For complete statement click here.
Download flyer: "Barbara Lee Speaks for Me and Millions More (93 KB PDF file - requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

On Friday evening, September 14, the House of Representatives approved an "Authorization for Use of Military Force," S. J. Res. 23, by a vote of 420-1. One courageous Congresswomen, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-9) voted against the resolution. Her statement follows:

Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today really with a very heavy heart, one that is filled with sorrow for the families and the loved ones who were killed and injured this week. Only the most foolish and the most callous would not understand the grief that has really gripped our people and millions across the world.

This unspeakable act on the United States has forced me, however, to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction. September 11 changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. This is a very complex and complicated matter.

This resolution will pass, although we all know that the President can wage a war even without it. However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let us step back for a moment. Let us just pause for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.

I have agonized over this vote, but I came to grips with it today and I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, ``As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.''

We strongly urge organizations and individuals to write Rep. Barbara Lee with letters of support for her courageous stand.

Rep. Barbara Lee 426 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515

or:

Rep. Barbara Lee 1301 Clay Street, Suite 1000N Oakland, CA 94612

email: Barbara.Lee@mail.house.gov

Not in Our Son's Name
Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez

Our son Greg is among the many missing from the World Trade Center attack. Since we first heard the news, we have shared moments of grief, comfort, hope, despair, fond memories with his wife, the two families, our friends and neighbors, his loving colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald / ESpeed, and all the grieving families that daily meet at the Pierre Hotel.

We see our hurt and anger reflected among everybody we meet. We cannot pay attention to the daily flow of news about this disaster. But we read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us. It is not the way to go. It will not avenge our son's death. Not in our son's name.

Our son died a victim of an inhuman ideology. Our actions should not serve the same purpose. Let us grieve. Let us reflect and pray. Let us think about a rational response that brings real peace and justice to our world. But let us not as a nation add to the inhumanity of our times.

______________________________________________________
Copy of letter to White House:

Dear President Bush:

Our son is one of the victims of Tuesday's attack on the World Trade Center. We read about your response in the last few days and about the resolutions from both Houses, giving you undefined power to respond to the terror attacks.

Your response to this attach does not make us feel better about our son's death. It makes us feel worse. It makes us feel that our government is using our son's memory as a justification to cause suffering for other sons and parents in other lands.

It is not the first time that a person in your position has been given unlimited power and came to regret it. This is not the time for empty gestures to make us feel better. It is not the time to act like bullies. We urge you to think about how our governement can develop peaceful, rational solutions to terrorism, solutions that do not sink us to the inhuman level of terrorists.

Sincerely,
Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez

And our flag was still there
By Barbara Kingsolver
San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 25, 2001

My daughter came home from kindergarten and announced, "Tomorrow we all have to wear red, white and blue."

"Why?" I asked, trying not to sound wary.

"For all the people that died when the airplanes hit the buildings."

I fear the sound of saber-rattling, dread that not just my taxes but even my children are being dragged to the cause of death in the wake of death. I asked quietly, "Why not wear black, then? Why the colors of the flag, what does that mean?"

"It means we're a country. Just all people together."

So we sent her to school in red, white and blue, because it felt to her like something she could do to help people who are hurting. And because my wise husband put a hand on my arm and said, "You can't let hateful people steal the flag from us."

He didn't mean terrorists, he meant Americans. Like the man in a city near us who went on a rampage crying "I'm an American" as he shot at foreign-born neighbors, killing a gentle Sikh man in a turban and terrifying every brown- skinned person I know. Or the talk-radio hosts, who are viciously bullying a handful of members of Congress for airing sensible skepticism at a time when the White House was announcing preposterous things in apparent self-interest, such as the "revelation" that terrorists had aimed to hunt down Air Force One with a hijacked commercial plane. Rep. Barbara Lee cast the House's only vote against handing over virtually unlimited war powers to one man that a whole lot of us didn't vote for. As a consequence, so many red-blooded Americans have now threatened to kill her, she has to have additional bodyguards.

Patriotism seems to be falling to whoever claims it loudest, and we're left struggling to find a definition in a clamor of reaction. This is what I'm hearing: Patriotism opposes the lone representative of democracy who was brave enough to vote her conscience instead of following an angry mob. (Several others have confessed they wanted to vote the same way, but chickened out.) Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth who've spent years learning our culture and contributing their talents to our economy. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder? Who are we calling terrorists here? Outsiders can destroy airplanes and buildings, but it is only we, the people, who have the power to demolish our own ideals.

It's a fact of our culture that the loudest mouths get the most airplay, and the loudmouths are saying now that in times of crisis it is treasonous to question our leaders. Nonsense. That kind of thinking let fascism grow out of the international depression of the 1930s. In critical times, our leaders need most to be influenced by the moderating force of dissent. That is the basis of democracy, in sickness and in health, and especially when national choices are difficult, and bear grave consequences.

