Thank you and I'm very happy to be here this evening once again at the Illinois Disciples Foundation which has always been a center for organizing for peace justice and human
rights in this area ever since I first came to this community from Boston in July of 1978 and especially under its former minister my friend Jim Holiman. And I also want to thank Joe
Miller of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Jeff Machoda for inviting me to speak here this evening. People of my generation still remember how important it was for the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War to be organized and to speak out against the Vietnam War and they continue to serve as a voice for peace in the world for the past generation
and likewise for Jeff Machoda. Whenever anyone calls me and asks say I want to organize something on peace, justice, human rights, social welfare I always say talk to Jeff. He's
the best in this entire area for something of that nature. I want to start out with my basic thesis that the Bush administration's war against Iraq cannot be justified on the facts or the
law. It is clearly illegal. It constitutes armed aggression. It is creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan. It is creating terrible regional instability. Right now
today we are having artillery barrages across the border between India and Pakistan which have fought two wars before over Cashmere and yet today are nuclear armed. The
longer this war goes on the worse it is going to be not only for the millions of people in Afghanistan but also in the estimation of the 1.2 billion Muslims of the world and the 57
Muslim states in the world. None of which believe the Bush administration's propaganda that this is not a war against Islam. Now let me start first with the facts. As you recall
Secretary of State Colin Powell said publicly they were going to produce a white paper documenting their case against Osama bin Laden and their organization Al Taeda. Well, of
course, those of us in the peace movement are familiar with white papers before. They're always laden with propaganda, half-truths, dissimulation, etc. that are usually very easily
refuted after a little bit of analysis. What happened here? We never got a white paper produced by the United States government. Zip, zero, nothing. What did we get instead? The
only statement of facts that we got from an official of the United States government was Secretary of State Colin Powell himself. And let me quote from Secretary Powell. This is the
October 3 edition of the New Speak Times. "The case will never be able to be described as circumstantial. It's not circumstantial now." Well as a lawyer if a case isn't circumstantial,
it's nothing. That's the lowest level of proof you could possibly imagine is a circumstantial case. Yes, the World Court has ruled that a state can be found guilty on the basis of
circumstantial evidence provided there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But here we have Secretary of State Colin Powell admitting on behalf of the United States that the case
against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda is not even circumstantial. If it's not even circumstantial then what is it? Rumor, allegation, innuendo, insinuation, disinformation, propaganda.
Certainly not enough to start a war. In the same issue of the New Speak Times the U.S. Ambassador who went over to brief our NATO allies about the Bush administration's case
against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was quoted as follows: "One Western official at NATO said the U.S. briefings which were oral without slides or documentation did not report any
direct order from Mr. Bin Laden nor did they indicate that the Taliban knew about the attacks before they happened." That's someone who was at the briefings. What we did get
was a white paper from Tony Blair. Did anyone in this room vote for Tony Blair? No. And the white paper is in that hallowed tradition of a white paper based on insinuation,
allegation, rumors, etc. Even the British government admitted the case against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would not stand up in court and as a matter of fact it was routinely derided in
the British press. There was nothing there. Now I don't know myself who was behind the terrorist attacks on September 11. And it appears we are never going to find out. Why?
