[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 23]
[House]
[Page 31360]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          IN PURSUIT OF PEACE

  (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. KUCINICH. Madam Speaker, yesterday our President mused about the 
inevitability built of war, war's instrumentality in the pursuit of 
peace, and just wars.
  It is important for us to reflect on his words, because once we 
believe in the inevitability of war, war becomes a self-fulfilling 
prophecy. Once we are committed to war's instrumentality in pursuit of 
peace, we begin the Orwellian journey to the semantic netherworld where 
war is peace, where the momentum of war overwhelms hopes for peace.
  And once we wrap doctrines perpetuating war in the arms of justice, 
we can easily legitimate the wholesale slaughter of innocents. The war 
against Iraq was based on lies, the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan 
based on flawed doctrines of counterinsurgency. War is often not just; 
sometimes it is just war. And our ability to rethink the terms of our 
existence, to explore the possibility of peace without war, may well 
determine whether we end war or war ends us.

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