SPEECH TO NUCLEAR AGE PEACE FOUNDATION (SANTA BARBARA, USA)
THE 5th ANNUAL FRANK K. KELLY LECTURE ON HUMANITY ’S FUTURE
BY MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE (NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE).

A RIGHT TO LIVE WITHOUT VIOLENCE, NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND WAR

By Mairead Corrigan Maguire
Dear Friends,

I am very happy to be here with you.    I am particularly pleased to give this Frank Kelly lecture and to thank, Frank Kelly, David Krieger, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, for their inspiring work on Nuclear Disarmament.

I believe Nuclear weapons are a great threat to humanity, so your task of telling the truth about them is very important.   For all of us, we are called to seek truth and live out of that truth with as much integrity as possible.  Often when people tell the truth they have to pay a price for doing so.   Two truth-tellers of our generation are currently paying a very high price.   In Burma, for speaking out for human rights and democracy, the Nobel Peace Laureate, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, remains imprisoned in her home for 10 years.  In Jerusalem, Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower, is not allowed to leave Israel.  In 2004, Mordechai Vanunu completed 18 years (12 in solitary confinement) in an Israeli prison, for telling the world that Israel had a nuclear programme . Upon his release the Israeli Government put illegal restrictions on Mordechai Vanunu, forbidding him to speak to foreigners, foreign media, or to leave Israel.  Mordechai Vanunu  followed his conscience, and  tried to warn us against the dangers of another possible form of holocaust, a nuclear one.    I believe Israel should let Vanunu go. He is not a threat, to National security.  Vanunu was a junior technician in Dimona Nuclear plant 20 years ago and as he has repeatedly said, he has no nuclear secrets. In refusing to let Mordechai go, the Israeli Government continues it injustice of punishing a freed man.

Many Governments will go to great lengths, to silence their own citizens who challenge their illegal policies.  Governments only have to summons the words, ‘national security’, and they feel it gives them legitimacy to do what they like.  They can remove civil liberties, (as is happening here in America), impose imprisonment and sometimes even literally ‘get away with murder’.  To challenge one’s own Government when it ignores moral and ethical values is true patriotism.  To speak truth to power and be willing to suffer, takes courage.   That is why many people take inspiration from Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Mordechai Vanunu, and others, imprisoned for working for human rights and democracy. For those of us who have our freedom, we have a responsibility to speak out against injustices and abuse of power, wherever it comes from, but particularly from our own Governments.   There are many threats to freedom in our world today.  Sadly, I believe that the American Government’s current foreign policies are amongst the greatest threats to the freedom, safety and security of the world.   Many of their policies are causing the suffering of millions of people, not only in America, but throughout the world.  They constitute a form of International terrorism which is tragically fuelling insurgency and terrorism in many parts of the world.

WAR, INVASION AND OCCUPATION:

Many years ago, I met the late Professor Wald, an American Nobel Laureate.   He told me that most American people, like people everywhere, want peace. They do not want nuclear weapons, or their sons and daughters to go to war.   However, he explained that the American Government, is run by the military industrial complex, and the economy is built on a war footing, with one in six people working for the military industrial machine.   It follows that when a Government’s economy is built on militarism and war, and it is big money and business, they need to find an enemy.       Thirty years ago the enemy was ‘communism’ and the nuclear weapons race was at its height. Then came the end of the cold war, and we all had great hope that peace was possible.     We were all filled with hope believing  that America would disarm its nuclear weapons and we could spend the disarmament savings tackling the real enemies of poverty and injustice.   Instead the US Government identified a new enemy.      The enemy is called ‘terrorism’.  A new war has been proclaimed on ‘terrorism’ and we are assured by the Bush Administration, and the Pentagon,  that we have entered the age of ongoing wars.   The President is blind to the irony of his position, not seeing the terror he is engaged in, in Iraq, and how he follows a terror tradition begun in the Middle East 20 years ago by Reagan and Rumsfeld.

