province of fiction writers. Then the Sept. 11 attacks occurred. President George W. Bush announced that in the caves of Afghanistan, U.S. forces had uncovered plots to attack nuclear power plants. But eliminating the risks in the short run was impossible. Enhancing protection, while imperfect, remained the only option.

    As we map our nuclear future we should be mindful of the closing remarks of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech: “The United States pledges before you – and therefore before the world – its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma – to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”

    In the post-Sept. 11 world, solving “the fearful atomic dilemma” requires not more but less Atoms for Peace. The risk of nuclear terrorism, coupled to the environmental and proliferation burdens the initiative gave rise to, now requires that we roll back Eisenhower’s vision and try to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle.

    *This article was originally published in Atoms for Peace’. The writer, who served in the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs during the first Bush administration, is author of “Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy.”

  • UC must use position to lead WMD debate: U.S. move toward more offensive weapons signals dangerous trend

    The situation surrounding the University of California’s potential bid to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory is complex. The UC never has had to bid to manage Los Alamos. It was asked by the federal government to manage the labs and develop nuclear weapons as a public service. Competing to continue the research and development of weapons of mass destruction – a relationship that always has been in contradiction with the core mission of a university that promotes the principles of academic openness – is ethically questionable. Competing against defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Bechtel Corp. is even more questionable.

    It is true that the ethical dimensions of this managerial role have changed greatly since the original Manhattan Project, when we justified our pursuit of the original weapons of mass destruction as necessary to counter Hitler’s program of atomic weapons development.

    Similarly, the ethical dimensions have changed since the end of the Cold War, during which our justification was the vital necessity to balance the threat posed by the Soviet Union.

    Now, we use the “War on Terror” to justify the development, planned production and threatened use of new nuclear weapons. But the role of nuclear weapons has changed as well.

    The current administration has implemented a major strategic shift in U.S. foreign/defense policy, discarding the “threat-based approach” of the Cold War and assuming an “abilities-based approach” as outlined in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. This means that rather than producing nuclear weapons for defensive purposes – deterrence – we are now researching and designing a new generation of offensively designed nuclear weapons. Meet the euphemistically termed “bunker buster” and “mini-nuke” that UC employees are creating.

    “Mini-nukes” are still designed to be immensely powerful. Even worse, the planned bunker busters would most likely create huge clouds of radioactive dirt after detonation. Studies have shown that weapons detonated close to the ground or in shallow pits actually create more fallout than weapons detonated as an airburst. Supposedly, these weapons would be used against enemy command posts and weapons stockpiles.

    As nuclear strategies and policies change, so should our highly prestigious and respected university. Furthermore, students should have substantial say in these changes.

    Whose university is this? Am I wrong in believing that universities exist for students? Shouldn’t students be welcomed (not to mention correctly informed) to enter this critical debate? Isn’t it our right as an inseparable part of the UC to be consulted on major decisions such as this, one that will affect the course of the university and the world for decades to come? I say yes. Is Los Alamos the real UCLA? I say no.

    But this debate is bigger than who should manage the nuclear weapons complex. Catastrophic terrorism – terrorism plus WMD – is now regarded as the most significant threat to global security. The German foreign minister went so far as to call catastrophic terror a new “totalitarian threat” because it is not deterrable. So how do we meet this challenge? Preemptive strikes and nation-building are both very limited and inefficient strategies.

    In the face of this new “totalitarian” threat, many new questions must be posed and debated – by everyone. What effect on the psyche and policy of other nations is produced through the continued research, development and threat to use weapons of mass destruction by the nation who spends more on the military then the next nine nations combined? Can the United States have weapons of mass destruction without everyone else having them? If everyone has them, how can we stop terrorists from acquiring these weapons? Is it possible to stop terrorists from acquiring biological and nuclear weapons?

    If we truly and objectively ask and answer these questions to the best of our ability as rational human beings, I think the debate about the U.S. nuclear weapons complex would quickly shift from who should manage the nuclear weapons complex to whether there should be a nuclear weapons complex to manage.

    The UC, despite its deep contradictions, is the greatest university system in the world. Why else would we have been trusted to manage Armageddon for 60 years? Since the nuclear age began with us, we are the most qualified institution to lead a much needed international debate about the future of WMD, the future of catastrophic terror and, ultimately, the future of Earth. It is not only our privilege, it is our responsibility.

    *Micheal Cox is the student organizer for the Foundation’s UC Nuclear Free Chapter at UCLA. This article was orginially published in the Daily Bruin Online athttp://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?ID=26587

  • “Strike against Terror”

    “Strike against terror” is a misleading expression. What we are striking against is not the real cause or the root of terror. The object of our strike is still human life. We are sowing seeds of violence as we strike. Striking in this way we will only bring about more hatred and violence into the world. This is exactly what we do not want to do.

    Terror is in the human heart. We must remove this terror from the heart. Destroying the human heart, both physically and psychologically, is what we must absolutely avoid. The root of terrorism should be identified, so that it can be removed. The root of terrorism is misunderstanding, intolerance, hatred, revenge and hopelessness. This root cannot be located by the military. Bombs and missiles cannot reach it, let alone destroy it. Only with the practice of looking deeply can our insight reveal and identify this root. Only with the practice of deep listening and compassion can it be transformed and removed.

    Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness. More darkness will make darkness thicker. Only light can dissipate darkness. Violence and hatred cannot be removed with violence and hatred. Rather, this will make violence and hatred grow a thousand fold. Only understanding and compassion can dissolve violence and hatred.

    Hatred, and violence are in the hearts of human beings. A terrorist is a human being with hatred, revenge, violence and misunderstanding in his or her heart. Acting without understanding, acting out of hatred, violence and fear, only helps sow more terror, bringing terror to the homes of others and ultimately bringing terror back to the homes of the attacker. The philosophy of “an eye for an eye,” only creates more suffering and bloodshed and more enemies. One of the greatest casualties we may suffer results from this wrong thinking and action. Whole societies are living constantly in fear with their nerves being attacked day and night. Such a state of confusion, fear and anxiety is extremely dangerous. It can bring about another world war, this time extremely destructive in the worst possible way.

    We must learn to speak out for peace now, so that our spiritual voice can be heard in this dangerous and pivotal moment of history. Those of us who have the light should display the light and offer it so that the world will not sink into total darkness. Everyone has the seed of awakening and insight within his or her heart. Let us help each other touch these seeds in ourselves so that everyone can have the courage to speak out. We must ensure that the way we live our daily lives does not create more terrorism in the world, through intolerance, hatred, revenge and greed. We need a collective awakening to stop this course of self­-destruction.

    Spiritual leaders in this country need to be invited to raise their voice strongly and speak up for peaceful solutions to the world problems and bring about the awareness of the teaching of compassion and non-violence to the American nation and the people.

    By understanding the nature and cause of the suffering of humanity, we will then know the right method to begin to heal the great problems on this planet.
    * This Article was written by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and peace activist: 
    “Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, and to humanity.” –Spoken by The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., in nominating Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.

  • Choose Hope And Change The World

    Choose Hope And Change The World

    Earth Charter Summit, San Francisco

    We are gathered to consider one of the most visionary documents of our time, the Earth Charter. Before we focus our attention on this great document, though, I need to say something about the drums of war and war itself.

    I wrote this poem in 1971, more than thirty years ago during another war, but unfortunately it is again appropriate today. Listen carefully and you can hear the steady beating of the drums of war coming from Washington.

    THE DRUMS

    They’re beating on the drums again,
    the drums, the drums.
    They’re calling out the young men again,
    young men, young men.

    They’re training them to kill again,
    with knives and guns,
    with tanks and bombs.

    They’re sending them away again,
    across the ocean
    by ship, by plane.

    They’re acting up at home again,
    the mothers, the mothers.
    They don’t want their sons to go again
    to die, to die.

    And now they’re coming home again
    in caskets wrapped in flags
    with shrapnel in their backs,
    with heroin in their veins.

    And now they’re coming home again
    with snickers on their lips,
    with medals on their chests.

    They’re blowing on the bugles now.
    They’re beating on the drums,
    the drums, the drums.
    War is not an abstract. War kills people, particularly the innocent; war rips families apart, destroys cities and wastes our resources – including our most precious resource of all, our children.

    The political leaders of the most powerful nation that the world has ever known are beating on the drums of war, as they pursue perpetual war against terrorism, against the Taliban and now against Iraq. These men, flush with power, seek “regime change” in Iraq. They have decided that it is time that Saddam must go, regardless of the cost in lives of Iraqi civilians and of young Americans who will be sent to fight and die.

    If the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team has its way, we Americans will see the face of Saddam on every Iraqi man, woman and child. They will become our targets, the “collateral damage” of the bombs we drop from 30,000 feet. They will serve as both the enemy and those we liberate with our bombs. They will be the victims of our arrogance. Their deaths and injuries will be the cause of the next cadres of terrorists who rise up after we have injured and killed their loved ones and destroyed their homes and families. The new terrorists who are created by this war will make us the victims of the hubris of our political leaders.

    Today’s American military force is an army of volunteers, composed primarily of young people who are seeking the opportunity to get ahead. They are promised a college education, something they generally could not otherwise afford, for serving in the military. They are not told when they sign up that they may have to fight and die on a far-away desert before their dreams of a college education could be fulfilled. These are the young people who will be sent to die because they lacked good economic alternatives.

    I would like to offer just one simple suggestion that could put an end to this war and perhaps all war: Let those who seek to send others to fight in wars, go themselves. Isn’t that the essence of leadership – to lead the way.

    I’m tired of leadership of the “do as I say, not as I do” variety. Unfortunately, that has become the principal form of leadership in Washington – and it is bipartisan. This style of leadership also applies to weapons of mass destruction. Our government doesn’t want Saddam to have even one nuclear weapon, but it plans to retain thousands for itself in perpetuity. Our government provided the materials for biological weapons to Iraq over many years, and now our government has sabotaged the verification protocol of the Biological Weapons Convention that the nations of the world, including our closest allies, were eager to implement.

    If Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld said they were ready to go off to fight Saddam Hussein, I would at least believe that they had a modicum of integrity for being willing to put their own lives on the line for what they believed in. Instead, they want to send someone else’s sons and daughters off to fight and die.

    And what about Congress? Do you think that those who vote for war will be willing to go or to send their sons and daughters? Of course not. They believe in sending others to fight and die so that their own patriotism will not be questioned.

    But why should we judge their patriotism by their willingness to send others to war? What is wrong with us, citizens of a democracy? How did we become so complacent, so willing to let politicians dictate the lives and deaths of our young people without being willing to put their own lives or even their careers on the line?