Because Congress in its wisdom has decided not to empanel a joint committee of both Houses of Congress with subpoena power giving them access to whatever documents they
want throughout any agency of the United States government including FBI, CIA, NSA, DSA. And to put these people under oath and testify as to what happened under penalty of
perjury. We are not going to get that investigation and yet today we are waging war against Afghanistan on evidence that Secretary of State Powell publicly stated is not even
circumstantial. Now let's look at the law. Immediately after the attacks President Bush's first statement that he made in Florida was to call these attacks an act of terrorism. Now
under United States domestic law we have a definition of terrorism and clearly this would qualify as an act or acts of terrorism. For reasons I can get into later if you want, under
international law and practice there is no generally accepted definition of terrorism. But certainly under United States domestic law this qualified as an act of terrorism. What
happened? Well again according to the New Speak Times, President Bush consulted with Secretary Powell and all of a sudden they changed the rhetoric and characterization of
what happened here. They now called it an act of war. And clearly this was not an act of war. There are enormous differences in how you treat an act of terrorism and how you treat
an act of war. We have dealt with acts of terrorism before. And normally acts of terrorism are dealt with as a matter of international and domestic law enforcement. And in my
opinion that is how this bombing, these incidents, should have been dealt with. International and domestic law enforcement indeed there is a treaty directly on point. Although the
United Nations was unable to agree on formal definition of terrorism they decided, let's break it down into its constituent units and deal with it peace-wise. Let's criminalize specific
aspects of criminal behavior that we want to stop. The Montreal Sabotage Convention is directly on point. It criminalizes the destruction of civilian aircraft while in service. The
United States is a party. Afghanistan is a party. It has an entire legal regime to deal with this dispute. The Bush administration just ignored the Montreal Sabotage Convention. There
was also the Terrorist Bombing Convention. That is also directly on point and eventually the Bush administration just did say, well, yes, our Senate should ratify this convention. It's
been sitting in the Senate for quite some time lingering because of the Senate's opposition to international cooperation by means of treaties on a whole series of issues. Indeed, there
are a good 12-13 treaties out there that deal with various components and aspects of what people generally call international terrorism. That could have been used and relied upon
by the Bush administration to deal with this issue. But they rejected the entire approach and called it an act of war. They invoked the rhetoric deliberately of Pearl Harbor. December
7, 1941. It was a conscience decision to escalate the stakes, to escalate the perception of the American people as to what is going on here. And of course the implication here is that
if this is an act of war then you don't deal with it by means of international treaties and agreements. You deal with by means of military force. You go to war. So a decision was made
very early in the process. We were going to abandon junk ignore the entire framework of international treaties and agreements that had been established for 25 years to deal
with these types of problems and basically go to war. An act of war has a formal meaning. It means an attack by one state against another state. Which of course is what happened
on December 7, 1941. But not on September 11, 2001. And. again, I repeat here Secretary Powell saying there isn't even a substantial case. The next day, September 12, the Bush
administration went into the United Nations Security Counsel to get a resolution authorizing the use of military force and they failed. It's very clear if you read the resolution, they tried
to get the authority to use force and they failed. Indeed, the September 12 resolution, instead of calling this an armed attack by one state against another state, calls it a terrorist
attack. And again there is a magnitude of difference between an armed attack by one state against another state an act of war and a terrorist attack. Again terrorist are dealt with as
criminals. They are not treated like nation states. Now what the Bush administration tried to do on September 12 was to get a resolution along the lines of what Bush Sr. got in the
run up to the Gulf War in later November of 1990. I think it is a fair comparison Bush Jr. to Bush Sr. Bush Sr. got a resolution from the Security Counsel authorizing member states
to use "all necessary means" to expel Iraq from Kuwait. They originally wanted language in there expressly authorizing the use of military force. The Chinese objected - so they used
the euphemism "All necessary means." But everyone knew what that meant. If you take a look at the resolution of September 12 that language is not in there. There was no authority
to use military force at all. They never got any. Having failed to do that the Bush administration then went to the United States Congress and using the emotions of the moment tried
to ram through some authorization to go to war under the circumstances. We do not know exactly what their original proposal is at that time. According to a statement made by
Senator Byrd in the New Speak Times, however, if you read between the lines it appears that they wanted a formal declaration of war along the lines of what President Roosevelt
got on December 8, 1941 after Pearl Harbor. And Congress refused to give them that. And a very good reason. If a formal declaration of war had been given it would have made
the president a constitutional dictator. We would now all be living basically under marshal law. Congress might have just picked up and gone home as the House did today. Which,
