George Washington WANTED A DEPARTMENT OF PEACE

GEORGE WASHINGTON RECOMMENDED A DOP.


WITH A SIGH,THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES dipped his pen in the ink and signed the bill before him into law.
“It makes little sense to fund experts to make weapons and war when what we want is peace,” he fretted. Having recently ordered men to war the President asked the congress to design a Department for Peace. We must have armies and weapons," he agreed, but we ought to have some experts to study routes to avoid using them. But the Congress of 1776 had a new nation to set up. The DOP, although resurrected occasionally, has largely rested in the shadows for 300 years.

Instead, we have fought war following on the heels of war. developed horrible weapons and now the horror war of horrors. But in September 2005, General Washington’s DOP will have another chance. With Congressman Dennis Kucinich leading and masses following and cheering, surely, its time has come. We need to pull out every possible help to stop the War in Iraq: a war scheduled by a Rogue administration to grow, move. on continue, to destroy the earth, to sap all its life. That life includes your.

Last week Air America, radio A. M. 1090 floated a question: "How many U. S. citizens still believe that Iraq had a part in 911." I didn't wait for the answer, but my guess is that for 99 per cent an image of Iraq flitted into mind.

Yet, almost everyone who keeps informed knows that we invaded this tiny helpless country. Why? Oil? It is hardly a secret that In two years the human race will squeeze the last drop from the World.1 So why are the President's pals trashing Iraq meanwhile transferring trillions of dollars of our taxes to their blotted bank accounts?

And why do citizens of a nation that claims to be civilized, acquiesce to their military's open, internationally-known, plain -sight brutality: viciousness like the attack on civilian hospitals in Fallujah, were troops led by U. S. Marines handcuffed doctors, throwing half of the bed patients outside, including sick and U. S. injured children, looting, taking everything a doctor could use, torching Fallujah Main, then “cleaning up” with poison gas and napalm—2 as published by international media, but ignored in the U.S. Why do we allow it? Are we frozen in disbelief. Is our presence so terrible that we are unable to comprehend reality? Will we defer to the more and more persistent rumors of an invasion in Iran3 rumored as scheduled for June?

Remember "Shock and awe?" It seems a millennium ago, but I predict it will go done in history, if there is to be any, as the only true statement Bush has uttered. How many of us remember Hitler's rise? This Bush band of criminals means to control the world, and with an iron hand. Fallujuh is an example.

We desperately need a leader: a man with unimpeachable principles: a limited commodity: but, the citizens need to know we have one. For support regarding my choice, download Charles Cropley, ND, 4 international lecturer, and read his account of his discovery of Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the man both of us know: The hero who lives by The Golden Rule. But it wasn’t always so for Congressman Kucinich.

Son of Polish immigrants, born on "the wrong side of tracks," probably in a junked car in a dunp,5 Kucinich went to work at age 10 to help support 6 little sisters. Before he was 17, he had enrolled in 21 schools. That 17th year he walked into a library and fell in love with books. Two and a half years later he gradated from City University, while holding down a full-time job in the steel mills, earning his degree in literature and philosophy.

One of the memories etched indelibly into Dennis’s memory was of his parents at the kitchen table counting pennies to pay the heat bill. Now he concentrated on clean, affordable city power, heat for the poor. The week he gained his 23rd birthday, the minimum age required, he beat the Republican nominee for a seat on Cleveland City Council. At age 31, he became the youngest Mayor of a major city in recorded history.

5,6 His second day in office a coalition of bankers demanded that he give them the city power plant. As he angrily showed them out, they threatened to bankrupt the city. They did it. They pocketed city funds, then surreptiously whispered the villain name: “Kucinich.”

He lost his next campaign. His reputation followed him. He couldn’t find a job. He couldn’t support his family.

Forced to he sent his wife and baby home, bewildered, broke, desperately lonely, mourning, he wandered. It was here that he prepared to run for President, prepared to be taunted and vilified by a media and the corporations that controlled it, corporations terrified of the possibility that voters might be introduced to this man who would be their champion— and who had proved that he would hold them8 accountable for their dealings.

Fifteen years passed so. Then The City ofCleveland learned the truth. The City Council begged forgiveness, begged him to come home. They needed him.

He returned as the community hero, to annual Kucinich Weeks, Kucinich picnics, Kucinich fairs: Cleveland voters had learned their lesson: —for eleven years he has won with as much as 78 percent.

About those years alone, he says "I have been proven. I have been tempered in the fires of hell. I have walked in the desert through pillars of flame": such reference's to the Bible come from Dennis easily.

They go back to his years as a choir boy in a church, largely black, the community that trained his glorious, unbelievable, beautiful voice, where he still returns to the little house he bought his parents with his "first long-pants job.”

I once asked him how, living among corporate greed and accepted corporate crime, he has kept from straying. His face split, the wide grin showing his white teeth, then he told me about his “mentor: the ancient black lady from his childhood calls him every morning asking, “Have you said your Golden Rule.” The Golden Rule, a philosophy directly opposite to corporate greed which makes him dangerous to them—even more directly than they are to all of us.

We need a President who would face Enron like Dennis faced the Cleveland bankers: a man who is a 9 philosopher, musician, poet: the man the Gandi family and the Dalia Lama supported for President, facts the media never reported, a man about whom main street media, owned body and soul by corporate America, made a pact to see his name in print only as negative. Unable to find negatives, they took the next best route to keep their dishonorable pact.

No 2004 voter ever knew that Congressman Kucinich has won the Internationally sought Gandhi Peace Award, or knew that The Gandhi Family and the Dalia Lamma traveled with Dennis him to the crowds that followed him from Boston to San Antoinio and on and on.

When doorbelling, the slowest possible advertising, finally awoke voters to recognize his name and the last states to caucus voted for Kucinich overwhelmingly, his votes were completely omitted from the daily news reports. ignored on radio and TV.

Even when Ganny D, a women in her 70s, walked from Florida to San Francisco posting his name, then led a crowd of a thousand across the Golden Gatebridge, not one photo or word appeared in the news.

When I, as a crippled 83 year old, pushed my walker 3 miles in a rally photographers lined up for a picture, then yanked each others cameras off sight when they saw my Kucinich sign.

If this growing control of press doesn't frighten you, it should. Control of press is a tool for those who peddle fear and turn it into a murder and terror. The question that should be asked now is, “Who are the terrorists.” One answer is “Who has the WMDs?” The answer is the U.S. U. S. not only has them but is using every one of them, supposedly to stop the Iraqis from using them. That is what I call pretzelized logic.


Three hundred years ago, our First Congress established a Department of War: But General Washington, having lead men into battle, was intent on a Department for Peace.

Our hero of this piece, Congressman, brilliant scholar, biblical student, poet, musician, voice for the disinherited, of the suffering and the masses, the man who listens to an ancient each morning reminding him of The Golden Rule carries General Washington’s banner for a Department of Peace.

Honoring George Washington, Congressman Kucinich will present the bill for the DOP to Congress, September 6. 2005. For 300 years it has lanquished in the shadows. Now we need one desperately.


WRITER'S CREDITS: I wrote the first article published under my by-line 71 years ago. Subsequently, twenty-six earned awards. Mike Lowry, Stew Udall, Secretary of the Interior under three Presidents, and others, read my work before Congress, both national and state. Work in progress: auto-bio,editor-ready, 2 historical sequels and a collection of my weekly columns.
Emily Horswill, 3333 148st SW., Lynnwood, Wa. 98037: emhorswill@earthlink.com; 425 -741-540