    Hermann Goering, the Nazi Head of the Luftwaffe, said this about war in a conversation with a prison psychologist during the Nuremberg Trials:

    Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood.

    But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

    Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

    The human future stands on soft and precarious ground. Looking ahead, one path leads to war and devastation. Another path, far more hopeful, is the path of peace. But it must be an active, energetic and organized peace. We cannot wait for peace to come to us. We must choose peace and commit ourselves to attaining peace by our actions. A starting point for doing so is saying NO to war.

    Daisaku Ikeda has said, “Nothing is more precious than peace…. Peace is the most basic starting point for the advancement of humankind.”

    The drums of war are beating. Which will it be: Peace or war? We have choices. We can act.

    The Earth Charter is a blueprint for peace. It represents the hopes and dreams of millions of people for our common future. It is built upon an understanding of our shared humanity and our inextricable link with the web of all life. It is premised on our shared responsibility for passing the world on intact to the next generation and the next and the next. We must not be the generation that breaks faith with life and with the future.

    Never before in human history has the danger to our survival been greater. Today we live in a world in which nations are pitted against nations, in which wars are commonplace, in which overwhelmingly the victims of wars are civilians, and in which terrorists strike out at innocent civilians. All of this must change if we are to survive, if we are to flourish, and if we are to realize our full potential as human beings.

    The Earth Charter is a call to action. It is a call to each of us to rise to our full potential as human beings and to play our part in changing the world. Without our actions, the Earth Charter is only a flowery document – words upon a piece of paper. It is up to us, by our actions, to breathe life into this vision of global decency.

    Each of us is more special than we can possibly imagine. We are, in fact, miracles of creation. Each of us is entirely unique. There has never been anyone quite like you – with your combination of interests and talents, knowledge and appreciations — in the entire history of the universe. But beyond our magnificent uniqueness and our diversity, we all share a common humanity.

    We have been endowed with gifts that we often fail to realize or to use.

    We have the gift of thought and reflection, allowing us to grapple with the world’s problems and to find creative solutions, such as the Earth Charter itself.

    We have the gift of memory, making it possible for us to learn from our mistakes and those of others.

    We have the gift of voice and language, enabling us to communicate and to make our voices heard.

    We have the gift of conscience, enabling us to determine for ourselves right from wrong.

    We have the gift of creativity, allowing us to add to the world’s already enormous store of beauty through arts and literature, philosophies and religions, sciences and engineering, and day-to-day problem solving.

    We have the gift of love, making it possible to share closely with others the incredible gift of life in all its richness and beauty as well as in its sorrow and suffering.

    We have the gift of empathy, allowing us to understand another’s hurt and sorrow and to reach out with compassion and love.

    We have the gift of mobility, making it possible for us to go where we are needed.

    We have the gift to make and use tools, enabling us to extend our powers dramatically. Our tools have taken us into outer space, where our astronauts and cosmonauts have looked back on our beautiful, blue planet, so alone in the universe, so precious in its nurturing of life.

    And our tools have given us the power to destroy ourselves. That is the essence of the Nuclear Age. We can no longer be assured that the continuous flow of life, at least human life, will continue.

    Our tools are dual-purpose because we are dual-purpose, creatures capable of both good and evil.

    And we must choose. Choice itself is another of our great gifts as human beings. We each have the power of choice that we manifest each day of our lives by every act we make and decision we take.

    I believe that we are more powerful than our tools, including our most terrible weapons of mass destruction. We have the power to control these tools and to eliminate them. But we must exercise that power or our tools may eliminate us.

    As the Earth Charter tells us, the choice is ours: “We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future.”

    That choice can be made by our apathy, complacency and ignorance. That is the choice of abandoning our humanity by default. That is the choice of abandoning our human responsibility. It is the choice of those who would sleepwalk through the greatest challenges of our time, perhaps of any time.

    That choice can be made by giving over our power to leaders who would lead us into war and greed and selfishness. That is the choice of abandoning our democratic responsibilities and playing the role of lemmings rushing over a cliff to our demise.

    Or our choice can be made by standing on our own two feet, by embracing others, by our compassion, our creativity and our commitment to changing the world.

    To choose the path of life and decency will not be easy. In fact, it will require every ounce of courage that we have. We will have to learn to believe in ourselves and to empower ourselves to be a force for peace, even against great odds.

    We will have to stand firm and confident in the power of right and decency against entrenched and powerful institutions that would have us be complacent consumers rather than active peacemakers.

    At the dawn of the Nuclear Age, just days after the first atomic weapon was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Albert Camus, the great French writer said, “Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”

    Let us stand with Camus and choose Peace, because it is necessary. Let us stand with Camus and demand that our governments choose reason.

    War no longer has a place on our planet, and we must stop preparing for war. We must stop squandering our resources on tools of destruction. We must demand that the $850 billion now spent on the world’s military forces be spent instead on meeting human needs. If human needs are met and principles of justice among all peoples are adhered to, there will be no need for war, and the need for defense will atrophy.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “One day we must come to see that peace is not the distant goal we seek, but the means to that goal.”

    Let us stand with Martin Luther King, Jr. and choose Peace because it is a wiser course of action, respectful of human life. Let us join him in his dream for justice and dignity for all. Let us stand with him in his conviction that peace and nonviolence are not only the ends we seek, but also the means to attain those ends.

