Keynote at the Veterans for Peace National Convention

We Stand Our Ground - Keynote at the Veterans for Peace National
Convention in San Francisco
By William Rivers Pitt — t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday 10 August 2003
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/081003A.shtml

I must begin by saying that standing here before you is, simply,
one of the greatest honors of my life. I have never served in the
armed forces in any capacity. My father, however, did. He
volunteered for service in Vietnam in 1969. The changes that war
wrought upon him have affected, for both good and ill, every single
day of my life. Vietnam did not only affect the generation that
served there. It affected the children of those who served there,
and the families of those who served there. That war is an American
heirloom, great and terrible simultaneously, handed down from
father to son and from mother to daughter, from father to daughter
and from mother to son. The lessons learned there speak to us
today, almost thirty years hence.

Let me tell you a quick story about my father. His call to the
freedom bird came while he was still out in the field. He arrived
at Dulles Airport to meet my mother still dressed in his bush
greens, still wearing the moustache, with the mud of Vietnam still
under his fingernails and stuck inside the waffle of his boot sole.
A few days earlier, he had come across a beautiful old French
rifle. It was given to him by a Vietnamese friend, a former teacher
with three children who had been conscripted permanently into the
military. My father managed to bring this rifle home with him, and
sent it on the flight in the baggage hold along with his duffel.

My father and my mother stood waiting at the baggage claim for his
things to come down. The people there - and this was 1970, remember
– backed away from him as if he was radioactive. They knew where he
had just come from. If the greens were not a giveaway, the standard
issue muddy tan he and all the vets wore upon return from Vietnam
was. When the rifle came down the belt, not in a package or a box,
just laying there in all its reality, the crowd was appalled and
horrified. My mother and father looked at each other and wondered
what these people were thinking. What did they think was happening
over there? What did they think it is that soldiers do? Did they
even begin to understand this war, and what it meant, what it was
doing to American soldiers, to the Vietnamese soldiers like my
father’s friend, and to the civilians caught in the crossfire?
The looks on those people’s faces there said enough.

The answer was
no. They didn’t know, and apparently didn’t want to know. Now,
thirty three years later, we are back in that same place again,
fighting a war few understand that is affecting soldiers and
civilians in ways only those soldiers and civilians can truly know.
Ignorance, it seems, is also an American heirloom to be passed down
again and again and again.
Many of you know, far better than I do, what my father felt that
day in Dulles. That is why I am honored to speak to you tonight. If
the American people fully knew what this war in Iraq was really
about, if they fully knew what it means today to be a soldier in
that part of the world, they would tear the White House apart brick
by brick. If the people had but a taste of the horror and the lies,
they would repudiate this administration and all it stands for. The
don’t know, because they have been fed a glutton’s diet of
misinformation and fraud. Changing that is why we are here.

The first of August saw a very interesting article published in the
Washington Post. The title was, "US Shifts Rhetoric On its Goals in
Iraq." The story quotes an unnamed administration source - I will
bet you all the money in my wallet that this "source" was a man
named Richard Perle - who outlined the newest reasons for our war
over there. "That goal is to see the spread of our values," said
this aide, "and to understand that our values and our security are
inextricably linked."

Our values. That’s an interesting concept coming from a member of
this administration. We make much of the greatness and high moral
standing of the United States of America, and there is much to be
proud of. The advertising, however, has lately failed completely to
match up with the product.
Is it part of our value system to remain on a permanent war footing
since World War II, shunting money desperately needed for human
services and education into a military machine whose very size and
expense demands the fighting of wars to justify its existence?
Is it part of our value system to lie to the American people, to
lie deeply and broadly and with no shame at all, about why we fight
in Iraq?

Is it part of our value system to sacrifice nearly three hundred
American soldiers on the altar of those lies, to sacrifice
thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq
on the altar of those lies?
Is it part of our value system to use the horror of September 11 to
terrify the American people into an unnecessary war, into the
ruination of their civil rights, into the annihilation of the
Constitution?
Is it part of our value system to use that terrible day against
those American people who felt most personally the awful blow of
that attack?

