- Get Up, Stand Up, stand up for your right,
- Get Up, Stand Up, don't give up the fight.
- -- Bob Marley
-
- I am one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that seeks to
prevent
- President Bush from launching a military invasion of
Iraq without Congressional declaration of war because to do so would be
in direct violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which
states "Congress shall have Power ... [t]o declare War.
-
- The "October Resolution" did not declare war
and unlawfully ceded to the President the decision of whether or not to
send this nation into war. Furthermore, this resolution violates the War
Powers Act of 1973, since there was no finding or statement in it of a
clear and/or imminent threat by Iraq to this nation, which is specifically
required under the War Powers Act.
-
- On February 24, 2003 the First Circuit Court of Appeals
in
- Massachusetts agreed to an expedited hearing of this
legal challenge to Bush's authority to invade Iraq absent a Congressional
declaration of war. The Court turned down the government's request for
more time. The hearing has been scheduled for Tuesday March 4 at 9 a.m.
in Boston.
-
- Ever since September 11th, the current Administration
has sought to keep us scared about really stupid issues and stupid about
really scary issues. If we dare to criticize, we are termed unpatriotic
or cowardly. As the whole course of history teaches us, these methods are
very effective.
-
- "Of course the people don't want war. But after
all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's
always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy,
a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice
or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country
to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
-
- Have we become so risk-adverse in this country that we
believe that death is an option? Do we think that any of us are going to
get out of here alive? Will we sacrifice our Constitutional responsibilities
as well as liberties in order to remain 'safe'?
-
- Our apathy has reached such proportions that, despite
everything hanging in the balance, fewer people voted in the 2002 election
than watched the World Series, which had one of the lowest ratings in its
history. Prior to that election, our Representative and Senators cravenly
compromised whatever ethics and morals they may have left by passing the
October Resolution rather than risk losing their seats by opposing a popular
President. Given the voter turnout, how ludicrous
- was that?
-
- For months now people have been telling me to 'get over
it', to accept that it's 'out of my control', to cease and desist rather
than be judged a 'crank' and of course, 'love it or leave it'. My government
has told me that I should limit my efforts to buying more products, including
duct tape and plastic sheeting, when it is our greed and our vast carelessness
that got us into this mess in the first place, and to trust their superior
wisdom and judgment.
-
- Excuse me? Weren't we all taught in our civics classes
that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?
-
- It is the obligation; it is the sacred duty of the citizens
of a democracy to be critical of its government. As Thomas Jefferson wrote,"
for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence."
-
- Therefore, when Military Families Speak Out asked me
to join in this lawsuit, I accepted with alacrity. I have a son in the
Navy (inactive) reserves who, of course, could be called back at any time.
He spent six months in the Persian Gulf in 2000.
-
- But more importantly, my late husband served in Nam during
the Tet Offensive, patrolling the Mekong Delta on a Swift Boat. He certainly
could have availed himself of other options in order to avoid active military
duty but he felt that would have been unfair to those without his connections.
-
- He was never the same.
-
- For the rest of his life, he would not discuss his experiences
there. He read every book and saw every movie (alone) but to speak of it
was verboten. Some two decades after his return, I entered our bedroom
to find him watching Letters From Nam, alone in the dark. By the glow of
the television set, I could see the tears streaming down his face. That
gentle and decent man went to his grave without anyone ever explaining,
never mind justifying, to him why he had been ordered to do the things
he did and witness the horrors he witnessed.
-
- This can never be allowed to happen again.
-
- My question to President Bush, who didn't even fulfill
his National Guard obligations, is "How dare you? How dare you send
another generation of our fine young people to fight in a war of dubious
necessity that hasn't been declared by Congress? How dare you?"
-
- My question to the members of Congress, only one of whom
has a child serving in the military is, "How dare you? How dare you
violate the separation of powers set forth in this nation's Constitution
by delegating the authority to wage war to the Executive Branch, months
in advance, without any proof of an imminent threat? How dare you?"
-
- Our young men and women enlisted in the armed forces
to defend this country, not to engage in a preemptive, offensive strike,
in violation of the Constitution and international law, against a country
that has done nothing, nothing, to harm us since the end of the last Gulf
War.
-
- We didn't get Saddam then and we've not been able to
find Osama (whose name has not been mentioned by Bush in over a year).
What makes this vengeful, oil-soaked administration think we'll be able
to get Saddam this time around?
-
- Whom we will get, however, are perhaps up to a million
Iraqi
- citizens. Over 50% of the Iraqi population is under fifteen
years of age and over 10% of the Iraqi population is over the age of sixty.
-
- Of what can we, the citizens -- and by definition --
the participants in a democracy, be thinking?
-
- In conclusion, I believe the members of Congress and
indeed, all Americans, would do well to commit the following words of Abraham
Lincoln to heart:
-
- Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever
he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do
so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose,
and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix
any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much
as you propose. If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary
to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you
stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of
- the British invading us"; but he will say to you,
"Be silent: I see it, if you don't."
-
- The provision of the Constitution giving the war making
power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons:
kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars,
pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the
object. This our Constitutional Convention understood to be the most oppressive
of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution
that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon
us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where
kings have always stood."
-
- I have no previous experience in activism other than
all the
- usual '60's activities. I'm a fifty-something, widowed,
social worker living in the Heartland, who refuses to concede that she
is merely a member of a Focus Group.
-
- And so here I sit typing this, a plaintiff in a lawsuit
filed against the President of the United States, after having been interviewed
live and worldwide on MSNBC Monday night.
-
- I fired myself up for that interview by dedicating my
performance to my late husband and all the others who have killed or been
killed or have returned home to spend the rest of their lives in varying
degrees of walking wounded-ness as a result of the innumerable 'conflicts'
and 'police actions' in which this country has engaged itself since its
last declaration of war in 1941.
-
- The Greatest Generation's war was authorized by Congress
- would that all subsequent veterans could have that consolation."
-
- "Never believe that a few caring people can't change
the world for, indeed, that's all who ever have." -- Margaret Meade
-
- Laura Johnson Manis
- Rock Island, IL
-
- "To go against conscience is neither right nor safe.
Here I stand. I can do no other."
- -- Martin Luther
-
- __________________________
-
- 'We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected
the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical
infants. We know more about war than we do about peace, more about killing
than we do about living." --WWII General Omar Bradley
-
- "Military power is as corrupting to the man who
possesses it as it is pitiless to its victims. Violence is just as devastating
to the soul of the perpetrator as it is to the body and souls of those
who are victims of it." --American Friends (Quakers) Service Committee
-
- "Where there is mercy, there is the Christ. And
where there is cruelty, there is the satanic." --Emmanuel Charles
McCarthy
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