by the way, was encouraged by President Bush. It was his recommendation. And you'll recall, as a result of that declaration of war on December 8, 1941, we had the amphiumas
Koromatsu case where Japanese- American citizens were rounded up and put in concentration camps on the basis of nothing more than a military order that later on was turned out
to be a gross misrepresentation of the factual allegation that Japanese-Americans constituted some type of security threat. If Bush had gotten a declaration of war, we would have
been on the same footing. And the Koromatsu case has never been overturned by the United States Supreme Court. Instead, Congress gave President Bush Jr. what is called a War
Powers Resolution Authorization. Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that was passed over President Nixon's veto, namely 2/3rds majority in both houses of Congress and
designed to prevent another Tonkin Gulf Resolution and another Vietnam war. Now if you read the resolution, which he did get, and only one courageous member of Congress,
Barbara Lee, an African-American representative from Oakland voted against it as a matter of principle. This resolution, although it is not as bad as a formal declaration of war, is
even worse than the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. It basically gives President Bush a blank check to use military force against any individual organization or state that he alleges notice
his ipsa dictum - was somehow involved in the attacks on September 11 or else sheltered, harbored, or assisted individuals involved in the attacks on September 11. In other words
Bush now has a blank check pretty much to wage war against any state he wants to from the United States Congress. And it was then followed-up by Congress with a $40 billion
appropriation as a down payment for waging this de facto war. Very dangerous this War Powers Resolution Authorization. No real way it can be attacked in court at this point in
time. In the heat of the moment, Congress gave him this authority. It is still there on the books. Again, let's compare and contrast this resolution with the one gotten by Bush Sr. in the
Gulf Crisis. Bush Sr. got his security counsel resolution. He then took it to Congress for authorization under the War Powers Resolution and they gave him a very precise
authorization to use military force for the purpose of carrying out the security counsel resolution that is only for the purpose of expelling Iraq from Kuwait. And indeed that is what
Bush Sr. did. He expelled Iraq from Kuwait. He did move north. He stopped short south of Bosra saying that's all the authority I have. I'm not here to approve what Bush Sr. did in
that war but simply to compare it to Bush Jr. Now Bush Sr. has been criticizing saying well you should have marched all the way to Bagdad but he had no authority by the security
counsel to do that and he had no authority from the Congress to do that either. Again, compare that to Bush Jr.'s resolution of September 14 that basically gives him a blank check
to wage war against anyone he wants to with no more than his ipsa dictum. It's astounding to believe. Even worse than Tonkin Gulf. In addition Bush Jr. then went over to NATO to
get a resolution over from NATO and he convinced NATO to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Pact. Article 5 of the NATO Pact is only intended to deal with the armed attack by
one state against another state. It is not, and has never been, intended to deal with a terrorist attack. The NATO Pact was supposed to deal in theory with an attack on a NATO
member state by a member of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. With the collapse of both the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, there was no real justification or pretext
anymore for the continued existence of NATO. Bush Sr. then in an effort to keep NATO around, tried to transform its very nature to serve two additional purposes. 1) policing
Eastern Europe and we saw that with the illegal war against Serbia and 2) intervention in the Middle East to secure the oil fields. And the NATO counsel approved this. The
problem the NATO Pact, the treaty setting up NATO, provides no authorization to do this at all and indeed would have to be amended by the parliaments of the NATO member
states to justify either policing Eastern Europe or as an interventionary force in the Middle East. The invocation of NATO Article 5, then, was completely bogus. The Bush
administration was attempting to get some type of multi-lateral justification for what it was doing when it had failed at the United Nations Security Counsel to get authorization. The
Bush administration tried again to get more authority from the Security Counsel and all they got was a presidential statement that legally means nothing. They tried yet a third time,
September 29, before they started the war to get that authorization to use military force and they got don't have to give them up I'm sorry I didn't make that clear. It's the people in
the mainstream news media who have said we must give up those rights and including so-called liberal law professors like Alan Dershowitz and Larry Tribe of my alma mater,
Harvard Law School, who should be ashamed of the positions they have taken. So I don't believe we should be giving up any of these rights. Our law enforcement authorities, FBI,
CIA, NSA, they have all the powers they need. They certainly don't need more powers than they already have. Indeed under the currently existing laws Ashcroft has already picked
up 700 Arabs and Muslims. They disappeared somewhere. We have no idea where they are. Their families, and some have retained lawyers, are trying to find these people. Now,
they are not U.S. citizens. It would be much harder to do that with United States citizens so I'm not advocating we give up any rights. I regret to say, however, that is the message
coming out of the mainstream news media and even by self-styled liberal law professors like Dershowitz and Tribe. So I'm advocating that.