In l999, when I visited Iraq, I witnessed first-hand the destructive power of American/UK foreign policy.  The horror of what I witnessed will stay with me forever.   At the Amiriya Shelter in Baghdad, we saw the photographs of over 400, mostly women and children, who were incinerated during the first Gulf War. Two American bombs were dropped on this shelter, on 12th February, l992, (the end of Ramadan and Ash Wednesday).   Also, at Mansour Hospital in Baghdad we saw children slowly dying from malnutrition and disease and the doctors had not enough drugs or anesthetics.   Over half a million children under the age of five died because of the combined action of the First gulf war (when US/UK allied forces from the air, took out most of the Iraqi infrastructure, plus the effect of the economic trade sanctions). Not only the Iraqi children were dying but a whole nation was slowly being destroyed.  Our delegation was told there were no weapons of mass destruction as UN Inspectors had done their job so well, that the Iraqi Government was no threat to anyone outside its own borders.   We knew this truth about nuclear weapons, why then did Bush and Blair lie to us all?

People knew about the suffering of the Iraqi people, both under the cruel dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and the cruelty of the Allied Forces, who used depleted uranium weapons, polluting Iraqi land and rivers, and resulting in many children being born with  deformities.   It was such policies of the West, and the treatment of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation, that angered many people around the world, and particularly our Arab brothers and sisters, who saw the suffering inflicted on their own people.

The death and suffering brought about by the llth September, 2001 bombings, in America (which themselves were equally reprehensible) should have been a wake-up call to Western Governments, that alternatives to their violence had got to be used, if there was to be a real solution to the problems.  Sadly, the old ways of violence, and war, kicked in and the American Government’s war of terrorism and tactics of ‘shock and awe’ only added to the suffering. The British Government had already learned that you don’t fight terrorism with force, having just helped to end thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland through dialoguing with representatives of paramilitary groups.   There was an alternative to war, but the American Government had its own agenda.

People mobilized in opposition to the Afghanistan war, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq.   In February, 2003, eleven million people took part in 80 countries and more than 600 urban communities, calling for no war.  Yet, the USA/UK governments, ignored UN, and went to war illegally.  I believe Bush and Blair should be made accountable for illegally taking the world to war, and for crimes against humanity.

The whole world knows that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was not about regime change, weapons of mass destructions, or ‘war on terrorism’.  It was what all wars are about, Power.  Power to make money, defense dollars, oil dollars, and the power to control the region.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in the growth of the nationalist insurgency, who perceive themselves as fighting for the freedom of their country, and to end the US led occupation. (When people experience violence and injustice upon themselves or others, their own anger, pain, frustration, can turn into violence and so the cycle continues, until someone has the courage to break the violent cycle, by dealing with the root causes).   In November, 2004, the siege of Fallujah by the US military, when they used illegal white phosphorus chemical weapons on civilians, and destroyed three-quarters of the city, will go down in history as another example of the madness of militarism.  Such barbarity only serves to increase the insurgency movements, and feeds the cycle of violence.  The cost of the invasion in terms of human life is horrific.  Hundred of thousands of Iraqi civilians and many Afghan people dead, over 2,000 (dead) and 16,500 (injured, 300 of which were brain injuries) American soldiers, over 100 (dead) British soldiers.  Each and every one of these lives sacred.   No other country in the world sacrifices its youth to ‘Full spectrum dominance’ i.e. ongoing unnecessary militarism and war.  No other country has bases in so many countries (700 US military bases in 13O countries).

But there is also a strong resistance to the war mentality among ordinary Americans.  In this respect I pay the highest tribute to those people who today languish in prisons, both inside and outside America, because of their nonviolent acts of civil disobedience against the outrageous policies of warmongers.  Among them I include, refusenicks and conscientious objectors everywhere, and parents like Cindy Sheehan, (USA) and Rose Gentle (Britain) who have spoken truth to power at great personal cost.

The continued presence of US/UK troops in Iraq exacerbates the violence.   A further offensive by the Allied forces, which means mass arrests, house raids and bombing of civilians, continued illegal detentions, torture, and abuse, is being resisted with violence by insurgency groups.  The American Government should state it has no strategic interest in Iraq, and its intention to withdraw all US troops and bases immediately, stop bombing, and provide sufficient funds to the Iraqi people to rebuild basic infrastructure.  They should close Guantanamo Bay (where some detainees are currently on hunger strike and being forcibly fed), end illegal detentions and torture in US detention facilities and set up a fair and speedy judicial process for detainees.   The American Government claims it wishes to bring democracy to Iraq but refuses to extend any legal rights to those held in illegal camps such as Guantanamo.