Is striking first part of our value system?
Is living in fear part of our value system?
It is not part of my value system. It never will be.
This new justification for our war in Iraq is yet another lie, an
accent in a symphony of lies. The values this administration
represents play no part in the common morality of the American
people, play no part in the legal and constitutional system we
adore and defend. One of the worst things ever to happen to this
country was allowing the people within this administration to use
words like "freedom" and "justice" and "democracy" and
"patriotism," for those good and noble words become the foulest of
lies when passing their lips.

For the record, the justification for war on Iraq was:
The procurement by Iraq of uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear
weapons program, plus 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of
botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents -
500 tons, for those without calculators, is one million pounds -
almost 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents,
several mobile biological weapons labs, and connections between the
Iraqi regime and al Qaeda that led directly to the attacks of
September 11.

None of these weapons have been found. The mobile weapons labs -
termed "Winnebagoes of Death" by Colin Powell - turned out to be
weather balloon platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the 1980s.
The infamous Iraq-al Qaeda connection has been shot to pieces by
the recently released September 11 report. And the Niger uranium
claim was based upon forgeries so laughable that America stands
embarrassed and ashamed before the judgment of the world. This is
all featured on the White House’s website on a page called
’Disarming Saddam.’ The Niger claims, specifically, have yet to be
removed.
Lies. Lies. All lies.

That Washington Post story, however, reveals a deeper truth here.
Now that the original and terrifying claims to justify this war
have been proven to be utterly and completely phony - Niger
recently asked for an apology, by the way - the administration is
falling back upon the justification for war that these men have
been formulating for years and years and years.
They call it Pax Americana, a plan to invade Iraq, take it over,
create a permanent military presence there, and use the oil
revenues to fund further wars against virtually every nation in
that region. This we call bringing our "values" over there. Norman
Podhoretz, one of the ideological fathers of this group of
neoconservatives who now control the foreign policy of this nation,
described the process as "The reformation and modernization of
Islam." That’s a pretty fancy phrase. I am a Catholic, and can
therefore call it by its simpler name: Crusade. We know all about
those.

This is the Project for a New American Century, the product of a
right-wing think tank that, in 1997, was considered so far out
there that no one ever thought its members would ever come within
ten miles of setting American policy. One broken election, however,
vaulted these men into positions of unspeakable power. Their white
papers, their dreams of empire at the point of the sword, have
become our national nightmare, and the nightmare of the world. I
speak of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard
Perle, John Bolton, Lewis Libby, and the rest of these New American
Century men who have taken our beloved country and all it stands
for it and thrown it down into the mud.

You will note that I did not name George W. Bush, for blaming Bush
for the gross misadministration of this government is like blaming
Mickey Mouse when Disney screws up. He is not in charge. Truman
said "The buck stops here," and so we point to Bush as a symbol of
all that has gone wrong. But he is not in charge. These other men,
these New American Century men, have delivered us to this wretched
estate, and by God in Heaven, there will be a reckoning for it.
But is it all ideology for these men? Of course not. There is the
payout. Have you ever heard of a company called United Defense, out
of Arlington, Virginia? Let me introduce you. United Defense
provides Combat Vehicle Systems, Fire Support, Combat Support
Vehicle Systems, Weapons Delivery Systems, Amphibious Assault
Vehicles, and Combat Support Services. Some of United Defense’s
current programs include:

The Bradley Family of Fighting Vehicles, the M113 Family of
Fighting Vehicles, the M88A2 Recovery Vehicle, the Grizzly, the M9
ACE, the Composite Armored Vehicle, the M6 Linebacker, the M4
Command and Control Vehicle, the Battle Command Vehicle, the
Paladin, the Future Scout and Cavalry System, the Crusader,
Electric Gun Technology/Pulse Power, Advanced Simulations and
Training Systems, and Fleet Management. This list goes on and on,
and includes virtually everything an eternal war might need.
Who owns United Defense? Why, the Carlyle Group, which bought
United Defense in October of 1997. For those not in the know, the
Carlyle Group is a private global investment firm. Carlyle is the
eleventh largest defense contractor in the US because of its
ownership of companies making tanks, aircraft wings and other
equipment. Carlyle has ownership stakes in 164 companies which
generated $16 billion in revenues in the year 2000 alone. The
Carlyle Group does not provide investment or other services to the
general public.