    Eleanor Roosevelt said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

    Let us stand with Eleanor Roosevelt and believe firmly in the beauty of our dreams. Let us believe deeply that the vision of the Earth Charter is not only right and necessary, but also possible. It is not an idle dream, but a vision of a world that must be built by our actions.

    Pablo Casals, the great master of the cello, said, “The love of country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?”

    Let us stand with Pablo Casals, and choose to be citizens of the world. Let us erase the borders in our minds and replace them with an all-embracing love for humanity. Let us work to create a world in which every person, no matter where he or she is born, is able to live with dignity and full human rights as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    Jacques Cousteau, who explored and shared the beauty of the oceans and who lived with a deep commitment to future generations, said, “The time has come when speaking is not enough, applauding is not enough. We have to act.”

    Let us stand with Jacques Cousteau and commit ourselves to action – to action that will change the world, even if it is done one person and one decision at a time.

    The Dalai Lama has reminded us that we must never give up. He has written:

    No matter what is going on
    Never give up
    Develop the heart
    Too much energy in your country
    Is spent developing the mind
    Instead of the heart
    Be compassionate
    Not just to your friends
    But to everyone
    Be compassionate
    Work for peace
    In your heart and in the world
    Work for peace
    And I say again
    Never give up
    No matter what is going on around you
    Never give up

    Let us stand with the Dalai Lama, who has spoken so passionately for peace and nonviolence, and pledge to never give up our struggle for a more decent and peaceful world, a world we can be proud to pass on to the next generation.

    I would like to ask each of you to take three steps today to build a peaceful world and make the Earth Charter the reality we live by.

    First, say NO to nuclear weapons – all nuclear weapons – no matter who possesses them. You can go to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s web site at www.wagingpeace.org and sign our Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity and All Life. While you are at the web site, you can sign up to receive our Sunflower e-newsletter that will keep you informed monthly about the latest developments in working for a nuclear weapons-free world.

    Second, say NO to war. Write to the President and to your Congressional representatives today, and tell them that war against Iraq is an unacceptable solution and that they must find peaceful means through the United Nations and international law to end our impasse with Iraq so that innocent Iraqis and Americans will not be killed and more terrorists will not be created. Send more letters to your newspapers and talk about this with your friends. You can find a sample letter and contact information at the Waging Peace web site.

    Third, say YES to Peace and Choose Hope. Put aside complacency and despair and choose Hope as the basis for all of your actions from this day forward. Not frivolous hope, but hope that is rooted in courage, compassion and commitment. Stand up for peace, for human dignity and for future generations in all you say and do.

    The Earth Charter states, “As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning.” Let us begin.

    With hope as our foundation, with the Earth Charter as our guide, with each other for support, I am confident that together we will change the world.
    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age.

  • Iraq and the War on Terrorism

    Delivered to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco

    Introduction

    Like all Americans I have been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of intense, focused and enabled hatred that brought about September 11th, and which at this moment must be presumed to be gathering force for yet another attack. I’m speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.

    First Thing First: War On Terrorism

    To begin with, I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another.

    We are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion.

    I don’t think that we should allow anything to diminish our focus on avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists who we know to be responsible for it. The fact that we don’t know where they are should not cause us to focus instead on some other enemy whose location may be easier to identify.

    Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that the most urgent requirement of the moment — right now — is not to redouble our efforts against Al Qaeda, not to stabilize the nation of Afghanistan after driving his host government from power, but instead to shift our focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein. And he is proclaiming a new, uniquely American right to pre-emptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents a potential future threat.

    Moreover, he is demanding in this high political season that Congress speedily affirm that he has the necessary authority to proceed immediately against Iraq and for that matter any other nation in the region, regardless of subsequent developments or circumstances. The timing of this sudden burst of urgency to take up this cause as America’s new top priority, displacing the war against Osama Bin Laden, was explained by the White House Chief of Staff in his now well known statement that “from an advertising point of view, you don’t launch a new product line until after labor day.” Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, that action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than outside it. In fact, though a new UN resolution may be helpful in building international consensus, the existing resolutions from 1991 are sufficient from a legal standpoint.

    We also need to look at the relationship between our national goal of regime change in Iraq and our goal of victory in the war against terror. In the case of Iraq, it would be more difficult for the United States to succeed alone, but still possible. By contrast, the war against terror manifestly requires broad and continuous international cooperation. Our ability to secure this kind of cooperation can be severely damaged by unilateral action against Iraq. If the Administration has reason to believe otherwise, it ought to share those reasons with the Congress — since it is asking Congress to endorse action that might well impair a more urgent task: continuing to disrupt and destroy the international terror network.

    I was one of the few Democrats in the U.S. Senate who supported the war resolution in 1991. And I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield, even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds of the North and the Shiites of the South — groups we had encouraged to rise up against Saddam. It is worth noting, however, that the conditions in 1991 when that resolution was debated in Congress were very different from the conditions this year as Congress prepares to debate a new resolution. Then, Saddam had sent his armies across an international border to invade Kuwait and annex its territory. This year, 11 years later, there is no such invasion; instead we are prepared to cross an international border to change the government of Iraq. However justified our proposed action may be, this change in role nevertheless has consequences for world opinion and can affect the war against terrorism if we proceed unilaterally.

