[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20369-20371]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                QUESTIONS RAISED OUT OF LOVE FOR NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rogers of Michigan). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, there is a saying that we must be careful 
what we ask for because we might get it. Today we have given the 
President what he asked for; and if he gets the same from the Senate, I 
think it is important as we leave to remind him of the weight of the 
power that we have given him, that is, to commit this country to war.
  As I listened to the debate today, I thought of a story I read in the 
notes of the Bishops Retreat at Blackstone, Virginia, on October 1. The 
priest, Christopher Morris, tells this story. He told about a general 
who lived in his parish, and he said, ``Nearly half of my congregation 
was made up of military families; so any opposition to the war in 
Vietnam seemed to be attacking those who had to fight it. When a series 
of Sunday evening sessions addressing this issue were announced, some 
of the service people in the congregation protested. We had arranged 
for members of the American field service to come and make the case 
against the war and a representative from the Pentagon to come and give 
the government's case for the war. But some felt this was unpatriotic 
and undermining our troops who were being sent into combat.''
  The general and his wife attended our church, she being more active 
than he. He was the comptroller of the Army stationed at nearby Fort 
Monroe. I called and asked if I could go and see him and was invited to 
their house late one evening. The three of us sat together in the 
living room. He was a general who was loyal to the defense of his 
country and its government's policy. Somewhat to my surprise, he said 
to me, ``Everyone knows there is a division of opinion in this country 
and the church should not avoid the issue. If you're going to present 
the sides fairly, I think you should go ahead.''
  Two years later when I had left Hampton and been appointed to do 
graduate study at Union Seminary, a call came to New York asking me if 
I would come down to Arlington Cemetery for the burial of the general's 
18-year-old son. On behalf of a grateful Nation, the chaplain said, 
presenting the flag to his wife. ``Don't speak to me of a grateful 
Nation,'' she replied. ``This is not a grateful Nation. It is a 
confused Nation. My son loved nature and liked to climb mountains, and 
now he is dead in a war he never believed in and neither did I.'' I 
have never seen more agony in a person's face than I saw in the face of 
the general.
  I hope the President will understand that we are divided here. We 
were not all on one side. And those of us who voted against are as 
patriotic as those who voted for. The questions we raise are because we 
love our country, and I think that as we enter this period it is very 
important not to brand one side or the other as unpatriotic.
  Mr. Speaker, I add to the Record an article entitled ``Am I anti-
American?'' by Arundhati Roy in the Guardian, September 27, 2002. She 
lays out the case for why we have the strength and the ability to raise 
questions about our democracy. It is important and it should not be 
considered un-American for anyone to raise these issues.

                  [From the Guardian, Sept. 27, 2002]

                          Am I Anti-American?

                           (By Arundhati Roy)

       Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the US 
     government myself included have been called ``anti-
     American''. Anti-Americanism is in the process of being 
     consecrated into an ideology. The term is usually used by the 
     American establishment to discredit and, not falsely--but 
     shall we say inaccurately--define its critics. Once someone 
     is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will 
     be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost 
     in the welter of bruised national pride. What does the term 
     mean? That you're anti-jazz?
       Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't 
     delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike?
       That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean 
     you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American 
     citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the 
     thousands of war resisters who forced their government to 
     withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all 
     Americans?
       This sly conflation of America's music, literature, the 
     breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary 
     pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the US 
     government's foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely 
     effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover 
     in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of 
     hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.
       There are many Americans who would be mortified to be 
     associated with their government's policies. the most 
     scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the 
     hypocrisy and the contradictions in US government policy come 
     from American citizens. (Similarly, in India, not hundreds, 
     but millions of us would be ashamed and offended, if we were 
     in any way implicated with the present Indian government's 
     fascist policies.)
       To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, 
     is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An 
     inability to see the world in terms other than those that the 
     establishment has set out for you: If you don't love us, you 
     hate us. If you're not good, you're evil. If you're not with 
     us, you're with the terrorists.
       Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of 
     scoffing at this post-September 11 rhetoric, dismissing it as 
     foolish and arrogant. I've realized that it's not. It's 
     actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, 
     dangerous war. Every day I'm taken aback at how many people 
     believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to 
     supporting terrorism. Now that the initial aim of the war--
     capturing Osama bin Laden seems to have run into bad weather, 
     the goalposts have been moved. It's being made out that the 
     whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and 
     liberate Afghan women from their burqas. We're being asked to 
     believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist 
     mission. (If so, will their next stop be America's military 
     ally, Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this way: in India there are 
     some pretty reprehensible social practices, against 
     ``untouchables'', against Christians and Muslims, against 
     women. Should they be bombed?
       Uppermost on everybody's mind, of course, particularly here 
     in America, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/
     11. Nearly 3,000 civilians lost their lives in that lethal 
     terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still 
     sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is 
     raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a 
     loved one surely knows that no war, no act of revenge, will 
     blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones 
     back. War cannot avenge those who have died.

