Security without Empire gets a Hearing in Washington

Two hundred people from all over the United States and a dozen other nations around the world gathered at American University in Washington, DC lst weekend, as part of the organizing conference on foreign military bases, dubbed “Security without Empire.” I was on the organizing committee for the event, spoke on Friday night about US nonviolent strategies for resisting foreign bases, and co-led a workshop on doing research.

The conference came at a propitious time. President Obama said the day we began that he “intends” to withdraw all US troops and contractors from Iraq by December 31, 2011. Though “intent” offers some wiggle room, this is a new promise around which the peace movement can and should organize. At least as important, as Raed Jarrar elucidated in the conference, this 2011 withdrawal date is required by the agreement signed by Iraq and the United States and ratified by the Iraqi parliament. If Washington is to honor democracy and law in Iraq, all US troops and bases must leave.

Jana Glivicka is a remarkable 21-year-old student of logic and an activist in the movement to prevent the new US military base for missile defense from being installed in the Czech Republic. She summed up the base this way: “It’s a weapons system that doesn’t work, aimed at a threat that doesn’t exist, in a country that doesn’t want it.” No wonder the Obama administration is studying whether to proceed with the system. Seventy percent of the Czech population is opposed to it, and the Czech senate is expected to vote on it in the next two months.  

Gualdemar Jiménez of Service for Peace and Justice in Ecuador told the crowd about the base in the Pacific port of Manta, set up in 1999 with no public consultation, purportedly to fight the drug trade. But the base was used to sink boats with undocumented immigrants and to support the war in Colombia, and human rights and peace groups held conferences, meetings with officials and the population, camps, until 2006 when Rafael Correa made non-renewal of the base agreement part of his campaign. When he became president, groups held him to his promise, and a constituent assembly inserted a ban on all foreign military presence in the new constitution.

An “anti-military fashion show”, with great panache, demonstrated the ways that militarism has entered our social lives and dress, and also how some of us resist it in our personal expression.

Most conference participants were under no illusions that the new administration in Washington is anti-militarist, ready to re-define security in terms of meeting social, economic and environmental needs. But meetings with Congressional Democratic staff, as we fanned out to more than 20 meetings on Capitol Hill on Monday, still provided some jarring moments. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has proposed a dramatic 25% cut in the military budget. As chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank is in a powerful position to act on this very positive proposal. But he also supports the war and US escalation in Afghanistan. Senior staff for the House Armed Services Committee told a delegation that the United States plans to expand foreign military bases.

But Enzo Cascati from Vicenza, Italy is having none of it. Although the Berlusconi government has embraced construction of a new base in the beautiful city (a UNESCO heritage site) that will facilitate the war in Iraq, more than 95% of local population recently voted against it in a non-binding referendum. Many will take more dramatic nonviolent action if construction goes forward. At least Enzo was able to communicate this to Capitol Hill militarists.

On the other hand, we also met with counsel to Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), an FOR member who was a student leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. His stepfather was an activist from Vieques, the first black president of the University of Puerto Rico’s student organization more than 30 years ago. When he heard the stories from Vicenza and Ecuador, he responded from the heart. “Thanks for what you did” to stop naval bombing in Vieques, he said.