It occurs to me that my patriotic duty is to recapture my flag from the men now waving it in the name of jingoism and censorship. This isn't easy for me.

The last time I looked at a flag with unambiguous pride, I was 13. Right after that, Vietnam began teaching me lessons in ambiguity, and the lessons have kept coming. I've learned of things my government has done to the world that made me direly ashamed. I've been further alienated from my flag by people who waved it at me declaring I should love it or leave it. I search my soul and find I cannot love killing for any reason. When I look at the flag, I see it illuminated by the rocket's red glare.

This is why the warmongers so easily gain the upper hand in the patriot game: Our nation was established with a fight for independence, so our iconography grew out of war. Our national anthem celebrates it; our language of patriotism is inseparable from a battle cry. Our every military campaign is still launched with phrases about men dying for the freedoms we hold dear, even when this is impossible to square with reality. In the Persian Gulf War we rushed to the aid of Kuwait, a monarchy in which women enjoyed approximately the same rights as a 19th century American slave. The values we fought for and won there are best understood, I think, by oil companies. Meanwhile, a country of civilians was devastated, and remains destroyed.

Stating these realities does not violate the principles of liberty, equality, and freedom of speech; it exercises them, and by exercise we grow stronger. I would like to stand up for my flag and wave it over a few things I believe in, including but not limited to the protection of dissenting points of view. After 225 years, I vote to retire the rocket's red glare and the bullet wound as obsolete symbols of Old Glory. We desperately need a new iconography of patriotism. I propose we rip stripes of cloth from the uniforms of public servants who rescued the injured and panic-stricken, remaining at their post until it fell down on them. The red glare of candles held in vigils everywhere as peace-loving people pray for the bereaved, and plead for compassion and restraint. The blood donated to the Red Cross. The stars of film and theater and music who are using their influence to raise money for recovery. The small hands of schoolchildren collecting pennies, toothpaste, teddy bears, anything they think might help the kids who've lost their moms and dads.

My town, Tucson, Ariz., has become famous for a simple gesture in which some 8,000 people wearing red, white or blue T-shirts assembled themselves in the shape of a flag on a baseball field and had their photograph taken from above. That picture has begun to turn up everywhere, but we saw it first on our newspaper's front page. Our family stood in silence for a minute looking at that photo of a human flag, trying to know what to make of it. Then my teenage daughter, who has a quick mind for numbers and a sensitive heart, did an interesting thing. She laid her hand over a quarter of the picture, leaving visible more or less 6,000 people, and said, "That many are dead." We stared at what that looked like -- all those innocent souls, multi-colored and packed into a conjoined destiny -- and shuddered at the one simple truth behind all the noise, which is that so many beloved people have suddenly gone from us. That is my flag, and that's what it means: We're all just people together.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine books including "The Poisonwood Bible," (Harperflamingo, 1999).

A Pure, High Note of Anguish
By Barbara Kingsolver
Los Angeles Times, Sept. 23, 2001

I want to do something to help right now. But I can't give blood (my hematocrit always runs too low), and I'm too far way to give anybody shelter or a drink of water. I can only give words. My verbal hemoglobin never seems to wane, so words are what I'll offer up in this time that asks of us the best citizenship we've ever mustered. I don't mean to say I have a cure. Answers to the main questions of the day--Where was that fourth plane headed? How did they get knives through security?--I don't know any of that. I have some answers,but only to the questions nobody is asking right now but my 5-year old.

Why did all those people die when they didn't do anything wrong? Will it happen to me? Is this the worst thing that's ever happened? Who were those children cheering that they showed for just a minute, and why were they glad? Please, will this ever, ever happen to me?

There are so many answers, and none: It is desperately painful to see people die without having done anything to deserve it, and yet this is how lives end nearly always. We get old or we don't, we get cancer, we starve, we are battered, we get on a plane thinking we're going home but never make it. There are blessings and wonders and horrific bad luck and no guarantees. We like to pretend life is different from that, more like a game we can actually win with the right strategy, but it isn't. And, yes, it's the worst thing that's happened, but only this week. Two years ago, an earthquake in Turkey killed 17,000 people in a day, babies and mothers and businessmen, and not one of them did a thing to cause it. The November before that, a hurricane hit Honduras and Nicaragua and killed even more, buried whole villages and erased family lines and even now, people wake up there empty-handed. Which end of the world shall we talk about? Sixty years ago,Japanese airplanes bombed Navy boys who were sleeping on ships in gentle Pacific waters. Three and a half years later, American planes bombed a plaza in Japan where men and women were going to work, where schoolchildren were playing, and more humans died at once than anyone thought possible. Seventy thousand in a minute. Imagine. Then twice that many more, slowly, from the inside.

