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From MoveOn.org |onelink|CHALLENGING THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY |The Shambhala Warrior| Just war - or a just war? |When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History | A Government Possesed by the Warrior Archetype-or is it Outlaw?| The State of the World|Bush's war threatens U.S. security Could this war be a wake up call? |Choose Peace| || Food for thought | A message from Martin Wood, photographer of sacred sites|
Many of us first heard about the Bush administration's plan to invade Iraq last August. However, a small group of political elites planned the takeover of Iraq years ago. With that goal achieved, now is the time to look at who these people are, how they created a war on Iraq, and most importantly their plans for the future.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a Washington-based neo-conservative think-tank founded in 1997 to "rally support for American global leadership." PNAC's agenda runs far deeper than regime change in Iraq. Its statement of principles begins with the assertion that "American foreign and defense policy is adrift" and calls for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."
While their tone is high-minded, their proposal is unilateral military intervention to protect against threats to America's status as the lone global superpower. The statement is signed by such influential figures as Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.
PNAC is not alone, nor did it arise from new wells of power. Most of the founding members of PNAC held posts in the Reagan or elder Bush administration and other neo-conservative think-tanks, publications, and advocacy groups.
The effect of PNAC's ideology is great on Bush -- the presidential candidate who promised a "humble," isolationist foreign policy. The events of September 11, 2001 provided a window of opportunity for furthering PNAC's agenda of American empire. Understanding that agenda can help us anticipate the Bush administration's next steps and organize accordingly.
If you only read one article in this bulletin, it should be this one.
This article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel superbly covers the
influence of PNAC in Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. As the author
writes, the goal is to transform the Middle East through a show of U.S.
military might and "the obvious place to start is with Iraq, which
was already in trouble with the United Nations, had little international
standing and was reviled even by some Arab nations."
http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/apr03/131523.asp
CHALLENGING THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
The Peace Education Fund and California Peace Action have launched a
national advertising campaign that features the infamous photo of Donald
Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. The ads ask the question: "Who
Are We Arming Now?" The ad is part of Peace Action's Campaign for
a New American Foreign Policy which is building political pressure for
an alternative to the bleak vision of the Project for the New American
Century.
http://www.moveon.org/r?437
from Joanna Macy's memoir Widening Circles
The Shambhala Warrior
(a Tibetan legend told to Joanna Macy by Choegyal Rinpoche)
"There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Barbarian
powers have arisen. Although they waste their wealth in preparations
to
annihilate each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable
devastation and technologies that lay waste the world. It is now, when
the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the
kingdom of Shambhala emerges.
"You cannot go there, for it is not a place. It exists in the hearts
and
minds of the Shambhala warriors. But you cannot recognize a Shambhala
warrior by sight, for there is no uniform or insignia, there are no
banners. And there are no barricades from which to threaten the enemy,
for the Shambhala warriors have no land of their own. Always they move
on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.”
by Jimmy Carter
Profound changes have been taking place in American foreign policy, reversing consistent bipartisan commitments that for more than two centuries have earned our nation greatness. These commitments have been predicated on basic religious principles, respect for international law, and alliances that resulted in wise decisions and mutual restraint. Our apparent determination to launch a war against Iraq, without international support, is a violation of these premises.
As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards. This is an almost universal conviction of religious leaders, with the most notable exception of a few spokesmen of the Southern Baptist Convention who are greatly influenced by their commitment to Israel based on eschatological, or final days, theology.
To read Jimmy Carter's entire essay as it appeared in The New York Times, go to [free registration required]:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/opinion/09CART.html?ex=1048661013&ei=1&en=4eb64793d6d3fb20
When
Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
Published on Sunday, March 16, 2003 by Com
monDreams.org
by Thom Hartmann
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.
Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
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An archetypal analysis of how the country came to stand at the brink of war.
By Carol S. Pearson herowithin.com
As I have reflected on this, I have come to think that although Bush used the Warrior/Hero story as the myth to make meaning of post-9/11 reality, his own behavior seems more Outlaw than Warrior. He seems to have a disdain for the law, acting as if he and, by extension, we are above it.
So what archetypal story can we use to make meaning of the world in which we live and take right action?
Food for thought
from Fraser Clark’s Parallel Youniversity
http://www.parallel-youniversity.com
We must speak with one voice against Saddam's failure to allow opposing voices, right?
We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them. Right?
We’re sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that "might does not make right," as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does.Right?
If the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honour-bound to do that, too, because democracy, as WE define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as THEY define it.Right?
Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend, right?
We’ll ignore the UN to make clear to Saddam that the UN can’t be ignored, right?.
Bush's war threatens U.S. security
by David Batstone
I'm meeting a growing number of executives and economists who oppose the war on Iraq because it's bad for business. As Yale economist Jeffrey Garten - who held policy positions in the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton administrations - wrote this week: "America's foreign policy and its economic policy are on a collision course."
War in Iraq will not come cheap for the U.S. economy - and neither will postwar occupation. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Bush administration is preparing spending requests totaling as much as $95 billion for a war with Iraq and its aftermath. Let me put that figure in perspective. The federal government spent less than $20 billion in 2002 on all elementary, middle, and high schools combined across the USA. The total NASA budget, to site another example, hovers around $15 billion annually. Add $70 billion to either one of these budgets and we might be able to send a team of astronauts to Mars, or just maybe buy my public school kids their own science book.
More alarming still, not a cent of what will be spent on Iraq can be found in the Bush administration's proposed federal budget. The American public already was being asked to swallow more than $300 billion in federal deficits so that the wealthy could pay less tax. And that doesn't count the $25 trillion of off-balance-sheet liabilities for Medicare and social security that will come due once baby boomers retire. So what's another $100 billion?
Most of us already are in sticker shock about the soaring costs of gasoline for our automobiles and heat for our homes. Imagine the impact if the oil fields of Iraq go up in flames during a massive U.S. invasion. Could the debt-ridden airline industry take that kind of hit? What about the trucking industry? The ripple effect of an invasion may be disastrous for the U.S. economy.
Could this war be a wake up call?
Chris Johnstone
For Deep Ecology News.
As America and Britain go to war with Iraq, I ask myself “What can I do about this? How can I respond?” In my work as a doctor and group therapist treating people with addiction problems, I find a useful parallel. When one of my clients has a bad relapse, I explore with them the idea that this can be responded to constructively, that it can become a prompt to a deepening of recovery. Each relapse is a reminder of how bad things have got (and can get), but it also offers an opportunity to revisit the decision about which way they want to go. I see the war as similar to a bad relapse. It reminds us just how addicted our society is to oil and how far it will go to protect its supply. The question it leaves us with is do we want to continue this way or do we want to change? I find in the war a painful wake up call to the need for a deeper level shift in culture.
In his book “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight”, Thom Hartmann writes “When enough people change the way they view things, then solutions become evident, often in ways we couldn’t even imagine before we looked with new eyes. We have destroyed much of the world because of our culture, we can save much of it by changing our culture.” As a culture we are dependent on using the stored energy (in the form of oil and coal) of sunlight millions of years old. In the massive binge of recent decades, we have used up about half of the world’s oil. Forecasts suggest that what remains will last 45 years at current rates of consumption, but perhaps only 30 years if our appetite for oil continues to rise (world energy use quadrupled between 1940 and 1980, and on current trends will have done so again by 2020). As the oil runs out, there will be increasing conflict over the supplies that remain. This war is only the first skirmish. We can continue the way we’re going, or we can respond to this as a wake up call.
We live at a pivotal moment in human history. We have a limited window
of time to develop ways of living that can continue after the oil runs
out. We can use the oil existing today to fund this transition to sustainability,
or we can continue the binge and leave anyone currently under 40 to suffer
the consequences. The choices we make will determine whether, like in
addiction, we continue the downward spiral, or whether we start moving
towards recovery. In their book Coming Back to Life, Joanna Macy and
Molly Brown write “When people of the future look back at this
historical moment, they will see, perhaps more clearly than we can now,
how revolutionary it is. They may well call it the time of the Great
Turning”. Whether this Great Turning actually happens or not depends
on us. What would it involve? Macy and Brown describe three aspects.
First there are the ‘holding actions’ of protest. This is
expressing our “NO!” and includes the range of ways we draw
attention to and oppose the destruction of our world. This is necessary
and may buy us a bit of extra time, but if it is all we do we can end
up with battle fatigue. The second strand is to create new social and
economic structures to support the shift towards sustainable ways of
living. Just how are we going to live when the oil runs out? At the moment
we’re hardly even talking about it. We need to be developing and
investing in these ways of living now. This is expressing our “YES!” to
positive, sustainable alternatives eg. simpler lifestyles, ethical investments,
renewable energy, locally grown organic produce, bicycles and public
transport. But none of this will really take hold unless there is a deeper
level shift in values, assumptions and ways of looking at things. This
is the third strand, and it too has parallels with what happens in addictions
recovery.