    Secondly, in 1991, the first President Bush patiently and skillfully built a broad international coalition. His task was easier than that confronted his son, in part because of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. Nevertheless, every Arab nation except Jordan supported our military efforts and some of them supplied troops. Our allies in Europe and Asia supported the coalition without exception. Yet this year, by contrast, many of our allies in Europe and Asia are thus far opposed to what President Bush is doing and the few who support us condition their support on the passage of a new U.N. resolution.

    Third, in 1991, a strong United Nations resolution was in place before the Congressional debate ever began; this year although we have residual authority based on resolutions dating back to the first war in Iraq, we have nevertheless begun to seek a new United Nations resolution and have thus far failed to secure one.

    Fourth, the coalition assembled in 1991 paid all of the significant costs of the war, while this time, the American taxpayers will be asked to shoulder hundreds of billions of dollars in costs on our own.

    Fifth, President George H. W. Bush purposely waited until after the mid-term elections of 1990 to push for a vote at the beginning of the new Congress in January of 1991. President George W. Bush, by contrast, is pushing for a vote in this Congress immediately before the election. Rather than making efforts to dispel concern at home an abroad about the role of politics in the timing of his policy, the President is publicly taunting Democrats with the political consequences of a “no” vote — even as the Republican National Committee runs pre-packaged advertising based on the same theme — in keeping with the political strategy clearly described in a White House aide’s misplaced computer disk, which advised Republican operatives that their principal game plan for success in the election a few weeks away was to “focus on the war.” Vice President Cheney, meanwhile indignantly described suggestions of political motivation “reprehensible.” The following week he took his discussion of war strategy to the Rush Limbaugh show.

    The foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of what may lie before it. Such consideration is all the more important because of the Administration’s failure thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run — even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest that this will be an easy conquest. Neither has the Administration said much to clarify its idea of what is to follow regime change or of the degree of engagement it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.

    By shifting from his early focus after September 11th on war against terrorism to war against Iraq, the President has manifestly disposed of the sympathy, good will and solidarity compiled by America and transformed it into a sense of deep misgiving and even hostility. In just one year, the President has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of September 11th and converted it into anger and apprehension aimed much more at the United States than at the terrorist network — much as we manage to squander in one year’s time the largest budget surpluses in history and convert them into massive fiscal deficits. He has compounded this by asserting a new doctrine — of preemption.

    The doctrine of preemption is based on the idea that in the era of proliferating WMD, and against the background of a sophisticated terrorist threat, the United States cannot wait for proof of a fully established mortal threat, but should rather act at any point to cut that short.

    The problem with preemption is that in the first instance it is not needed in order to give the United States the means to act in its own defense against terrorism in general or Iraq in particular. But that is a relatively minor issue compared to the longer-term consequences that can be foreseen for this doctrine. To begin with, the doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means that if Iraq if the first point of application, it is not necessarily the last. In fact, the very logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements against a succession of sovereign states: Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, etc., wherever the combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction together with an ongoing role as host to or participant in terrorist operations. It means also that if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the Administration it is simultaneously creating the precedent for preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president so decides.

    The Bush Administration may now be realizing that national and international cohesion are strategic assets. But it is a lesson long delayed and clearly not uniformly and consistently accepted by senior members of the cabinet. From the outset, the Administration has operated in a manner calculated to please the portion of its base that occupies the far right, at the expense of solidarity among Americans and between America and her allies.

    On the domestic front, the Administration, having delayed almost —months before conceding the need to create an institution outside the White House to manage homeland defense, has been willing to see progress on the new department held up, for the sake of an effort to coerce the Congress into stripping civil service protections from tens of thousands of federal employees.

    Far more damaging, however, is the Administration’s attack on fundamental constitutional rights. The idea that an American citizen can be imprisoned without recourse to judicial process or remedies, and that this can be done on the say-so of the President or those acting in his name, is beyond the pale.

    Regarding other countries, the Administration’s disdain for the views of others is well documented and need not be reviewed here. It is more important to note the consequences of an emerging national strategy that not only celebrates American strengths, but appears to be glorifying the notion of dominance. If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion; if what we represent to the world is empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion.

    At this fateful juncture in our history it is vital that we see clearly who are our enemies, and that we deal with them. It is also important, however, that in the process we preserve not only ourselves as individuals, but our nature as a people dedicated to the rule of law ..

    Dangers Of Abandoning Iraq

    Moreover, if we quickly succeed in a war against the weakened and depleted fourth rate military of Iraq and then quickly abandon that nation as President Bush has abandoned Afghanistan after quickly defeating a fifth rate military there, the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam. We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

    We have no evidence, however, that he has shared any of those weapons with terrorist group. However, if Iraq came to resemble Afghanistan — with no central authority but instead local and regional warlords with porous borders and infiltrating members of Al Qaeda than these widely dispersed supplies of weapons of mass destruction might well come into the hands of terrorist groups.

    If we end the war in Iraq, the way we ended the war in Afghanistan, we could easily be worse off than we are today. When Secretary Rumsfield was asked recently about what our responsibility for restabilizing Iraq would be in an aftermath of an invasion, he said, “that’s for the Iraqis to come together and decide.”

    During one of the campaign debates in 2000 when then Governor Bush was asked if America should engage in any sort of “nation building” in the aftermath of a war in which we have involved our troops, he stated gave the purist expression of what is now a Bush doctrine: “I don’t think so. I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I’m missing something here. We’re going to have a kind of nation building corps in America? Absolutely not.”