[[Page 20370]]

       War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.
       To fuel yet another war--this time against Iraq--by 
     manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials 
     sponsored by corporations selling detergent or running shoes, 
     is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. We 
     are seeing a pillaging of even the most private human 
     feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent 
     thing for a state to do to its people.
       The US government says that Saddam Hussein is a war 
     criminal, a cruel military despot who has committed genocide 
     against his own people. That's a fairly accurate description 
     of the man. In 1988, he razed hundreds of villages in 
     northern Iraq and killed thousands of Kurds. Today, we know 
     that that same year the US government provided him with $500m 
     in subsidies to buy American farm products. The next year, 
     after he had successfully completed his genocidal campaign, 
     the US government doubled its subsidy to $1bn. It also 
     provided him with high-quality germ seed for anthrax, as well 
     as helicopters and dual-use material that could be used to 
     manufacture chemical and biological weapons. It turns out 
     that while Saddam was carrying out his worst atrocities, the 
     US and UK governments were his close allies. So what changed?
       In August 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so 
     much that he had committed an act of war, but that he acted 
     independently, without orders from his masters. This display 
     of independence was enough to upset the power equation in the 
     Gulf. so it was decided that Saddam be exterminated, like a 
     pet that has outlived its owner's affection.
       A decade of bombing has not managed to dislodge him. Now, 
     almost 12 years on, Bush Jr is ratcheting up the rhetoric 
     once again. He's proposing an all-out war whose goal is 
     nothing short of a regime change. Andrew H. Card, Jr., the 
     White House chief-of-staff, described how the administration 
     was stepping up its war plans for autumn: ``From a marketing 
     point of view,'' he said, ``you don't introduce new products 
     in August.'' This time the catchphrase for Washington's ``new 
     product'' is not the plight of people in Kuwait but the 
     assertion that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Forget 
     ``the feckless moralizing of the `peace' lobbies,'' wrote 
     Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board. The US 
     will ``act alone if necessary'' and use a ``pre-emptive 
     strike'' if it determines it is in US interests.
       Weapons inspectors have conflicting reports about the 
     status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and many have 
     said clearly that its arsenal has been dismantled and that it 
     does not have the capacity to build one. What if Iraq does 
     have a nuclear weapon? Does that justify a pre-emptive US 
     strike? The US has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in 
     the world. It's the only country in the world to have 
     actually used them on civilian populations. If the US is 
     justified in launching a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, why, any 
     nuclear power is justified in carrying out a pre-emptive 
     attack on any other. India could attack Pakistan, or the 
     other way around.
       Recently, the US played an important part in forcing India 
     and Pakistan back from the brink of war. Is it so hard for it 
     to take its own advice? Who is guilty of feckless moralizing? 
     Of preaching peace while it wages war? The U.S., which Bush 
     has called ``the most peaceful nation on earth'', has been at 
     war with one country or another every year for the last 50 
     years.
       Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're 
     usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then, of 
     course, there's the business of war. In his book on 
     globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Tom Friedman 
     says: ``The hidden hand of the market will never work without 
     a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell 
     Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for 
     Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. 
     Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.'' Perhaps this was 
     written in a moment of vulnerability, but it's certainly the 
     most succinct, accurate description of the project of 
     corporate globalization that I have read.
       After September 11 and the war against terror, the hidden 
     hand and fist have had their cover blown--and we have a clear 
     view now of America's other weapon--the free market--bearing 
     down on the developing world, with a clenched, unsmiling 
     smile. The Task That Never Ends is America's perfect war, the 
     perfect vehicle for the endless expansion of American 
     imperialism.
       In Urdu, the word for profit is fayda. Al-qaida means the 
     word, the word of God, the law. So, in India, some of us call 
     the War Against Terror, Al-qaida vs Al-fayda--The Word vs The 
     Profit (no pun intended). For the moment it looks as though 
     Al-fayda will carry the day. But then you never know . . .
       In the past 10 years, the world's total income has 
     increased by an average of 2.5% a year. And yet the numbers 
     of the poor in the world has increased by 100 million. Of the 
     top 100 biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not 
     countries. The top 1% of the world has the same combined 
     income as the bottom 57%, and the disparity is growing. Now, 
     under the spreading canopy of the war against terror, this 
     process is being hustled along. The men in suits are in an 
     unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down contracts are being 
     signed, patents registered, oil pipelines laid, natural 
     resources plundered, water privatized and democracies 
     undermined.
       But as the disparity between the rich and poor grows, the 
     hidden fist of the free market has its work cut out. 
     Multinational corporations on the prowl for ``sweetheart 
     deals'' that yield enormous profits cannot push them through 
     in developing countries without the active connivance of 
     state machinery--the police, the courts, sometimes even the 
     army. Today, corporate globalization needs an international 
     confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian 
     governments in poorer countries, to push through unpopular 
     reforms and quell the mutinies. It needs a press that 
     pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense 
     justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies, sterner 
     immigration laws, and watchful coastal patrols to make sure 
     that it's only money, goods, patents and services that are 
     globalized--not the free movement of people, not a respect 
     for human rights, not international treaties on racial 
     discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons, or greenhouse 
     gas emissions, climate change, or, God forbid, justice. It's 
     as though even a gesture towards international accountability 
     would wreck the whole enterprise.
       Close to one year after the war against terror was 
     officially flagged off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in 
     country after country freedoms are being curtailed in the 
     name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being 
     suspended in the name of protecting democracy. All kinds of 
     dissent is being defined as ``terrorism''. Donald Rumsfeld 
     said that his mission in the war against terror was to 
     persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue 
     their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, 
     slaves tremble in their quarters. So, it's hard for me to say 
     this, but the American way of life is simply not sustainable. 
     Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond 
     America.
       Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, 
     maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, 
     overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though 
     structural cracks have already appeared. As the war against 
     terror casts its net wider and wider, America's corporate 
     heart is hemorrhaging. A world run by a handful of greedy 
     bankers and CEOs whom nobody elected can't possibly last.
       Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was 
     intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too 
     few people to usurp too much power: 21st-century market-
     capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons.
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, Oct. 10, 2002]