After a really bad relapse, my clients usually feel depressed. Sometimes
they are in despair. But there are ways that these uncomfortable feelings
can be useful. Emotional pain serves a function when it alerts us to
a problem and motivates us to respond. Following a crisis or disaster,
an addict may feel so awful that they think to themselves “I’ve
had enough of this, I’m going to change”. This can become
the turning point referred to as hitting bottom. One of my clients
recently described this to me. “I remember the day I started
getting serious about my recovery. It was when I woke up in intensive
care after a failed overdose.” She was so shocked to find herself
there that she broke through the denial that had previously claimed
her drinking wasn’t much of a problem. We may feel horrified
by what is currently happening in our world, but is it possible that
in the years to come we might look back and say “I remember the
time I started getting serious about The Great Turning. It was when
America and Britain invaded Iraq”?
Turning points are not automatic. They depend on how we respond to the situation we’re faced with. When I give blood test results to a client that show their liver is being destroyed by alcohol, they can react in a number of ways. If they don’t want to feel upset by such disturbing information, they can always (and some do) drink to cheer themselves up. However, blotting out the alarm like this feeds into the downward spiral of addiction. Another option is to feel so concerned that this becomes a rock bottom, a turning point towards recovery. We have similar choices about how we respond, both to this war and to all the other disturbing facts, like blood test results, about the state of the world. We can maintain the denial that pretends we haven’t got an oil-use problem. Or we can allow the alarm we feel to serve as a wake up call to our oil dependence syndrome.
What can we do about this? In both addictions recovery and societal recovery, feelings of overwhelm and powerlessness are common. Alcoholics Anonymous have a motto of “keep it simple, take a day at a time”. Focussing on achievable goals helps maintain determination. How would it be I wonder if each day we did one thing, no matter how small, for the recovery of our world? Might a Great Turning occur through us and the tiny steps we take? If we participate in the problem, we can participate in the solution. My tip for a simple action step is get hold of Thom Hartmann’s book “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight”. It contains an important message that shows this war in a different light.
Chris Johnstone is a doctor and group therapist working in an NHS addictions
treatment unit. He can be contacted at dreambeat@tantraweb.co.uk
Thom Hartmann has a web site at http://www.Thomhartmann.com
Joanna Macy has a web site at http://www.joannamacy.net/
THE STATE OF THE WORLD – THE NEAR & DISTANT
FUTURE
AND HOW WE CAN HELP
One of Palden Jenkin's occasional essays on the state of the world
5th February 2003
You're welcome to print or forward this material
Ever since early in 2002, I have felt that a war in Iraq isn't going
to
happen. Now, I might have to eat my beloved Hebridean hat over this!
We
shall see. More recently, I've seen a possibility of a war which goes
dreadfully wrong. Two indicators are the certainty that USA will win
easily (a mistake no sensible military commander makes, since it tempts
fate), and the recent space shuttle 'accident', reminding us that 'there's
many a slip twixt the cup and the lip' - no matter how technically
advanced or triumphalist you are. But in all my investigations, I have
not
seen an attack on Iraq as successful or highly likely. Hmmm. There has
been plenty of contrary opinion of course! The scale of conviction that
war will happen is quite daunting.
How can an Iraq war not happen, when the buildup for war seems so unstoppable? Well, the new cold war scenario unfolding since 9-11 represents a miscalculation - a mis-reading of current history, underlying trends and viability, and a diversion from the crucial tasks at hand. It's an old-fashioned male, hawkish mindset, a dragon fearing extinction and mindlessly thrashing its tail. It is powerfully insidious too, exercising a tremendous grip on the world population. Despite material errors, twisted logic and visible insanity in the evolving Iraq situation, there's a high degree of permission and commission being granted - largely by omission - by the world public, even though so many have profound reservations. Those underlying, intuitive public feelings are coming to the test. I believe this is historically an important juncture. It concerns two major issues: the obvious one is war, and the less obvious one is the attention given to events by the world public.
This is why the war might not happen. Public awareness and underlying feelings are very strong, even though still rumbling relatively quietly - and they draw on the accumulated subliminal experience of the 1990s wars. It would be operationally more workable for USA and UK to pull off an Iraq intervention if public feeling were behind it. Even in the military, confidence and a feeling of mission-correctness are weak - and if generals' and pilots' hearts aren't behind it, trouble looms. American operational invincibility must be judged after, not before, the event. As I have pointed out previously, USA stands at a very similar point to that of UK around 1910 - certain of its might and priority and heading for serious reduction. By 1920, UK's time was done - though, ominously, it took until the late 1940s and the 1960s to really catch up with it.
