ustxtxb_obs_1986_05_02_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

and unless the Congress declares that war, until and unless Congress declares war on Nicaragua, we must reject, refuse, and oppose each and every presidential war. BOMB BY BOMB, Reagan is alienating us from our allies and the decent opinions of mankind. France and Spain refused us the right to fly our bombers over their territory; Spain refused to let us use bases in Spain to launch the bombers. The heads of state in West Germany and Italy have criticized our attack on Libya. Britain let us launch the F-111′ s from the R.A.F. bases at Lakenheath and Upper Heyford, but the Thatcher government acted only after painful internal debate, and the decision has split Britain. Earlier this year Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, speaking specifically about whether to attack Libya, said: “Once you start to go across borders, then I do not see an end to it and I uphold international law very firmly.” Very firmly, indeed! she decided to consent to the American attack on Libya from British soil in a quid pro quo for U.S. support for Britian in the Falklands war. Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock is outraged. NATO, the military alliance formed to defend against possible attack from the Soviet Union, has been used in an act of war against a Mediterranean nation. Lately a crisis has been gathering for American citizens. President Reagan has been torpedoing every serious prospect of a nuclear arms control agreement with the Soviet Union that’s the truth of it; any fairly close student of the matter knows it. Far from being satisfied with the obscene nuclear military buildup he has obtained, Reagan is trying to lay down the basis for a new wave of nuclear and biological weaponeering for the 1990s. In Lebanon, Grenada, Nicaragua, and now Libya, he is waging presidential wars with rising relish and ferocity. Yet the. institution upon which the burden of opposition would normally fall, the Democratic party of the United States, has itself fallen into weakness and pusillanimity. It may be too much to say that it has been corrupted, but it is not too much to say that big-money contributors have penetrated its highest counsels and that Republicans disguised as Democrats now speak from many of its podiums. This, the weakness, the uncertainty, the illness of the Democratic party as an institution, is what has created the crisis for citizenship. What we must have is a revival of direct action by citizens acting in their own names not as Democrats, or Republicans, or Texans, or professors, or workers, or businessmen, but as American citizens. We must go back into politics with a vengeance. We must go back into our organizations with cold purpose; we must form new organizations; we must communicate directly with our members of the House and Senate; we must wire them, we must write them, we must go to where they make their speeches and face them and demand they obey the Constitution. The one most promising source of new energy for the American democracy is the American peace movement. Since Reagan’s re-election of 1984 that movement has been moribund, but significant forces of renewal have been gathering. Certain major organizations are contemplating joining forces. The idea is abroad among leaders of the movement that what we need, and very soon, is one American peace movement, a confederation of the various organizations into one mighty force, all the organizations still separate and intact, but acting together. If Reagan’s attacks on Libya do not abort the November or December summit meeting in Washington, then let the peace organizations gather there too at the same time for their own summit! And next spring, the spring of 1987, let there be a national conference of all the peace organizations to compose the competing egos, the overlapping and uncoordinated efforts, into one American Peace Movement. Let that one American Peace Movement then go into the hearings and the counsels of both the American parties for the 1988 election, and let us look across the Atlantic to the Europeans and say to them: We have one peace movement, where is yours? For we must bring into being on our own in the free nations of the Western Hemisphere and the European peninsula of the Eurasian land mass one Western Peace Movement to face the governments and the politicians everywhere. BEFORE President Reagan shames us further as a nation with additional unauthorized acts of war; before he bombs Libya again; before he bombs Nicaragua, he must be stopped. Left to their own devices their intent study of the public opinion polls, their calculations about their own re-elections, their solicitude for the opinions of their richest contributors the members of the House and the Senate will not stop him. That is why there is a crisis in citizenship, the citizens must stop him. Before President Reagan destroys this generation’s chance to stop the nuclear arms race, before he drives the Soviet leadership back into the control of its own nuclear hawks, indeed, before he drives us all further toward, or into, nuclear war, he must be stopped. Stop the President! Stop the President! East Dallas Printing Company Full Service Union Printing 211 S. Peak Dallas, Tx 75226 Whole Earth Provision Company I Nature Discovery Gifts amaze, inform, delight Choose from our business or family gifts of lasting value, for all ages, price ranges and any occasion. Call or stop by and let us make suggestions. LiC4 SLi kIrmee l -V;:t :NAMOOJtirtalmi ,acy ,whia lSgagiOrtallgear iottit.ladialliM 2410 San Antonio St. 4006 South Lamar Blvd. 8868 Research Blvd. 8 MAY 2, 1986