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Edited on Fri Jun-18-04 04:19 PM by bigtree
I have appealed since the beginning of the war for our country to end its illegal and immoral occupation. I pray for all of our souls, that we will learn to value peaceful acts of mercy and tolerance, and reject violent postures and acts which just invite more violence.
"We have our best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the 17th century to build a world where the great powers compete in peace instead of prepare for war," Bush said after 9-11. "The United States bears a disproportionate responsibility for security." His position was in sharp contrast to candidate Bush, who had complained for months about former president Clinton's "nation-building." There are many reasons why Bush's strategy of preemption is misguided and wrong. It is a licence to release the aggressor nation from their responsibility to pursue - to the rejection of their last reasonable admonition - a peaceful resolution to any perceived threat. And, with a deft flex of military and political muscle the presumption of innocence, even in the face of a clear absence of proof, is a conquered victim of the tainted consensus of a cabal of purchased adversaries; " either with us or against us." Lincoln once remarked: "A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!" Preemption is a corrosive example for those countries who may feel threatened enough by their neighbors to move to resolve their fears militarily instead of engaging in the long-established enterprise of diplomacy and negotiation. Indeed, the appointment of Colin Powell as Secretary of State, our nation's top diplomat - the general who's army's killing of Iraqi innocents is rivaled in this century only by the enemy he sought to capture - is a discouraging message for those in the region who had hoped the hunger to divide the region militarily had waned with the end of the first war. A common mantra coming out of the White House these days was echoed by Vice President Cheney in a speech this October before the Heritage Foundation: "We are fighting this evil in Iraq so that we do not have to fight it in our own cities," he counseled. This is a dangerous misconception which only serves the narrow administration view that Saddam Hussein was a potential orchestrator of a worldwide Muslim terror offensive against the U.S. and its allies. A great deal of the information which the White House used to support the link to the 9-11 terrorists was the product of mis-information provided by the very dissident groups which we were funding here in the United States. The rest of the intelligence, as we have discovered in the aftermath of the invasion, was cobbled together from conflicting sources within the government to reflect the administration's assertions that Saddam posed an immediate threat to the U.S.. Whatever proliferation of weapons that may have occurred in Iraq would have been exacerbated by our invasion, as any WMD's that might have existed would, by now, have been dispersed, perhaps to Syria or Iran. What is the value in using Iraq as a terror magnet? It has resulted in daily attacks on our soldiers by an Iraqi resistance - possibly aided by some outside terror network; likely no more than remnants of the Republican Guard or the like. What is it about our operation in Iraq that would support the argument that we won't have to fight them (terrorists) on our shores? Most observers predict another devastating attack in the U.S. is inevitable if not imminent. Further, by likening Iraq to the worldwide Muslim terror offensive the president does what Hussein could not; he binds Iraqis to the Muslim extremists. He practically invites them to join the battle there and ally with the forces that threaten our soldiers daily. This will not create a democratic wedge against Muslim extremism in the region. Democracy cannot be imposed. If they don't understand that, they don't understand democracy. Sadly, American soldiers serve as targets in Iraq, and their lives are no less important than ours here in the states. Inviting attacks on Americans overseas is an amazing retreat from the peaceful influence of a great nation of justice; humbled by bloody, devastating wars; and witnessed to the power of liberty, and to the freedom inherent in the constitution we wisely defend with our peaceful acts of mercy, charity, and tolerance. "Peace," Herman Wouk wrote, "if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act but the coming of a state of mind." All else that we pursue should be a means to that peace; and a wholesale rejection of violent postures which just invite more violence. "There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is 'bring them on'," Bush spoke to reporters in the White House Roosevelt Room in July. How then should the American people judge the alarm and outrage that subsequent administrations have expressed about Saddam's murderous aggression against others outside of Iran that he considered a threat to his regime; Or against those who we would regard as enemies of the United States? Is it moral to support another country's genocide of a people that our own leaders would, if given free reign, commit to slaughter at the whim of their supposedly clean hands, in the name of liberation and justice? Is it moral for the U.S. to commit slaughter by proxy, and then condemn our accomplices as incarnations of intolerable evil? Does morality manifest itself in our ambitions or in our actions? This nation will have to make that determination with their votes and with their participation in our political system, in matters that relate to the conduct of America's foreign affairs, by involving themselves in deliberations that intend to determine which course will make our nation most secure; to decide: Whether it is best to arm ourselves, and the world to follow, with the hollow reasoning of keeping up with perceived threats to our ‘security’; or is it more reasonable and more practical to reach out to the world diplomatically, to lessen the animosity toward America that our military interventions have engendered. Our aggression resigns the nation to a perpetual global threat against the United States and our interests. Diplomacy provides hope that the killing among all countries would end, by the force of our collective resolve; not at the point of a weapon.
That is where I stand in regard to our illegal and immoral invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. That is consistent with my condemnation of the senseless killing of Paul Johnson.
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