Neither Congress Nor The President Has It RIGHT!
Address by Brian Terrell – Director of the Catholic Peace Ministry
2 May 2007 – Des Moines, IA
Since before the war in Iraq entered its current deadly phase with shock and awe four years ago, members of Iowa’s peace community have gathered many times in protest here in this plaza. We have been unequivocal in our condemnation of this crime and in demanding an end to it. “Not one more day, not one more dollar” has been the call under which we have gathered, often going from here to the federal building to call on our members of congress to stop funding the war.
After a Democratic congress was swept into office on a wave of antiwar sentiment in last November’s elections, it was recognized that there was a strong popular mandate to end the war and it was hoped that this new congress would do what it could to bring our troops home by cutting the war’s funding.
On February 5, Voices for Creative Nonviolence in Chicago launched the Occupation Project, a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience to end the Iraq war. Since then more than 300 activists around the nation have been arrested occupying the offices of members of congress until they pledge not to vote for any more war funding. Several of us here this evening are awaiting trial or sentencing and more occupations are being planned.
Any expectations that the new congress might listen to the will of the people and vote to end the war were wholly betrayed when it passed the so called “war accountability act,” a supplemental spending bill approving more that $100 billion to continue the war. This bill that President Bush vetoed yesterday had only nonbinding suggestions that some troops might be redeployed and even at that, would have left more than 40,000 troops in Iraq along with more than 120,000 contracted mercenaries.
The Democrats also want troop redeployments to be tied to “benchmarks” that the Iraqi government should be required to reach. Speaking of a country that the United States had subjected to two wars and thirteen years of the most brutal sanctions in history followed by four years of cruel, arbitrary and chaotic occupation, whose people have been subjected to torture and murder and whose resources from its art to its oil have been plundered, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin said, “We have given to the Iraqi people more than any other nation could ask for. We stood behind them, we have deposed their dictator, we have given them free governance and a chance at a constitution and free elections. Now,” says Mr. Durbin, “it is time for us to make it clear to the Iraqis that it is their country, it is their war and it is their future!” What the senator means is that it is up to the weak colonial puppet government that the United States imposed on the people of Iraq to quell the sectarian violence that our occupation has inflamed and to crush any opposition to American control over Iraq.
Another benchmark dictated to the Iraqi government is that it be required to pass the proposed Petroleum Law, which creates a Federal Oil and Gas Council on which would sit representatives of Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP, etc., whose tasks include approving their own contracts. Instead of Iraqi central government decision-making on oil, the proposal authorizes regional authorities to individually sign contracts with foreign companies, promoting contract bidding wars between regions that could lead to breaking Iraq into three states.
And get this: the reward for meeting the benchmarks is that the troops stay in Iraq! If the Iraqi government rises to Mr. Durbin’s challenge to rob and tyrannize their own nation, the redeployment won’t happen. Either way, the occupation that Iraqis hate and chafe under remains.
It is widely recognized that the war in Iraq was not a defensive war. Call it a preemptive war or call it a war of choice, call it a war of aggression. A war of aggression is a war crime by any standard of international law. Preemptive war is a sin by any religious or ethical “just war” standard. “We should never have gone to war,” many liberals say, “but now that we are at war, it is essential that we win.” I beg to differ. What is essential for Iraq, for the United States and for the peace of the world is for the United States to lose this war. Aggression and plunder must not be rewarded. The war is ruining the reputation, trust and standing of the United States in the international community, putting our homeland in peril. ‘Winning” the war, as if anyone can ‘win” a massacre, will not improve our security. Even though I left his office in chains and with a police escort after an “occupation” there in February, Senator Grassley had the good manners to write me a letter thanking me for expressing my opinions on Iraq. His support of the war, he wrote, is based not only on the events of September 11, 2001, but even more weirdly, the events of December 7, 1941! Two dates he says that are “forever engraved in my mind.” March 19, 2003, when shock and awe rained down on Baghdad, is another day of infamy that needs to be engraved in the mind of every American.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was widely condemned recently for having the courage to say the obvious, that the war is already lost. Harry Reid says that the war is lost but then he votes to pay for it to continue for at least another year! It is the height of criminality, irresponsibility if not insanity to send our soldiers off to fight a war that one knows is already lost. No, when a war is lost, a country sends its soldiers home. It pays reparations to its victims. A country that loses a war does not dictate terms to the country it had illegally and unjustly attacked. What reparations can we make to the Iraqis, commensurate to what we have inflicted, what reparations can we pay to the soldiers and their families whose generosity and courage have been so grossly abused?
This evening there is another rally, called by MoveOn.Org, over at the library, to protest not congress’s bad bill but President Bush for vetoing it. We tried to negotiate a way we could rally and protest the war together but our differences made this impossible. Many of us agree with Dennis Kucinich, that no one can support this bill and be against the war. Despite his intentions, Bush has done the right thing by stopping congress for funding the war. Letting the veto stand would effectively end the war. The Democrats promise that they will not let that happen, that they will find some way to compromise with Bush to continue the slaughter. It has been too facile, too easy, maybe even too fun to call this Bush’s war or Cheney’s war. If congress is successful in forging that compromise, the war will no longer be Bush’s and Cheney’s war alone. It will be Obama’s, war, Clinton’s war, Pelosi’s war, Harkin’s war, Boswell’s war. We will remember this come the Iowa caucus this winter.
“Half a loaf is better than none,” said a representative of MoveOn.Org defending congress’s bill. Half a loaf! Jesus said, “What parent, if a hungry child were to ask for a loaf of bread, would give that child a stone?” If with the “war accountability act” the Democrats were offering the children of Iraq a half of a loaf of bread I would howl at their cold stinginess but would acknowledge with MoveOn.Org that half a loaf is better than nothing to a starving child. But the “war accountability act” is not half a loaf, not even a stone. It is a cluster bomb offered to that hungry child, it is an insult to humanity and to God that we will not tolerate!
Brian Terrell
Catholic Peace Ministry
4211 Grand Avenue
Des Moines, IA 50312