Ken Butigan
Declaration of Peace
The momentum to end the U.S. war in Iraq has accelerated dramatically over the past twelve months. Responding to the growing catastrophe on the ground and building on four years of work, the U.S. anti-war movement – led prominently by Iraq War veterans, military families, religious leadership, the Hip Hop community, and longtime peace and justice advocates – significantly contributed to framing the November 2006 mid-term congressional election as a referendum on the war.
The clear mandate for peace that swept the new Congress into power last fall has been reinforced since then by thousands of demonstrations, interfaith services, and sit-ins.
In spite of this monumental effort, however, the war goes on. The Bush administration is committed to an open-ended occupation, and Congress has been tentative in putting its mandate to end the war fully into effect…
Despite the profound challenges it faces, the anti-war movement has in fact made enormous progress and is moving steadily toward ultimately ending this policy. Now more than ever, we have the chance to contribute to the moral and political conditions to end this tragic war…
We stand at a crossroads poised between two fundamental options: American Empire or A New Direction. The U.S. occupation in Iraq is embedded in the former; but our work to end this war offers us an opportunity to choose the latter.
As the momentum continues to build for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, we have an opportunity to engage in the great spiritual practice of our time: ending this war as a first step in setting a dramatic new course for our nation and our world…
Just as this new course will call us to challenge the structured violence of war, so too will it invite us to challenge all the structures of violence that feed this war and that this war feeds: the structured violence of racism, poverty, sexism, homophobia, and ecological destruction; the structured violence that chooses destruction over meeting human needs; and the structured violence that threatens new war-making instead of developing strategies that respond to the roots of war, like the Global Marshall Plan and the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.
This New Direction will be a long-term process of transforming the world so that its structures support justice and the well-being of all. Not only will this mean setting our societies on a new footing, committed to a nonviolent world whose core strives to put into practice what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the love that does justice.”
But it will also mean, inextricably, that we as persons, organizations, and communities of faith and conscience will be invited to embark with deliberate intention on the nonviolent life: the journey that frees us in our core from patterns of violence and injustice so that we can engage in the impossible but necessary sacred work of mending all the personal, interpersonal, social and structural broken circles through the power of courageous connection, compassion, cooperation, and transformed community.
This comprehensive transformation, however, will not happen spontaneously. It will require deepening and broadening the peace movement through education, community-building, and action…
Since November, the peace movement has launched a dramatic “full court press” on the new Congress to end the war. These efforts have been strengthened by relentless, coordinated campaigns lobbying Congress; dozens of nonviolent sit-ins across the U.S. organized by The Occupation Project; a march attended by hundreds of thousands of people in Washington, D.C. organized by UFPJ; hundreds of local events held across the nation marking the fourth anniversary of the war in mid-March organized by The Declaration of Peace and many other groups; and the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, where 3,500 people from across the U.S. gathered in ecumenical strength for prayer and action in D.C., and where 222 people were arrested as they prayed for peace in front of the White House after a dramatic ecumenical service at the National Cathedral. Now the anti-war movement is preparing to move to the next stage.
Strategy for the Future
As we begin to address the question of what is required in this crucial time of “turning,” it is important to again acknowledge the sheer difficulty of social change, especially as it approaches accomplishing its goal. Deeply entrenched interests and assumptions uphold and seek to legitimate this policy. They do not easily concede their power, as Frederick Douglass said more than century ago.
To effect a withdrawal of troops from Iraq will require a vast effort; to see the emergence of a comprehensive peace plan – including a peace process led by the Iraqi people and supported by the international community; closure of U.S. bases in Iraq; U.S. reparations; and money for human needs at home, not war abroad – will require a much more monumental endeavor. Finally, more challenging still will be the effort to set a fundamentally new course for U.S. foreign and domestic policy…
Great social movements dramatize the fundamental moral crisis of their age and offer a clear choice to their societies. They often dramatically change the terms of the debate about certain fundamental aspects of their cultures.
The current movement to end the war in Iraq has the potential to do this. This will require finding creative ways to challenge the matrix of structural violence in which this war is embedded and all the other forms of structural violence that this war replicates and reinforces: racism, sexism, poverty, homophobia, economic inequality, and a systemic unresponsiveness to human need in communities and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (when $700 million a day is spent on war)…
Given the catastrophe that the U.S. invasion unleashed and that has reigned during four years of occupation, there is no guarantee that the transition will be a smooth one. On the other hand, a surer guarantee is that if the U.S. war and occupation continue, the daily bloodshed will also continue.
It is for this reason that on May 8, 2007, for the very first time, a majority in the Iraqi Parliament – 144 out of 275 members – signed a legislative petition calling for the U.S. to withdraw its troops from the country. Here the parliamentarians were reflecting Iraqi public opinion…
University of Michigan Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian History, Juan Cole, explores this theme further in The Nation (April 9, 2007). For Cole, continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and its suppression of the Sunnis has allowed Shiites and Kurds to avoid compromise. “The key to preventing an intensified civil war,” Cole writes, “is U.S. withdrawal from the equation so as to force the parties to an accommodation.” But, Cole adds, a peace process must accompany this withdrawal: “The civil war must be negotiated to a settlement, on the model of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Lebanon.” Here we come to the last important component of a strategic frame: the need to support a Comprehensive Peace Plan as well as “troop withdrawal” and “defunding the war.” Here is a framework for a Comprehensive Plan of Peace that the Declaration of Peace has been supporting for the past year:
An end to all funding for U.S. military operations in Iraq.
Safe and rapid withdrawal of all U.S. troops and coalition forces from Iraq, with no future deployments.
Support for an Iraqi-led peace process, including a peace conference to shape a post-occupation transition.
No permanent U.S. military bases or installations in Iraq.
Return control of Iraqi oil to the people of Iraq, as well as complete sovereignty in their economic and political affairs.
Support for reparations and reconstruction to address the destruction caused by the U.S. invasion, military occupation, and 13 years of economic sanctions.
Establish a U.S. “peace dividend” for job creation, health care, education, housing, and other vital social needs at home.
Increased support for U.S. veterans of the Iraq war.
No war against Iran or any other nation. In this phase, we must strengthen the growing majority’s resolve to end the occupation by telling the truth about the U.S. role in Iraq and by calling for a comprehensive plan for peace…
The great spiritual practice of our time is to take hold of one another’s hand and cross into the crossroads of peace and justice. Together we will enter the mystery of this time and invite the People Power that is deepening and broadening in our society to definitively create the political and moral conditions for ending the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq and for setting our society on a new course for a just and lasting peace.
