Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Ma5) Speech in Support of US Dept of Peace (HR1673)

[paineinthearse]

The bill will be introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich in the next few days (not yet in Thomas, will be H.Res 1673).

This text was received via email from Rep. McGovern's staff. Enjoy.

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Massachusetts Campaign for a US Department of Peace
First Parish Church
20 Lexington Road
Concord, MA
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
{3:15 M- 4:15 PM: JPM remarks and Q& A}


WHY I SUPPORT A US DEPARTMENT OF PEACE


Thank you, Pat, for those kind words of introduction.

I want to thank Dave Dunn, Carol Dwyer and Pat Simon for inviting me to participate in this special event.

Please let me begin by expressing my own appreciation and support for the efforts of everyone in this room to make this world a more peaceful place.

It means a great deal to me to meet people and organizations that are committed to building a more peaceful world and using peaceful, non-violent means as a tool of action, as a tool to create social change.

I know that you all have the skill, the experience and the commitment to work towards improving the human condition. I know that you believe, like I do, that by working together, we can develop creative and innovative ways to increase the impact of peace-building at all levels of society, nationally and internationally. And if there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that we can make a difference.

I know that Dave just summarized the key elements of H.R. 1673, which was the bill number in the 108th Congress, of legislation to establish a Cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peace. I know that my good friend and colleague, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, plans to reintroduce this legislation soon, and I am already on his list as an original cosponsor of this bill.

This bill – and the vision of Congressman Kucinich – embrace a broad-based approach to non-violent conflict resolution, both here at home and internationally. A Department of Peace would actually serve to promote non-violence as an organizing principle in our society, and promote non-violence as a fundamental value of our society. In effect, it seeks to help create the conditions for a less violent, more peaceable world.

Domestically, the Department would be responsible for developing policies to address such issues as domestic violence, child abuse, and the mistreatment of the elderly. Internationally, it would make recommendations to the President on the protection and promotion of human rights, and the prevention and de-escalation of international conflict.

One aspect of this bill that I like very much is that the Department would have an Office of Peace Education to work with educators in elementary, secondary and higher education on the development and implementation of curricula to teach students in conflict resolution skills. It would also create a Peace Academy, modeled after our military service academies, where the best and the brightest would receive instruction in peace education and offer opportunities for graduates to serve in programs dedicated to domestic or international conflict resolution.

Many people might dismiss this proposal out of hand as utopian, but let me talk about a couple of aspects of this proposed Department that demonstrate how efforts in this direction are already underway.

Let me start with the Peace Academy. I happen to be the Democratic Co-Chair of the Congressional Hunger Center. My Republican counterpart is Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri. The Hunger Center is dedicated to training up the next generation of leaders in the fight against hunger. Many people think ending hunger is an idealistic and impossible goal. I don’t. I think it’s a matter of political will. And I can tell you that every year, we are flooded with applications from some of the best graduate students in the country to spend one year working as fellows in domestic hunger organizations and domestic hunger policy-making offices – or two years working one year as a fellow in an overseas placement targeting hunger and then one year back here in the United States in an international policy-making placement addressing hunger issues.

I can guarantee you that many of these young men and women would have been happy to apply for admission to a Peace Academy, if they had been offered such an opportunity.

We need to remember – once upon a time, there was no Peace Corps; there was no VISTA program; there was no Department of Education, for that matter. It took leaders with visions to create these programs and agencies. This case is no different.

War is always presented as something inevitable, a tragic aspect of human nature, and an unfortunate, but necessary, means of ensuring peace and stability.

Well, war is not inevitable unless we refuse to work – patiently and tirelessly – for peace.

War with Iraq was presented as inevitable. In fact, it was presented as so necessary that the failure to go to war would result in the demise or imminent harm of the United States. Except it was all a lie. No weapons of mass destruction. No ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist network. No imminent threat whatsoever. And yet, those of us who raised questions about the rationale leading up to the war are still held up to public criticism, even though the questions we were raising were correct – and even though the alternative action we were proposing, namely letting the UN arms inspectors complete their mission, would have resolved all the unanswered questions.

Isn’t it time to insist that our leaders suspend their incessant talk of preventive war? Of their presumed right act unilaterally? Isn’t it time that we insist upon “preventive diplomacy” and our obligation to lead and work with the world community on matters of global security?

I have a vision of nations working together, using what President Roosevelt called the “science of human relationships” to end conflicts before they flare into full-fledged armed war. That is the basis for the creation of a Department of Peace.

When Walter Cronkite first heard that legislation had been introduced in the Congress to create a Department of Peace, he stated “there is an urgency to its adoption. In this dangerous world, where the strength of the United States is needed to keep the peace, we need a visible manifestation of our intention to play that role, without the arrogance that cost us friends and allies among the nations and peoples of the world.”

Well, I agree with Walter Cronkite.

There is an urgency. There is a need. And this is the time for vision and for action.

