Wanted: U.S. Department of Peace

Q: Your views on the Iraq war?

A: I'm not sure that it was the right thing to do. You might say removing Saddam from power was a right thing to do. Maybe it was, but was that necessarily then our responsibility to do that? And was it our responsibility to do that by invading a country that had in no way declared any war on us?

Q: You voted for the resolution to go to war.

A: I did, and I'm not happy about it. The resolution was a resolution that authorized the president to take that action if he deemed it necessary. Had I been more true to myself and the principles I believed in at the time, I would have openly opposed the whole adventure vocally and aggressively. I had a tough time reconciling doing that against the duties of majority leader in the House. I would have served myself and my party and my country better, though, had I done so. (emphasis mine)

Those are the answers former House Majority leader and U.S. Representative (R-TX-26) Dick Armey gave in a recent interview with Dave Montgomery at McClatchy Newspapers (available here).

And therein lies the explanation of how it came to be that we invaded Iraq. It is impossible for any human being to faithfully act in a way true to the principles they believe in. But when you're a political leader making decisions about who lives and who dies, an inability (self imposed or not) to stand up and speak against a wrong is a key ingredient in a recipe for needless and horrific human tragedy.

Amazingly, Dick Armey is not alone among the responsible decision makers in admitting his actions were wrong. Twenty-eight of the 77 senators who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq now say they wouldn't have done so had they known then what they know now. Bullshit. I think many of them are just using the "if-I-had-known-then" excuse to hide the fact that like Armey they, too, knew better and should have also vocally and aggressively opposed invading Iraq.

Millions of people around the world protested loudly and clearly that military force against Iraq wasn't justified. Millions of folks took (and continue to take) their convictions to the streets in protest of using war as the answer. But because Dick Armey and other political leaders best in a position to prevent this massacre felt constrained from publicly advocating their true doubts about and objections to invading Iraq, hundreds of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been murdered and maimed.

I don't know of any vote of import cast by Armey that I agreed with, nor do I know how it is that he (and other politicians guilty of the same offense) is able to live with his conscience given all of the blood spilled (and spilling still) in Iraq, but I will give him all the credit for his candid admission that he failed in his core responsibility to faithfully execute the duties of the office to which he had been elected by not aggressively opposing our invasion of Iraq when he recognized in the first place that it was the wrong thing to do.

Given human nature and the nature of political party politics, I don't believe we can rely on current or prospective political representatives from learning from Armey's wrong doing. I think there will always be human and institutional constraints which prevent every one of us from always being faithful to our beliefs and responsibilities. I do believe, however, that we can do immensely better in creating an environment that advocates against war and violence as a tool to resolve problems. And it seems to me that an excellent start in doing that would be with passage of HR 808, a bill introduced into the House of Representatives yesterday that would create a U.S. Department of Peace, which would be responsible for researching, articulating and facilitating nonviolent solutions to domestic and international conflict.

Thirty eight years after John Lennon wrote the song Give Peace A Chance we're still bombing and shooting people to resolve our differences. When comes the end?