[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 34 (Thursday, March 21, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E418-E419]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            PEACE AND NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT: A CALL TO ACTION

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 20, 2002

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, in this time of national crisis, it is 
important for all those who love our country to speak out. I offer 
these thoughts in a spirit of reconciliation.

``. . . 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 
are all ultimately perfectable, if you believe we can evolve, and 
become better than we are; if you believe we can overcome the 
nihilistic scourge of war and someday fulfill the dream of peace and 
harmony on 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, nonviolent 
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' 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 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.
  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. 
In the past week 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 pre-
emptive 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, we 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 very 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.
  The same powerful humanity expressed by any one of us expresses 
itself through each of us. 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 commonalities. 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.

[[Page E419]]

  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.
  At this moment of peril we must move from paralysis of fear. 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 Non-Proliferation 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.
  It is necessary that we do so, for at this moment our world is being 
challenged by war and premonitions of nuclear annihilation. 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 planet and: 
Challenge those who believe in a nuclear right. Challenge those who 
would build new nuclear weapons. Challenge those who seek nuclear re-
armament. 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.
  It is practical to work to make war archaic. That is the purpose of 
HR 2459. It is a bill to create a Department of Peace. HR 2459 seeks to 
make non-violence an organizing principle in our society. 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 likeminded 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.
  We need web sites dedicated to becoming electronic forums for peace, 
for sustainability, for renewal and for revitalization. We need forums 
which strive 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. 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.

                          ____________________