There are no worst days, it seems. Ten years ago, early on a January morning, bombs rained down from the sky and caused great buildings in the city of Baghdad to fall down--hotels, hospitals, palaces, buildings with mothers and soldiers inside--and here in the place I want to love best, I had to watch people cheering about it. In Baghdad, survivors shook their fists at the sky and said the word "evil." When many lives are lost all at once, people gather together and say words like "heinous" and "honor" and "revenge," presuming to make this awful moment stand apart somehow from the ways people die a little each day from sickness or hunger. They raise up their compatriots' lives to a sacred place--we do this, all of us who are human--thinking our own citizens to be more worthy of grief and less willingly risked than lives on other soil. But broken hearts are not mended in this ceremony, because, really, every life that ends is utterly its own event--and also in some way it's the same as all others, a light going out that ached to burn longer. Even if you never had the chance to love the light that's gone, you miss it. You should. You bear this world and everything that's wrong with it by holding life still precious, each time, and starting over.

And those children dancing in the street? That is the hardest question. We would rather discuss trails of evidence and whom to stamp out, even the size and shape of the cage we might put ourselves in to stay safe, than to mention the fact that our nation is not universally beloved; we are also despised. And not just by "The Terrorist," that lone, deranged non-man in a bad photograph whose opinion we can clearly dismiss, but by ordinary people in many lands. Even by little boys--whole towns full of them it looked like--jumping for joy in school shoes and pilled woolen sweaters.

There are a hundred ways to be a good citizen, and one of them is to look finally at the things we don't want to see. In a week of terrifying events, here is one awful, true thing that hasn't much been mentioned: Some people believe our country needed to learn how to hurt in this new way. This is such a large lesson, so hatefully, wrongfully taught, but many people before us have learned honest truths from wrongful deaths. It still may be within our capacity of mercy to say this much is true: We didn't really understand how it felt when citizens were buried alive in Turkey or Nicaragua or Hiroshima. Or that night in Baghdad. And we haven't cared enough for the particular brothers and mothers taken down a limb or a life at a time, for such a span of years that those little, briefly jubilant boys have grown up with twisted hearts. How could we keep raining down bombs and selling weapons, if we had? How can our president still use that word "attack" so casually, like a move in a checker game, now that we have awakened to see that word in our own newspapers, used like this: Attack on America.

Surely, the whole world grieves for us right now. And surely it also hopes we might have learned, from the taste of our own blood, that every war is both won and lost, and that loss is a pure, high note of anguish like a mother singing to any empty bed. The mortal citizens of a planet are praying right now that we will bear in mind, better than ever before, that no kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.

"Will this happen to me?" is the wrong question, I'm sad to say. It always was.

No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak
By Barbara Kingsolver
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 14, 2001

I cannot find the glory in this day. When I picked up the newspaper and saw "America Strikes Back!" blazed boastfully across it in letters I swear were 10 inches tall--shouldn't they reserve at least one type size for something like, say, nuclear war?--my heart sank. We've answered one terrorist act with another, raining death on the most war-scarred, terrified populace that ever crept to a doorway and looked out. The small plastic boxes of food we also dropped are a travesty. It is reported that these are untouched, of course--Afghanis have spent their lives learning terror of anything hurled at them from the sky. Meanwhile, the genuine food aid on which so many depended for survival has been halted by the war. We've killed whoever was too poor or crippled to flee, plus four humanitarian aid workers who coordinated the removal of land mines from the beleaguered Afghan soil. That office is now rubble, and so is my heart. I am going to have to keep pleading against this madness. I'll get scolded for it, I know. I've already been called every name in the Rush Limbaugh handbook: traitor, sinner, naive, liberal, peacenik, whiner. I'm told I am dangerous because I might get in the way of this holy project we've undertaken to keep dropping heavy objects from the sky until we've wiped out every last person who could potentially hate us. Some people are praying for my immortal soul, and some have offered to buy me a one-way ticket out of the country, to anywhere. I accept these gifts with a gratitude equal in measure to the spirit of generosity in which they were offered. People threaten vaguely, "She wouldn't feel this way if her child had died in the war!" (I feel this way precisely because I can imagine that horror.) More subtle adversaries simply say I am ridiculous, a dreamer who takes a child's view of the world, imagining it can be made better than it is. The more sophisticated approach, they suggest, is to accept that we are all on a jolly road trip down the maw of catastrophe, so shut up and drive.

I fight that, I fight it as if I'm drowning. When I get to feeling I am an army of one standing out on the plain waving my ridiculous little flag of hope, I call up a friend or two. We remind ourselves in plain English that the last time we got to elect somebody, the majority of us, by a straight popular-vote count, did not ask for the guy who is currently telling us we will win this war and not be "misunderestimated." We aren't standing apart from the crowd, we are the crowd. There are millions of us, surely, who know how to look life in the eye, however awful things get, and still try to love it back.

