Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: war

  • Earth Day In The Shadow Of War: Militarism And Environmental Destruction Go Hand In Hand

    With Kyoto in shambles and environmental laws under assault, Earth Day 2003 hardly possesses the feel-good air that hovered over the celebrations of the 1990s. More than ever, honoring the natural world impels us to resist those in power. With festivities taking place in the shadow of war, this Earth Day must also be a call for peace.

    The environment has long been a silent casualty of war, suffering before, during, and after actual combat takes place. And, from assaults on ecosystems in the Persian Gulf to regulatory exemptions for U.S. military activities here at home, the current war provides fresh lessons about how militarism goes hand in hand with ecological destruction.

    Historically, the environmental impacts of military actions have drawn little attention. Self-proclaimed pragmatists like to shrug off the complaints of tree huggers as irrelevant next to grave matters of state. But while their reasoning may carry some weight in a case of obvious genocide, it is dishonest not to weigh often crushing environmental damage in the same balance with international interests and the human toll of war.

    Even as the shooting in Baghdad dies down, past and future wars continue to claim victims on the environmental front worldwide. For example, the military industry’s development and testing of weaponry produces an endless stream of hazardous waste. Such activity has contaminated over 11,000 “hot spots” on 1,855 military facilities in the United States, according to the Defense Department’s own documents.

    New data on the poisonous herbicides used to kill off Vietnam’s jungles and crops paint a grim portrait of how war devastates ecosystems and poses persistent threats to human health. Just this month, a story broke indicating that Agent Orange was applied far more recklessly than originally estimated — meaning citizens and soldiers alike suffered far graver exposures to dioxin.

    Even after active conflicts end, military waste wages a lingering cold war on the natural world. A 1993 State Department report identifies landmines and other unexploded ordnance as “the most toxic and widespread pollution facing mankind.”

    Operation Desert Storm perpetuated this sad history. The Gulf War of 1991 resulted in some 65 million barrels of spilled oil, which killed tens of thousands of marine birds in the Persian Gulf and seeped through the desert into sensitive water sources. Meanwhile, in Iraq’s cities, bombing devastated sewage and water treatment facilities.

    Most significantly, the 600 oil fires set by the Iraqi army burned for up to nine months, releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. This pollution caused dark, greasy rains to fall as far as 1,500 miles away.

    “The first Gulf War was the biggest environmental disaster in recent history,” former Earth Island Journal editor Gar Smith recently told The Washington Post.

    Lacking the massive oil fires and extreme infrastructural damage that marked the first Gulf War, the current clash may not prove as environmentally disastrous as some feared. Nevertheless, with controversial depleted-uranium weaponry in use and with ecosystems still reeling from the last conflict, revelations of environmental damage may emerge, as they have with past wars, for years to come.

    Two years ago the World Health Organization began exploring whether the depleted uranium from munitions used in Desert Storm were causing spikes in cancer, kidney diseases and other congenital disorders among Iraqis. The Pentagon says the weapons are safe — but just this month the Royal Society issued a scathing indictment of these claims and called for the United States and Britain to remove hundreds of tons of the substance to protect Iraqi citizens. If such suspicions prove correct, these civilians must be considered casualties of war and counted along with those who died in air strikes. This would mean, of course, that the true body count from the current war will take years to assess.

    Even relatively minor environmental disruptions in Iraq can have wide-ranging impacts, especially on biodiversity. The Persian Gulf harbors more than half of the marine turtle species in the world, all of which are listed as “endangered” or “threatened.” Sixty species of waterfowl and nine different birds of prey spend their winters in Iraq’s delicate wetlands. “From a biodiversity point of view,” the noted ornithologist Phil Hockey told Grist Magazine, “this is the worst possible time of the year to have a war there.”

    The U.S. occupation of Iraq could itself invite despoliation. Global oil companies are eager to develop virgin oil fields in Iraq, aiming to double the country’s production to around six million barrels a day by 2010. Conservation and renewable energy are unlikely to rank high in the agenda as they undertake this massive new extraction. And progressives, while they push for Iraqi self-determination and support the country’s control of its own profitable resources, should feel ambivalent about Iraq’s stable economy coming at the cost of lowered oil prices and continued U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.

    Putting aside its impacts abroad, the war in Iraq may deal a cruel blow to environmental protections in the United States. Never one to miss a moment of political opportunism, the Bush administration now argues that requiring the Department of Defense to comply with environmental laws will hurt the troops’ “training readiness.” The White House has therefore asked Congress to exempt the armed forces from a wide swath of regulations — a goal generals have pursued for years.