Let's look at our current time. The world is now entering the serious stuff of globalisation: how is the world to be organised and controlled? USA has one answer - superpower dominance. Yet, tentatively, the 'rest of the world' is slowly formulating another answer - something to do with 'the international community', in a more communitaire, egalitarian sense. This is the big question of at least the next ten years, and 2001-03 is phase one. By countering the international community-forming process, the Bush camp is unwittingly speeding it up: with or without USA, the world has a lot to get organised.
This community-forming process is not easy or simple: there are lots of old scores to be settled, and rampantly individualistic nations cooperate only up to a point, even though they all know more is needed. It's shaky territory. Meanwhile, USA presents safe knowns: join our club, obey the rules, and we'll leave each other's dirty sheets concealed. A strong lobby of interests in USA fears loss of dominance. Superpower dominance worked for the twentieth century and, though it is being reasserted, current history has another agenda. So there's a grating going on in the geopolitical tectonic plates, with risk for earthquakes.
There are governments, institutions, corporations, vested interests and background powers who tend to support the superpower dominance model because there is uncertainty in the ranks, and they are afraid of the consequences of not supporting USA. USA exploits this loophole: the alternative is as yet too tentative to stand up to USA's bluster and force. The emergent world community of nations, cultures, ethnicities and popular opinion has no consolidated voice at present, and there are many complex issues to clear up too. But every time USA pushes its case, this emergent world consensus is nudged to firm itself up. One of the unappointed elder bishops of this consensus, Nelson Mandela, recently pronounced "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America". Strong stuff. Something is brewing.
At this stage, no one knows the way forward into a world order that is basically humane, ecologically-friendly, just, equitable and safe. The next 20-50 years will work this out. No road-map offers global guidelines suitable for everybody. There are, however, plenty of possibilities which need more development-time: the new formula needs an evolutionary leap, a shift in the world context, yet to come. Strangely, some of the forerunners of this new social development paradigm happen to be countries relatively isolated from the international community - such as Iraq, Iran, Cuba and North Korea - plus countries that have undergone large-scale recent changes - such as Russia and South Africa - plus countries or regions that have been knocked out of the economic development game by disaster or politics - such as several African countries. In these places, irrespective of their governments, people have had to improvise to solve their problems, and in so doing they open up grass-roots social options outside the range available in the modern capitalist world. Future social options are being hot-housed in advance of the rest of the world, and these might in future be leading nations and regions, by dint of that experience.
The potential Iraq war is an attempt to impose a certain order not just on Iraq but on the world. This is an attempt to gain control before things go awry. Awry, that is, for the former twentieth century order, which has much to lose. There is a strange death-urge hidden within this control agenda too: being unsoundly based, an Iraq war risks creating major setbacks for American superpower credibility - just as lack of success can undermine its bewitching appearance of invincibility. An unconscious urge to fail hides behind the assertions of America's hawks. This self-destruct program risks pulling the rest of us down with it.
We must thank George Bush and Saddam Hussein for their efforts: their medieval feud pushes the world into confronting important issues, including armaments, arms trading and military aid, plus the modern war addiction suffered by politicians, generals, terrorists and all of us. After 1989, when the Wall came tumbling down, everyone wanted war to go away - but it won't unless peace and disarmament are strongly asserted. Disarmament is an historic trend born in the 1920s after 'the war to end all wars' (WW1), gaining momentum in the 1950s-60s with the rise of the peace movement. But world consensus must shift clearly and unequivocally to override the profits and interests driving the arms trade. The tricky bit is that disarmament means genuine conflict resolution and international justice, otherwise it cannot work. Thus disarmament must be consistently reasserted by mainstream global consensus over decades. This is a big one: it demands longterm commitment, something the fickle aspect of public opinion doesn't savour. It rests on clear, mainstream world consensus.
This consensus concerns other enormous matters too: environment, world justice, economics, corporate power and much more - in particular, global decision-making procedures and institutions. What is noteworthy is a significant rumbling in the guts of millions, possibly billions of people, as the collective unconscious readies itself for facing the full implications of all this. It's that 'something is seriously wrong' signal that comes up every now and then. It creates a deep disquiet, only some of which is expressed publicly - the rest feeds into a longterm cumulative reservoir of shifting values which surfaces during crises like Afghanistan and Iraq. As the global situation intensifies, the heat rises in this nightmarish fermentation.
