- The speech was given at the public hearing on Capitol
Hill, January 27, organized by the Council for the National Interest.
-
- During my long life, America has surmounted many severe
challenges. As a teenager, I experienced the great depression. In World
War II, I saw war close-up as a Navy Seabee. As a country newspaper editor,
I watched the Korean War from afar. As a Member of Congress, I agonized
through the Vietnam War from start to finish. During these challenges I
never for a moment worried about Americaís ultimate survival with
its great principles and ideals still intact.
-
- Today, for the first time, I worry deeply about Americaís
future. We are in a deep hole. I believe President George W. Bushís
decision to initiate war in Iraq will be the greatest and most costly blunder
in American history. He has set America on the wrong course.
-
- I must speak out. As best I can, I must bestir those
who will listen to the grave damage already done to our nation and warn
of still greater harm if Bush continues his present course during a second
term in the White House.
-
- When terrorists assaulted America on 9/11, killing nearly
3,000 innocent civilians, President Bush responded, not by focusing on
bringing to justice the criminals who were responsible, but by initiating
a war against impoverished, defenseless Afghanistan, a broad attack that
killed at least 3,000 innocent people. Even before the dust settled in
Afghanistan, the president initiated another war--this one in Iraq, a war
planned long before 9/11.
-
- In the name of national security, the president has brought
about fundamental, revolutionary changes that threaten our nationís
moorings. At home and abroad, he has undercut time-honored principles of
the rule of law.
-
- Abroad, he has made war a ready instrument of presidential
policy instead of reserving it as a last-resort should peril confront our
nation. In public documents, he claims the personal authority to make war
any time and any place he alone chooses and the authority to use force
to keep unfriendly nations from increasing their own military strength.
-
- His power is unprecedented. He directs a military budget
greater than all other nations combined. At his instant, personal command
is more military power than any nation in all recorded history ever before
possessed.
-
- He proclaims America the global policeman and for that
role he has already expanded a worldwide system of U.S. military bases.
Four new ones are in place in Iraq and four others near the Caspian Sea.
-
- He orders the development and production of a new generation
of nuclear arms for U.S. use only, meanwhile threatening other nationsóIran
and North Korea, for exampleóagainst acquiring any of its own.
-
- Unleashing Americaís mighty sword, he brings about
regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq but mires our forces in quagmires
from which escape seems unlikely for many years.
-
- He isolates America from common undertakings with time-tested
allies. He trivializes the United Nations and violates its charter.The
president offers wars without end, and the Congress shouts its approval.
But his use of Americaís vast arsenal is so reckless that he is
regarded widely as the most dangerous man in the world.
-
- Here at home, in his frantic quest for terrorists, he
stoops to bigoted measures based on race and national origin, tramples
on civil liberties, and spreads fear and disbelief throughout the land.
Those of Middle Eastern ancestry, and many others, buckle under government-inflicted
humiliations and abuses with trepidation, sorrow and resentment.
-
- Frustrated by Iraqi dissidents who protest the occupation
by killing U.S. troops almost daily, the president reverts to war measures.
He orders heavy aerial bombing in wide areas of the countryside.
-
- Even as body bags pile high, the president seems oblivious
to warís horror. The rockets and one-ton bombs may kill a few Iraqi
guerrillas and cause others to pull back and pause, but they kill and maim
innocent civilians, level homes, turn neighborhoods into rubble, and permanently
blight many lives. They create deep-seated outrage, not cooperation.
-
- The Iraqi carnage is piled alongside the simultaneous
destruction and blighting of American lives. More than 500 U.S. military
personnel have been killed and, according to one estimate, nearly 10,000
have been wounded. Ponder that fact. Ten thousand American families permanently
blighted in a war the United States initiated. Mark Twain, writing of war,
once asked, ìWill we wring the hearts of the unoffending widows
with unavailing grief?î
-
- The president overreacts to 9/11 by leading America into
a lengthy fiery trial that may last far into the futureóyears of
U.S.-initiated wars designed to punish regimes believed to harbor terrorists.
-
- This is not the America my generation fought to preserve
in World War II.
-
- Starting wars will not bring a just peace. The president
should ponder deeply why many people in many nations engage in anti-American
protest.
-
- The answer: People worldwide, especially in Iraq and
Palestine, are livid over grievances against America. Almost all Iraqis
are glad Saddam Hussein is out of power, but many of themóthe total
may be a substantial majorityósee America as arrogant, biased, untrustworthy,
and bent on world domination.
-
- Here are some of the reasons:
-
- * In the l980s--the height of Saddamís cruel treatment
of Kurds and other Iraqi citizensóthe U.S. government served as
the dictatorís silent, uncomplaining partner, helping him battle
Iran by providing intelligence, and critical military supplies, even some
components of weapons of mass destruction.
-
- * At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqis had a bitter
experience with the presidentís father. President George Bush, Sr.
publicly urged the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. His call prompted a strong
uprising, but Bush refused U.S. support in any form. This bleak rejection
prompted Saddam to use helicopter gun-ships to slaughter dissidents by
the hundreds. He had retained use of these lethal aircraft in a provision
of the U.S.-approved armistice.