Talking to the insurgency groups and helping the development of Iraqi peace and human rights groups will be necessary.   The Spiritual leaders in the Iraqi community have an important role to play in helping bring a nonviolent resolution to the conflict.  Suicide bombings and insurgency violence only add to the suffering of Iraqi people, and Iraqi civil community have the power to demand an end to occupation and all forms of insurgency  violence, including suicide bombing, and use nonviolence as a means of solving these problems.   This is how the Northern Ireland conflict was stopped, not by the Government removing basic civil liberties, not by militarism, or Para militarism, but ugh upholding high standards of justice, and by the politicians and Irish and British Governments talking to the Representatives of Paramilitary groups.   In Northern Ireland, the political dialogue continues today, and although still slow and painful, we know that the war is over.  The Northern Irish civil community played a role in stopping the violence; it now has a role in helping to build trust and reconciliation.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Of concern to people around the world is the American Nuclear weapons policy. Many people see this policy as hypocrisy and double standards, and as fuelling a second nuclear arms race. With 6,000 active and operational nuclear warheads, 2,000 on hair trigger alert, and ready to be launched with 15 minute warning, the Bush Administration refused to relinquish the option of first use of nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear weapons states.  It continues to ignore its obligations under the NPT.  The Bush Administration has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in order to pursue destabilizing missile defense program and has not supported a verifiable Fissile Material cut-off treaty.   Has the Office of the President no integrity left?  Has the Office been sold into the business of making money for Arms manufacturers?  The United States is the great block to nuclear disarmament preferring instead to point the finger at Iran and North Korea.   The hypocrisy of the American Government increasing it nuclear weapons, and going to war against Iraq based on the Bush Administration’s lie that Iraq  had  nuclear weapons and was a threat to the American people, is not missed by the International Community, nor is the current saber rattling of America, against Iran.

In Britain too, Tony Blair, plans to replace Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles.  Originally the Trident cost  £12.5bn   The cost of replacing them now will be  more, and much of this will be paid  by British taxpayers, to the Pentagon, as Britain does not own but leases these missiles from the Pentagon.     I would like to add my voice to the growing campaign in Britain calling upon the Blair Government to support the international rule of law by implementing its obligations of the NPT which would preclude a replacement of Trident.   Nuclear weapons are hopelessly irrelevant to the threat of terrorism, and the collapse of the cold war has removed even the theoretical justification for anyone possessing strategic nuclear weapons.  Nuclear weapons are unethical, immoral, and illegal.  Continuation of building these weapons ignores the fact that the world has changed.  Most of the conflicts, as Britain has experienced on its own doorstep in Northern Ireland, are ethnic/politic in nature, and you cannot drop a nuclear bomb, or hellfire missiles from a predator drone, on an ethic /political conflict! And this principle should apply equally to Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq.

In his message to mark World Day of Peace on January lst, 2006, Pope Benedict, condemned countries like the United States, Britain, and France that insist on the necessity of nuclear weapons for alleged security.  Benedict says that ‘in a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims’.  He says the money saved by nuclear disarmament ‘could then be employed in projects of development capable of benefiting all their people, especially the poor’.

As long as the USA continue their nuclear arms development, and non-compliance with the NPT, and threaten other countries, it offers an incentive to non nuclear states to attempt to get nuclear weapons and join the ‘big boy’s elite nuclear club’.   Of concern to the world is the fact that the Israeli Government is a nuclear power and is threatening Iran with a first strike policy.  Israeli’s nuclear adventure continues to put the Middle East in grave danger of a nuclear arms race.  Should Israel carry out its recent threat to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities  in March, (or the USA does this) it could lead to a military and political catastrophe for the Middle East.  Israel has about 200 nuclear weapons (same as Britain) and as it was the first to obtain such weapons, it has a moral responsibility to tell the truth that it has them, and start leading the movement to create a Nuclear Free Zone in the Middle East.