    Given the ease with which the Marines rolled across the Iraqi desert, it’s hard to see how our environmental laws have hampered the military’s ability to face current threats. Nevertheless, the legislation puts the screws into the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Superfund, to name a few. In fact, it’s “a rollback of almost every major environmental law on the books,” says Michael Jasney, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

    Of course, many environmentalists already opposed the president’s overseas adventurism. To them, the inevitable human costs seemed as unjustifiable as the conflict’s toll on the natural world. Yet, in the end, bringing an ecological perspective to the military debate may prove necessary. Only by challenging America’s enormous appetite for oil, along with its imperial ambitions, can we preempt a war — both human and ecological — without end.
    * Mark Engler is a writer based in New York City. Research assistance for this article provided by Katie Griffiths.

  • 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.”

  • Going to War? Ask Yourself Some Critical Questions About Bush Plan

    Originally Published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

    Before our nation commits itself to an invasion of Iraq, to war and its aftermath, I urge my fellow Americans to think ahead for a moment and soberly question some popular assumptions:

    Is this really the project that we want to rally the world around?

    Is this really the best way to prevent future terrorism?

    Do we really know where this path is going to take us?

    Is this really how we want to jump-start our ailing economy?

    Is this really how we want to fuel our SUVs?

    Is this really a fitting tribute to the victims of 9/11?

    Is this really what will make us feel better?

    Are these really the values we want to impart on our children?

    Is this really what we want to pledge allegiance to when we pledge allegiance to the flag?

  • 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.

  • Statment Opposing Military Action in Iraq

    Thank you, Rep. Kucinich for inviting me to speak today. I do not believe that our world, our children, the people of the Middle East or the citizens of Israel will be safer by going to war against Iraq. I believe that going to war against Iraq would be a mistake. The cost would be heavy in lives lost, dollars wasted and it would squander the goodwill of our allies.

    The serious question is when will the human race work towards peace, rather than war. As citizens of the most educated and financially well-off country in history, when will we decide to put our strength and our energy and our creativity behind peace rather than destruction.

    It is true that Saddam Hussein is a dictator – he is a menace and the world would be better off without him. But, the world will also be better off if the United States works within the scope of international institutions instead of launching an unprovoked first-strike against Iraq. America’s greatest asset is our moral authority, not our military power. Attacking a sovereign country unprovoked forfeits that authority completely.

    A war with Iraq will cost between $100-250 billion. Just think what we could do with that amount of money if we decided to invest in humanity rather than military hardware.

    With $150 billion we could help developing countries in Africa by forgiving half of the continent’s debt, $112 billion would repair or rebuild all the public schools in the United States, and for only $12 million we could demine and replant the breadbasket of Afghanistan to help that nation recover from more than 20 years of continuous war.

    We owe it to our children to exercise the full range of diplomatic options in Iraq, so we can prevent a war that will cost thousands of lives, and give a boost to our real enemies – the terrorists who planned September 11.

    War represents a failure of national policy. It is a last resort. America’s strength is our commitment to moral action and a government based on the rule of law. That law must never be silent, and our moral sensibilities must never be intimidated by fear.
    Dated: September 19, 2002 10:00 AM Cannon Terrace

  • Local teacher heading to Iraq: Pacifist will study how war threats, embargoes affect schools

    Published in the Ventura County Star

    Fear is violence.

    It may not always bring physical wounds but inflicts harm just the same by paralyzing and isolating people, said Leah Wells, a Santa Paula teacher whose impending peace mission to Iraq makes her something of an expert in the matter.

    The 26-year-old pacifist said that if she allowed her journey to be detoured by the possibility of U.S. bombing, war and political coups — fears real enough that trip organizers are talking to the about half-dozen participants about the risks — she’d be on the wrong side of the battle.

    “Fear is the worst form of violence. It makes us step back from who we really are,” she said. “Life is inherently dangerous. Cave people knew that. You do what you do. You trust in the goodness of people.”

    On Thursday, Wells will take her trust and convictions on a journey aimed at studying how Iraq’s schools have been affected by war threats and 12 years of economic embargoes.

    She’ll go to Chicago, then to Jordan and finally, in a 15-hour drive, to Baghdad for about eight days in Iraq. The roundabout route is dictated by a travel sanction that means Wells and others in her group could face U.S. penalties including prison and fines — a possibility she alludes to briefly before moving on to another topic.

