Thanks for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Jay Bookman wrote an editorial for the Atlantic Constitution on September 29^th that you should read. He argues that the official story on Iraq has never made sense. It is hard to believe that American leaders would start a preemptive war based on such lack of evidence for a clear and present danger to the United States.

Another question is why the Bush administration seems so unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?

Well, the answer is "because we won't be leaving Iraq."

Having conquered Iraq, Bush wants the United States to create a permanent military base in that country from which to control oil resources in an unstable Middle East, keeping a close eye on neighboring Iran and Saudi Arabia. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the United States does not covet other nations' territory but 57 years after World War II ended, we still have major bases around the world. Now we have the chance to establish more military bases in Iraq. Bush is not interested in "containing" or deterring Iraq, as we did with the Soviet Union for 45 years. He is interested in direct military control over that oil territory.

The Bush administration plan, released on Sept. 20, is a major departure from all previous approaches and indicates that the change is due to the attacks of Sept. 11. The document says, "The United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of U.S. troops." But that report's references to terrorism as the cause for this new departure of a new National Security Strategy is not inspired simply by the events of Sept. 11.

The policy can be found in a report issued in September 2000 by the Project for the New American Century, a group of conservative interventionists, all highly placed and well educated. Overall, that 2000 Project report reads like a blueprint for the current Bush defense policy.

So, why am I here?

People who studied in our best colleges formulated this new foreign policy. The planners have been trained on the finest campuses in America. Here are a few those authors and their affiliations.

Paul Wolfowitz has a doctorate in political science from University of Chicago and was dean of the international relations program at Johns Hopkins University during the 1990s. He served in the Reagan State Department, moved to the Pentagon during the first Bush administration as undersecretary of defense for policy. He was sworn in as deputy defense secretary in March 2001.

John Bolton is a Yale Law graduate who worked in the Reagan administration as an assistant attorney general. He switched to the State Department in the first Bush administration as assistant secretary for international organization affairs. He was sworn in as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, May 2001.

Eliot Cohen has a doctorate in government from Harvard, taught courses there and now directs strategic studies at Johns Hopkins. He is the author of several books on military strategy. He was on the Defense Department's policy planning staff in the first Bush administration. He is now on Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board.

I. Lewis Libby has a Law degree from Columbia (a Yale undergrad). He has held advisory positions in the Reagan State Department. He was a partner in a Washington law firm in the late '80s before becoming deputy undersecretary of defense for policy in the first Bush administration (under Dick Cheney). Now he is the vice president's chief of staff.

Dov Zakheim has a doctorate in economics and politics from Oxford University. He worked on policy issues in the Reagan Defense Department and went into private defense consulting during the 1990s. He was foreign policy adviser to the 2000 Bush campaign and sworn in as undersecretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Pentagon, May 2001.

Stephen Cambone has a doctorate in political science from Claremont Graduate School. He was in charge of strategic defense policy at the Defense Department in the first Bush administration. Now heads the Office of Program, Analysis and Evaluation at the Defense Department.
 

Why refer to the background of these government officials? It is because universities teach students how to create this kind of foreign policy. Universities are involved in this type of thinking for students. The enemy is us.

The authors of this Report say, "past Pentagon wargames have given little or no consideration to the force requirements necessary not only to defeat an attack but to remove these regimes from power." The report says U.S. forces will be required to perform "constabulary duties" and that such actions "demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations." (My italics) The Report advocates a military presence spread over more of the globe, in addition to the roughly 130 nations in which U.S. troops are already deployed. These officials argue that we need permanent military bases in the Middle East, in Southeast Europe, in Latin America and in Southeast Asia, where no such bases now exist.

In essence, the Bush plan is to be the world’s policeman and government. The cost of this global military commitment will be enormous. In 2000, we spent $281 billion on our military, which was more than the next 11 nations combined. By 2003, our expenditures will have risen to $378 billion.

If you watched the PBS Frontline story on Saudi Arabia last Thursday night you would understand more about why the Bush administration wants to invade Iraq and "change the regime." Saudi Arabia is not a reliable ally. The Crown Prince Abdullah sent a letter to President George W. Bush last August of this year in which he says, "A time comes when peoples and nations part. We are at a crossroads. And it's time for the United States and Saudi Arabia to look for their separate interests."

A fundamentalist Muslim religious faith called the Wahhabis reigns in Saudi Arabia. There is pressure from these religious fundamentalists to free Arabia from the influence of the United States. A destabilization of the Saudi regime could repeat what happened to the Shah in Iran and to Sadat in Egypt. It means that the Bush administration must exercise direct control over its oil resources.

So, President Bush wants unrestricted power to invade Iraq and have a direct military presence in and around Arab territories. The military protection of Israel is part of the equation. Israel is on the alert and would go into action with us, using our weapons, at any sign of attack on them. Terrorism then mounts. World War III could be around the corner.

(Watch for the Biden-Lugar resolution coming up this week. It may thwart the intent of Bush to invade and "change the regime.")

My point is that universities are involved in teaching this kind of military action. So, how is Boston College doing? How are we training leaders to bring peace and justice to this world?

We are at one of the best colleges in the country and I am honored to have taught here for 35 years, but let me suggest how the educational program could improve at this campus.

