Peace And Nuclear Disarmamant: A Call To Action
by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)
Dear Pax Christi Members and Friends,
Below please find a courageous statement by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)....please take the time to give it a read.
Blessings of peace,
Phyllis
Phyllis Turner Jepson, Director
Pax Christi USA
Local/Regional Group Development Office
Email: paxwpb@gate.net
Web: www.paxchristiusa.org
Thomas Merton: When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the
enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my
country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.
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Peace And Nuclear Disarmamant: A Call To Action
by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)
t r u t h o u t | Feature
". . . Come my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world," .
. .
Alfred Lord Tennyson
If you believe that humanity has a higher destiny, if you believe we
can evolve, and become better than we are; if you believe we can overcome
the scourge of war and someday fulfill the dream of harmony and peace earth,
let us begin the conversation today. Let us exchange our ideas.
Let us plan together, act together and create peace
together. This is a call for common sense, for peaceful, non-violent citizen
action to protect our precious world from widening war and from stumbling
into a nuclear catastrophe. The climate for conflict has intensified, with
the struggle between Pakistan and India, the China-Taiwan tug of war, and
the increased bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians. United States'
planned troop deployments in the Philippines, Yemen, Georgia, Columbia
and Indonesia create new possibilities for expanded war. An invasion of
Iraq is planned. The recent disclosure that Russia, China, Iraq, Iran,
Syria, North Korea, and Libya are considered by the United States as possible
targets for nuclear attack catalyzes potential conflicts everywhere.
These crucial political decisions promoting increased
military actions, plus a new nuclear first-use policy, are occurring without
the consent of the American people, without public debate, without public
hearings, without public votes. The President is taking Congress's approval
of responding to the Sept. 11 terrorists as a license to flirt with nuclear
war.
"Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war,"
the President has been quoted as saying on March 13th 2002. Yet Article
1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution explicitly requires that
Congress take responsibility when it comes to declaring war. This President
is very popular, according to the polls. But polls are not a substitute
for democratic process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics
or dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight belies
reality: Spending $400 billion a year for defense is a political decision.
Committing troops abroad is a political decision. War is a political decision.
When men and women die on the battlefield that is the result of a political
decision. The use of nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions,
is a profound political decision. In a monarchy there need be no political
decisions. In a democracy, all decisions are political, in that they derive
from the consent of the governed.
In a democracy, budgetary, military and national
objectives must be subordinate to the political process. Before we celebrate
an imperial presidency, let it be said that the lack of free and open political
process, the lack of free and open political debate, and the lack of free
and open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy.
We have reached a moment in our country's history
where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president of his
or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and
without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear through
talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our
leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds
are reshaping consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation.
Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction
thinks: war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches
the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace?
Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum,
which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world.
It is also urgent that we find those places of war in our own lives, and
begin healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen
of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that
each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the
world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each
one of us chooses, so becomes the world.
Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts,
the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar
of our daily lives. Which is why we should always take care to regard the
power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action
through time and space.
Some of our leaders have been thinking and talking
about nuclear war. Recently there has been much news about a planning document
which describes how and when America might wage nuclear war. The Nuclear
Posture Review recently released to the media by the government:
1. Assumes that the United States has the right to launch a preemptive
nuclear strike.
2. Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons.
3. Attempts to minimize the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.
4. Promotes nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack.
Some dismiss this review as routine government planning. But it becomes
ominous when taken in the context of a war on terrorism which keeps expanding
its boundaries, rhetorically and literally. The President equates the "war
on terrorism" with World War II. He expresses a desire to have the nuclear
option "on the table." He unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty. He
seeks $8.9 billion to fund deployment of a missile shield. He institutes,
without congressional knowledge, a shadow government in a bunker outside
our nation's Capitol. He tries to pass off as arms reduction, the storage
of, instead of the elimination of, nuclear weapons.
Two generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares.
We feared and hated the Russians who feared and hated us. We feared and
hated the "godless, atheistic" communists. In our schools, each of us dutifully
put our head between our legs and practiced duck-and-cover drills. In our
nightmares, we saw the long, slow arc of a Soviet missile flash into our
neighborhood. We got down on our knees and prayed for peace. We surveyed,
wide eyed, pictures of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We supported
the elimination of all nuclear weapons. We knew that if you "nuked" others
you "nuked" yourself.
The splitting of the atom for destructive purposes
admits a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking of Us vs.
Them, the dichotomized thinking, which spawns polarity and leads to war.
The proposed use of nuclear weapons, pollutes the psyche with the arrogance
of infinite power. It creates delusions of domination of matter and space.
It is dehumanizing through its calculations of mass casualties. We must
overcome doomthinkers and sayers who invite a world descending, disintegrating
into a nuclear disaster. With a world at risk, we must find the bombs in
our own lives and disarm them. We must listen to that quiet inner voice
which counsels that the survival of all is achieved through the unity of
all.
We must overcome our fear of each other, by seeking
out the humanity within each of us. The human heart contains every possibility
of race, creed, language, religion, and politics. We are one in our commonalties.
Must we always fear our differences? We can overcome our fears by not feeding
our fears with more war and nuclear confrontations. We must ask our leaders
to unify us in courage.
We need to create a new, clear vision of a world
as one. A new, clear vision of people working out their differences peacefully.
A new, clear vision with the teaching of nonviolence, nonviolent intervention,
and mediation. A new, clear vision where people can live in harmony within
their families, their communities and within themselves. A new clear vision
of peaceful coexistence in a world of tolerance.
We must move away from fear's paralysis. This is
a call to action: to replace expanded war with expanded peace. This is
a call for action to place the very survival of this planet on the agenda
of all people, everywhere. As citizens of a common planet, we have an obligation
to ourselves and our posterity. We must demand that our nation and all
nations put down the nuclear sword. We must demand that our nation and
all nations:
Abide by the principles of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Stop the development of new nuclear weapons.
