[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 83 (Wednesday, June 16, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1141-E1142]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           FLY LIKE AN EAGLE

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. ZOE LOFGREN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 16, 2004

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Speaker, this past weekend I was privileged to 
attend the graduation of my daughter from Stanford University. There is 
an interesting tradition at Stanford. Each year the graduating students 
vote to select a professor to give one last lecture to them at lunch 
the day before graduation. This year, that honor went to Professor 
Terry Karl.
  Professor Karl has a long history as a human rights advocate. Among 
other things, she has monitored elections for the United Nations and 
served as an advisor to U.N. peace negotiators.
  During the ``final lecture'', Professor Karl challenged the graduates 
to assume responsibility for the long-term prospects of our country, 
especially in the wake of the recent prison abuse scandal at Abu 
Ghraib. She discussed the doctrine of ``command responsibility,'' which 
says that leaders cannot turn a blind eye to abuse.
  As she poignantly stated, ``no amount of military power will make up 
for what we lose if the world at large believes that, despite our years 
of rhetorical support for rights and democracy, we are prepared to 
compromise them the moment our own lives become threatened.''
  I believe that Professor Karl has raised very important issues in 
this lecture, and I ask that her entire lecture be made a part of the 
Record so that all the American people, not just the Stanford class of 
2004, may have the benefit of her scholarship and insights.

 [Speech to the Graduating Class of 2004 Stanford University, June 12, 
                                 2004]

          Fly Like an Eagle (Even if You Feel Like a Chicken)

                            (By Terry Karl)

Gildred Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Political 
                                Science

       President Hennessey, Provost Etchemendy, Trustees, parents, 
     and most especially graduates, thank you for the honor of 
     inviting me to speak to you. In the midst of your 
     celebration, I ask you to pause--for these are serious times.
       Archbishop Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid hero and head of 
     South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, tells a 
     story (which inspired this talk) about a farmer who raised 
     chickens in his backyard. Amongst this farmer's chickens, 
     there was one that looked a little odd. It behaved like a 
     chicken. It walked like a chicken. It pecked away like a 
     chicken. One day a wise woman came along and said to the 
     farmer: ``You know, that isn't a chicken. It is an eagle.'' 
     The farmer said: ``No way. That is a chicken.'' And he looked 
     at the odd bird and said: ``Don't get any fancy ideas. You 
     are a chicken.''
       ``I don't think so,'' said the wise woman. She picked up 
     the strange looking chicken, climbed up the nearest mountain, 
     stood at the edge of a precipice, and waited until sunrise. 
     Then she turned the bird towards the sun and said: ``You are 
     an eagle. You can soar. You can change your world. Go fly.''
       The strange looking chicken shook itself and tentatively 
     spread its wings. It looked up at the sky. It looked down--
     way down--to the bottom of the precipice. It took a few steps 
     back in the direction of the other chickens, where it had 
     been so comfortable, where it had a daily routine and food to 
     eat. ``Sorry,'' it said to the wise woman: ``I don't feel 
     like an eagle. I feel like a chicken. And I don't think I can 
     fly.''
       ``That's your choice,'' the wise woman said softly. ``But 
     remember, you are responsible for the decisions you make. If 
     you don't dare to fly, you will never be fully alive. You 
     will never reach the sky. Even if you feel like a chicken, 
     fly like an eagle.''
       That ``strange chicken'' comes to mind every time there is 
     a choice between taking an easy path or making a trail where 
     there is no road. After completing my doctorate at Stanford, 
     I conducted research in El Salvador's civil war in the 1980s. 
     Military leaders repeatedly assured me that their army did 
     not commit human rights abuses. But the testimony of 
     countless others told a different story. Salvadorans 
     described how they had been hooded or blindfolded for days; 
     deprived of sleep, food, and water; beaten and shocked; raped 
     and forced to watch the torture and murder of others.
       At El Mozote, a massacre site where a forensic team would 
     later dig up the bodies of over 100 children under the age of 