    The events of the last 85 years provide ample evidence that our approach to winning the peace that follows war is almost as important as winning the war itself. The absence of enlightened nation building after World War I led directly to the conditions which made Germany vulnerable to fascism and the rise to Adolph Hitler and made all of Europe vulnerable to his evil designs. By contrast the enlightened vision embodied in the Marshall plan, NATO, and the other nation building efforts in the aftermath of World War II led directly to the conditions that fostered prosperity and peace for most the years since this city gave birth to the United Nations.

    Two decades ago, when the Soviet Union claimed the right to launch a pre-emptive war in Afghanistan, we properly encouraged and then supported the resistance movement which, a decade later, succeeded in defeating the Soviet Army’s efforts. Unfortunately, when the Russians left, we abandoned the Afghans and the lack of any coherent nation building program led directly to the conditions which fostered Al Qaeda terrorist bases and Osama Bin Laden’s plotting against the World Trade Center. Incredibly, after defeating the Taliban rather easily, and despite pledges from President Bush that we would never again abandon Afghanistan we have done precisely that. And now the Taliban and Al Qaeda are quickly moving back to take up residence there again. A mere two years after we abandoned Afghanistan the first time, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Following a brilliant military campaign, the U.S. abandoned the effort to destroy Saddam’s military prematurely and allowed him to remain in power.

    What is a potentially even more serious consequence of this push to begin a new war as quickly as possible is the damage it can do not just to America’s prospects to winning the war against terrorism but to America’s prospects for continuing the historic leadership we began providing to the world 57 years ago, right here in this city by the bay.

    What Congress Should Do

    I believe, therefore, that the resolution that the President has asked Congress to pass is much too broad in the authorities it grants, and needs to be narrowed. The President should be authorized to take action to deal with Saddam Hussein as being in material breach of the terms of the truce and therefore a continuing threat to the security of the region. To this should be added that his continued pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is potentially a threat to the vital interests of the United States. But Congress should also urge the President to make every effort to obtain a fresh demand from the Security Council for prompt, unconditional compliance by Iraq within a definite period of time. If the Council will not provide such language, then other choices remain open, but in any event the President should be urged to take the time to assemble the broadest possible international support for his course of action. Anticipating that the President will still move toward unilateral action, the Congress should establish now what the administration’s thinking is regarding the aftermath of a US attack for the purpose of regime change.

    Specifically, Congress should establish why the president believes that unilateral action will not severely damage the fight against terrorist networks, and that preparations are in place to deal with the effects of chemical and biological attacks against our allies, our forces in the field, and even the home-front. The resolution should also require commitments from the President that action in Iraq will not be permitted to distract from continuing and improving work to reconstruct Afghanistan, an that the United States will commit to stay the course for the reconstruction of Iraq.

    The Congressional resolution should make explicitly clear that authorities for taking these actions are to be presented as derivatives from existing Security Council resolutions and from international law: not requiring any formal new doctrine of pre-emption, which remains to be discussed subsequently in view of its gravity.

    Pre-Emption Doctrine

    Last week President Bush added a troubling new element to this debate by proposing a broad new strategic doctrine that goes far beyond issues related to Iraq and would effect the basic relationship between the United States and the rest of the world community. Article 51 of the United Nations charter recognizes the right of any nation to defend itself, including the right in some circumstances to take pre-emptive actions in order to deal with imminent threats. President Bush now asserts that we will take pre-emptive action even if we take the threat we perceive is not imminent. If other nations assert the same right then the rule of law will quickly be replaced by the reign of fear — any nation that perceives circumstances that could eventually lead to an imminent threat would be justified under this approach in taking military action against another nation. An unspoken part of this new doctrine appears to be that we claim this right for ourselves — and only for ourselves. It is, in that sense, part of a broader strategy to replace ideas like deterrence and containment with what some in the administration “dominance.”

    This is because President Bush is presenting us with a proposition that contains within itself one of the most fateful decisions in our history: a decision to abandon what we have thought was America’s mission in the world — a world in which nations are guided by a common ethic codified in the form of international law — if we want to survive.

    America’s Mission In The World

    We have faced such a choice once before, at the end of the second World War. At that moment, America’s power in comparison to the rest of the world was if anything greater than it is now, and the temptation was clearly to use that power to assure ourselves that there would be no competitor and no threat to our security for the foreseeable future. The choice we made, however, was to become a co-founder of what we now think of as the post-war era, based on the concepts of collective security and defense, manifested first of all in the United Nations. Through all the dangerous years that followed, when we understood that the defense of freedom required the readiness to put the existence of the nation itself into the balance, we never abandoned our belief that what we were struggling to achieve was not bounded by our own physical security, but extended to the unmet hopes of humankind. The issue before us is whether we now face circumstances so dire and so novel that we must choose one objective over the other.

    So it is reasonable to conclude that we face a problem that is severe, chronic, and likely to become worse over time.

    But is a general doctrine of pre-emption necessary in order to deal with this problem? With respect to weapons of mass destruction, the answer is clearly not. The Clinton Administration launched a massive series of air strikes against Iraq for the state purpose of setting back his capacity to pursue weapons of mass destruction. There was no perceived need for new doctrine or new authorities to do so. The limiting factor was the state of our knowledge concerning the whereabouts of some assets, and a concern for limiting consequences to the civilian populace, which in some instances might well have suffered greatly.