Who works for the Carlyle Group? George Herbert Walker Bush works
for the Carlyle Group, has been a senior consultant for Carlyle for
some years now, and sits on the Board of Directors. This company is
profiting wildly from this war in Iraq, a tidy gift from son to
father.
And then, of course, there is Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, profiting
in the millions from the oil in Iraq. Halliburton subsidiary, Brown
& Root, is also in Iraq. Their stock in trade is the building of
permanent military bases. Here is your permanent military presence
in Iraq, and all for an incredible fee. Cheney still draws a one
million dollar annual check from Halliburton, what they call a
’deferred retirement benefit.’ In Boston, we call that a paycheck.
Pax Americana. That which President Kennedy spoke so eloquently and
specifically against when he said, "What kind of a peace do we
seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced upon the world by our weapons of
war." This is now the rule of law for this nation. It must be
stopped, and we must be the ones to stop it.

This is America. At bottom, America is a dream, an idea. You can
take away all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our
armies - you can take all of that away, and the idea will still be
there as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind. I
do very much believe that the idea that is America stands as the
last, best hope for this world. When used properly, it can work
wonders.
That idea, that dream, is in mortal peril. You can still have all
our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can
have all of that, but if you murder the idea that is America, you
have murdered America itself in a way that ten thousand September
11ths could never do. The men and women within this current
administration are murdering the idea that is America with their
Patriot Acts, their destruction of civil liberties, their lies,
their daily undermining of even the most basic tenets of decency
and freedom and justice that we have tried to live up to for 227
years.

That, and that alone, should be enough to get you on your feet with
your fist in the air, whether or not you believe we have any chance
of stopping all this. We may not win, but we damned well have to
fight them. If we don’t, we are the traitors some would say we are.
When you stare into the obsidian darkness of the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial in Washington DC, it stares back at you. The stone of the
monument is jet black, but polished so that you must face your own
reflected eyes should you dare to read the names inscribed there.
You are not alone in that place.
You stand shoulder to shoulder with the dead, and when those names
shine out around and above and below the person you see in that
stone, you become their graveyard. Your responsibility to those
names, simply, is to remember.

Remember what that dream, that idea that is America, is supposed to
be. Never forget it. Never let your children forget. Hand it down,
generation after generation, because it is the most valuable
heirloom we all possess. If we lose it, we have lost everything.
When all else fails, I fall back on the words of the extraordinary
anti-war activist, Daniel Berrigan. A friend of Berrigan’s,
Mitchell Snyder, was for years an advocate and activist for the
homeless in Washington DC. Snyder became despondent over the fact
that his government could spend billions on bombs and planes and
guns, but could not seem to find the money to help the homeless.
Snyder became so despondent that he committed suicide. Daniel
Berrigan penned these lines in memory of Snyder, and it is in these
lines that I find my hope and strength when the darkness creeps too
close.

Some stood up once, and sat down Some walked a mile, and walked
away Some stood up twice, then sat down, "I’ve had it" they said,
Some walked two miles, then walked away. "It’s too much," they
cried. Some stood and stood and stood. They were taken for fools,
They were taken for being taken in. Some walked and walked and
walked. They walked the earth, They walked the waters, They walked
the air. "Why do you stand," they were asked, "and why do you
walk?" "Because of the children," they said, "And because of the
heart, "And because of the bread," "Because the cause is the
heart’s beat, And the children born And the risen bread."
The cause is the heart’s beat. This cause is my heart’s beat. It is
yours. May it be there for all time, until that day comes when we
can, once again, stand in awe and pride before our flag and our
government and our nation, when we can once again revel in the
rescued dream that is America.

Until then we are at the barricades, and on the streets, and in the
faces of all those who would spend the precious blood of our men
and women on lies and profit and greed. The obsidian darkness of
that memorial demands this of us. The golden ideals of this nation
demand this of us. The laws of our forefathers demand this of us.
Most importantly, we demand this of ourselves.
They can take nothing from us that we are not willing to give, and
we are not willing to give this great nation up. Let them be
warned. We stand our ground.
Thank you.

[William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is
a New York Times and international best-selling author of three
books - "War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest
Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag,
Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from Context
Books.]