It is not naive to propose alternatives to war. We could be the kindest nation on Earth, inside and out. I look at the bigger picture and see that many nations with fewer resources than ours have found solutions to problems that seem to baffle us. I'd like an end to corporate welfare so we could put that money into ending homelessness, as many other nations have done before us. I would like a humane health-care system organized along the lines of Canada's. I'd like the efficient public-transit system of Paris in my city, thank you. I'd like us to consume energy at the modest level that Europeans do, and then go them one better. I'd like a government that subsidizes renewable energy sources instead of forcefully patrolling the globe to protect oil gluttony. Because, make no mistake, oil gluttony is what got us into this holy war, and it's a deep tar pit. I would like us to sign the Kyoto agreement today, and reduce our fossil-fuel emissions with legislation that will ease us into safer, less gluttonous, sensibly reorganized lives. If this were the face we showed the world, and the model we helped bring about elsewhere, I expect we could get along with a military budget the size of Iceland's.

How can I take anything but a child's view of a war in which men are acting like children? What they're serving is not justice, it's simply vengeance. Adults bring about justice using the laws of common agreement. Uncivilized criminals are still held accountable through civilized institutions; we abolished stoning long ago. The World Court and the entire Muslim world stand ready to judge Osama bin Laden and his accessories. If we were to put a few billion dollars into food, health care and education instead of bombs, you can bet we'd win over enough friends to find out where he's hiding. And I'd like to point out, since no one else has, the Taliban is an alleged accessory, not the perpetrator--a legal point quickly cast aside in the rush to find a sovereign target to bomb.

The word "intelligence" keeps cropping up, but I feel like I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming at each other, "He started it!" and throwing rocks that keep taking out another eye, another tooth. I keep looking around for somebody's mother to come on the scene saying, "Boys! Boys! Who started it cannot possibly be the issue here. People are getting hurt."

I am somebody's mother, so I will say that now: The issue is, people are getting hurt. We need to take a moment's time out to review the monstrous waste of an endless cycle of retaliation. The biggest weapons don't win this one, guys. When there are people on Earth willing to give up their lives in hatred and use our own domestic airplanes as bombs, it's clear that we can't out-technologize them.

You can't beat cancer by killing every cell in the body--or you could, I guess, but the point would be lost. This is a war of who can hate the most. There is no limit to that escalation. It will only end when we have the guts to say it really doesn't matter who started it, and begin to try and understand, then alter the forces that generate hatred.

We have always been at war, though the citizens of the U.S. were mostly insulated from what that really felt like until Sept. 11. Then, suddenly, we began to say, "The world has changed. This is something new." If there really is something new under the sun in the way of war, some alternative to the way people have always died when heavy objects are dropped on them from above, then please, in the name of heaven, I would like to see it. I would like to see it, now.

US must realize there are no quick fixes
By Lawrence J. Korb, 9/13/2001

GIVEN THE FACT that more Americans probably died on Sept. 11, 2001, than at Pearl Harbor or Omaha Beach on D-Day, the desire for immediate revenge in the form of a massive military attack is understandable. But there are three reasons which make such of course of action counterproductive in the long run.

First, whom would we attack? These terrorists are not agents of an individual nation state. They are motivated by a cause that transcends loyalty to a particular government. While certain governments may have tolerated or, in President Bush's phrase, even harbored these terrorists, chances are they have had little choice, given the support the cause has in their countries, and most certainly did not aid, abet, or encourage the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Moreover, an attack on a state like Afghanistan would make it more difficult for that nation to help us track down and arrest the terrorists.

Second, any large-scale military attack would cause more harm than good. As we discovered when we retaliated for the bombings in Lebanon in 1983 and the destruction of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, we did not strike the terrorists but instead killed innocent civilians, which only increased support for terrorism in those countries.

Third, the terrorists themselves are not afraid to die. Although they are despicable murderers, they are not, as President Bush called them, cowards. Killing them will make them heroes and only enhance their cause.

Nor are these terrorists unsophisticated. Carrying out a mission that included hijacking four large airliners from three major airports and striking two of the most important symbols of American power simultaneously was an incredible accomplishment. Chances are they would figure out how to survive a bombing or missile attack.

The United States must realize that we are in this for the long haul. In the 21st century terrorism will threaten us the way that fascism and communism threatened us in the 20th. There are no quick fixes to the problem. We must begin by recognizing that up to now we have been very lucky. The surprise should not have been what happened Tuesday but that it had not happened before. Our long-range approach must involve coming to grips with these realities.

Even though our military and economic power is unequaled, we cannot deal with this new enemy unilaterally. This nation must work together with the intelligence services of all nations so that we can stop these missions before they start. By the time the terrorists had boarded the four airliners, it was too late. The world community needs to stop these individuals before they enter the country or arm themselves.

And if these cooperative efforts fail, the United States and other nations must make any nations that support these groups international pariahs and prevent them from having access to the global financial or trading systems.

To be effective, this cooperation must go beyond fighting terrorism. The United States must also work cooperatively, not unilaterally, on areas like global warming, arms control, and the international criminal court.

This nation must also refocus its defense priorities. Since the end of the Cold War, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons designed to refight the Cold War.

