[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5364-5365]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             PLEA FOR PEACE

  Mr. LEWIS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to plead for peace. 
Every day our great Nation moves ever closer to war with Iraq. I know 
many Americans believe war is unavoidable. I hope and pray that they 
are wrong.
  It is not an easy thing to disagree with the administration at a time 
when hundreds of thousands of our brave men and women are poised in the 
Persian Gulf. I want to make it clear that I will support our troops 
regardless of what happens, but I cannot, in good conscience, betray 
the nonviolent principles on which I have worked my whole life. I 
cannot sit silent when I believe there is still time to use diplomacy 
and let the inspectors do their job.

                              {time}  1345

  While I believe that the hour is late, it is not too late to stop the 
rush to war. It is not too late to embrace peace. War with Iraq will 
not bring peace to the Middle East. It will not make the world a safer 
or better or more loving place. It will not end the strife and hatred 
that breed terror.
  War does not end strife. It sows it. War does not end hatred. It 
feeds it. War is bloody. It is vicious, it is evil, and it is messy. 
War destroys the dreams, the hopes, and aspirations of people. I 
believe, Mr. Speaker, that war is obsolete.
  As a great Nation and a blessed people, we must heed the words of the 
spiritual: ``I am going to lay my burden down, down by the riverside. I 
ain't gonna study war no more.'' For those who argue that war is a 
necessary evil, I say you are half right. War is evil. But it is not 
necessary. War cannot be a necessary evil, because nonviolence is a 
necessary good. The two cannot coexist. As Americans, as human beings, 
as citizens of the world, as moral actors, we must embrace the good and 
reject the evil. To quote Ghandi: ``The choice is nonviolence or 
nonexistence.''
  America's strength is not in its military might, but in our ideas. 
American ingenuity, freedom, and democracy have conquered the world. It 
is a battle we did not win with guns or tanks or missiles but with 
ideas, principles, and justice. We must choose our resources, Mr. 
Speaker, not to make bombs and guns but to solve the problems that 
affect all humankind. We must feed the stomach, clothe naked bodies, 
educate and stimulate the mind. We must use our resources to build and 
not to tear down, to reconcile and not to divide, to love and not to 
hate, to heal and not to kill. Let us, in Reverend Dr. Martin Luther 
King Jr.'s words, ``take offensive action in behalf of justice to 
remove the conditions which breed resentment, terror and violence 
against our great Nation.'' That is a direction in which a great Nation 
and a proud people should move.
  War is easy; but peace, peace is hard. When we hurt, when we fear, 
when we feel vulnerable or hopeless, it is easy to listen to what is 
most base within us. It is easy to divide the world into us and them, 
to fear them, to hate them, to fight them, to kill them. War is easy.

[[Page 5365]]

  But peace is hard. Peace is right, it is just, and it is true. But it 
is not easy to love thy enemy. No, peace is hard. As my friend and 
mentor, Dr. King, said when he spoke about the Vietnam War: ``War is 
not the answer. Let us not join those who shout war. These are days 
which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness.'' He was right 
then and the wisdom of those words holds true today. War was not the 
answer then, and it is not the answer today. War is never the answer. 
It is not too late to stop our rush to war. Let us give peace a chance.

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