-
- * Iraqis also remember bitterly that U.S. fighter planes
enforced sanctions on the people of Iraq for a decade after the Gulf War.
This embargo was so harsh it led to immense civilian suffering, including
the death of at least a half-million Iraqi infants.
-
- * Today, Iraqis are wary of the Presidentís motives
and dependability. Many doubt that his true objectives are, as he now states,
establishing freedom and democracy in their country, or, as he earlier
stated, destroying Iraqís weapons of mass destruction. Aware that
he ignored offers of conciliation from Saddamís emissaries before
the invasion, they believe he harbors dreams of an American empire and
wanted the war in Iraq, come what may.
-
- * Their greatest and most deep-seated complaint is Bushís
failure to make even the slightest move to halt Americaís anti-Arab
bias. For example, the president has made no effort to distance America
from Israelís colonialism.
-
- He pays lip-service to statehood as a goal for the Palestinians,
but he has done nothing to stop Israeli Prime Minister Sharonís
brutality of Palestinians--assassinations, military forays that leave vast
death and destruction, high fences that confine Palestinians like cattle,
and the steady usurpation of more Palestinian land.
-
- Bush seems unconcerned by the worldwide outrage at Americaís
massive, unconditional, uncritical support of Israel, without which the
Jewish state could never have carried out its humiliation and devastation
of Palestinian society.
-
- Bush is overwhelmed by the influence of religious zealots--both
Zionist and fundamentalist Christian. He ignores Americaís own heavy
guilt for the plight of Palestinians. He fails to recognize that more than
a billion Muslims worldwide, along with many millions of non-Muslims, are
deeply aggrieved at this complicity.
-
- Bush offers an exquisite example of close-in hypocrisy.
On one side of a Middle East border, he tries to convince Iraqi Arabs that
he offers them democracy and freedom while, at the same time on the other
side of the border, he supports Israelís violent denial of these
identical rights for Palestinian Arabs.
-
- Iraqis worry that U.S. occupation will become a new colonialism--indefinite
U.S. control of Iraqi oil reserves, Israeli-style brutality, and a U.S.-forced
treaty that will keep Iraq from helping the Palestinians.
-
- President Bush is so befuddled by the awful carnage of
9/11 and rumors of more assaults to come that he does not see what is vivid
to most of the world--the real ground zero of terrorism is in Palestine,
not Manhattan. He ignores the real ground zero at great peril to America.
-
- This issue surmounts all others in the presidential political
campaign. It impels me to speak out against what George W. Bush is doing.
I am a Republican, and I will remain in the Party of Lincoln. I feel no
joy in making this case against the president. He may be sincere in his
stewardship, but he is wrongódead wrong--in the direction he is
taking our country.
-
- What should be done? Must the president proceed with
wars without end?
-
- The presidentís best war decision is purely political
one, and it is plain, peaceful, generous and just. He must make a clean
break from Israelís scofflaw behavior.
-
- If Bush has the will, he can easily free himself and
America. If he acts, he will transform the grim scene in Iraq and elsewhere
in the Middle East into bright promise. Any day he chooses, the president
can instantlyówithout firing a shot--quiet guerrilla warfare in
Iraq and anti-American protests throughout the world.
-
- All he needs to do is inform Sharon that all aid will
be suspended until Israel vacates the Arab territory Israeli forces seized
in June 1967. U.S. aid is literally Israelís lifeline, so the ultimatum
would be electrifying evidence that the United States, at long last, will
do what is right for Arabs and Muslims. If Bush acts, the Iraqi people
will have reason to believe, for the first time, that the U.S. government
truly opposes colonialism.
-
- The ultimatum would prompt rejoicing worldwide, not just
among Iraqis and Palestinians. Opinion polls show that a large majority
of Israelis, weary of the long, bloody struggle to subjugate the Palestinians,
would welcome co-existence with an independent, peaceful Palestine.
-
- An impressive foundation for this presidential ultimatum
already exists. All member-states of the Arab league unanimously offered
peace-for-withdrawal four years ago. A similar plan called the Geneva Accords
was recently announced jointly by former officials of Israel and Palestine.
Almost simultaneously, four retired heads of Israeli intelligence even
urged full, unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.
-
- By standing resolutely for justice for Palestinians,
who are mostly Muslim, Bush would virtually end anti-American protests
and strengthen moderate forces worldwide.
-
- Will Bush liberate America from endless wars and chart
a constructive, peaceful new future for our nation? If he does so promptly,
he will be a shoo-in for reelection. If he does not, I will join other
Republicansóthere will be many of us--in urging his defeat.
-
- - Paul Findley, a Member of Congress for 22 years, is
the author of They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront
Israelís Lobby and chairman emeritus of the Council for the National
Interest. He writes books and articles from his home in Jacksonville, Illinois,
and lectures widely on international affairs.
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- http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/Jan/28%20o/A%20
Republicans%20Case%20Against%20George%20W%20Bush%20By%20Paul%20Findley.htm
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