All of these sophisticated ships, planes, tanks, and missile defense systems are of little or no use against this new enemy. Some of these billions would be better spent on buying more border police and customs agents, building more Coast Guard ships, and enhancing our human intelligence capabilities. One example of our misplaced priorities is the fact that President Bush proposes to spend more on missile defense in 2002 than on the entire Coast Guard.

Striking blindly with military force now would be counterproductive. Let us use the desire for action that comes from this great tragedy to commence what must be done to ensure that a day like Sept. 11, 2001, is never seen again.

**************************** Lawrence J. Korb is director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.

This story ran on page A31 of the Boston Globe on 9/13/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

Living in a new era of insecurity
By Sam Nunn

The bitter events of last week will never pass from the American memory. But whether they are remembered as an isolated, unrepeated horror or the first nightmare in a new era of insecurity may well depend on what we do now.

The terrorists who planned and carried out the attacks of Sept. 11 showed there is no limit to the number of innocent lives they are willing to take. Their capacity for killing was restricted only by the power of their weapons.

As we strengthen airport and airplane security, we must not automatically assume that the next attack against America will be like the one we just experienced.

Though we may not yet know with certainty which group sponsored these attacks, we do know that Osama bin Laden declared in 1998 that acquiring weapons of mass destruction is "a religious duty." This statement should not be taken lightly. We have had a look at the face of terrorist warfare in the 21st century, and it gives us little hope that if these groups gained control of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons they would hesitate to use them.

As America prepares a response, we must build a new framework for national security that protects us from the full range of new dangers we face.

Ten years ago a communist empire broke apart. Its legacy: 30,000 nuclear warheads; more than 1,000 tons of highly enriched uranium; 150 tons of plutonium; 40,000 tons of chemical weapons; 4,500 tons of anthrax and tens of thousands of scientists who know how to make weapons and missiles but don't know how to feed their families. Russia's dysfunctional economy and eroded security systems have undercut controls on these weapons, materials and know-how and increased the risk that they may flow to hostile forces.

Our nation understands from heart-shattering experience that America is targeted for terrorist attack. But we do not fully grasp how Russia's loose controls over weapons, materials and know-how dramatically increase our vulnerability to an attack with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In 1998, an employee at Russia's premier nuclear weapons laboratory was arrested for trying to sell documents on weapons design to agents of Iraq and Afghanistan. Just this year, a former bin Laden associate admitted to a federal grand jury his role in a plot to purchase uranium. Threats of terrorism and threats of weapons of mass destruction are not separate, but interrelated and reinforcing. The world's security now depends in great part on who is faster and smarter -- those trying to get weapons, materials and know-how, or those trying to stop them.

To reduce these threats to our own security, we have -- for the past 10 years -- helped the Russians secure weapons and weapons materials to prevent theft, convert nuclear weapons facilities to civilian purposes and employ their weapons scientists in peaceful pursuits. But we need to do much more.

Russia itself has experienced terrible terrorist attacks in recent years, and its outpouring of support in the past few days indicates there may be a real opportunity for enhanced U.S.-Russia cooperation.

Early this year, a distinguished bipartisan task force declared loose weapons, materials and know-how in Russia "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States," and called for a fourfold funding increase to reduce these threats. We need to reflect this sound advice in our budget priorities. Keeping weapons of mass destruction out of terrorists' hands is either a priority or an afterthought. If it is an afterthought, after what?

The tragic events of this week have given us a rare opportunity to lead a world coalition against terrorism. NATO, for the first time in 52 years, has formally declared that the alliance has been attacked, and 19 democracies are now committed to join America in hitting back. We also have other partners in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

To carry out the Bush administration's declaration of war against terrorism, we must:

• Prevent terrorist groups from getting nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, weapons materials and know-how.
• Eliminate terrorist cells wherever they are, including in the United States.
• Enlist the support of our coalition partners to destroy the infrastructure and cut off the funding of terrorist groups wherever they are.
• Make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who knowingly harbor them, as President Bush has said.
• Take every feasible and reasonable step in our military planning to avoid inflicting large numbers of civilian casualties that will only sow the seeds for the next generation of fanatical, suicidal terrorists.
• Make it clear by our words and actions that our war is against terrorism, not a war against Islam at home or abroad.
• Continue to address the underlying conflicts and conditions around the world that breed fanatical hatred and terrorism -- probably our most difficult challenge.
• Promote and enhance the diplomacy, intelligence gathering and cooperation that are our first line of defense.

In implementing this strategy, we must make sure that we don't undercut the international cooperation we need to protect ourselves against a wide range of dangers.

The United States cannot identify and eliminate terrorist groups, destroy their funding and support, apply pressure to rogue regimes, secure dangerous materials, limit the spread of weapons of mass destruction and gather intelligence without the support and active cooperation of allies and former adversaries. While we must be prepared to act alone if necessary, if we are going to go after terrorists before they come to our shores, we must have partners abroad.

We must develop a comprehensive defense against the full range of threats, based on relative risk and supported by strong alliances so that the pain of today will not be known by the children of tomorrow.