Take all nuclear weapons systems off alert.
Persist towards total, worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Our nation must:
* Revive the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty.
* Sign and enforce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
* Abandon plans to build a so-called missile shield.
* Prohibit the introduction of weapons into outer space.
We are in a climate where people expect debate within our two party
system to produce policy alternatives. However both major political parties
have fallen short. People who ask "Where is the Democratic Party?" and
expect to hear debate may be disappointed. When peace is not on the agenda
of our political parties or our governments then it must be the work and
the duty of each citizen of the world. This is the time to organize for
peace. This is the time for new thinking. This is the time to conceive
of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence
of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness. This is the
time to conceive of peace as respect, trust, and integrity. This is the
time to tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness
which compels violence at a personal, group, national or international
levels. This is the time to develop a new compassion for others and ourselves.
When terrorists threaten our security, we must enforce
the law and bring terrorists to justice within our system of constitutional
justice, without undermining the very civil liberties which permits our
democracy to breathe. Our own instinct for life, which inspires our breath
and informs our pulse, excites our capacity to reason. Which is why we
must pay attention when we sense a threat to survival.
That is why we must speak out now to protect this
nation, all nations, and the entire planet and:
* Challenge those who believe that war is inevitable.
* Challenge those who believe in a nuclear right.
* Challenge those who would build new nuclear weapons.
* Challenge those who seek nuclear rearmament.
* Challenge those who seek nuclear escalation.
* Challenge those who would make of any nation a nuclear target.
* Challenge those who would threaten to use nuclear weapons against
civilian populations.
* Challenge those who would break nuclear treaties.
* Challenge those who think and think about nuclear weapons, to think
about peace.
It is practical to work for peace. I speak of peace and diplomacy not
just for the sake of peace itself. But, for practical reasons, we must
work for peace as a means of achieving permanent security. It is similarly
practical to work for total nuclear disarmament, particularly when nuclear
arms do not even come close to addressing the real security problems which
confront our nation, witness the events of September 11, 2001.
We can make war archaic. Skeptics may dismiss the
possibility that a nation which spends $400 billion a year for military
purposes can somehow convert swords into plowshares. Yet the very founding
and the history of this country demonstrates the creative possibilities
of America. We are a nation which is known for realizing impossible dreams.
Ours is a nation which in its second century abolished slavery, which many
at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation where women won the
right to vote, which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is a
nation which institutionalized the civil rights movement, which many at
the time considered impossible. If we have the courage to claim peace,
with the passion, the emotion and the integrity with which we have claimed
independence, freedom and, equality we can become that nation which makes
nonviolence an organizing principle in our society, and in doing so change
the world.
That is the purpose of HR 2459. It is a bill to
create a Department of Peace. It envisions new structures to help create
peace in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our neighborhoods,
in our cities, and in our nation. It aspires to create conditions for peace
within and to create conditions for peace worldwide. It considers the conditions
which cause people to become the terrorists of the future, issues of poverty,
scarcity and exploitation. It is practical to make outer space safe from
weapons, so that humanity can continue to pursue a destiny among the stars.
HR 3616 seeks to ban weapons in space, to keep the stars a place of dreams,
of new possibilities, of transcendence.
We can achieve this practical vision of peace, if
we are ready to work for it.
People worldwide need to be meet with like-minded
people, about peace and nuclear disarmament, now. People worldwide need
to gather in peace, now. People worldwide need to march and to pray for
peace, now. People worldwide need to be connecting with each other on the
web, for peace, now.
We are in a new era of electronic democracy, where
the world wide web, numerous web sites and bulletin boards enable new organizations,
exercising freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association,
to spring into being instantly. Thespiritoffreedom.com is such a web site.
It is dedicated to becoming an electronic forum for peace, for sustainability,
for renewal and for revitalization. It is a forum which strives for the
restoration of a sense of community through the empowerment of self, through
commitment of self to the lives of others, to the life of the community,
to the life of the nation, to the life of the world. Where war making is
profoundly uncreative in its destruction, peacemaking can be deeply creative.
We need to communicate with each other the ways in which we work in our
communities to make this a more peaceful world. I welcome your ideas at
or at . We can share our thoughts and discuss ways in which we have brought
or will bring them into action. Now is the time to think, to take action
and use our talents and abilities to create peace:
in our families.
in our block clubs.
In our neighborhoods.
In our places of worship.
In our schools and universities.
In our labor halls.
In our parent-teacher organizations.
Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize and take action to
create peace as a social imperative, as an economic imperative, and as
a political imperative. Now is the time to think, speak, write, organize,
march, rally, hold vigils and take other nonviolent action to create peace
in our cities, in our nation and in the world. And as the hymn says, "Let
there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."
This is the work of the human family, of people
all over the world demanding that governments and non-governmental actors
alike put down their nuclear weapons. This is the work of the human family,
responding in this moment of crisis to protect our nation, this planet
and all life within it. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace.
As we understand that all people of the world are interconnected, we can
achieve both nuclear disarmament and peace. We can accomplish this through
upholding an holistic vision where the claims of all living beings to the
right of survival are recognized. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament
and peace through being a living testament to a Human Rights Covenant where
each person on this planet is entitled to a life where he or she may consciously
evolve in mind, body and spirit.
Nuclear disarmament and peace are the signposts
toward the uplit path of an even brighter human condition wherein we can
through our conscious efforts evolve and reestablish the context of our
existence from peril to peace, from revolution to evolution. Think peace.
Speak peace. Act peace.
Peace.
To reach Congressman Dennis Kucinich contact:
info@thespiritoffreedom.com
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