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Kathy and I both are pleased to have this chance to talk to you. The situation we face is the United States and in the world today is so critical, and the U.S. government is in our view doing so many things wrong, that I want to begin with a comment on the value of non-violent civil disobedience. Kathy and I regarded our own efforts to go to Iraq on the eve of a U.S.-led aggressive war against that country as one kind of civil disobedience. Daniel Ellsberg has recently called the U.S. aggression against Iraq a „massive war crime,¾ and we agree with that. This country desperately needs smarter policies ‚ both foreign and domestic - rather than more smart bombs. And we believe that non-violent civil disobedience is one of the absolutely essential things those of us who want peace rather than perpetual war should be doing more of in weeks to come.
Kathy and I are here today largely because we spent the last half of March in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine, where we spent a lot of time in Ramallah and East Jerusalem, and where we visited at least briefly Jenin, Nablus, and Gaza, and where we interviewed both Yasir Arafat and Hanan Ashrawi. But I want to take a minute to explain why we wound up in Palestine rather than in Iraq. We had traveled to Amman, Jordan early in March with a 10-member „Iraq Peace Team¾ under the sponsorship of Voices in the Wilderness, a humanitarian organization formed in the mid-1990s to oppose the sanctions imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf war. The principal mission of the organization and of our particular peace team was to go into Iraq and be witness to the deprivation that the Iraqi people had been enduring for many years under sanctions, and more recently under the threat of war. And if the war started while we were there, we were going to try to take whatever small actions we could to demonstrate our support for the innocent people of Iraq, who have suffered so much for so long. Our 10-person team included three from Canada, and the rest of us, including Kathy and me, were from various parts of the U.S.
The two of us personally had another reason for wanting to go to Iraq. We also wanted to demonstrate in the strongest possible way our opposition to the United States¼ plans to launch an aggressive and „pre-emptive¾ war against Iraq. We wanted, in any way we could, to prevent this expanded, U.S.-led war from happening. We failed, of course, but more on that in a minute. A few days after we arrived in Amman, we were handed the huge disappointment that we would receive no visas for Iraq, because of our past employment with the CIA. (Previously, most of the signals we¼d received had been that we would get the visas, and we, as well as all the other members of our team, who did not yet have their visas either, had come to Amman on the strength of that earlier information. The others did finally get their visas; we did not.)
So we went to the West Bank instead. We had originally wanted to go to Iraq for a few weeks, and then to the West Bank for another few weeks, but had sacrificed the West Bank part of the trip because it became clear early on that, with war more and more likely, we might have to stay in Iraq indefinitely. Anyway, we had to change our plans, and we now think that in our limited time in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza we accomplished a good deal. At least the two of us personally learned a great deal, and Kathy¼s going to talk more about that.
First, though, I want to make a few comments about the eight other people on our particular "Iraq Peace Team" who did go on to Baghdad. I think they¼ve all come home by now, although a few only left Baghdad quite recently. They were really a splendid group. Neither Kathy nor I have ever found it particularly easy to bond with strangers, and we didn¼t know any of these people until we met them in Chicago one day before we all flew to Jordan. But we bonded with these folks to a greater degree, and more rapidly, than perhaps we had ever done before with strangers. I could tell you wonderful stories about every one of the eight, but I¼m only going to mention two of them.
April Hurley is the first one. She is the only one of the group who was a medical doctor, and she could therefore make an instantaneous and major contribution to helping Iraqi people in Baghdad by working in a hospital. A woman somewhere in her forties, she had given up her practice in California to do precisely that. In the middle of the war, she wrote a piece in her email diary that she titled, "Toying with Lives." Here are a few lines from what she wrote. "Bombing is loud and shattering, with explosions closer and almost continuous. Jets fly low and create deliberate frightening, deafening roars which must create horrible nightmares in little children. ä All the terrible atrocities that we anticipated are occurring here in Baghdad. Cowboy pilots are toying with lives and livelihoods, bombing buses and farmer families. ä There must be hundreds of killed and maimed children ‚ they know that this city is teeming with kids! äThere is a front not far from here, perhaps a half mile. The main hospitals have been converted to accommodate wounded soldiers and they are swamped. Witnesses for civilian casualties [and non-Arab doctors like me] are not as welcome as before due to security at the hospitals. We are unable to stray far from this hotel and we don¼t have casualty figures, but the carnage is overwhelming, as anticipated. There are probably sufficient doctors since Baghdad has many residents and physician-specialty hospitals; many Arabic-speaking and overseas-Iraqi MDs have arrived to help. I know that medicines and supplies were short to begin with when Baghdad was just dealing with civilian victims. Now they must be desperately trying to operate without sufficient narcotics, anesthetics, or antibiotics. I can¼t imagine what that kind of hopelessness, helplessness must be like in the face of so much suffering. äI¼m so sorry that we couldn¼t prevent this. Our soldiers are so naÔve and insensitive; they know nothing of this society that they are decimating. We get word that they dump pornography in their wake, and we see the result of their play with sophisticated, violent toys. I know that they see little of what they¼ve done. America will need to cope with their regrets and guilt later. ä Someone said [to me] that we are hearing the requiem of international law, [but] I still trust the common soul of the world community. The global spirit will rise up."