Last April some of us protested at Dimona Nuclear Plant, in Israel, calling for it to be open to UN Inspection, and bombs to be destroyed.  Israeli Jets flew overhead, and a train passed into the Dimona Nuclear site.  This brought back to me vivid memories of my visit to Auschwitz concentration camp, with its rail tracks, trains, destruction and death.   I felt sad, but later took hope from the words of an Israeli Professor when he said to me: ,   “It is possible to rid the entire Middle East of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destructions, we can and we should begin to do this NOW…”   A nuclear free Middle East and world is not a dream.  The strategy is set out in the Nuclear Weapons Convention all is needed is the political will, led by America and Israel, from a position of power, to make it happen.   If Iran decides to go down the road of building a bomb it will fuel tension and the nuclear arms race in the Middle East.  They too should do their part in encouraging dialogue in order to rid the Middle East of nuclear weapons and take seriously the task of justice and reconciliation, with Israel.

We know that human beings mimic and imitate each other, and if one country gets a bomb, someone else wants it.  So how do we stop this madness?    Everyone has a part to play, and everyone has responsibility.   University scientists, and arms developers, have a responsibility for designing and making weapons.  If everyone refused to be a chain in the killing machine   – as Mordechai Vanunu did – .it could be broken and stopped.    Currently the Pentagon has a ‘targeted killing’ programme to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles.   These are unmanned Predator Drone aircraft equipped with Hellfire missiles which are operated by CIA or Pentagon officials at computer consoles in the United States.  They have been the cause of many civilian deaths; one used in Pakistan killed 18 civilians.   It must be asked in what prestigious American Universities, and in other countries, have Scientists, designed such killing machines.  These Scientists must take responsibility for their actions and stop their misguided rationalization of the killing of human beings.

I am reminded of the words of Galileo:
‘If only I had resisted, if only the natural scientists had been able to evolve something like the Hippocratic Oath of doctors, the vow to devote their knowledge wholly to the benefit of mankind!  As things now stand the best one can hope for is a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for anything….. I surrendered my knowledge to those in power, to use, or not to use, or to misuse, just as suited their purposes.’

We have to abolish nuclear weapons.  No Government can be trusted with them, not the USA, Britain, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel.  Nuclear weapons have been used twice, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The ‘justifications’ for these slaughters was the greater good of the United States.  The same justification could be made again not just by the USA but by every country possessing nuclear weapons.

VIOLENCE OF POVERTY:

Militarism and war condemn the poor to misery by usurping money which could provide human security in the form of Medicare and education for all.  Surely, the measure of a country’s greatness is how it treats its children, the materially poor, and weak, in its own communities?  The Pentagon Budget is around $450 billion.   How can the US Government justify this while 20 million Americans  live below the poverty line, and some of their schools don’t have pencils for their children? (I once was asked by an American teacher to collect money to buy school pencils).

We hear about the American Christian Right’s family values and morality.  This current Bush administration has continued to penalize the poor and reward the rich, yet there is no serious outcry against such injustice, and no demand for the President to nurture the nation’s children, by either the Christian right or the American people.   Poverty and injustice is so ingrained within American society that it will take more than charity to solve the problem.  Martin Luther King understood this well, when he said ‘True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar, it comes to see that an edifice which produces a beggar is in need of restructuring.”

INTERNATIONAL LAWS:

Since the Second World War great efforts have been made by the International community, in building up an impressive body of human rights, international laws and treaties.   However, what we have lately witnessed has been the systematic bypassing of our best international laws and the flagrant and contemptuous flouting of UN conventions and the United Nations itself.  No country can appeal to the UN to uphold international laws that will benefit only that one country and flout the UN authority when its resolutions run counter to that country’s perceived interests.  These international laws and treaties cannot be set aside at the whim of any one Government, but must be upheld by all, and applied to all.  The American Government’s, current practice of acting unilaterally and pre-emptively, setting aside the Geneva convention, due process of law for detainees, renditioning, unauthorized wiretapping of its own citizens, etc., denies their citizens their constitutional rights, and sends a ‘green light’ to dictatorships around the world.   The American Constitution, so long admired by many in the International Community , is now endangered by those enemies of freedom within it own Executive, and only the vigilance of real American  freedom lovers and true democrats, can save it from destruction and desecration.

