Changing America is our Only Hope
by Phil Worden
A speech delivered at the October 26 Rally for Peace in Augusta
| The United States has
deliberately put the United Nations in an impossible position: if it refuses
to authorize a US attack and the US attacks anyway, the UN will have proven
itself irrelevant. If it authorizes an attack on Iraq because of the US
threat to act unilaterally, it will have become a rubber stamp for the
United States. Either way, a hope for world government dies.
|
I assume you already know how dangerous the current crisis is. The richest
and most powerful country the world has ever seen — a country so full of
weapons of mass destruction that it can, with the push of a button, tear a
billion people to pieces — threatens to attack Iraq. The United States calls
its planned attack an act of "self-defense." But in its National Security
Strategy the administration concedes — as it must — that its claim of
self-defense is not based on current international law. Rather, it argues
that the rules of self-defense must change in this new age of terrorism.
Thus the United States not only claims a right to unilaterally attack
another country but a right to unilaterally change international law as
well. Whenever we talk about the Persian Gulf, we are talking about oil. The
tragic irony of America's dependence on foreign oil is that — just like an
addict who steals a drug that is ultimately going to kill him — we burn so
much oil so recklessly that we risk killing the earth with global warming.
This unsustainable economic exploitation keeps America on a road that goes
nowhere and has no future.
I suggest to you that the current crisis is not a contest between the United
States and Iraq over oil. The real contest is between the United States and
the United Nations. The important ultimatum is the one where George Bush
demanded that the United Nations authorize an attack on Iraq or become as
irrelevant as the old League of Nations, whose failure led to World War II.
Remember what the people who went through World War II did when it ended.
They established the United Nations to stop a great power from ever again
starting a war to promote its own imperial ambitions. The United States has
deliberately put the United Nations in an impossible position: if it refuses
to authorize a US attack and the US attacks anyway, the UN will have proven
itself irrelevant. If it authorizes an attack on Iraq because of the US
threat to act unilaterally, it will have become a rubber stamp for the
United States. Either way, a hope for world government dies.
This attack on the UN needs to be seen in its historic context. By asserting
its interests unilaterally as the sole super power, the US is setting the
rules for a new stage in history, a future in which the US plays a
domineering and predatory role. I don't care if you call it globalization,
neoliberalism, the post cold-war era or just the start of the 21st century,
the point is that we have entered a new period in history.
It's not the UN but the World Bank and the IMF that the US promotes as the
wave of this future. It is against this background that we should view the
Patriot Act. Aggression abroad always takes place at the expense of
democracy at home. The very essence of the Patriot Act is to allow the
government to do to its citizens what previously it could only do to foreign
agents. The War Against Terrorism is not going to be fought only against
foreigners but against Americans at home as well. Just in case this message
didn't get through, the Attorney General has said that those of us who do
not support the Administration's policies in the War on Terrorism are
supporting the terrorists.
The Big Chill has begun again. I think it is precisely because all of this
seems so un-American that the unfolding of this crisis has been so agonizing
to so many of us. Most of us believe in the values of human rights and
democracy that our country preaches but refuses to practice. This crisis
unfolded as though Bush were determined to prove to the people of the world
that their worst fears about America are true. In doing so, he challenges
our own beliefs about who we are and what we stand for. In Tom Paine's
words: "These are the times that try one's soul."
But we can find strength for the stand we must make by imagining how
different world history would be if we change America. Changing America is
the best — and maybe the only — hope the future has. To John Ashcroft, I say
that we not only have an absolute legal right to oppose this damned war; it
is our sacred obligation to the people of the world that we change America.
To all of you out there who are willing to take a stand on the side of
humanity against the forces of war and empire, I say: Stand strong! Because
you represent what's best about America.
Phil Worden is an attorney in Northeast Harbor who was active in SDS, the
Clam Shell Alliance, and the movement to end the Vietnam War.
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