    The brevity may be linked to what she calls baby steps. She copes with her fears by looking at her trip as a series of moments to be taken one at a time. She’ll get on the plane, then deal with the next obstacle.

    Ask what her parents think, and Wells said they’re proud but “very, very afraid for me.”

    Ask again why she’s going.

    “Because it’s the right thing to do … because I believe really strongly in nonviolence,” she said.

    Wells, who grew up in a southern Illinois farming community, studied neuro-linguistics at Georgetown University. She got her start as peace educator about four years ago when she co-taught at a maximum-security juvenile prison near Washington, D.C. Now she works for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, teaching Solutions to Violence classes at three Ventura County high schools.

    At a continuation school in Santa Paula, students quote Gandhi and talk about ways to solve conflict in the world, school and home. The principal says Wells’ efforts were the reason there were no fights on campus last year.

    Her class is unusual. The students together make up their rules and goals. When a boy reading aloud from a pacifist essay about the Gulf War asks when he should stop, she tells him to keep going as long as he wants. When she’s in Iraq, the students may take turns leading the class.

    Wells said she does not advocate her opinions, but instead pushes the students to make their own conclusions. Some of the students think U.S. strikes against Iraq are defensible.

    “If Iraq is helping out the terrorists, they should pay consequences,” said a boy in a “Save the Planet” T-shirt.

    Another student thinks any bombing should be carefully planned to avoid civilian casualties. He calls Wells crazy for going to Iraq. She gets that a lot.

    “I feel pretty sane,” she said. “I think the people talking about war are the crazy ones.”

    She is traveling as part of a humanitarian group, Voices in the Wilderness. She joined it on a trip to Iraq last year. She saw poverty and suffering everywhere: Children playing next to canals of raw sewage; a mother watching her child die in a cancer ward that was woefully underequipped; markets displaying withered fruit so pitiful her next trip to a Ventura grocery store brought tears.

    Wells has heard schools are hurting, too. She’s been told some families will send only one child to school because they can only afford one pencil and one notebook.

    “I just want to see for myself,” she said.

    Wells doesn’t think the media covers the plight of the Iraqi people, instead fixating on Saddam Hussein and politics. She wants to collect stories and help Americans understand the inhumane impact of sanctions and threats of war on the way everyday people live.

    It’s not only a few of her students who disagree with her. She gets long, passionate e-mails from people who question her patriotism and understanding of the destruction perpetrated by Saddam. She answers them all, sometimes getting involved in long, intricate dialogues.

    Wells doesn’t support Saddam or anything connected to him. She wants the people to choose their own leader through nonviolent revolution.

    Suggest she’s idealistic, and she interprets it as a compliment. Ask about the feasibility of global peace, and she paraphrases words used by Martin Luther King Jr.:

    “The arc of the universe is long,” she said, “but it bends toward justice.”

  • “Unlimited Damage”

    Originally Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta

    There are genuine fears that the anticipated US war on Iraq might lead to such an explosion of hostility to the US that somewhere down the line over the next few years or decades nuclear weapons might be used by terrorist groups or by the US itself. Such a prognosis no longer seems unreal. The world remains very much under the nuclear shadow. Barring the first few years after the end of the Cold War (when genuine steps towards actual nuclear disarmament and not just arms management were being made) in the post-Cold War period now unfolding, the dangers of nuclear war are even greater, albeit different, from what they were during that past. Then the justified fear was of a global holocaust. Now it is of a regional or ‘limited’ nuclear war or exchange.

    Supporters of nuclear weapons in India do not want to believe this. On the contrary, they want to use the example of that Cold War past, as the reassurance that we need not fear the use of nuclear weapons now. Deterrence assured peace then, so it will do so now! Actually, the world came close to nuclear use on a number of occasions during the Cold War especially in the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. Nuclear peace was not the result of deterrence but much more because of the existence of a nuclear taboo established by the very horror of what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki 57 years ago. Despite US governments contemplating the use of nuclear weapons during the Korean and Vietnam wars, as well as on other occasions, the White House was fully aware that even the American public would not condone such use except in circumstances where the homeland territory itself was threatened.

