Congressman Charles Rangel at Saint Luke’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, NYC 3/12/05

A transcription of the first twenty-five minutes of the Congressman’s speech given on Saturday March 12, 2005, 2:30 p.m. at St. Luke’s AME Church, located on 1872 Amsterdam Ave., NYC.

Mr. Rangel is a gifted orator. The audience was receptive and engaged. During the question and answer phase, there were no questions regarding the West Side Stadium for which the Congressman is now on record as supporting.

Vin -

(audience applause)

Thank you pastor. I don’t normally get this close to heaven.

(audience laughter)

I really appreciate the fact that you have opened up your church to this dialog because it just seems to me that the act of war and killing, that you can’t get more (inaudible) than the taking away of someone’s life, especially when a political decision has been made. I don’t think the church can dispute that God has given us all a sense of striking back in self-defense. Every animal that God has made, he gives this strength to protect himself, especially humankind.

I suspect that if one knew that they were going to be injured that they would have a legal and moral obligation to prevent that from happening, that is if our country was ever invaded here.

My friends what is happening in the Bush administration is that an entirely new standard has been created for war, that is to prevent the danger from becoming imminent. That is a subjective decision that is made where you don’t have to show a connection between 9/11. You don’t have to show Saddam Hussein’s connection with the terrorists. You don’t have to show weapons of mass destruction. You merely have to say that he is a terrible man, and he could, or that he has the potential of causing a situation that could put us in imminent danger.

Last week, the Democratic Leadership met with Condoleeza Rice. I say the Democratic Leadership because the Congress is so partisan that the Secretary of State meets with the Republican Leadership, and then meets with the Democratic Leadership, and the President calls himself a “uniter”. What could bring us closer together in a time of war is saying, “There are no Democrats. There are no Republicans.”

She (Condoleeza Rice) was sharing with us how she thought that the invasion of Iraq has caused so many seeds of freedom and liberty to blossom: the elections in Iraq, that the Syrians will get out of Lebanon, and the fact that Iranians have received orders as to what they have to do within a time frame.

I said, “Madame Secretary, if we believe that the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein has now developed a sense of peace in the area, has the administration reached a point where they believe that they have been successful and the question of war against Iran will be taken off the table because a lot of the people who had to decide whether or not these elections were so successful in Iraq, also would have to decide whether it is worth the loss of over 1,500 American lives, the wounding of over 12,000 Americans and the death of over 100,000 Iraqis?” She said that she and the President thought it was worth it, (scattered audience guffaws), but she said that the option of war, especially as it relates to Iran, can never be taken off the table. Which means that she is validating an earlier decision, a decision that had nothing to do with 9/11, to show that American military power was prevalent over international persuasion. Pastor, I can‘t begin to tell you how frightening this is. Not for Iraq, but for the credibility and the dignity of our nation. (audience claps)

I have traveled around the world, and I have had Africans, Asians and Europeans try to get me to say derogatory things about my country. I have managed to say, “This is my country.” (an audience member is heard saying “Amen”) . We have to work our way out to see that we get justice and equity in my country.” I would go so far as to say, “Whatever country you go to, you go to the U.S. embassy, we find your people lining up to get into the United States, not our people lining up to get to where you are,” but on the question of this war, I have never felt so embarrassed, not just to be an American, but to be a part of the American Government that can decide how many people are going to lose their lives without us having been placed in imminent danger, or without us being attacked.

This isn’t just chance. This isn’t just a guy woke up in Texas and said that he wanted to become President, and therefore he is going to adopt this foreign policy. You have to remember that this is a man who never left the continental United States of America before he became President. This is a man that is proud of the fact that he wasn’t bright! (audience laughs/guffaws)

When he (Bush) said that he placed in his Cabinet friends of his father to compensate for his lack of understanding of foreign policy, that wasn’t half chance either. I don’t know how many of you have heard of the Project for a New American Century. That will have to go down (in history) as one of the most infamous groups that was ever created. It was only a handful of them, but they completely controlled the foreign policy of the United States. It’s Dick Cheney. It’s Rumsfeld. It’s Perle. It’s Wolfowitz. It’s Jeb Bush.

They had decided, when Clinton was in office, that the United States cannot, and should not, tolerate people that they don’t know, and that we could be subjected to violence as a result of them. As a matter of fact, they refer to the enemy as Islamic terrorists. This should be enough to outrage anybody: to have a religious label placed on murderers. We would never think of calling Hitler a “Christian Terrorist”, or the Ku Klux Klan, that killed so many black folks, but we never call them “Baptist Terrorists”.

If you confront these people in Congress, the depth of their racism and bigotry would cause them to say, “But aren’t they Islamic, and aren’t they terrorists?” These people have decided, and they had written to then President Clinton, and to then Speaker Gingrich, and to then Senate Leader Lott, and said that as a part of our foreign policy, Saddam Hussein had to go.

From the Lenox Ave. point of view, what this means really is that if there is somebody in the neighborhood that is giving you a hard time, and there are good people in that neighborhood, (female audience member responds, “Oh, yes there are!”) but you can’t figure out who is giving you a hard time, you teach them all a lesson. You knock over one of the meanest of them, and you know he is mean because he was your partner in the 80’s (audience laughs), but if you make him the symbol of what is evil, to pull the statue down, to put him in a spider hole, to kill his sons, to show that this is the core of evil, then everyone who looks like him, or speaks like him, or has the same religion as he, will then get the message, even if he was not responsible for 9/11.

In this letter that they sent to the President, where they said that our foreign policy should be to invade, and to topple, the Iraqi Government, even the President questioned, “How are we going to get out?” He was satisfied with what they told him... but we have really walked into the jaws of hell in Iraq, and we haven’t the slightest clue as to how we get out.