     12, a peasant woman approached me. ``You are American. You 
     are powerful. You will find out who is responsible for 
     this.'' That night, flying back to the United States, I 
     railed against that woman. ``Powerful? A general is powerful. 
     A president is powerful. I am five feet tall. I am a woman 
     from Missouri. I don't have tenure. I am not powerful.''
       Now, fast forward two decades to a South Florida courtroom, 
     in June 2002, where two Salvadoran generals living in the 
     U.S., Generals Jose Guillermo Garcia and Eugenio Vides 
     Casanova, stood on trial, charged with responsibility as 
     their country's top commanders for the abuse of Salvadoran 
     civilians. Three survivors of torture brought the 
     courtroom to tears as they testified about what had 
     happened to them. One of them, Carlos Mauricio, honors us 
     with his presence today.
       As the expert witness in this trial--a trial that few 
     believed would ever take place and even fewer believed could 
     be won--I documented how the actions these generals had taken 
     (and the actions that they had failed to take) were 
     interpreted down the chain of command as a ``green light'' to 
     commit torture. Thus these men should be held responsible for 
     crimes committed against Salvadoran civilians.
       In their defense, the generals denied their responsibility. 
     They were fighting terrorism. They could not be expected to 
     control the actions of all their soldiers. They were not 
     present when prisoners were humiliated, abused and murdered, 
     and they were not the actual torturers. So why, they asked 
     the jury, were they on trial for what a few ``bad apples'' 
     had done?
       Because the law demands it.
       The doctrine of ``command responsibility,'' the product of 
     an American initiative enshrined in law since the Nuremberg 
     Statutes after World War II, affirms that civilian and 
     military leaders may be held legally accountable for abuses 
     committed by their subordinates--even when these commanders 
     did not personally order abuses, witness such abuses, have 
     direct knowledge about them or conspire to commit them. This 
     law recognizes the tremendous danger of abuse inherent in war 
     and, in tribute to the awful sacrifices of the Holocaust and 
     those who died in two world wars, it places the moral worth 
     of each and every person at the center of our international 
     order. Rather than permit leaders to turn a blind eye to 
     abuse, it contends that those leaders who ``knew or should 
     have known'' about abuse and ``failed to prevent or punish 
     it'' are criminally accountable for this abuse. It charges 
     both military and civilian authorities with an affirmative 
     duty to prevent crimes, to control their troops, to act 
     when a crime is discovered, and to punish those found 
     guilty of committing the actual crime--no matter how high 
     responsibility may reach in the chain of command.
       Thus, a Florida jury found these once powerful Salvadoran 
     generals responsible for gross human rights abuses. In an 
     historic and precedent-setting ruling, a jury of ordinary 
     people reaffirmed the doctrine of command responsibility in 
     an American court. Their verdict, covered in every major 
     newspaper and widely televised around the world, sent a 
     powerful signal. It warned murderers, torturers and dictators 
     to think twice before retiring to the United States. And it 
     demonstrated that, at our best, America's freedoms and the 
     energies of people like our lawyers, researchers, 
     translators--people just like you--can be harnessed to 
     transcend national borders and to hold even the most powerful 
     to account for their actions against the vulnerable.
       Which brings me back to the precipice where we left the 
     strange chicken.
       Our country is at the edge of a precipice. Regardless of 
     how the situation in Iraq finally plays itself out, we are in 
     the midst of one of the greatest and most intractable global 
     crises of modern times. 9/11 was an earthquake in the psyche 
     of America, and flying airplanes into buildings where people 
     work is a crime against humanity. But the behavior depicted 
     in the terrible photos of the hooded Iraqi led around on a 
     leash and the 37 homicides of prisoners in U.S. detention now 
     under investigation are also criminal acts. While the numbers 
     may not be the same and the circumstances are different, 
     U.S. law and international law are clear: both are crimes 
     against humanity.
       The simple truth, whether we like to hear it or not, is 
     that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of 
     the United States, from Afghanistan to Guantanamo to