Psychologically, it represents a clash between human instincts and conditioned conformity. Politically, it is resolving itself into a clash between people and 'big brother' - governments, corporations, armies and their supporters. It's not quite that stark, but that's how the collective unconscious, rightly or wrongly, resolves it. The collective unconscious doesn't speak with ifs and buts - it makes simple, clear statements without explanations. Until it formulates a statement it rumbles with unease, burping occasionally with indigestion. On the question of peace in Iraq, something is coming clear - and not just about Iraq.
We are being asked to go along with a war most of us don't support and, when the cruise missiles start up, we're supposed to close our eyes and accept a fait accompli. We'll switch on our TV sets and give plenty of business to the media, who are ready for the great show. Wonderful - it's business, and we all support that, don't we? But wait. In recent decades, public sensitivities have had some training - with the help of CNN and BBC (who are also at war!). Consider this: arguably, the emotional potency millions of people, particularly women, felt toward the Afghan situation in October 2001 played a significant, unacknowledged role in the rapid fall of the Taliban - there are few other satisfactory explanations. Rationalists would dispute this, but they are not the sole judges of this question. The mass collective psyche is an active player in geopolitics, with or without Security Council support.
We stand today at another such window. Public feeling is escalating. The prevailing charged emotions of today are split between opposition to the war or disquiet about it - but not support for war. Also, a two-pronged peace-attack is falling into place: one prong is made up of generalised semi-conscious mainstream public feelings, and the other is a funny prayer coalition of Muslims, Buddhists, new age pacifist meditators and (some) Christians. If Afghanistan is anything to go by, this grouping could become decisive. Whether this works or not is, of course, yet to be seen. But it has been done before. This tradition started, as far as I know, here in Glastonbury (where I live) in WW2, with the establishment of the nationwide Silent Minute (a daily national silent meditation) plus the 'occult war effort' (by a collection of occultists of the time), blessed by Churchill and catalysed by Wellesley Tudor Pole and Dion Fortune.
Deep issues are at work here, beyond all the oil, military and power stuff. It's touch-and-go. Time gets squeezed and stretched, potentised by an acute polarisation in the collective unconscious - a friction between what's sensed to be right and what seems to be happening. There is a sense of making history too. The historic issue concerns world disarmament. Optimistically, it could take ten years to remove all world WMDs, and perhaps up to thirty years to deconstruct the conventional and small-arms military race. Social-political peace-processes, major national changes and rebels, criminals and terrorists are involved, so it could take this long. But that's fast in terms of history. Whatever is the case, the nervy brinkmanship of our day heats up the question of disarmament. If this possible Iraq war, phoney or real, is to be turned to any genuine, lasting gain, it is surely that it could shoehorn the world into a comprehensive, historic disarmament process. Perhaps we need to contribute to making this so.
So I have a suggestion. Please consider carefully what you feel and pray for - whether it's formal prayer/meditation or simply deep wishing. Do pray for peace. But if a war does start, make a few modifications to the prayer. Praying for peace when a war has started can raise the hackles of hawks and raise the stakes a further notch - because hawks fight for war, regardless of the Iraq excuse. Telling a smoker to give up makes them smoke more, unless they're really ready to quit.
I'd suggest the revised prayer could contain the following three elements:
* accepting that war and madness have started, may these events truly serve the greatest good, not only toward the objective of world peace, but also in generating wholesome, unexpected side-effects; * pray for and inwardly support the victims of the conflict (both civilians and military), and, * may the world's public be fully aware and open-eyed. Formulate these your own way. This is a making-the-best-of-a-tough-situation prayer strategy. Don't lose heart if war breaks out: keep focused on eventual world peace and positive outcomes and remember that war can still contribute to peace in ways that peace cannot (this is no justification for war, but it's still true, especially if we help it go that way). Stay out of an oppositional or negative frame of mind - humanity's collective psyche doesn't understand negatives, and steady constancy of mood and commitment is needed when shooting starts, to counterbalance the intensely nightmarish madness. Please consider this suggestion and do what you feel best with it.
While we're at it, let's give thanks for the value of brinkmanship: it forces us to peer over the abyss and shift our stuff - the stuff we're usually too busy or compassion-fatigued to think and act on. Brinkmanship brings up fundamentals, forcing us up against our walls. It is potentially a gift - if we make it so. The highest magic happens in twenty minutes flat, but to work it well we must enter that zone of compressed time, intensity and integrity that allows it to happen. We live in a potential history-making moment, and world consensus is at stake.