We need to continue to press our government – and governments around the world – to work within the international system of law and justice.

You must continue to use your voice to demand change in U.S. policies that escalate conflict, violence, the violation of human rights, and war.

And I will continue to help you in this effort by playing a similar role in Congress.

I know that together, we will succeed.

[Sapphire Blue]

1. The Peace Alliance & Foundation

http://www.dopcampaign.org/index.htm

[paineinthearse]

2. RW spin - attack supporters as radical/ leftist/ marxist

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17293

Indoctrination at Xavier
By Jacob Laksin and Jordan Michael Smith
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 8, 2005

Numbering among America’s oldest Catholic Universities, Xavier was also one of only 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the country. Of late, however, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based school has increasingly fallen under the sway of a different kind of faith: radical leftist politics. For evidence of this development, one need only consider Xavier’s Peace and Justice program. To judge by its mission statement, the program makes no effort to disguise the left-wing activist agenda—including a reflexive aversion to war and a palpable hostility to free-market capitalism—that underpins the Peace and Justice curriculum. "Using spiritual and intellectual resources, the programs work toward global economic justice, basic human rights, a culture of non-violence, and a more orderly and humane way of making decisions on an international level," it explains.

In this, Xavier’s Peace and Justice program borrows directly from the program’s founder and co-director, Fr. Benjamin J. Urmston. It was Urmston who, in 1981, inaugurated the Peace and Justice program. A Jesuit minister, Urmston is also a devout radical. In fact, Urmston’s personal website at Xavier is a veritable windmill of leftist propaganda. Aside from reproducing fringe conspiracy theories invoking the "Israeli lobby’s neo-conservative network," Urmston regularly rails against free market capitalism, globalization, and what he calls the American "military-industrial complex." Thundering like a Hebrew prophet, Urmston makes clear his view of the United States, stating, "We can change sinful economic and social structures." He is equally contemptuous of the idea of a nation state, asserting that "a single nation state or a group of nation states are incapable of judging fairly or acting promptly." To replace the nation, Urmston calls for an expanded United Nations. In addition, Urmston, who has called for every country to create a "Council of Conscience," is an enthusiastic supporter of the United States Department of Peace extolled by far-left Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Urmston’s views on terrorism, meanwhile, call to mind the lunatic ravings of Ward Churchill. "What goes around, comes around," Urmston declares on his website, "A nation which inflicts violence and injustice on others cannot expect to live in peace and security within its own borders. Its victims will find some way to inflict violence and harm on it."

Urmston’s disdain for the United States is equaled only by his enthusiasm for the communist cause. It is no accident that one of the earliest programs sponsored by Xavier’s Peace and Justice program, under Urmston’s direction, was a discussion series called Comprehending Communism. The unambiguous aim of the discussions was to sell Xavier students on the proposition, then in vogue among the pro-communist Left, that anti-communism was far more pernicious than communism itself. At one such discussion, as Urmston recounts on the Peace and Justice website, Dr. John Fairfield, a history professor at Xavier, "stated that the US fought Communism with all the ferocity of Stalin's totalitarianism, that the thought control of anti-communism was often as oppressive as what it said it was fighting." Urmston remained an eager celebrant of communist revolution in Central America throughout the 1908s, taking "study trips" to "worker cooperatives" in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba.

Even today, Urmston remains committed to the Cuban revolution. While he concedes that "Cuba is not heaven," Urmston holds the United States accountable for the fact "that Cuba does not handle dissent well." The blame for Cuba’s intolerance of dissent, as Urmston sees it, properly rests with the U.S. antagonism toward the Castro dictatorship, which has produced a "bunker mentality" within the Cuban regime. Urmston’s radicalism is reflected in the classes offered through the Peace and Justice program. For instance, a class entitled Challenge of Peace in the Contemporary World, taught by one Dr. John Sniegocki, frames "peace" within the context of leftist politics, wherein it is "understood holistically as social justice, ecological sustainability as well as absence of violent conflict." In accord with the radical pseudo-Gospel that globalization is the leading cause of international poverty, the course also surveys the "impacts of economic globalization on social conflict." The books selected by Dr. Sniegocki are clearly intended to reinforce these views. Among them are Tinderbox: US Foreign Policy and Roots of Terrorism, by radical San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes, which explains anti-American terrorism as a logical consequence of American foreign policy toward the Middle East; Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History, by antiwar activist Elise Boulding on capitalism and corporations; and The Essential Gandhi.

more.......

Jacob Laksin is a Frontpage columnist. Jordan Michael Smith is a Graduate Student in Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

[American Tragedy]

3. Funny...

<<Urmston regularly rails against free market capitalism, globalization, and what he calls the American "military-industrial complex.">>

He refers to the military-industrial complex like it's just a bizarre left-wing construct, rather than a phrase describing a proven financial relationship, which has been in wide public use for more than forty years, at least since Eisenhower's most famous address.

[goodhue]

4. kick

http://www.dopcampaign.org/read_bill.htm