Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s speech, delivered on the House or Representatives floor on Tuesday, July 18.

“Mr. Speaker, we make war with such certainty, yet are befuddled how to create peace. This paradox requires reflection if we are to survive. Making and endorsing war requires a secret love of death, a fearful desire to embrace annihilation. Creating peace requires compassion, putting ourselves in the other person’s place, and all of their suffering and all of their hopes, and to act from our heart’s capacity for love, not fear.

“The fight against terrorism in the 21st century is beginning to have the feel of the fight against communism in the 20th century, conjuring of enemies, scapegoating, and wanton destruction. Our war on terror has become a war of error, so we blame the exercise, our capacity for warmaking. And because we have not yet begun to explore our capacity for peacemaking, we are reduced to a predatory voyeurism, once making war, watching war, being aghast at war, impotent to stop our own creation.

“We are the most powerful Nation, but we do not have the power to reserve for ourself or to grant to our allies an exemption from the laws of cause and effect.

“The fate of the world hangs in the balance, and until we consciously choose peace over war, life over death, the balance is tipping toward mutually assured destruction.”

July 20, 2006

Congressman Kucinich introduced H. Con. Res. 450 on Wednesday, calling upon the President “to appeal to all sides in the current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of violence and to commit United States diplomats to multi-party negotiations with no preconditions.”

The concurrent resolution also asks the President to send a “high-level diplomatic mission to the region to facilitate such multi-party negotiations.”

Finally, the Kucinich resolution “urges such multi-party negotiations to begin as soon as possible, including delegations from the governments of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt; and supports an international peacekeeping mission to southern Lebanon to prevent cross-border skirmishes during such multi-party negotiations.”