The future depends on such a felt and spoken consensus - it acts like a containing field encouraging and disallowing a variety of possibilities. Around 1989 we watched consensus-eruptions break out in the crowds on the streets of former Soviet countries, and changes happened (though in China such consensus was clearly insufficiently strong). Potentially we stand at one of those moments, where the logjam of change could get freed up. It depends how far we want to set in motion a process of up-stepped world change. But if we back off now, world disarmament gets delayed, and trouble will surely follow.
Nowadays it is common to voice anti-American feelings: Americans shouldn't indulge in self-pity or pique but look at its genuine causes. Forgiveness will come with correction. But this is not the main issue - anti-Americanism is a diversion. American superpower mentality prevails because the international community has not established an alternative. Military adventures happen because no one stops them. A new global consensus is in its formative stages, but the Bush crusade is unwittingly pushing it forward by trying to push it back. Tyrants provoke a reaction: you're with or against them - or dithering painfully somewhere between - and they force us to form a view on issues we don't happily face. Three of these issues are war, the causes of war and the potency of today's world situation. Humanity needs to speak. This is one of those moments of compressed, potentised time.
Saddam Hussein probably does have some WMDs, but so do others - not least USA, UK and France. My assessment is that, as an ageing dictator who would prefer to complete his term well, Hussein wouldn't have used them. He wanted to live out his days as the self-appointed father of his people. He could have been softened up and tempted to redeem himself - but this softening strategy needed actually carrying out, and it wasn't done.
Meanwhile, sure, this war is about oil, geopolitical control, Israel, military rearmament and other agendas. But it is delaying two mega-issues to a later day: a proper global evolution of world power and control and the worldwide adoption of energy-efficient and ecologically-friendlier technologies, economics and social forms. These are massive, fundamental global matters affecting many wider issues in turn. They are now postponed, though the Bush crusade is unintentionally raising them up the world agenda. This is where mass consensus comes in. It's time to fully acknowledge we're in the twenty-first century. It's time for change - before it's too late. Some of us have been saying this for thirty years, and it's truer now than ever.
Please do all you can to re-humanise Iraqis. They aren't objects, pawns in others' games. They have the longest history of urban civilisation on Earth. Their current isolation forces them to survive as best they can. Please re-humanise 'badguys' too - dictators, hawks, troops and military pushers - since we're asking them to step down and re-connect with the loving, considerate, sensitive human in themselves, and they're frightened. Hard-nuts are humans too.
Compassion isn't about pity: it's about putting ourselves in others' sandals, shoes and boots, feeling how they experience life, from their angle. It's about sharing the experiential predicament of being human. We're all very mixed in our inner beings, and this saint-and-sinner mixture is what our precarious world situation is all about, played out before our eyes. We are all guilty, by association and complicity, of crimes against humanity. It's time for a clean-up, time to take the big risk. Yes, our economies might be weakened. Yes, chaos could break out. Yes, world disarmament could be tough. Yes, there will be more brinkmanship - without it, complacency continues to hold power. How much does our anticipation of things going 'wrong' stop us from moving forward? Answer: lots.
Sooner or later, we have to stand up for a world peace-building process. When? 2008? 2012? 2020? How old will your kids be then? Do we really believe that inwardly shifting the world consensus makes a difference, or are we but helpless recipients of history and the deeds of titans and assholes? Are we willing to move forward on this and face whatever consequences arise? And if the war doesn't happen, will we all go home again, hoping the problem will just melt away? These are issues we face today, hidden behind this threatened war. These involve historic mass decisions.
We are responsible for the life, death and constrained existence of the people of Iraq. Let's shoulder it well. We ourselves are actors on the stage of the theatre of war - even if we're 'over here' while it's 'over there'. Geographical distance doesn't apply in the world of the psyche - though cultural and experiential distance do. This is an experiential stretch, a challenge to step beyond secure positions. What goes on inside us makes a difference and we're transiting from practice-runs to the real stuff. This isn't really between UKUSA and Iraq - it's between war and peace.
This mental war, threatening to become a shooting war, obliges a shift of underlying values. We stand at a power point in time where humanity's clarity of intent is being honed. This is the evolutionary process of the twenty-first century: humankind is training itself in the reality of creating its collective reality, and the stakes are rising. We are redefining the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable. We're beginning to create our future facing forwards.