1. Boston College should have a stronger program on world affairs and international studies. It should study world organizations.

Boston College should have courses on the world organizations (world trade associations, international non-governmental associations, and inter-governmental organizations) and the development of international law.

I taught a course on "International Organization" on campus years ago. I would say to students "Massachusetts does not invade Vermont because there is a higher authority in the federal government that would not allow it to happen."

We need New World governing systems. Fr. Robert Drinan, S.J. was head of the Law School when I started that course and on the national board of the World Federalist Association. If he were here on campus, he would teach about the development of democratic world government and world law.

In my course, I said that that government can never solve all the problems of the world. In a civil society, there are thousands of non-governmental federations -- thousands of local-to-global business and trade federations, thousands of professional federations, thousands of scientific federations, thousands of religious federations, thousands of educational federations, etc. I study them as part of the development of civil society.

So, what can you do?

Boston College needs a chapter of The World Federalists on campus.

(Interested students should Call Jock Forbes at 617-576-3871)

BC students should serve as interns at The United Nations Association.

Boston College needs courses on the United Nations. The work of the UN includes the subject of every discipline in this university — economics, sociology, political science, physics, chemistry, biology, art, religion, and education. Why are our disciplines not focused on the development of world organizations in this age in which nations race toward self-destruction?

Boston College needs to open its undergraduate major in International Studies for all students. Faculties need to develop a subject for "world organization" and "world cultures." The current program on international studies at BC should not be limited to only honor students. It should be a strong program that provides BC with a special niche in this field of international affairs. It should designed in the Jesuit tradition.

Boston College needs to develop a graduate program in International Studies. We should not let other universities only place leaders into positions of power. Remember where those leaders in the Bush administration were coming from — the University of Chicago, Yale, and Columbia? BC should develop its own subject, its own theme and perspective. It should provide a special niche in this field of foreign policy, with competent faculty and students. It should put leaders into top government positions. The BC theme for this program: New World governing systems based on the principles of global justice and freedom.

2. The Boston College Carroll School of Management should promote civil markets, not capitalist markets. The economy is in trouble. The Bush administration knows it and ignores it.

Jeffrey Garten is dean of the Yale School of Management and has served with secretaries of state under Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance and undersecretary of Commerce for Internal Trade in the Clinton administration. He is openly opposed to the Bush policy. Look at his strong article in BusinessWeek, October 14^th. He argues that CEOs and corporations should be critics of this Bush policy.

What could we do at the BC Carroll School?

Management faculty could emphasize the development of a civil economy. They could offer courses on social investment and civic-oriented trade associations. "Social investment" integrates financial principles with ethical principles. The economy is tanking today because of the way capital is allocated. It is a system of finance that needs to be changed. Management should be studying the way pension funds are organized and how they allocate capital for the common good, not for greed alone. We should teach about a market system that will not collapse periodically and, as some political leaders have argued, lead a President to divert us toward a war.

Feminist students in the Carroll School should study global markets as systems of domination. They should follow the lead of Prof. Jean Baker Miller on "domination" (Toward New Psychology for Women) as the problem to be solved. Faculties should apply Miller’s theory on domination to world trade. The World Trade Center is a symbol of freedom for us but a symbol of domination for other people.

The Church has its principles to apply in the Carroll School. There is a principle of subsidiarity, invented in the Catholic tradition, but I do not see it taught in the school of management. The Jesuit Institute should be encouraging interdisciplinary studies on subsidiarity for all big corporations. Subsidiarity means that people at best organize corporations at the lowest level of administration for effective governance. Management scholars should teach this principle and apply it to big corporations like Enron, which do not perform responsibly to employees and investors. They contribute to the current economic instability.

Bush is focused on Iraq, not on the economy.

How many students at BC and the Carroll School are working on the problem of renewable energy? Can you see how the failure to promote renewable energy resources has something to do with a war on Iraq? Are faculties researching this question on new energy resources?

Management faculty should critique the World Trade Organization and offer alternatives. We need New World governing systems. How can the WTO develop into a body of representative stakeholders? How can capitalist markets change into civil markets? How is the faculty at the School of Management working on this problem?

3. Boston College needs courses on the history of civil disobedience. It needs training programs in nonviolent action.

At Boston College we should be sensitive to the spiritual dimensions of our lives. Jesus said, "love your enemies." Now, we cannot seem to do that very well. But it does behoove us to study how to do it. This is not just a problem of ethics. Ethics focuses too often on just interpersonal relations (which is important) but we have big political and economic structures operating here that aim to destroy one another. We need to examine structures of domination and search for alternatives based on fairness and justice, making loving our enemies more possible.

We need skills in nonviolent action and the ability to love our enemies under pressure. Come join us on our Peace Vigil Thursdays at 5:00 pm at Newton Centre. There you learn how respect somebody who tries to shove you or tear up your signpost, which says "Peace Not War." Can you look at your attacker with the power of Mohandas K. Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Dorothy Day? Does BC teach about Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker? Can you discipline your fear and rage-energy and cultivate tenderness in your heart toward your enemy?

BC has a role to play in teaching about the prevention of war.

I hope to see you at the Peace Vigil in Newton Centre next Thursday. Some students have begun to join us. We started protesting with a handful of people. Last week our number had grown to 83.

Thanks for inviting me.