Alright y'all, welcome back to Anti-War Radio Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas.
Our next guest is Jim Fine, he's the Legislative Secretary for Foreign Policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Welcome to the show, Jim.
Scott, I'm very glad to have an opportunity to be here with you.
Well, I'm very glad to have you on, and you know, I had a friend in high school who was a Quaker, and he explained to me that he would rather get killed than kill somebody.
It was his religion.
Well, that's the pacifist conviction at the heart of the convictions of the Society of Friends, that there is a power that simply enjoins us against the killing of another human being.
In any circumstances?
In any circumstances, although, you know, I need to be candid with you.
If you look over time and at the breadth of the membership in the Society of Friends, you will see that there have been times and places where some members of the Society of Friends have been prompted to take part in war.
If you go to the Friends burial ground of any Northeastern United States Friends meeting house, you'll see, if you go after Memorial Day, you'll see that there are some American flags in the burial ground.
And if you look closely at the medallions that hold those flags, you'll see that there are Friends, or they may be former Friends because they may well have been disowned by their meeting, but at least the meetings relented and allowed them to be buried in the burial grounds.
They're Friends who participated in the Civil War and in World War II.
You may see a few others, but generally speaking, World War II and the Civil War were very divisive within the Society of Friends, and there were some, a minority, but there were some who felt that they were conscience-bound to serve in those wars.
Well, and I guess of all the wars, those two, I guess it's no surprise that those are the ones that really would drive that kind of thing.
But anyway, I don't mean to get into the pacifist angle too much.
I'm just interested in it.
I'm an individualist, so I believe everybody has the right to defend themselves, but that doesn't mean that they necessarily should every time, and certainly if they do, it's got to be proportionate, right?
It certainly does.
Friends are very supportive of the, it's a little bit ironic, but Friends are very supportive of the international law that applies to warfare, because although we reject war as an instrument of state policy, we also believe that those who don't share that rejection need to act within limits that the law and the international community has laid down.
So Friends have been very supportive of the United Nations, very concerned that humanitarian law be respected in a time of conflict, and this is, I think, members of the society recognize that society as a whole does not share our pacifist conviction, and we are very concerned to advocate for practical alternatives that can both prevent war, end war, and rebuild societies that are devastated by war.
I think it was the experience, maybe, of having a Quaker state back in the 18th century, that 17th and 18th century, that made Friends very conscious of the need to govern in practical ways and minimize the use of force in government.
But when pressed, there was a time back in the early 1700s when there were pirates in the Delaware River, and there was a great debate in the Pennsylvania legislature about what to do about the pirates.
And finally, after a great deal of discussion, the Quaker legislature agreed that it was necessary to dispatch frigates to suppress the pirates down the river south of Philadelphia in the Delaware.
They regarded it as a police action, but there were still grave misgivings on the part of Friends that it involved the threat or use of force, but nonetheless recognized that practical governance required the use of force within limited and proportionate limits.
And now even the state recognizes your convictions enough that they'll let you be conscientious objectors even really without a fight, right?
The U.S. law, and in an earlier era, first it was British law, since Friends came from England, that recognized the religious objection to warfare and allowed Friends to perform alternative service, which they have done in every war since World War I, when there was conscription.
In fact, in a sense, you can say that the two leading Quaker organizations in the U.S., the American Friends Service Committee, and even ourselves, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, were responses to the challenges of war.
AFSC was begun as a means to provide people during World War I to provide alternative service instead of participating in war, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation was originally a spinoff from the American Friends Service Committee at the end of World War II, when Friends recognized that building a better world in the aftermath of that devastating conflict would require attention to national legislation and the policies of the U.S. government to avoid future wars and build structures of equity and justice around the world, obviously a task that remains still to be done.
And please forgive me for my ignorance, but Friends is simply a term for fellow Quakers?
Yes.
Pardon me for lapsing into sectarian jargon here, but that's Friends with a capital F, and that is the official designation of members of the Society of Friends, which is more commonly called Quakers.
And it's kind of interesting that the term Quakers was originally a derisive term that was applied to members of the Society of Friends by their opponents in 17th century England, because in that day, Friends were seized with a religious enthusiasm when the power of the divine was upon them.
