"I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew"
—John Greenleaf Whittier
The 535 members of Congress are in theory responsible to and represent the best interests of America. Among the reasons to question whether the theory is really carried out in practice are the endemic corruption that accompanies more than $3.5 billion (that's only what is legally reported) spread around Washington, D.C., by more than 13,000 lobbyists (in 2009), the erosion of judgment and integrity that accompanies too much compromise, putting party loyalty ahead of the best interests of the citizens, the breakdown of the democratic voting system because of the obscene costs of financing a congressional election campaign, the Supreme Court's decision that corporations have the same "rights" as private citizens when it comes to financing campaigns, and, of course, that same Congress' inability/unwillingness to pass a meaningful campaign finance reform bill. The list goes on (and on). Everyone can add to it. More than 20 paid lobbyists for every member of Congress certainly do.
Still, there are a few bright lights among the lobby-muted bulbs in Congress and everyone has their own favorites. One of mine is Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D. Ohio. Kucinich has consistently taken the principled stand in representing the best interests of the American people, often at significant political risk. He is a liberal with a voting record often at odds with the Democratic Party line. That is, his own thinking on an issue is more important to him that party obedience. Kucinich maintains that peace is in the best interests of the people and war is not. The unnecessary wars the U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan for more than nine years, Iraq for more than seven years, are funded by a majority congressional vote. Kucinich votes with the minority on this issue.
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In a recent interview with Maya Schenwar, he said, "America's invasion of Iraq has made us less secure. We invaded a country that did not attack us—that had no intention or capability of attacking us—and that, famously, did not have weapons of mass destruction. The subsequent occupation has fueled an insurgency, and as long as we have troops there, the insurgency will remain quite alive.
"Every mythology about our presence in Iraq is being stripped away. The idea that we can afford it? We can't. That Iraq will pay for it? It shouldn't and couldn't. That somehow we'd be welcomed there? By whom? That there's some kind of security to be gained in the region? We have destabilized the region. Every single assertion of this war, and every reason for this war, has been knocked down. And yet it keeps going. But the fact that the conflict that we helped to create is still quite alive does not justify staying there. War becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of continued war, unless you break the headlong momentum by getting out.
"Afghanistan is a separate war; it needs to be separated. I believe we were right to strike at al-Qaida immediately after 9/11. And I think most Americans believed that was the right thing to do. But it was wrong to invade and occupy the country. It showed an acute lack of understanding of history, and a lack of understanding of the people of Afghanistan."
He introduced articles of impeachment for both George Bush and Dick Cheney, both of whom deserved impeachment and more for what Kucinich termed "misleading Congress into war" and "manufacturing evidence to sway public opinion in favor of the war in Iraq." These actions were not congressional partisan politics. He sincerely believes in the words of Eisenhower and Whittier quoted above, that the time of peace is coming and that it will present a higher test of manhood than does war.
Kucinich, who in 2003 was awarded the Gandhi Peace Price, said, "War is not inevitable. Peace is inevitable, if we are willing to explore the inherent truth of human unity—if we are willing to contemplate the undeniable fact that we're all one, that we are interdependent and interconnected.
"We need to support a cabinet-level department of peace, which would serve to make non-violence an organizing principle of our society. The department would address issues of violence in our own society as well as head off war, through having somebody in the cabinet who could advise the president on non-violent conflict resolution. Funding would be pegged to 1 percent of the Department of Defense's budget. One percent! And that would be about $7 billion a year. Why wouldn't we want to explore peaceful means of conflict resolution? We've explored war and war doesn't work. This is a different world. It's not World War II anymore."
What a great idea. The secretary of Peace, advising the president on non-violent conflict resolution. Write your member of Congress and ask him or her to support it. It's not World War II anymore.
The first secretary of Peace should be Dennis Kucinich.