And my hat's continued existence is at risk.
---------------------------------- Palden Jenkins
Glastonbury, England palden.jenkins@btopenworld.com http://www.palden.jenkins.btinternet.co.uk/
I've been a student of history, geopolitics and esoterics since the 1960s, tracking current affairs and their historic and futurological significance. I work psychically too, looking at things from the inside and allsides, intuitively. The 'law of paradox' interests me - it encourages evolutionary leaps by presenting irreconcilable opposites and conflicts.
My next book comes out in May 2003, called 'Healing the Hurts of Nations', obtainable through www.gothicimage.co.uk <http://www.gothicimage.co.uk/> or through me.
You're welcome to forward this material (without alteration please,
and
keeping my name on it). Thanks for your attention.
Somewhere tonight in Iraq, a small girl lies sleeping who in a few weeks may be a lump of scorched flesh buried under concrete.
On a basketball court somewhere in the United States a young man lands a jump shot, who in a few weeks may have no legs, or eyes, or have tumors already brooding in his brain from exposure to the depleted uranium of our own weapons. A young boy who is healthy and vibrant today will be racked with cancer. A mother will hear her children crying for food and have nothing to give them but tainted water to quench their thirst. Land that is today rich and fertile will, a short time from now, be contaminated with radioactivity that lasts longer than all the years between ancient Sumer and Babylon and now.
And young men and women who in the innocence of their hearts volunteered to serve their country will be led to perpetrate unspeakable crimes that will haunt their nights and blight the rest of their lives. When they complain of strange ailments, the Veteran's Administration will admit no connection. And for years afterwards, as has happened since the first Gulf War, they will take their own lives in a steady stream of suicides. They will not be the sons and daughters of the men and women who sit in Congress or the White House. A disparate number of them will come from communities in our own land who suffer poverty, dispossession, discrimination.
And all of this will be done at the command of men who have never themselves faced combat or fought a war, who rob our schools and hospitals to pay for their own weapons of mass destruction, who promote an empire-building agenda of their own that will not provide the security theyclaim. For the sheer injustice of our attack on a country that has not attacked us will provoke such fear and hatred against us that all our bombs and missiles and cops and spies will not be able to keep us safe. The media and the politicians tell us this war is inevitable, that we can't stop it, that our protests and petitions and pleas make no difference. They murmur a constant incantation of our powerlessness, lulling us into a nightmare sleep. But we can still wake up. We can choose to walk out of the nightmare, and dream a different dream.
All it takes is for each one of us who cherishes the lives of children to refuse to be silent, to say no to war, to say yes to peace. And to ask ourselves, how have we abandoned our country, our fate, into the hands of callous men who have no compunction about wasting ives? What spell has been cast that fogs our eyes and binds our hands? What lies have we believed? What power have we let slip away?
Replace the nightmare with this dream: that in the moment when one world power has amassed the unchallenged military might to make its bid for global empire, its own people rise up and say, "No. That is not what we want to be. We don't want to rule the world over the broken bodies ofchildren. We don't want blood on our hands. We want children who are sick to have the best possible care, in Iraq and in our own country. We want schools and jobs and parks and hospitals and food for the hungry. We want to join hands with the people of the world, and strengthen the institutions that are slowly and painfully learning to solve conflicts without bloodshed, and teaching us to respect our differences. We know that peace must be built on justice, and we want peace." Dream that we wake up, stand up, speak out, not in the thousands but the millions, joining with millions around the world. Dream that soldiers refuse their orders, dockworkers refuse to load ships, secretaries shut off their computers, workers close their factories, and even politicians find the courage to stand for what is right. And make the dream real. If you have spoken out before, now is the time to speak again, to make another phone call, write another letter, stand in another vigil. If you have marched before, march again and this time bring more of your friends and neighbors. If you haven't marched, if you have been immersed in the demands of your own life, if you feel that your small voice makes no difference, now is the time to speak anyway, to terrupt your ordinary pursuits, to become the one small drop that just might turn the tide.
If you can get to New York or San Francisco on the weekend of February 15-16 for the big marches and rallies, come‹because the numbers are vitally important.
If you can't, there will be marches and rallies and vigils to join all across the country. Find one, or call one of your own.
Be public. Be visible. Be the loud, uncomfortable conscience that has disappeared from the halls of power.
And believe that truth is stronger than lies, love trumps fear, and no cabal of power can contain the multitudes when we awaken and choose life.
