A Prayer for America
Excerpted from a speech by U.S. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), Feb. 17, 2002

I offer these remarks today as a prayer for our country, with love of democracy. We must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask, why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?

How can we justify, in effect

• canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
• canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
• canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
• canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
• canceling the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?

We cannot justify

• widespread wiretaps and Internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it;
• secret searches without a warrant;
• giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups;
• giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records;
• giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance;
• a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy.

"To promote the common defense" is one of the formational principles of America. Our Congress gave the President the ability to respond to the tragedy of September the Eleventh. We licensed a response to those who helped bring the terror of September the Eleventh. But we the people and our elected representatives must reserve the right to measure the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the response, and to correct the response.

We did not authorize:

• the invasion of Iraq.
• the invasion of Iran.
• the invasion of North Korea.
• the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.
• permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
• the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.
• military tribunals suspending due process and habeas corpus.
• assassination squads.
• the resurrection of COINTELPRO.
• the repeal of the Bill of Rights.
• the revocation of the Constitution.
• national identity cards.
• the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our cities. an eye for an eye.

Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan.

We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy.

Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy. The President has requested a $45.6 billion increase in military spending. All defense-related programs will cost close to $400 billion.

Consider that the Department of Defense has never passed an independent audit. Consider that the Inspector General has notified Congress that the Pentagon cannot properly account for $1.2 trillion in transactions. Consider that in recent years the Dept. of Defense could not match $22 billion worth of expenditures to the items it purchased; wrote off, as lost, billions of dollars worth of in-transit inventory; and stored nearly $30 billion worth of spare parts it did not need.

Yet the defense budget grows with more money for weapons systems to fight a cold war which ended, weapon systems in search of new enemies to create new wars.

This has nothing to do with fighting terror. This has everything to do with fueling a military industrial machine with the treasure of our nation, risking the future of our nation, risking democracy itself with the militarization of thought which follows the militarization of the budget.

Let us pray for our children. Our children deserve a world without end. Not a war without end. Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger, free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness, free of the terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the survival of democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation, and not appropriate for the survival of the world.

Let us pray that we have the courage and the will as a people and as a nation to shore ourselves up, to reclaim from the ruins of September the Eleventh our democratic traditions. Let us declare our love for democracy. Let us declare our intent for peace. Let us work to make nonviolence an organizing principle in our own society. Let us recommit ourselves to the slow and painstaking work of statecraft, which sees peace, not war as being inevitable. Let us work for a world where someday war becomes archaic.

That is the vision which the proposal to create a Department of Peace envisions. Forty-three members of congress are now cosponsoring the legislation. Let us work for a world where nuclear disarmament is an imperative. That is why we must begin by insisting on the commitments of the ABM treaty. That is why we must be steadfast for nonproliferation.

Let us work for a world where America can lead the way in banning weapons of mass destruction not only from our land and sea and sky but from outer space itself. That is the vision of HR 3616: A universe free of fear. Where we can look up at God's creation in the stars and imagine infinite wisdom, infinite peace, infinite possibilities, not infinite war, because we are taught that the kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. Let us pray that we have the courage to replace the images of death which haunt us, the layers of images of September the Eleventh, faded into images of patriotism, spliced into images of military mobilization, jump cut into images of our secular celebrations of the World Series, New Year's Eve, the Superbowl, the fOlympics, the strobic flashes which touch our deepest fears, let us replace those images with the work of human relations, reaching out to people, helping our own citizens here at home, lifting the plight of the poor everywhere. That is the America which has the ability to rally the support of the world. That is the America which stands not in pursuit of an axis of evil, but which is itself at the axis of hope and faith and peace and freedom.

America, America. God shed grace on thee. Crown thy good, America. Not with weapons of mass destruction. Not with invocations of an axis of evil. Not through breaking international treaties. Not through establishing America as king of a unipolar world. Crown thy good, America.

America, America. Let us pray for our country. Let us love our country. Let us defend our country not only from the threats without but from the threats within. Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good with brotherhood, and sisterhood. And crown thy good with compassion and restraint and forbearance and a commitment to peace, to democracy, to economic justice here at home and throughout the world.

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Back to Peace Talk Index, Spring, 2002