**************************** Former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) is co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization working to reduce the threat from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

This article first ran in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Sept. 16, 2001

View from a native of Afghanistan
By Tamim Ansary

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours.

Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

Interview with Noam Chomsky

(1) There has been an immense movement of troops and extreme use of military rhetoric, up to comments about terminating governments, etc. Yet, to many people there appears to be considerable restraint...what happened?

From the first days after the attack, the Bush administration has been warned by NATO leaders, specialists on the region, and presumably its own intelligence agencies (not to speak of many people like you and me) that if they react with a massive assault that kills many innocent people, that will be answering bin Laden's most fervent prayers. They will be falling into a "diabolical trap," as the French foreign minister put it. That would be true -- perhaps even more so -- if they happen to kill bin Laden, still without having provided credible evidence of his involvement in the crimes of Sept. 11. He would then be perceived as a martyr even among the enormous majority of Muslims who deplore those crimes, as bin Laden himself has done, for what it is worth, denying any involvement in the crimes or even knowledge of them, and condemning "the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans" as an act that "Islam strictly forbids...even in the course of a battle" (BBC, Sept. 29). His voice will continue to resound on tens of thousands of cassettes already circulating throughout the Muslim world, and in many interviews, including the last few days. An assault that kills innocent Afghans -- not Taliban, but their terrorized victims -- would be virtually a call for new recruits to the horrendous cause of the bin Laden network and other graduates of the terrorist networks set up by the CIA and its associates 20 years ago to fight a Holy War against the Russians, meanwhile following their own agenda, from the time they assassinated President Sadat of Egypt in 1981, murdering one of the most enthusiastic of the creators of the "Afghanis" -- mostly recruits from extremist radical Islamist elements around the world who were recruited to fight in Afghanistan.

After a little while, the message apparently got through to the Bush administration, which has -- wisely from their point of view -- chosen to follow a different course.

However, "restraint" seems to me a questionable word. On Sept. 16, the New York Times reported that "Washington has also demanded [from Pakistan] a cutoff of fuel supplies,...and the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population." Astonishingly, that report elicited no detectable reaction in the West, a grim reminder of the nature of the Western civilization that leaders and elite commentators claim to uphold, yet another lesson that is not lost among those who have been at the wrong end of the guns and whips for centuries. In the following days, those demands were implemented. On Sept. 27, the same NYT correspondent reported that officials in Pakistan "said today that they would not relent in their decision to seal off the country's 1,400- mile border with Afghanistan, a move requested by the Bush administration because, the officials said, they wanted to be sure that none of Mr. bin Laden's men were hiding among the huge tide of refugees" (John Burns, Islamabad).

According to the world's leading newspaper, then, Washington demanded that Pakistan slaughter massive numbers of Afghans, millions of them already on the brink of starvation, by cutting off the limited sustenance that was keeping them alive. Almost all aid missions withdrew or were expelled under the threat of bombing. Huge numbers of miserable people have been fleeing to the borders in terror, after Washington's threat to bomb the shreds of existence remaining in Afghanistan, and to convert the Northern Alliance into a heavily armed military force that will, perhaps, be unleashed to renew the atrocities that tore the country apart and led much of the population to welcome the Taliban when they drove out the murderous warring factions that Washington and Moscow now hope to exploit for their own purposes. When they reach the sealed borders, refugees are trapped to die in silence. Only a trickle can escape through remote mountain passes. How many have already succumbed we cannot guess, and few seem to care. Apart from the relief agencies, I have seen no attempt even to guess. Within a few weeks the harsh winter will arrive. There are some reporters and aid workers in the refugee camps across the borders. What they describe is horrifying enough, but they know, and we know, that they are seeing the lucky ones, the few who were able to escape -- and who express their hopes that ''even the cruel Americans must feel some pity for our ruined country,'' and relent in this savage silent genocide (Boston Globe, Sept. 27, p. 1).

Perhaps the most apt description was given by the wonderful and courageous Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy, referring to Operation Infinite Justice proclaimed by the Bush Administration: "Witness the infinite justice of the new century. Civilians starving to death while they're waiting to be killed" (Guardian, Sept. 29).

(2) The UN has indicated that the threat of starvation in Afghanistan is enormous. International criticism on this score has grown and now the U.S. and Britain are talking about providing food aid to ward off hunger. Are they caving in to dissent in fact, or only in appearance? What is their motivation? What will be the scale and impact of their efforts?