    The longer this taboo lasted – and credit here must go to the much derided peace movements and to the general public sentiment that viewed these instruments of war as uniquely evil – the more difficult it became to break the taboo. Now, it is a very different situation. There are four possible contexts in which this taboo might finally be broken. Moreover, was this to happen the world would not come to an end. There would most likely not be a nuclear winter and much of the advanced and prosperous world would escape the consequences of these regional or ‘limited’ holocausts were they, as most likely, to take place in the ‘third world’.

    As much as the Indian bomb lobby, in particular, might wish to deny it, the first scenario of such possible use involves South Asia and the India-Pakistan face-off. The US and the USSR were not territorially contiguous. They did not have a foundational dispute (like Kashmir) existing from their very inception as independent states. They never suffered from the growing ascendance of communal or religious extremist forces promoting the kind of hatreds and demonizations of the ‘other’ that are so prevalent in South Asia today. They never had direct conventional wars, or the near-wartime situations that belong to the history of India-Pakistan relations and which create the most favorable contexts for escalating hostilities to the nuclear level. Their respective military-technology systems were never as ramshackle as those in South Asia, that make the chances of an accidental triggering of nuclear exchanges so much greater here.

    There are three possible positions one can take regarding the prospects of a nuclear war in South Asia arising from an India-Pakistan conventional military conflict escalating into a nuclear exchange. The first view, widespread outside India and Pakistan among both pro nuclearists and anti-nuclearists, is that such an exchange sometime in the future between the two countries is almost inevitable. A second view is that the danger of this is so small it is negligible. This is certainly the position of most of those in India who supported India going nuclear. Interestingly, among Pakistani supporters of the bomb there is a greater degree of pessimism with a greater proportion, who even as they support Pakistan’s acquisition of the bomb, are fearful that there could well be a nuclear exchange between the two countries. The difference in perspectives between these two bomb lobbies is not difficult to understand. Pakistan’s tests in 1998 were a reaction to India’s tests. The Pakistan bomb has always been India-specific motivated by fear of India. India’s tests, however, were not motivated by fear of Pakistan (no matter what the occasional rhetoric) but was motivated by more grandiose visions of enhanced global and regional status and the desire to be taken more seriously as a major power. Prospects of growing regional insecurity or nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan have always been more casually dismissed on the India side. There is, of course, a third position that is far and away the most sober one – the possibility of a nuclear exchange is not negligible nor inevitable but in-between; that is to say, it is a real-case scenario, not just a worst-case one, and that its likelihood varies depending on how serious conjunctural tensions are between the countries

    The second context in which a ‘limited’ or regional nuclear conflict might break out is easy enough to visualize. India and Pakistan have ‘got away’ with having nuclear weapons. This inspires others. In a few more years, Iran could well do the same and this would certainly be followed by open declaration of nuclear status by Israel dramatically raising nuclear dangers in the Middle East, with nuclear-capable countries like Egypt aiming to follow suit. Does anyone, even among those worshipping at the altar of nuclear deterrence, think the Middle East would become safer were this to happen?

    In the third scenario, terrorists attack the US with a ‘suitcase’ nuclear bomb or a dirty bomb (explosive dispersion of radioactive materials but no nuclear chain reaction) or attack a nuclear reactor plant. Such is the mind-set of the US elite and much of its population after September 11, that the first would be virtually certain to lead to a serious nuclear retaliation somewhere by Washington, while even the second or third kind of terrorist attack might push it to break the taboo against use of tactical nuclear weapons.

    In the fourth scenario, the US deliberately initiates the use of tactical nuclear weapons. The US today is much more aggressively unilateralist in its behavior and nuclearly ambitious than ever before. Its nuclear policies and practical preparations (e.g. the Ballistic Missile Defense systems) aim at establishing a unilateral dominance over all other countries; at developing a range of tactical weapons, even mini- and micro-nukes; at extending their possible use (against selected countries deemed to have biological and chemical weapons); at completely blurring the distinction between such weapons and conventional ones. The latest Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) makes both part of the same military operational strategy to support general US foreign policy perspectives and ambitions.

    There are a great many powerful people in and around the US government who want to break the taboo against use of nuclear weapons since these would be ‘confined’ to places far away from the homeland and against forces that have no capability to retaliate against it. As for the threat of a possible nuclear terrorist attack against the US, the prior use of tactical nuclear weapons against some perceived enemy is, itself, seen as providing the most powerful deterrent example to prevent such an attack happening in the future.

    Short of again creating a disarmament momentum, it will be folly to think that over the next 57 years, nuclear weapons will not be used.