The other person I want to talk about for a minute is a young man - all of 27 years old - named Shane Claiborne. He was 20 years younger than the next youngest on the team, and yet he was in many ways the most mature, and the most emotionally secure, of the whole group. Here in the U.S. he directs an inner-city ministry in Philadelphia, where he ministers to minorities and the poor. Both Kathy and I, who have tended to hold organized religions at arm¼s length in our recent years, have come to accept that Shane¼s own religion and spirituality have clearly made him the mature and secure person that he is. He¼s just a remarkable guy. He¼s back in this country now and, once again, I want to quote from one of his emails.
"The only victor in war is violence. ... violence is the heroä Every time our government chooses to use military force to bring about change in the world, they once again teach our children the myth of redemptive violence, that violence can be an instrument for good. This is precisely the logic we are trying to rid ourselves of, especially here in the inner city. My outcry against this war is rooted in my desperate love for the kids in my North Philly neighborhood. One of them had a girlfriend who was stabbed, and he ran down our street yelling, 'I am declaring war on that terrorist.' War infects us. We begin to believe that violence can bring peace, in our world, in our neighborhoods, in our homes. ä War might seem to work for the powerful, just as robbing a bank might seem to work for the poor - but there is a better way that leads to life. Nearly the whole world cried out against this war, and the incredible thing is that I believe that outcry was rooted in the understanding that Saddam Hussein is a wicked tyrant and that there is a better way to free a household from an abusive father than by burning down the house. I believe this global groaning for peace will only grow stronger. Perhaps in the days to come we will be able to dream the dream of the Other Superpower, the Beloved Community. And in the days to come every war will be an attack on an entire people crying out for peace. One of the hospital managers [in Baghdad] put it like this. åViolence is for those who have lost their imagination. Has America lost its imagination?"
Now, before I stop talking, I also want to say a couple of other things about the Iraq war which, as I¼m sure many people here already know, is closely related to the Israel-Palestine issue. Kathy and I believe this war and its aftermath will prove to be a catastrophe. And by now turning its attention toward Syria, the Bush administration is making the situation worse. By concentrating on war with Iraq as a step toward „transforming¾ the entire Middle East, and by alleging that such a use of military force is the best way to spread democracy throughout the area, the Bush administration will more likely provoke more terrorism, more hatred of the United States, and more wars that could easily slip beyond anyone¼s control and turn into something close to perpetual warfare. Global domination by any single nation, including the United States, is not compatible with democracy. Spreading democracy through military action, and killing people to do so, is a travesty of human values, in all ways unjust and immoral. The Bush administration, if it had any smarts at all, would strangle its macho impulses, forget about threatening Syria, and immediately turn the whole mess of Iraq over to the U.N., with a promise to foot the entire bill because we caused the war. (I know none of that will happen under this benighted administration, but I wanted to say it anyway.)
The Bush administration should be concentrating its undivided attention in the region on resolving the disastrous, and worsening, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is a - and perhaps the - principal cause of unrest in the Middle East. If it had the will to do so, the United States could easily heal this festering wound by peaceful means, but its current policy of enabling Israel to do pretty much whatever it wants in the West Bank and Gaza, and its concentration on Iraq, not only ignore the central problem in the area but markedly worsen it.
In fact, the entire complex of U.S. foreign policies today is turning the world into a dangerous unstable place. Take, for example, the problem of religious fundamentalism. U.S. propaganda these days occasionally still mouths nice words about most Muslims being good people, not dominated by fundamentalist ideology. But at the same time, U.S. policies seem to be strengthening fundamentalism around the entire world.
All fundamentalism is dangerous. Islamic fundamentalism will surely be one of the factors encouraging more terrorism against the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel in the wake of the Iraq war. Judaic fundamentalism encourages terrorism by the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as state terrorism by the Israeli military. And Christian fundamentalism here in this country will encourage the Bush administration to extend full support to Israel¼s continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza.
The Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. will also provide strong support for the Bush administration¼s plans for more regime changes throughout the Middle East - by military force if necessary ‚ to create a new colonialism in the region dominated by some type of partnership between the U.S. and Israel.
Over the past couple of years under the Bush administration, and especially now that the Iraq war has entered a new phase, these trends have become well established in U.S. foreign policy. I believe that they are extremely dangerous because they may lead to a new world war - a Judeo-Christian World War against Islam. I think we should do everything we can to prevent such a war.
Now, we cannot turn off religious fundamentalism anywhere with just a wave of our hand. And I would submit that it is both a terribly wrong policy and an immoral policy to try to turn it off by military action and killing people in one part of the world - the Islamic world - while encouraging Judaic fundamentalism to flourish in the Palestinian occupied territories, and encouraging Christian fundamentalism to grow stronger in the U.S. Yet that is precisely what U.S. foreign policies today are doing.