The UN estimates that some 7-8 million are at risk of imminent starvation. The NY Times reports in a small item (Sept. 25) that nearly six million Afghans depend on food aid from the UN, as well as 3.5 million in refugee camps outside, many of whom fled just before the borders were sealed. The item reported that some food is being sent, to the camps across the border. If people in Washington and the editorial offices have even a single gray cell functioning, they realize that they must present themselves as humanitarians seeking to avert the awesome tragedy that followed at once from the threat of bombing and military attack and the sealing of the borders they demanded. "Experts also urge the United States to improve its image by increasing aid to Afghan refugees, as well as by helping to rebuild the economy" (Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 28). Even without PR specialists to instruct them, administration officials must comprehend that they should send some food to the refugees who made it across the border, and at least talk about air drop of food to starving people within: in order "to save lives" but also to "help the effort to find terror groups inside Afghanistan" (Boston Globe, Sept. 27, quoting a Pentagon official, who describes this as "winning the hearts and minds of the people"). The New York Times editors picked up the same theme the following day, 12 days after the journal reported that the murderous operation is being put into effect.

On the scale of aid, one can only hope that it is enormous, or the human tragedy may be immense in a few weeks. But we should also bear in mind that there has been nothing to stop massive food drops from the beginning, and we cannot even guess how many have already died, or soon will. If the government is sensible, there will be at least a show of the "massive air drops" that officials mention.

(3) International legal institutions would likely ratify efforts to arrest and try bin Laden and others, supposing guilt could be shown, including the use of force. Why does the U.S. avoid this recourse? Is it only a matter of not wishing to legitimate an approach that could be used, as well, against our acts of terrorism, or are other factors at play?

Much of the world has been asking the US to provide some evidence to link bin Laden to the crime, and if such evidence could be provided, it would not be difficult to rally enormous support for an international effort, under the rubric of the UN, to apprehend and try him and his collaborators. However, that is no simple matter. Even if bin Laden and his network are involved in the crimes of Sept. 11, it may be quite hard to produce credible evidence. As the CIA surely knows very well, having nurtured these organizations and monitored them very closely for 20 years, they are diffuse, decentralized, non-hierarchic structures, probably with little communication or direct guidance. And for all we know, most of the perpetrators may have killed themselves in their awful missions.

There are further problems in the background. To quote Roy again, "The Taliban's response to US demands for the extradition of Bin Laden has been uncharacteristically reasonable: produce the evidence, then we'll hand him over. President Bush's response is that the demand is non-negotiable'." She also adds one of the many reasons why this framework is unacceptable to Washington: "While talks are on for the extradition of CEOs can India put in a side request for the extradition of Warren Anderson of the US? He was the chairman of Union Carbide, responsible for the Bhopal gas leak that killed 16,000 people in 1984. We have collated the necessary evidence. It's all in the files. Could we have him, please?"

Such comparisons elicit frenzied tantrums at the extremist fringes of Western opinion, some of them called "the left." But for Westerners who have retained their sanity and moral integrity, and for great numbers among the usual victims, they are quite meaningful. Government leaders presumably understand that.

And the single example that Roy mentions is only the beginning, of course, and one of the lesser examples, not only because of the scale of the atrocity, but because it was not explicitly a crime of state. Suppose Iran were to request the extradition of high officials of the Carter and Reagan administrations, refusing to present the ample evidence of the crimes they were implementing -- and it surely exists. Or suppose Nicaragua were to demand the extradition of the US ambassador to the UN, newly appointed to lead the "war against terror," a man whose record includes his service as "proconsul" (as he was often called) in the virtual fiefdom of Honduras, where he surely was aware of the atrocities of the state terrorists he was supporting, and was also overseeing the terrorist war for which the US was condemned by the World Court and the Security Council (in a resolution the US vetoed). Or many others. Would the US even dream of responding to such demands presented without evidence, or even if the ample evidence were presented?

Those doors are better left closed, just as it is best to maintain the silence on the appointment of a leading figure in managing the operations condemned as terrorism by the highest existing international bodies -- to lead a "war on terrorism." Jonathan Swift would also be speechless.

That may be the reason why administration publicity experts preferred the usefully ambiguous term "war" to the more explicit term "crime" -- "crime against humanity as Robert Fisk, Mary Robinson, and others have accurately depicted it. There are established procedures for dealing with crimes, however horrendous. They require evidence, and adherence to the principle that "those who are guilty of these acts" be held accountable once evidence is produced, but not others (Pope John Paul II, NYT Sept. 24). Not, for example, the unknown numbers of miserable people starving to death in terror at the sealed borders, though in this case too we are speaking of crimes against humanity.

(4) The war on terror was first undertaken by Reagan, as a substitute for the cold war -- that is, as a vehicle for scaring the public and thus marshalling support for programs contrary to the public's interest -- foreign campaigns, war spending in general, surveillance, and so on. Now we are seeing a larger and more aggressive attempt to move in the same direction. Does the problem that we are the world's foremost source of attacks on civilians auger complications for carrying through this effort? Can the effort be sustained without, in fact, a shooting war?