                  Congress Must Resist the Rush to War

                          (By Robert C. Byrd)

       Washington.--A sudden appetite for war with Iraq seems to 
     have consumed the Bush administration and Congress. The 
     debate that began in the Senate last week is centered not on 
     the fundamental and monumental questions of whether and why 
     the United States should go to war with Iraq, but rather on 
     the mechanics of how best to wordsmith the president's use-
     of-force resolution in order to give him virtually unchecked 
     authority to commit the nation's military to an unprovoked 
     attack on a sovereign nation.
       How have we gotten to this low point in the history of 
     Congress? Are we too feeble to resist the demands of a 
     president who is determined to bend the collective will of 
     Congress to his will--a president who is changing the 
     conventional understanding of the term ``self-defense''? And 
     why are we allowing the executive to rush our decision-making 
     right before an election? Congress, under pressure from the 
     executive branch, should not hand away its Constitutional 
     powers. We should not hamstring future Congresses by casting 
     such a shortsighted vote. We owe our country a due 
     deliberation.
       I have listened closely to the president. I have questioned 
     the members of his war cabinet. I have searched for that 
     single piece of evidence that would convince me that the 
     president must have in his hands, before the month is out, 
     open-ended Congressional authorization to deliver an 
     unprovoked attack on Iraq. I remain unconvinced. The 
     president's case for an unprovoked attack is circumstantial 
     at best. Saddam Hussein is a threat, but the threat is not so 
     great that we must be stamped to provide such authority to 
     this president just weeks before an election.
       Why are we being hounded into action on a resolution that 
     turns over to President Bush the Congress's Constitutional 
     power to declare war? This resolution would authorize the 
     president to use military forces of this nation wherever, 
     whenever and however he determines, and for as long as he 
     determines, if he can somehow make a connection to Iraq. It 
     is a blank check for the president to take whatever action he 
     feels ``is necessary and appropriate in order to defend the 
     national security of the United States against the continuing 
     threat posed by Iraq.'' This broad resolution underwrites, 
     promotes and endorses the unprecedented Bush doctrine of

[[Page 20371]]

     preventive war and pre-emptive strikes--detailed in a recent 
     publication, ``National Security Strategy of the United 
     States''--against any nation that the president, and the 
     president alone, determines to be a threat.
       We are at the gravest of moments. Members of Congress must 
     not simply walk away from their Constitutional 
     responsibilities. We are the directly elected representatives 
     of the American people, and the American people expect us to 
     carry out our duty, not simply hand it off to this or any 
     other president. To do so would be to fail the people we 
     represent and to fall woefully short of our sworn oath to 
     support and defend the Constitution.
       We may not always be able to avoid war, particularly if it 
     is thrust upon us, but Congress must not attempt to give away 
     the authority to determine when war is to be declared. We 
     must not allow any president to unleash the dogs of war at 
     his own discretion and for an unlimited period of time.
       Yet that is what we are being asked to do. The judgment of 
     history will not be kind to us if we take this step.
       Members of Congress should take time out and go home to 
     listen to their constituents. We must not yield to this 
     absurd pressure to act now, 27 days before an election that 
     will determine the entire membership of the House of 
     Representatives and that of a third of the Senate. Congress 
     should take the time to hear from the American people, to 
     answer their remaining questions and to put the frenzy of 
     ballot-box politics behind us before we vote. We should hear 
     them well, because while it is Congress that casts the vote, 
     it is the American people who will pay for a war with the 
     lives of their sons and daughters.

     

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