NONKILLING, NONVIOLENT CULTURE

Many people around the world agree that we cannot continue to use war and terrorism as ways of solving international conflicts.  State terrorism in the form of pre-emptive war, waged with modern technology, and the terrorism of ‘terrorists’ and ‘freedom fighters’ both using forms of violence which kill are unacceptable.  We all have to challenge these increasing forms of lethality, and find new politics in order to remove killing from global life.  There is another way to solve international conflicts, instead of fight or flight, and it is the way of active nonviolence.

Since the beginning of time there have been examples of nonviolent conflict resolution but we have  not taken Nonviolence as a serious means of political change.  It is a recorded fact that less than five percent of human being have ever killed.   We are not born with a violence brain, we have to be culturally conditioned to accepting or using violence, and trained to be able to kill.   This fact should give us great hope that we can indeed build nonkilling, nonviolent societies, by working on all levels of society to remove the disease of violence.   It is good news that many Governments are recognizing violence as a health issue.   Governments, Education and Media, can all help the transition from a culture of violence to a culture of nonviolence.

Having lived thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, I have come to believe that it is our mindsets which must change.   In the midst of military and paramilitary violence, I had to ask myself ‘could I ever kill’?   I came to the absolute conviction that my life is sacred, every human life is sacred, and I have no right to take another person’s life.   Its just seems to me that is natural justice.  If I don’t want another to kill me, why should I believe I could kill them?  Life is a gift, a beautiful gift, to be celebrated, rejoined in and treated with dignity and respect.  Also, as a committed Christian, I always have to ask myself ‘What would Jesus do?’  He would love.  He simply loved people so much, that he could never have hurt or killed anyone.  Jesus totally rejected all the violence that had gone before him; he came to show a way of nonkilling, nonviolence.   I agree with the late great American theologian, Fr. John L. McKenzie, ‘you cannot read the gospels and not know that Jesus was totally nonviolent’.    Indeed the founders of all the great religions, including Islam, were men of peace.  I believe there is so much unhappiness in the world, because we are out of our roots which are love, compassion, forgiveness and service to all.  We must get back to our roots if we are to find real inner peace and happiness which is our rightful inheritance as human beings.    From these roots we can build nonkilling, nonviolent communities.    We can insist our Media, Corporations, and Governments uphold ethical principles, and their policies be based upon real values which uphold human dignity and rights, such as those contained in the Universal declaration of Human rights and many International law.

I believe, it is a fundamental principle that everyone has the right not to be killed and the responsibility not to kill or support the killing of others.  To realize a nonkilling, nonviolent, world it is necessary to establish or strengthen implementing institutions:

Why can we not have a Nonviolent Security Council, Global Nonkilling research and development,  A Nonviolent  global Rescue and Relief Service, a Global Council of Reconciliation and Restorative Justice.  A Nonviolent Global Ecumenical Body or Ministries of Nonviolence and peace, in every country?  Currently we have a Nonviolence Peaceforce, operating in several countries, and made up of people who believe that local and international conflicts can be solved without military force.

Yes, there are many problems, but what should be obvious is this:  In an inter-dependent, inter-connected world, the old politics of militarism, violence, and war are becoming redundant.  We need now to develop an International Charter for a Nonviolent World for the human family.  Already we see this beginning to take shape in the brave actions of nonviolent activists struggling in their own communities, to right wrongs and achieve justice.  We should try to keep contact with one another, and guard as precious this international community of activists, and the freedom and independence of the Internet that makes this community possible.  From this community maybe there will emerge an alternative united nations not answerable to militaristic governments but to the principles of truth, peace, justice and love.

We can build a World civilization, with a heart, and solve our problems by talking to each other, people to people, Governments to Governments.  So let’s send out a clear message from the Human Family, to the United Nations,  and all Governments – No more Violence,  No more Nuclear weapons, No more Wars, Invasions and Occupations, and above all NO WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST IRAN.   The human family have a right to peace, and the Peoples’ Movement, here in America, and around the world, gives us all hope for a better future.

Thank you,
Mairead Corrigan Maguire
Santa Barbara, California.www.peacepeople.com  2lst February. 2006