The Reagan administration came into office 20 years ago declaring that its leading concern would be to eradicate the plague of international terrorism, a cancer that is destroying civilization. They cured the plague by establishing an international terrorist network of extraordinary scale, with consequences that are -- or should be -- well-known in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere -- while using the pretexts, as you say, to carry out programs that were of considerable harm to the domestic population, and that even threaten human survival. Did they carry out a "shooting war"? The number of corpses they left in their wake around the world is impressive, but technically, they did not usually fire the guns, apart from transparent PR exercises like the bombing of Libya, the first crime of war in history that was timed precisely for prime time TV, no small trick considering the complexity of the operation and the refusal of continental European countries to collaborate. The torture, mutilation, rape, and massacre were carried out through intermediaries.

Even if we exclude the huge but unmentionable component of terrorism that traces back to terrorist states, our own surely included, the terrorist plague is very real, very dangerous, and truly terrifying. There are ways to react that are likely to escalate the threats to ourselves and others; there are ample precedents for more sane and honorable methods, which we've discussed before, and are not in the least obscure, but are scarcely discussed. Those are the basic choices.

(5) If the Taliban falls and bin Laden or someone they claim is responsible is captured or killed, what next? What happens to Afghanistan? What happens more broadly in other regions?

The sensible administration plan would be to pursue the ongoing program of silent genocide, combined with humanitarian gestures to arouse the applause of the usual chorus who are called upon to sing the praises of the noble leaders committed to "principles and values" and leading the world to a "new era" of "ending inhumanity." The administration might also try to convert the Northern Alliance into a viable force, perhaps to bring in other warlords hostile to it, like Gulbudin Hekmatyar, now in Iran. Presumably they will use British and US commandoes for missions within Afghanistan, and perhaps resort to selective bombing, but scaled down so as not to answer bin Laden's prayers. A US assault should not be compared to the failed Russian invasion of the 80s. The Russians were facing a major army of perhaps 100,000 men or more, organized, trained and heavily armed by the CIA and its associates. The US is facing a ragtag force in a country that has already been virtually destroyed by 20 years of horror, for which we bear no slight share of responsibility. The Taliban forces, such as they are, might quickly collapse except for a small hard core. And one would expect that the surviving population would welcome an invading force if it is not too visibly associated with the murderous gangs that tore the country to shreds before the Taliban takeover. At this point, most people would be likely to welcome Genghis Khan.

What next? Expatriate Afghans and, apparently, some internal elements who are not part of the Taliban inner circle have been calling for a UN effort to establish some kind of transition government, a process that might succeed in reconstructing something viable from the wreckage, if provided with very substantial reconstruction aid, channeled through independent sources like the UN or credible NGOs. That much should be the minimal responsibility of those who have turned this impoverished country into a land of terror, desperation, corpses, and mutilated victims. That could happen, but not without very substantial popular efforts in the rich and powerful societies. For the present, any such course has been ruled out by the Bush administration, which has announced that it will not be engaged in "nation building" -- or, it seems, an effort that would be more honorable and humane: substantial support, without interference, for "nation building" by others who might actually achieve some success in the enterprise. But current refusal to consider this decent course is not graven in stone. What happens in other regions depends on internal factors, on the policies of foreign actors (the US dominant among them, for obvious reasons), and the way matters proceed in Afghanistan. One can hardly be confident, but for many of the possible courses reasonable assessments can be made about the outcome -- and there are a great many possibilities, too many to try to review in brief comments.

(6) What do you believe should be the role and priority of social activists concerned about justice at this time? Should we curb our criticisms, as some have claimed, or is this, instead, a time for renewed and enlarged efforts, not only because it is a crisis regarding which we can attempt to have a very important positive impact, but also because large sectors of the public are actually far more receptive than usual to discussion and exploration, even it other sectors are intransigently hostile?

It depends on what these social activists are trying to achieve. If their goal is to escalate the cycle of violence and to increase the likelihood of further atrocities like that of Sept. 11 -- and, regrettably, even worse ones with which much of the world is all too familiar -- then they should certainly curb their analysis and criticisms, refuse to think, and cut back their involvement in the very serious issues in which they have been engaged. The same advice is warranted if they want to help the most reactionary and regressive elements of the political-economic power system to implement plans that will be of great harm to the general population here and in much of the world, and may even threaten human survival.

If, on the contrary, the goal of social activists is to reduce the likelihood of further atrocities, and to advance hopes for freedom, human rights, and democracy, then they should follow the opposite course. They should intensify their efforts to inquire into the background factors that lie behind these and other crimes and devote themselves with even more energy to the just causes to which they have already been committed. The opportunities are surely there. The shock of the horrendous crimes has already opened even elite sectors to reflection of a kind that would have been hard to imagine not long ago, and among the general public that is even more true. Of course, there will be those who demand silent obedience. We expect that from the ultra-right, and anyone with a little familiarity with history will expect it from some left intellectuals as well, perhaps in an even more virulent form. But it is important not to be intimidated by hysterical ranting and lies and to keep as closely as one can to the course of truth and honesty and concern for the human consequences of what one does, or fails to do. All truisms, but worth bearing in mind.

Beyond the truisms, we turn to specific questions, for inquiry and for action.

Return to Resources Main Page

WAND

Home