 |
Department of Peace Gains Connecticut Support
09/07/2007
Department of Peace Gains Connecticut Support A Column By Marilyn Aligata
Since writing my last column, Congressman John Larson (D) signed on as a co-sponsor of HR808, the legislation to establish a Department of Peace and Nonviolence. This brings the total of Representatives to sixty-eight in the 110th Congress of the United States of America who have signed on to co-sponsor this important bill. John is the only one in Connecticut to stand up at this time. Thanks John.
Disappointing to me is a talk I recently had with Chris Murphy (D) at the New Morning Country Store in Woodbury. I could not get him to acknowledge he would come on board to co-sponsor this bill with John. He was so anti-war before he was elected and he seemed to change so much since the election, so have lots of the Democrats.
It takes courage to go against the powers that be, to be called unpatriotic, or as Bush said, “Either you are with me or with the terrorist.” How offensive! Are our legislators afraid we will say these things to them if they speak out and oppose the war or Bush? Are they afraid we will not re-elect them if they do? Do they think we will accuse them of not supporting the troops? Don’t forget we went to war on untruths, Saddam Hussein and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. We sent our troops into a war of our own making and under false pretenses. Think about it! If you want the war over and our troop’s home, it takes guts to stand up and say so. If we want our men and women in uniforms to be safe, the war must end.
Since we made such a mess of things in Iraq, I realize that a great deal of thoughts and planning will need to go into leaving Iraq. Our leaders must decide this is the course of action so we can start planning. Make our voices heard to push them along! Bush stubbornly wants to stay the course instead of calling a meeting with the United Nations and Middle Eastern countries, including Iran to talk about how the problems can be resolved and what the U.N. and the U.S. can do to help. We must include people all of Iraq’s religious and political factors and ask them what they think It will take to end the war. The U.S. will not agree, but we need to shut up and listen! The most skillful, honest and fair diplomats/leaders are needed to bring about a just and satisfying solution. Is there anyone we can trust to do this without theirs or our government’s interests in mind? I hope so.
I was against the war in Iraq before we went to war. I stood on the green in New Milford holding a sign that said- “Peace is Patriotic” and people threw eggs at me. I was against the Vietnam War; I wanted the war to end and our troops to come home. Approximately 55,000 of our troops died in Vietnam...and for what? Can you help me?
Anyway, Chris Murphy needs to hear from us as he serves District 5, our district. Call him at 860-223-8412 in New Britain, in Washington call 202-225-4476, or e-mail him at www.chrismurphy.house.gov. and ask his support of HR808. Look at www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ct-district-DepartmentofPeace. I did and it works.
Connecticut has five Districts and only John Larson has spoken up. Connecticut’s other Representatives in Washington are Joe Courtney (D) from East Hartford, Rosa DeLauro (D) New Haven, Christopher Shays ® from Bridgeport and Chris Murphy (D) Cheshire. Will they speak out for HR808 to create a Department of Peace and Nonviolence?
On July 17th, in Providence Rhode Island, the City Council passed a resolution in support of HR808 to establish a Department of Peace and Nonviolence. Providence joins San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Cambridge, Newark and other cities, towns and Tribal Councils around the country who have supported this effort to provide a seat at the table, a voice and a budget for peace building and non-violence at the federal level. Connecticut cities and towns need to do the same.
Our state and local government(s) need to hear from us. It is a government of the people, for the people, by the people. Not a government of the politicians, by the politicians for their re-election. Unfortunately, politicians do what is in their best interest, not the best interest of their local constituents and their projects. Our politicians look out for the best interest of lobbyist and corporations and their projects. These groups fund the campaigns. This is a good time to demand change in campaign financing to make political campaigns fair and honest and where the law says NO to the big interests! “We the people” must take back our country and our democracy from government and corporations. We need to take back the media too. I am grateful for a paper like the Waterbury Observer, it is free to say what it wants and not owned by any corporation.
There are those of you thinking we do not need another bureaucracy, right? Well look at our government, it is full of bureaucracies and not one of them says Peace. Just the sound of the world peace makes me hopeful. Webster defines peace as 1. a state of calm and quiet 2. absence of war or strife. I thought...War is raw spelled backwards, and nothing is rawer then bloody war...Painful, aching throbbing, excruciating, hurting, agonizing and destructive war.
My cherished nephew and Godchild, Gary Aligata, a solider during the Vietnam War, committed suicide when he came home. G.I. suicides are up, 99 Army soldiers killed themselves last year. Some people, no matter how they are drilled and taught to kill, just cannot do it.We were not born to kill. In fact if you believe the 10 Commandments are good rules to live by, it says, “Thou shall not kill”, it does not say unless there is a war, or a capital punishment, or to get back at someone. Thou shall not kill, period! As far as self-defense goes, our country has become so violent, I do not know what is best, but I do know that violence only begets more violence.
Pacifism is one of the most underrated ideas on Earth. A.J. Muste, 1885-1967, became one of the foremost voices of his time for pacifist social change. As much as we admire Gandhdi, very few people, not to speak of any politicians, are trying to conduct their affairs along his lines. Muste took very literally that the idea of doing something unto others what you would have done unto yourself as something that our foreign policy needs to badly consider. We need to consider this also in our violence at home. Dr. Martin Luther King had the ideas to carry this out but he was taken from us before he could become too powerful as a leader in the world.