    Does Saddam Hussein present an imminent threat, and if he did would the United States be free to act without international permission? If he presents an imminent threat we would be free to act under generally accepted understandings of article 51 of the UN Charter which reserves for member states the right to act in self-defense.

    If Saddam Hussein does not present an imminent threat, then is it justifiable for the Administration to be seeking by every means to precipitate a confrontation, to find a cause for war, and to attack? There is a case to be made that further delay only works to Saddam Hussein’s advantage, and that the clock should be seen to have been running on the issue of compliance for a decade: therefore not needing to be reset again to the starting point. But to the extent that we have any concern for international support, whether for its political or material value, hurrying the process will be costly. Even those who now agree that Saddam Hussein must go, may divide deeply over the wisdom of presenting the United States as impatient for war.

    At the same time, the concept of pre-emption is accessible to other countries. There are plenty of potential imitators: India/Pakistan; China/Taiwan; not to forget Israel/Iraq or Israel/Iran. Russia has already cited it in anticipation of a possible military push into Georgia, on grounds that this state has not done enough to block the operations of Chechen rebels. What this doctrine does is to destroy the goal of a world in which states consider themselves subject to law, particularly in the matter of standards for the use of violence against each other. That concept would be displaced by the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States.

    I believe that we can effectively defend ourselves abroad and at home without dimming our principles. Indeed, I believe that our success in defending ourselves depends precisely on not giving up what we stand for.

  • A Time For Vision

    Published in the Santa Barbara News-Press

    Terrorism did not begin on September the 11th 2001. However, for Americans it is a date to remember our fallen heroes and the innocent victims of a vicious and senseless act. We must also remember the event was perpetrated by cowards, criminals, and extremely zealous fundamentalists, who, in the name of a great religion performed a perfidious and barbaric act that decries acceptance at any level within the human community. But we must also remember that no one can deprive us of our freedoms lest we agree to give them up.

    We must reinvigorate the patriotism that has been exhibited by our citizens and the veterans among them who have provided in large part the small degree of stability that exists in an agitated world. We must also recall the fundamental tenets upon which our country was founded and the constant vigilance that is required to retain the liberties we cherish.

    As we readjust our national ethic in light of all the negative current events, we must resolve not to relinquish our basic freedoms to the acts of a craven minority that represents the worst aspirations of humanity. Nor should we forget that we are not well served by governmental dictums that tend to usurp the democratic characteristics of our open society to provide the appearance of security for political reasons.

    Terrorism is an ill-defined term. It represents the unknowns that comprise the fears and apprehensions that may take any form we allow our minds to dwell on. It is a word that has no rational boundaries and has no single target for engagement. Terrorist acts are designed to create chaos. They are designed to create fear, distrust, uncertainty and disruption in normal human activity. The ultimate targets of terrorist acts are human minds.

    The word “WAR” is entirely inappropriate to be used in context with the pursuit of terrorists and those who support them. Since these acts are acts of criminals, the action taken against them should be implemented in terms of international criminal law. Enforcement actions should be applied by established international law-enforcement agencies.

    To describe the action taken against terrorism as a war is unacceptable. War, as odious as it is, is bounded by recognized conventions of engagement, and is generally confined to limited geographical locations by combatants who have formally declared their hostile intent toward each other. Nationally sanctioned Armed Forces act as representatives for the political entities engaging in war and the participants are identifiable. Wars have recognizable beginnings and ends and, as stupid as it sounds, rules of acceptable conduct.

    Just as terrorism did not begin with the September attacks, it will not end as long as criminal elements exists in the guise of political or religious causes. Terrorism recognizes no conventions of humanity nor are they confined to any given geographical location. There is no way a conventional war can engage and end the acts of clandestine terrorism.

    When we empower terrorist acts by declaring them acts of war we elevate the acts to a level of acceptability that is consistent with our acceptance of the use of overt war in settling political disputes. When we do this we lose our sense of proportionality and this leads to wrong thinking. Then, a greater hazard exists in the concomitant extension of military war powers to any government when the more appropriate action would be to join into an international coalition of law-enforcement agencies dedicated to addressing the unique problems associated with terrorism.

    Anyone who believes that their personal security against terrorism is enhanced by the actions of a government exercising war powers is very badly mistaken. Personal security, in fact, is reduced in the so-called interests of national security. If personal freedoms of travel, of speech, and access are impinged in the name of providing security against terrorism, then the terrorists are achieving their purposes.

    What is needed at this time in history is a vision of how the variety of political and religious interests on the international scene can be coordinated to formulate a new approach for the problems generated by the radical, criminal international terrorist organizations. Of how the understanding of these acts, in context with the moral base of all humanity, will render them so universally unacceptable that they will no longer have the political impact to provoke overreaction by national leaders lacking vision to counter the terrorist phenomena.

    Religious philosophies abhor the acts used by terrorists in their names because they advocate, rather than violence, a broad vision for finding solutions to the stressful interactions among the members of the world community. This is stated succinctly in Proverbs found in the Old Testament: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

    In remembering the events of September 11th we must develop a vision for the future that will not spawn terrorism of any kind – foreign or domestic.

  • Opposing the President’s Call for ‘Relentless War’

    Opposing the President’s Call for ‘Relentless War’

    In an article reflecting on the anniversary of September 11, President Bush wrote, in an instant, America was transformed from a nation at peace to a country at war. We were called to defend liberty against tyranny and terror. And we have answered that call with the might of our military and the spirit of a nation inspired by acts of heroism.