Rather than anyone¼s using military action and warfare to control religious fundamentalism, it would be far better to create the kinds of conditions around the world that would help the moderate forces in each of the three religions to control their own fundamentalists. I think the moderate elements in all of these religions are probably more numerous than the fundamentalists, but they are less well organized and less driven to achieve their aims and agenda.
The main point I want to make here is that there is really no other moral and civilized way to deal with the global problem of fundamentalism than to allow, and to encourage by peaceful means and exclusively peaceful means, the three major religions and their unique cultures to deal with their own problems of extremists in their own way. This is not a perfect world, but one thing I am very sure of is that the use of military action, especially by outsiders, to solve these deeply embedded religious problems, will make this world an entirely imperfect and unstable place to live in for years, and possibly decades, to come.
Let¼s leave religious fundamentalism and move to the issue of weapons of mass destruction, where U.S. propaganda also mouths nice words about preventing the further proliferation of such weapons, while U.S. policies actually encourage a further proliferation. The fact is that today the relative ease with which weapons of mass destruction can spread to new areas of the world makes all nations much more vulnerable to events that can severely damage their own national security, and the security and stablility of the entire globe.
Technology as well as U.S. policy has played a role here. With respect to nuclear weapons, for example, for the past almost 60 years it has gradually become a little easier each year to acquire a nuclear weapon and some type of delivery system. Now, after all these years, it¼s appreciably easier for a number of nations to obtain a nuclear weapon than it was 20 or 30 years ago. North Korea is a good example. But I think in general the same thing applies to other nations, and to other weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. In another decade or two, it will be even easier than it is now to acquire such weapons.
Let¼s look in a little more detail at North Korea. The North Korean case has made it clearer than ever that in a world of nation-states - the only world we¼ll have for some time to come - small countries are increasingly able to obtain nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. (By the way, I¼ll probably slip into using the abbreviation "WMD" somewhere while I¼m talking. That¼s just "Weapons of Mass Destruction," as I¼m sure most of you already know.) One small country, Israel, got nuclear weapons in the 1960s, but its ties with an acquiescent United States made it a special case. North Korea has now become the second small country to acquire nuclear weapons. (Pakistan and India are both much larger and more powerful, and not really in the category of "small.")
Largely because North Korea already has a few nuclear weapons, the U.S. has been deterred from the kind of aggressive action it has employed against non-nuclear Iraq, and has been forced to rely on diplomacy. And that¼s a good thing. But the point here is that at a minimum, the possession of nuclear weapons will probably make it possible for North Korea to stand up to the U.S. for a longer period than most of us up to now would have thought possible. This, in turn, will automatically make other nations of the world, and probably some sub-national groups too, see even greater value in having their own nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction as well. Jonathan Schell, one of the most astute analysts in the United States on weapons of mass destruction, emphasized this in a recent major speech, saying "The lesson is, get nuclear weapons and get them fast." U.S. policies deserve most of the blame for this. Except as a propaganda tool, every U.S. administration since Harry Truman's has in practice made the spread of nuclear weapons, the major type of weapons of mass destruction, a less important issue than the short-term perceived needs of U.S. national security. No administration has ever been willing even to discuss giving up the United States' own nuclear weapons. In these same years, however, most U.S. leaders and practically every American foreign policy or intelligence "expert" who ever worked on the nuclear-proliferation issue understood that, given this cast-in-concrete U.S. policy, preventing the further spread of such weapons among either friends or foes over the long run was impossible. The result is that over the past half-century, the U.S. has badly botched, and been completely hypocritical about, its alleged policy of opposing nuclear proliferation. The administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, who made the most noise against proliferation, are regarded by the Arab and Muslim worlds as the most hypocritical of all, because these two administrations acquiesced in Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons during the 1960s. To wrap all this up, the U.S. does not have a consistent or meaningful policy on preventing the further spread of weapons of mass destruction, and most senior U.S. officials know full well that we will never devote a top priority to preventing that further spread unless and until the U.S. becomes willing to negotiate seriously on giving up its own such weapons and to encourage its closest allies to do likewise. Once again, the conclusion is the same. Whether the subject is weapons of mass destruction, or religious fundamentalism, or aggressive wars in the Middle East, or the Israel-Palestine issue, the United States will have to change its own foreign policies if it sincerely wants any real peace and stability for the world in years to come. We don¼t have time to discuss them here, but you could say the same thing about the U.S. policies of striving to dominate the entire world politically and militarily, and of pressing ahead with a U.S. version of privatized, corporate economic globalization that has widened the income gap between rich and poor throughout the world. You can talk all you want about the "bad" policies of Iraq, or North Korea, or Syria, or Israel, or other nations. The chief culprit in the world today - that is, the chief pursuer of bad policies - is in my view the United States itself, and particularly the Bush administration. THIS HAS TO STOP. Thank you very much, and I¼m going to turn this over to Kathy now.