Thich Nhat Hanh, author of many books on peace says that peace comes with each of us and we must find peace within. In his book Being Peace, he says, “that with 50,000 atomic bombs, humankind has become the most dangerous species on earth. We were never as dangerous as we are now. We should be aware. Human life is more important than any ideology or doctrine. Humankind suffers very much from attachment to views, we will, however, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness through compassionate dialogue.” I hope he can convince enough of us. Among Buddhist leaders influential in the West, he ranks second only to the Dalai Lama.
A woman who has inspired me to stay the course over these many years is Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Beyond War. The PSR brochure states that she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The Smithsonian Institute and Ladies Home Journal named her as one of the most influential women of the 20th century. She has said there is an indebtedness of the current Bush Administration to the nuclear arms industry and warns of enormous dangers inherited in allowing weapon manufactures to dictate foreign policy. Caldicott talks of how the merging of weapons firms in the 1980s created hugely powerful “death merchants” including Lockheed Martin and others, ready to lobby politicians and manipulate public opinion on behalf of their corporate interest. The Nuclear Danger, a book by Dr. Caldicott has been acclaimed by Walter Cronkite as “ A timely warning at a critical moment in world history of the horrible consequences of nuclear warfare.”
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mohamed El Birdie said in his acceptance speech in 2005 that “Seventeen Years after the Cold War, the risk of another nuclear disaster is as great as ever with terrorist zealously pursuing atomic weapons. We are in a race against time. To escape self-destruction, the world must make atomic weapons as much of a taboo as slavery or genocide. It has been over 60 years since the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan yet the world is still deeply concerned over nuclear programs.” El Birdie has the Bush Administration bristling by challenging U.S. claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction when no such weapons were found.
We must constantly keep an eye on our politicians as our very life and our freedom depend on it. Senator Joseph Lieberman is threatening again. At a meeting on China with lawmakers he told them that they should approve a U.S. panel sanction of Beijing, over currency, as a warning about American frustration. Where U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is leading a “strategic economic dialog with Beijing over currency and with other diplomats, and says it is producing results. It appears that Mr. Lieberman does not know how to have a diplomatic dialog, he just likes to threaten. It is dismal to think I used to vote for him. His threatening Iran and being in a position to make decisions on Iran scare me. I did not like when Barrack Obama said in an article on Saturday, August 4th that he would launch a military strike against a terrorist haven in a remote territory of a “Muslim ally”. Hillary Clinton threatens too. What are we talking about here? Attack, attack, attack! I do not want anyone as president, in congress or the senate representing me or my country that is threatening. America does not make or keep friends that way and the world is no more peaceful. In fact, we create enemies.
My fellow citizens, I implore you to take a look, can’t you see it coming? Over the past 50 years, scientists, journalists, educators, theologists, philosophers, doctors, former senators, and presidents, Nobel Peace Prize winners have spoken out and they are speaking out again. Everyone seems to see that if we continue on the course of using war as the way to solve our disputes, nuclear warfare is coming. We can see that a nuclear war will wipe out the future for our children and grandchildren. We must do something today!
Albert Schweitzer was a doctor, scientist, author, peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1952. From 1952 till his death, he worked against nuclear tests and nuclear weapons with Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. In 1957 and 1958 they broadcast four speeches over Radio Olso, which was published in Peace or Atomic War.
I am now reading a book – Out of Iraq – A practical Plan for Withdrawal Now- by George McGovern, Democratic nominee for president in 1972, and William Polk, leading authority on the Middle East, who offers a detailed plan for speedy troop withdrawal from Iraq. The book is dedicated to their grandchildren. I am upset from what I read in his book. For example, on December 2, 2002, the Secretary of Defense gave written authorization for torture and cruel punishment. What have we become? We wonder why the world feels the way they do about us. Open your eyes Americans and find out what is going on, you won’t like what you see.
If all this information is terrifying, it is meant to be, something must wake us up to act on behalf of “we the people”. We must be active citizens, write, call, email, vote, demonstrate, march, whatever it takes to get the politicians to pay attention to us and make decisions that are in our best interest. I read in Dr. Caldicott’s information that the money we are spending on the Iraq war would be as much as $1,000 a day for the past 2000 years. Disgusting isn’t it? All America would have had health care, and social security would not be in trouble. And this is just a couple of problems we have, think of what we could do for education, the poor, etc. with that kind of money. We need to purge our government of politicians we don’t trust, and those who support war and especially those whose campaigns are funded by the powerfully lobbyists and billionaire corporations who want the favors back after the election. Sorry to say, that is about everyone.
We must maintain an alertness to vote for what is in the best interest of our family, our country and the world. I am passionately devoted to my dream that my children and grandchildren and all children of the world have a future. My dream is for leaders, politicians and most of all the citizens of the world to come to the belief that war is obsolete, and take a good look at pacifism, which could make the dream come true. We must find a way to live in peace or perish.
I hope I have stirred something inside you besides anger and fear. I hope I have made you feel you want to do something, to take action. There is a nationwide peace walk on September 15th. The Connecticut Walk will occur in Hartford on Saturday September 15 beginning at 10 a.m. at St Patrick and St. Anthony’s church at 265 Church St. If you have never been on a walk try it, its good for you spirit. The Walk will go through Bushnell Park and end up at the Capitol. Be creative; make signs, tell other people to come.
Back
|
|