    I am in complete accord on two issues. Yes, there was a horrendous attack on two major structures that symbolize our country s economic and military power, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, costing thousands of innocent lives. And yes, there was genuine heroism shown by those who resisted the terrorist attacks and by the emergency workers who sacrificed selflessly for the victims of September 11.

    But was America, as Bush claims, instantly transformed from a nation at peace to a country at war? If it was transformed in this way, it is because this is the direction in which Bush and his advisors transformed it. Becoming a country at war meant to the Bush administration an opportunity to expand US military forces while constricting civil liberties for ordinary Americans. Starting with his candidacy, Bush has pressed for increasing funding for the military. The September 11 attacks, along with a frightened and compliant Congress and American public, provided the opportunity to do so.

    We responded to September 11 with the might of our military, which pummeled Afghanistan and attacked al Qaeda training camps, leading to a regime change in Afghanistan. But all of this military might has failed to apprehend Osama bin Laden, the individual purported to be responsible for the attacks. Has the use of this military might against Afghanistan truly made us any more secure?

    There are few signs that Americans are more secure now than they were before the terrorist attacks. Our airports and other potential targets remain penetratable by terrorists, and virtually nothing has been done to address the root causes of terrorism. Our policies on the Middle East have become less even-handed, and we no longer seem to have sufficient respect in the region to play the role of honest broker in a peace process. Our dependence on foreign oil has not diminished. We have been an obstacle to upholding and strengthening international law in virtually all areas.

    Bush and his military team have not spent much time addressing the reasons that the terrorists chose to attack symbols of American economic and military power. They have simply used the blunt instrument of military force to strike out at a regime viewed as dangerous. The United States under the Bush administration appears more like a helpless flailing giant than a country basing its responses on reason, law and morality. The Bush administration seems oblivious to the decent respect for the opinions of Mankind referred to by the founders of our nation in the Declaration of Independence.

    Our attacks against Afghanistan have resulted in the deaths and injuries of thousands of innocent Afghanis due to our high-altitude bombing. Our response to September 11 has probably killed more innocent Afghanis than the number of innocent persons who died in the terrorist attacks. But our President tells us we are a country at war, and dismisses the deaths of the innocent people we kill as collateral damage.

    This will be a long war, Mr. Bush tells the American people, and unprecedented challenges await us. It will be a long war because we are failing to take necessary steps to achieve peace. It will be a long war because we are led by an administration that has no vision of peace or of a better world for others. It has no vision and few resources for alleviating poverty, or for building schools instead of tanks. It has no vision of preserving the environment and natural resources for future generations because it is intently focused on goals that merely serve corporate interests. It has no vision of halting arms sales, an area where the US remains indisputably number one in the world. Nor does it have a vision of bringing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction under control. We are an empire and empires require double standards. Thus, this will be a long war.

    The concepts of war and defense have often been confused in the minds of Americans, and appear particularly confused in the minds of Bush and his advisors. Through most of our nation s history, we had a War Department, but in 1947 the name of this department was changed to the Department of Defense, one suspects largely for purposes of public relations. Commenting on this change, novelist Joseph Heller astutely observed that since switching the name to Department of Defense, we have never again been in danger of war, only of defense.

    Now we are in danger of perpetual war. The United States under the Bush administration is leading the world in exactly the wrong direction, away from international law and toward increasing reliance on military force. Although no connection has been found between Iraq and the terrorist acts of September 11, Bush and Cheney are eager to wage war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Hussein may have weapons of mass destruction. But other countries, including dictatorships, actually have weapons of mass destruction. Possession of weapons of mass destruction has never been the litmus test for launching a pre-emptive and aggressive war. If we considered the elimination of nuclear weapons truly important, perhaps we would model the behavior we seek for others.

    It is highly unlikely that Saddam Hussein would attempt to inflict injury on citizens of the United States even if he had weapons of mass destruction unless, of course, he was attacked by the United States. Such an attack would put American soldiers in harm s way of Hussein s arsenal, and give Hussein the right under international law to act in self-defense. This right would still not include using weapons of mass destruction, although he might still choose to use them illegally when confronted by overwhelming US force.

    Bush has called for our government to wage an effective and relentless war against terrorists. Perhaps we should think instead of waging peace against the terrorists, acting with such justice and decency in the world that we would again be viewed as a positive model.

    How does a country wage peace? There are some seeds of an answer in Bush’s advice to the American people: Overcome evil with acts of goodness. Love a neighbor. Reach out to somebody in need. Feed someone who is hungry, teach a child to read&. These were Bush s suggestions for what Americans can do to help in the war on terror. But imagine if these suggestions were followed by our country in our policies toward the rest of the world. What if America sought to overcome evil with acts of goodness, rather than military might? What if America reached out to people everywhere who were in need of food, shelter, health care and education?

    Americans must choose the direction they wish to take. If left to make the choice itself, the Bush administration will lead the United States into a potentially devastating war against Iraq, which will undoubtedly increase the already simmering hatred toward the United States in most of the poorer areas of the world. The only way that Mr. Bush can be derailed from the perpetual war he seeks to wage is if the American people make their voices heard so clearly and persistently that Congress will have no alternative but to stand up to the President and say No! If the American people choose to docilely follow Mr. Bush into war against Iraq, we should not be surprised when the next front of the war returns to America in the form of increased terrorism.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.