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We are living in a defining time. Our nation and all its citizens are being tested as they were once tested by the Civil War. Will we reclaim our democracy? Will the preemptive war our nation wages in a volatile area of the world end in disaster? Will the people of the world strike a major blow against the use of war as a viable option? This historic moment holds monumental implications for the future of the world's peoples.
Will Americans stand by quietly while a cabal of usurpers wages an illegal war without consulting us? Or will history record that we remained true to the ideals that we have professed for more than two hundred years? We have been a beacon of hope for populations worldwide who long for justice and freedom. Without a commitment to these principles our pledge of allegiance becomes empty words.
Already the U.S. has lost respect. Our promises of military and financial aid no longer impress anyone because, too often, when we have gotten what we wanted we have failed to keep our promises. Already our treaty negotiations are suspect because we have broken so many treaty agreements. Already we can see some of our leaders failing the test.
The Good News
On the other hand, there is nothing in history to compare with the enormous demonstrations for peace that have taken place worldwide in the last few months. (Never before has a nation gone to war without some assurance that its people can be persuaded the war is necessary and will be beneficial.) With every day that goes by, the U.S. antiwar movement has grown. This is in spite of media that have been complicit in concealing the duplicities of the administration.
Calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush and a change of regime in the U.S are growing louder. There is on record a pattern of successful political resistance by populaces unhappy with their governments' foreign policies. Iran, South Africa, and Grenada are cases in point. For some of these populaces, violence came to them as a result of the foreign policy shift, but it came from outside. In the case of the U.S., we have little to fear from that eventuality (and much more to fear if there is no shift in U.S. foreign policy).
Internally, we have many policy statements from well-regarded organizations and people:
• A television panel of generals who experienced the "glory" of "winning" the last Persian Gulf War said before the current war on Iraq began that it was foolish, unnecessary, and dangerous.
• The CIA released a statement to the press that contradicted George W. Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein will use his weapons against us. "Not unless he is attacked," they say.
• A group of CIA veterans formed an organization they call "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity." The group is urging members of the intelligence community to leak documents that demonstrate the Bush Administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq.
• The president's wife cancelled a gathering of poets at the White House due to a well-founded fear they would speak out against the war. This cancellation sparked nationwide organizing of poets against the war.
• As of March 20, 2003, 161 local governments have passed resolutions against the war, including the city of St. Paul, Minnesota.
• Three nuns poured their blood on missile silos in California, risking long jail terms.
• Millions of people around the world took to the streets in the hours and days following the start of the war, including 5,000 Twin Cities marchers. Across the U.S., some workers called in "sick of war" and high school and college students staged walkouts. These young people will never forget the empowering moment when they spoke out and the whole country had to listen.
• Senator Robert Byrd (Dem., WV), highly respected among his colleagues, scolded his colleagues for their silence, for the fact that there was "no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this war."
• John Brady Kiesling, the political officer in Greece and a career foreign service worker, resigned protesting that the U.S. is "squandering our national legitimacy, America's most potent weapon of both offence and defense." He predicts "our current course will bring instability and danger, not security."
Nuns, students, county and municipal governments, veteran generals, the CIA, poets and artists, and foreign service workers have all raised a collective cry of "No War!" We can be proud of these people, some of whom risk much. And all this resistance is done without violence, despite the passions that are driving it. This movement could blossom into a permanent perception that new weapons and quickly shifting alliances have made war, as a policy, obsolete.
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