2) Many Middle Eastern countries harbor terrorists that pose a threat to the U.S. How would you suggest the U.S. deal with that threat entice these countries to change their
practices? This gets back to the problem I had mentioned before about the fact that there is no generally-accepted definition of international terrorism or terrorism as a matter of
international law. The reason being is that most of the third world and when it did exist, the socialist world (there are still a few socialist countries), took the position that people
fighting colonial domination, alien occupation or racists regimes were engaged in legitimate self-defense and not acts of terrorism. And therefore refuse to accept any definition that
these people were terrorists. Now, note, the United States government we're always on the other side. If you opposed us, you were terrorists. I remember in the 1980's and the
struggle against apartheid and divestment and disinvestment which was run on this campus the Regan administration for eight years telling us the ANC and Nelson Mandella were
terrorists. How many of you remember that? They were terrorists. Black people fighting a white racist colonial regime for their basic human rights. And yet as far as the United
States government was concerned, they were terrorists. Same in all the other colonial struggles in Africa typically we sided with white racists colonial settler regimes against the
indigenous black populations of these countries fighting for their freedom and independence and we called them terrorists. The same in the Middle East. Those who have resisted our
will or the will of Israel, we have called terrorists. The simple solution to deal with problem here on what's going on in the Middle East is simply to change our policies. If you look at
the policies we had pursued in the Middle East for the last 25 years, it has been to repress and dominate, kill, destroy and exploit the indigenous people of this region. And what
apparently the Bush administration seemed to call for is now we're going to wage war on anyone who disagrees with us. Well, the alternative is to reevaluate our policies and to put
our policies on a basis of international law which I regret to say we haven't done in the Middle East. Why? Because our primary interest has always been oil and natural gas and we
could not care less about peace, democracy or human rights for anyone in the Middle East. Remember Bush Sr. telling us that the war in the Persian Gulf was all about bringing
democracy to Kuwait. Who did we put back in power in Kuwait? The Amir and cleptocracy who still deprive women of the vote. There has been no change. We couldn't care less
about peace, justice, human rights and democracy any where in the Persian Gulf. You saw the other day Secretary of State Powell appearing with the military dictator of Pakistan,
Mushara, who overthrew a democratically elected government talking about bringing democracy to Afghanistan. Wasn't this truly welliant. He's there appearing with a military
dictator and they're talking about bringing democracy to Afghanistan. Clearly we couldn't care less about democracy, peace, justice, humanitarianism in Afghanistan. We care that
Afghanistan has in its own right large quantities of oil and gas and it has strategic location for oil and gas lines. That's what we care about. We could not care less about peace,
democracy, justice in Afghanistan. Look at our guys, the Norther Alliance left over from the war against the Soviet Union. These were people we armed, equipped, supplied and
trained and by the way, are still massively engaged in the drug trade. This is all propaganda. In any event, as a matter of law, it's not for the United States and the military dictator of
Pakistan to determine what should or should not be the government of Afghanistan. What should the U.S. government have done after 9/11 as I said we should have taken the
position which President Bush did originally. This was an act of terrorism and we should have treated it as act of terrorism which means the normal measures of international and
domestic law enforcement that we applied, for example, after the bombings of the two U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. After the bombings of the Pan Am jet over
Lockerbie. That is the way it should have been handled but a deliberate decision was taken by Bush in consultation with Powell to reject that approach and to deal with it by means
of war. Again, let me repeat, Article 1 the Kellogg Breand Pact made it very clear prohibiting war as an instrument of national policy. It's very clear in my assessment of the situation
that what we decided to do right away.
3) A question about Middle East Policy. There are many things we could do. We could bring home those 20,000 troops that occupy all those states right now in the Persian Gulf.
Does anyone realistically here think that we're going to do that and forfeit our direct military control of 50% of the world's oil supply in the Persian Gulf/Middle East region? Of
course not. We could dismantle the 5th Fleet which we set up in Barait to police, dominate and control the entire Persian Gulf. Does anyone realistically think we're going to do that?
No. We could reevaluate the entire policy towards this region. I don't see any evidence at all, no one in any of the major news media, the government, is talking about why don't we
just pick up and go home. Leave these people in the Middle East by themselves and support peace and development. That's not even on the agenda. We are now talking about
more warfare, bloodshed, and violence. Today they said well Somalia might be the next target. Well that's interesting because yesterday the New York Times had a big article on
how much oil they've now found in Somalia. And indeed, back when Bush Sr. invited Somalia, it was reported in the International Herald Tribune yes Somalia had already been
carved up by U.S. oil companies and we know for a fact the Bush family has enormous investments in oil and oil companies. Cheney, too.
4) What can we do to prevent another September 11. I've already made some suggestions about different things I think we could do but realistically speaking I don't believe we're
going to do them.
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