Don't Stand in the Way of Our Joy

Editor's Note: The following is the text of remarks delivered at the Asheville, North Carolina Rolling Thunder event.

You and I can agree and disagree about many things, and still respect each other as friends and as fellow Americans with strong opinions.

I was among the many people who thought Mr. Bush should have disarmed Iraq peacefully through the United Nations process that was already underway. But Mr. Bush took the road he took. There was, as a result, a time of killing and looting, and the spoiling of the treasures of an ancient civilization. Though I do not take lightly the great loss suffered by so many parents, children and elders because of the American government's approach, we must, as a historical matter, agree that what's done is done and that most people are relieved and generally satisfied with the outcome.

Though we disagreed with the means employed, there is now an opportunity for peace and for freedom in Iraq, and that can be a very good thing if it is properly advanced by people who respect the rights of the people of that region to be free, which means politically self-governing and the masters of their own resources. If that is what Mr. Bush has in mind for them, then we can still hope for a happy outcome. It is our experience, however, to expect otherwise.

It has been interesting to me to notice that, though the leaders speaking on the rally stages of the great peace marches have often spoken with righteous anger, and even though death was hanging in the air before and after this little war, and even though the marchers understood, and still do understand, that our American and global environment is also under attack, as are the working poor, and as is our dear Bill of Rights, that nevertheless the people in these marches were joyful.

Did you notice that? Did you feel it yourself if you were among them? The best smiles I have seen in years have been in these marches. This leads me to think that the peace movement is about something far deeper than the Bush Administration's attack du jour.

And if the movement is not only about the war, I must wonder if the movement is indeed being ineffective, as its inability to stop the war might indicate, or if it is succeeding or failing at a deeper and therefore more important level.

This is important digging we must do. Our own emotions have been so conflicted by this war. We peace marchers of course wanted our young people in uniform to come home safely. It's just that we wanted them to do so sooner rather than later. And we now are hopeful that the new day in Iraq can be a good day for the people of that region.

Many Americans and others have a happier view of the whole thing, and I think I can understand their point of view. Let me see if I can put words to it. Let me see if I can convince all my dear peacenik friends and myself that the U.S. is on the right course. Then, of course, I will try to knock that view down a bit.

It is a dangerous world, this line of thinking runs. We have come through the Cold War, where competing superpowers held each other in check and avoided nuclear war by setting up dictators here and there to protect their interests in key regions. Now the Cold War is over and these dictators, who have outlived their usefulness, must be given their walking papers or otherwise shown the door at the point of a tomahawk missile. It is important to do so now, some strategists argue, because these dictators have enough wealth and isolation to develop weapons that can destroy our own cities, if they will only give those weapons to the growing armies of terrorists in the world.

This rising danger of terrorism and leftover dictators is a prescription for future tragedy that must be defused, both by going after the terrorist networks, and by taking away the possible providers of their most fearsome weapons. To police the world in this new era of danger, we must be willing to become the policeman in dangerous regions. We must put military bases in key regions, not only to support our vital resource supply lines, but to preempt terrorism in the regions where it is nurtured.