Dennis Kucinich: Why not US Truth and Reconciliation with Iraq?
This is a letter by Dennis Kucinich. I think it is a great idea.
My inner feeling today was the importance of democracy and truth. It is very important that the people embrace the truth, face it and then recreate a stronger country. This applies to Australia, Britain and all the other countries who have been engaged in illegal wars of aggression. We can never learn from mistakes if we don’t face them. I am a great believer in speaking the truth. I personally think raising awareness and an inquiry itself is often enough to change people or at the very least to learn from the past and not repeat it. The important aspect is to face what is true and to undo the spin. This for me is the meaning of life, liberty and happiness. You cannot have life if you transfer resources into warfare, you cannot have freedom if you take freedom away from others and happiness comes from feeling good about who you are. If people see growing corruption and anything goes mentalities they lose confidence in their democracy, when that happens, expect people to lead change. That is my feeling.
I spoke to a guy to day from a Solidarity Movement. He was speaking about refugees and we got onto the subject of Gandhi. He had some negative comments which surprised me. I shared what I knew but I could see that his eyes were not meeting mine. I realised he was nodding but not really listening to see another perspective. I actually disengaged from the conversation as I saw his mind was closed. He spoke about a revolution to bring down the government. I was surprised at his violence and belief the system had to go. I contemplated about Gandhi and how many were moving away from him, what that inspired in me was the feeling that a darkness was there. They believe in fighting and protesting for change. I have not been around this type of thinking for a while and had to readjust. The adversarial forces of duality don’t see unity as an outcome. They see win/lose. I realised that is why the peace movement were seen as opponents, they were acting as opponents. I myself see true peace as opposing nothing. It is about raising your voice to speak the truth, it is about understanding the other, it is about finding common ground and enlightening a new path. I feel this light in the darkness within Dennis Kucinich. I never go looking for articles on him, I just somehow end up finding him. He is interested in statutes of liberty. I like that.
I found this call from him today, he runs a political action committee. He is calling for Truth and Reconciliation for the United States in respect of Iraq. I felt it to be a wise call. I am feeling the corruption in politics. I am sensing the corporate interests taking over. I do feel the people must take their power back and take responsibility for their own country. Democracy is representation of the people by the people. So far we are seeing elite groups and corporate interests not representing the people, only the people can create that.
What I loved about Gandhi was that he inspired a whole nation back to truth (satyagraha) and ahimsa (nonviolence, love). He advocated to not hate the enemy but to be a mirror to those perceived as the other. He believed in a higher power called soul force. These are the deeper values of humanity. He saw that this nonviolent power was more powerful than nuclear weapons. When you return to integrity, to ethics and value humanity you will find you have to answer the call. The truth as they say sets you free. This is a fundamental universal law. When we speak the truth those who have perpetrated actions against the social good also benefit as they are released from the guilt they all carry, no matter how they seem on the surface. It is important for the community to learn of crimes undertaken in their name with taxpayers money. They have a responsibility to hold their leaders in check. What is the saying? All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke.
That is why truth and reconciliation is important. It is true what is said down the bottom the inner is the outer. What we see in our world is a reflection of all of us. If you feel you do not like this on reflection, then be the change you wish to see in the world. You have the power to change and bring hope, it has never been about the leaders doing it for you, it was about you doing it for the leaders. They need you to show the way now.
Be nonviolent, speak up and remember, we are all One.
Denial – is not a river in Egypt!!
http://action.kucinich.us/page/content/iraq-plus-ten/
BY DENNIS KUCINICH
Dear Friends,
This is an anniversary not to be celebrated, but observed: Ten years ago, the war against Iraq began. It was based on lies. Demonstrable, easily disproven lies. Lies that were so easy to see that back in October of 2002, when the cause for war was being delivered to Capitol Hill, as a junior Congressman I was able to categorically ascertain that there was no cause for war, and distributed an analysis of the War Resolution to hundreds of members of the House. I then spoke to Congress for an hour detailing the false call for war. America needs to move forward, but we can only do so with the truth as our guiding light, and reconciliation as our healing path.
That is why I have called for a process of Truth and Reconciliation, where those who were responsible for taking us to war are brought forth in an officially sanctioned setting, and, under oath, testify to what they knew. The American people must know the truth about the grave decision made by our government to go to war. The families of US servicemen and women who made the ultimate sacrifice, deserve to know the truth. The families of dead Iraqi civilians, who died as a result of the war, deserve to know the truth. Ten years after the war, Iraq is still in turmoil. Ten years after the war, the United States’ financial security is threatened by the cost of the war and our long-term physical security has been damaged by the war. How can we recover? How can the people of Iraq recover? How can the world recover? We must demand the truth. We must know the truth. Truth and Reconciliation is the process. It has worked in other countries struggling with their past. It can work in America. Please let me know what you think.
Contribute to Kucinich Action to help support candidates who will stand for the truth, and to help us broaden our reach for an America which tells the truth, an America which focuses on our needs at home, an America which never mistakes offense for defense.
Please read the recent speech I gave to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, for a broader discussion of these themes. The speech is republished today in Truthout.
Here is an excerpt:
We must demand that America, our nation, establish a fully empowered Commission of Truth and Reconciliation, so that those responsible for misleading us into annihilating innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere be brought forward to a public accountability in a formal process of fact-finding, of inquiry, of public testimony, of admission, of confession. There is no other way out of the moral cul-de-sac in which reside the monstrous crimes of mass murder, torture, kidnapping and rendition other than atonement: AT ONE MENT. It is in atonement that we will achieve what Blake called the unity of opposites. It is in reconciliation that the Blakean idea of the contrary nature of God, containing multitudes of humanity, will cause us to understand the fragility of our social compact and the possibility that any of us could be murderer and victim. Without public expiation for the unbridled use of force, the wanton violence we have writ large in the world will replicate, perpetuate and be our own ruin. This is the importance of a formal process of Truth and Reconciliation. We had and have a right to defend ourselves as a nation, but when we go on the offense, the violence that we have visited abroad will inevitably blow back home. The violence we create in the world in turn licenses and desensitizes us to the wanton violence which is exercised in our streets, and unfortunately in our homes. We must understand the causal links. What is outermost presses down upon what is innermost. What is innermost becomes outermost.
Please help continue our own work of truth-telling. Contribute to Kucinich Action today.
Thanks,
Dennis