I don’t know how many of you have the done the foolish thing that I have done in racing to the airport. By mistake you go into the rent-a-car lot, and soon as you drive in, you realize that you have made one big mistake because out of the ground come these big hooks. You know you can’t back out. You know you have to catch a plane, and you have to negotiate with this attendant who doesn’t care how important you think you are. You have to do what he tells you to do to get out, and we have to do what the international community would suggest we have to do to get rid of terrorists without having so many innocent people die.

You know, when 9/11 hit, that was the cue for them to actually make up their minds, right then, that they were going to knock off Saddam Hussein. Because even in their writings, they said that the American people are not prepared politically and emotionally to lose American lives to get rid of Saddam Hussein, that we have to be taught in a Pearl Harbor type of incident to be a smart as they are. Even though 9/11, and the toppling of the Twin Towers, had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, did they not allow us to believe that it did? Wasn’t Saddam Hussein always mentioned with 9/11?

The truth has to be something that we have to continuously search for.... Where did 15 of the 19 Hijackers come from? (Audience replies: “Saudi Arabia”) And who visits the Crawford ranch and the White House, but the Saudis? Where did Bin Laden get some of his funds from if it wasn’t Saudi Arabia? Where do we get oil from, and where is there a place that lacks democracy more than Saudi Arabia?

There they are getting excited about republican style elections in Iraq, and if you can ask anybody that supports this war to name one person that they know that has been killed in this war, it would tell me that this is a class war type of system where the poorest of Americans, those who need the money, are the ones who are involved in this.

Some have asked me did I ever really think that my draft bill would pass. I said that I did not think that the situation warranted going to war, but if by introducing the bill, where everybody between the ages of 18 and 26 was eligible for military service, and those that were not selected for military service would have to be mandated to do some type of public service, if the President, if Rumsfeld, if Wolfowitz, if the Congress had thought by taking this courageous act of invading this third world country was the right thing to do, if they thought their kids would be involved, they never, never would have done it.

Even now, when we have 200,000 troops there, the Democrats and the Republicans would say that they (inaudible-speaker hit microphone while gesturing) have to stay there.

In August of 1950, I was shipped overseas, to fight the North Koreans and the Chinese, with the Second Infantry Division. My friends, today, the Second Infantry Division is still in South Korea.

We are not just satisfied with rattling swords outside of Iraq.... If they are going to maintain this foreign policy, they are going to have to move toward a draft because the recruiting that was done for the active military is an areas of high unemployment, whether it’s rural areas, or whether it’s in the cities.

...The Democratic Leadership of Washington Heights know that many Dominicans that are here were offered citizenship, risked their lives, to go to the military, hoping that this would be a positive thing. I don’t have to tell you about the number of Mexicans that are here. Just look at the names of those who have been killed. Look at their colors. Look at the towns that they come from, and the rural areas.

I heard a big commotion in my office a couple months ago. I came out to see what the devil was going on. There was a young fellow who had just joined the Army, just enlisted. He had a GED. He didn’t finish High School. His mother was crying, “Could I undo what he had done?” His father was crying as to where was the $80,000 they had promised his son.

I called the recruiting office, and they shared with me their policy. The $60,000 was an exaggeration of what the education benefits would be. The $20,000 wasn’t. Right now, you can get $20,000 if you join the Army with a GED, and $30,000 if you join the Marines. On reenlistment, after three years, you can get up to $60,000. That’s big money to offer poor families who come from areas of high unemployment, and their method of doing it is immoral, and they would respond, “Why don’t you let them recruit college kids for ROTC, so that you get people who are more highly educated.” The truth of the matter is that wherever you see kids joining ROTC, it is for the educational benefits they get, and not because they are anxious to topple Saddam Hussein.

Forty percent of the troops that are there, are middle-aged people who serve with the National Guard. When I put in the bill, Senator (garbled, probably Hollings) of North Carolina, of South Carolina, called me, and he said, “You know, you talk a lot about the poor and the minorities, but I’m catching hell from my rednecks, and the reservists!” Because South Carolina has more than its share of its military bases, and so therefore, people who are being discharged join the Reserves, so that they can get a little pension, so that they can march in the Fourth of July, stop floods, put out fires, so that they look good in a uniform. They are going over there (Iraq) two and three times. The casualties are just as high as for the active youngsters, most of whom believe, as I did, when I was younger, that I can’t get killed. It’s going to be the other guy.

Marriages are broken up because employers are under no obligations to pay them salaries when they are gone. We have people that have decent jobs, but they are corporals and sergeants in the National Guard, and that is the salary that the family has to live on.

The question that we have to face today is how long are we going to tolerate this criminal type of behavior... in the name of patriotism, so that so many people are intimidated in even speaking out against the war for fear that they could be criticized as not supporting the troops? (audience claps)

...Condoleeza has said that war will never be taken off the table. The President has said in his inaugural address, and more recently, that we are mandated by God to spread liberty and freedom wherever there are oppressed people. (Several in audience respond “Right here”).

...If you are talking about doing this in a philosophical or economic development or trade and commerce, that’s one thing. If you are talking about recruiting and keeping people in in the military after their term expires and placing them in harms way, this is not a Republican or Democratic decision. This is a moral question that we have to face as a nation.

A month ago, they commemorated the end of the Holocaust, and the end of World War Two, and I saw Germans, old Germans, who say, “The trains came. They put the Jews on, and we never saw them again. We had no idea of what was going!”

There was many times when people lost their relatives in the South because of the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan... but their was no outrage that human life was being taken, not in self-defense, not in imminent danger, because good people acted as if nothing was going wrong .

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