[[Page E1142]]

     Iraq, have been torturing prisoners. They have done this with 
     the institutional approval of the U.S. government advised by 
     memoranda from the President's own counsel, with official 
     declarations aimed at side-stepping the historic safeguards 
     of the Geneva Conventions, and with actual written policies 
     permitting the use of ``moderate physical force'' (from Mark 
     Danner in his excellent articles on torture in the New York 
     Review of Books)--policies that violate rulings by our 
     courts, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-
     American Court, and the Supreme Court of Israel. By the 
     military's own calculation, an estimated 80 percent of 
     prisoners subjected to this treatment are innocent of any 
     wrongdoing.
       No amount of military power will make up for what we lose 
     if the world at large believes that, despite our years of 
     rhetorical support for rights and democracy, we are prepared 
     to compromise them the moment our own lives become 
     threatened. The dreadful story told by these photographs (and 
     we have not seen the worst of them) has done enormous damage 
     to our moral standing, our strategic power, and our spirit.
       Today much of the world believes that there is a difference 
     between what Americans claim to stand for and what we 
     actually do in the world. According to a 19 nation poll 
     released last week, a majority now thinks that the United 
     States is having a negative influence on the world; only 37 
     percent judge our country as having a ``positive influence.'' 
     Listen to the countries polled: Canada, Chile, China, France, 
     Germany, Great Britain, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, 
     Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay and 
     Italy--and yes, the United States itself. This is an 
     enormous change from the days after September 11 when a 
     French newspaper proclaimed: ``We are all Americans.''
       Today, we stand more alone in the world than we ever have.
       This decline in our reputation is a decline in our 
     security. We live ``unavoidably side by side, Kant said two 
     hundred years ago. But even this great philosopher could not 
     have imagined how enmeshed nations and peoples have become 
     today. Thus what happens in one part of the world--the 
     dramatic increase in poverty and inequality, the failure to 
     address the terrible consequences of global warming, the 
     catastrophe of AIDS, the nineteen civil wars currently 
     active, the persistence of oil-related crises mixed to 
     dangerous combustion with religious or ethnic conflict in 
     Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Chad and Indonesia--this will blow 
     back on us. Global problems, no matter how remote they 
     appear, will increasingly affect everything in our daily 
     lives--from the imperative transition from a fossil fuel 
     energy system (which will happen in our lifetime), to the air 
     we breathe, to the diseases we face, to the safety of the 
     cities we inhabit.
       These problems cannot be solved with military might alone. 
     They cannot be solved within our borders. And they cannot be 
     solved without friends.
       Thus we must address the damage that has been done in our 
     name--no matter how far up the chain of command this 
     requires. For our spirit and our security, we must 
     demonstrate that we are a nation of law, democracy, and 
     decency. We must show the world that we will apply, at the 
     very least, the same standards to our own leaders as we have 
     to Salvadoran generals.
       Which brings me to you--the ``strange birds'' of 2004.
       This is your precipice. What will you do about it? What 
     will you do to awaken in yourselves and others a new sense of 
     responsibility for our country and for this world? How will 
     you fight to make your leaders conduct themselves ``as if 
     they were going to live on this earth forever and be held 
     accountable for its condition?''
       The question is not whether you will be chickens or eagles. 
     You have no choice. You are living in the most powerful 
     country in the world. You are graduating from one of the best 
     universities in the world. Tomorrow you will hold a 
     certificate that does much to ensure your place among the 
     most fortunate of this world. But just as that Salvadoran 
     woman in El Mozote once put it to me, I shall put it to you: 
     You are eagles. The choice you face is whether you will dare 
     to fly.
       Survey data on your generation as a whole is not very 
     promising. It says that you are primarily interested in 
     acquisition, that you define yourself in terms of possessions 
     rather than ``goods of the soul.'' You are self-interested 
     and care little for developing a moral code, much less for 
     assuming some type of global political responsibility. You do 
     not want to be eagles at all, we are told, but rather 
     successful chickens in a very well ordered barnyard.
       At Stanford our experience is different. Here students work 
     on women's health in Afghanistan and Chiapas, democracy in 
     China and Kyrgyzstan, and war crimes in Rwanda and the Hague. 
     Students build schools in Central America, assist AIDS 
     orphans in South Africa, develop medicines for low income 
     countries, test development strategies, provide education 
     programs for inner-city kids, create a journal to promote 
     human rights, and volunteer in virtually every community 
     service organization imaginable. Yet some of these very same 
     students are reluctant to show that they are not simply hard-
     nosed realists or self-interested balancers of costs and 
     benefits. It is almost as if they hear whispering in their 
     ears the German poet Holderlin, who wrote around 1800 an 
     essay entitled Good Advice. Listen to his advice: ``If you 
     have brains and a heart, show only one or the other. You 
     will not get credit for either should you show both at 
     once.''
       This isn't good advice at all.
       Your university years have been defined by two distinct 
     crimes against humanity--September 11 and torture in Iraq. 
     Whatever their differences (and they are different), the 
     lesson from these two crimes is the same: our own security is 
     intimately bound up with our ability to use both our hearts 
     and our brains, to empathize as well as analyze. Crimes like 
     9/11 or the torture of Iraqi prisoners can only occur when 
     the victims are defined as something less than human; they 
     can only be portrayed as permissible when all lives are not 
     valued equally. Their prevention rests on our capacity to 
     affirm the principles of equal respect, and to expand, not 
     contract, human rights protections both at home and abroad.
       Being an eagle means becoming citizens who are not simply 
     Americans but who are citizens of this earth. It means 
     raising, not lowering, the bar.
       We are at a turning point. For all of you who feel 
     helpless, who despair, who are cynical and who do not feel 
     like eagles, remember this. ``There are only two kinds of 
     people who tell you that you cannot change the world: those 
     who are afraid to try themselves, and more importantly, those 
     who are afraid that you may succeed.''
       Instead, think of Margaret Mead's well-known phrase: 
     ``Never say that the actions of one, two or three ordinary 
     people cannot change the world. It is the only thing that 
     does.'' Think of Carlos Mauricio, who faced down an abuser. 
     Think of all those people who give a piece of themselves 
     every day, who speak out against the brutality they see, who 
     try to stop impoverishment and the despoiling of our 
     environment, and who understand that ultimately the world 
     cannot be peaceful if some have far too much and others far 
     too little.
       Take inspiration from these eagles.
       Shake yourselves, spread your wings and lift off. Whether 
     you run a business or a community organization, a clinic or a 
     school, assume responsibility for the long-range prospects of 
     our country and our troubled earth. Aim high for a world 
     without war and without genocide, a world of respect for all, 
     a world that is far greater than the one we are handing to 
     you. Because, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, ``The future belongs 
     to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.''
       Congratulations, and may you fly!

                          ____________________