Starhawk is the author of Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising and eight other books on activism and earth-based and feminist spirituality. Her website is www.starhawk.org.
A message from
Martin Wood, photographer of sacred sites:
In many ways, the year 2003 has not begun well. There is the horrible
confrontation with Iraq, severe drought in many countries, ever increasing
political and social strife in much of Africa, and a continuing failure
by
almost all of the world's leaders to sincerely address global ecological
degradation. These and many other problems are wearing down the human
spirit, causing anguish and depression in millions of people. One
vital
thing each of us can do to help neutralize the global sense of despair
is to
deepen our relationship with the spirits of the sacred earth and
become a
beacon of loving consciousness in the world. Ten years ago, on a
holy
mountain in Colorado, I was shown a simple meditation technique for
connecting with the creative power of the earth. Practicing this
meditation
for as little as five minutes a day will revitalize your spirit,
calm your
mind, and send a wonderful healing energy all across the planet.
The simple
technique is taught on my web site at:
http://www.sacredsites.com/planetar.html
Martin Wood
RECKLESS ADMINISTRATION MAY REAP DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES
By US Senator Robert Byrd
Senate Floor Speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0212-07.htm
http://byrd.senate.gov/byrd_newsroom/byrd_newsroom.html
To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences.
On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every
American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.
Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent--ominously, dreadfully
silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the
nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.
We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our
own
uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the
editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of
the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular
war.
And this is no small conflagration we contemplate
This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle,
if
it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and
possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world. This nation is
about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in
an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of
preemption--the idea that the United States or any other nation can
legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be
threatening in the future--is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of
self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and
the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of worldwide terrorism,
making many countries around
the globe wonder if they will soon be on our--or some other nation's--hit
list. High level Administration figures recently refused to take nuclear
weapons off of the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq.
What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty,
particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and
security interests of many nations so closely together? There are huge
cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are
suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based
on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S.
leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which
existed after September 11.
Here at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little
guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are
being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their
stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with less
than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also
short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim. The economy is stumbling.
Fuel prices are rising and may soon spike higher.
This Administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be
judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal.
In that scant two years, this Administration has squandered a large
projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to
projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This Administration's
domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition,
under funding scores of essential programs for our people. This
Administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth.
This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health
care for our elderly. This Administration has been slow to provide adequate
funding for homeland security. This Administration has been reluctant to
better protect our long and porous borders.
In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden.
In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and
urging them to kill. This Administration has split traditional alliances,
possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like
the United Nations and NATO. This Administration has called into question
the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as
well-intentioned, peacekeeper. This Administration has turned the patient
art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that
reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders,
and which will have consequences for years to come.
Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil,
denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant--these types of crude
insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive
military might, but we cannot fight a global war on terrorism alone. We
need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well as
the newer found friends whom we can attract with our wealth. Our awesome
military machine will do us little good if we suffer another devastating
attack on our homeland which severely damages our economy. Our military
manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting support
of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters
cheering us on.
The war in Afghanistan has cost us $37 billion so far, yet there is evidence
that terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region.
We have not found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan,
the dark dens of terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and
devastated land.
Pakistan as well is at risk of destabilizing forces. This Administration
has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to
embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in
Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that
after winning the war one must always secure the peace? And yet we hear
little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans,
speculation abroad is rife. Will we seize Iraq's oil fields, becoming an
occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation's oil for
the foreseeable future? To whom do we propose to hand the reigns of power
after Saddam Hussein? Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in
devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear
arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments be toppled by
radicals, bolstered by Iran which has much closer ties to terrorism than
Iraq?
Could a disruption of the world's oil supply lead to a worldwide recession?
Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the
interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join
the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice for
nations which need the income? In only the space of two short years this
reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap
disastrous consequences for years. One can understand the anger and shock of
any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate
the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting
enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.
But to turn one's frustration and anger into the kind of extremely
destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is
currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the
awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest
superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this
Administration are outrageous. There is no other word.
Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of
horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation
of Iraq--a population, I might add, of which over 50 percent is under age
15--this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send
thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and
biological warfare--this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could
possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on
Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.
We are truly "sleepwalking through history." In my heart of
hearts I pray
that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a
rudest of awakenings.
To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be
a
last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any
President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation
which is over 50 percent children is "in the highest moral traditions
of our
country." This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to
be
having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner
so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our
own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.