They would quake in their meetings.
Like the Shakers?
Like the Shakers, exactly.
And so members of the established churches ridiculed their religious enthusiasm and dismissed them as the Quakers, and the Quakers said, well, that's right, we do quake under the power of the divine presence, and why shouldn't we?
So they've adopted the name and have been popularly known as Quakers ever since.
Interesting.
All right, now let's talk about foreign policy.
In reversal, Democrat's show of Iran resolution reads the headline, and this is something that we haven't really been able to pay too much attention to on this show, that anti-war forces won.
There was actually a big stink made, and we won the blockade bill that was going through the Congress that was, I guess, not going to demand or mandate a blockade, but it was going to request that Bush enforce a blockade preventing the Iranians from importing refined gasoline, and we beat them, and they killed the bill.
They certainly did.
I wouldn't be surprised to see something somewhat like that bill come back in the next Congress.
I think we have more battles to face, but I also think that this was a signal victory that shows a growing consensus that we need to reverse course and add a dimension to our policy towards Iran that we simply have not had to date, and which this administration has so far refused to do.
This was an extraordinarily draconian resolution.
You're right that it was a sense of Congress resolution.
It was non-binding, but it did use the term that it demanded.
It didn't urge.
It demanded that the president initiate an international action that would have imposed a gasoline embargo of gasoline imports to Iran, because Iran has to import 40% of its refined petroleum needs.
It would have imposed what I call a diplomatic quarantine on Iran.
It said no Iranian official should be permitted to travel abroad unless they were coming to talk about the suspension of Iranian enrichment.
And nothing like that has ever been done, to my knowledge, against any nation in the modern era.
And third, it said the president should initiate international action to impose a strict inspection regime on all persons and goods entering and leaving Iran.
And there was no way that that could be construed as anything other than a land, sea, and air blockade, although the lead sponsors of the resolution denied that.
But the way the resolution was worded, it was calling for a blockade, which would be in effect an act of war.
And the interesting thing is that initially supporters of this were saying it is simply an incremental increase in the sanctions already imposed on Iran.
But when the peace community, religious groups, and others began to press co-sponsors about the language of the bill, many of them were forced to take a second look at it and agreed with us that this resolution could be construed as calling in effect for an act of war.
An unprecedented five co-sponsors actually withdrew their sponsorship, although I need to tell you that the number of co-sponsors still rose to 280.
Several other co-sponsors said that although they remained co-sponsors, they would not vote for the bill in its present form if it was not amended to remove the blockade language.
And it became very clear to the leadership in Congress that this was not going to be a non-controversial resolution that could readily be passed on the suspension calendar of the House without causing a major debate and sharp disagreements on the House floor.
So they shelved it.
So I think what we have done is demonstrate that while there is a powerful lobby force to take extraordinary, draconian actions against Iran, there is also a coalition that includes – coalition may be too formal a word – but there are peace, religious, including constructive Jewish groups in the country that are concerned that U.S. policy on Iran is badly one-sided.
We are wielding the stick and we're not offering the significant carrot that has to go along with any effort to hope to change Iranian behavior or reach agreement with Iran.
And I think we've demonstrated that those forces are beginning to come up to the level of the neoconservative forces and others that are calling for bigger and bigger sticks.
Well, you know, it's funny.
This is from the headlines at the top of antiwar.com today, coincidentally.
Mohammed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said in an interview, quote, they did not have even the nuclear material, the raw unenriched uranium, to develop one nuclear weapon if they decide to do so.
And of course, if they decide to do so would mean that we would still have at least six months notice or something because they would have to kick the IAEA out of the country and basically announce that they were attempting to refine highly enriched uranium because as it stands, there are IAEA scientists standing right there.
So this whole thing that there's any Iranian behavior that even needs to be changed seems to me, you know, kind of a red herring.
Well, I think if you attend closely to the statements that come out from a variety of quarters, you'll see that there is recognition of the fact that there is no imminent danger from surprising quarters.
Former heads of the Israeli intelligence service, for example, have said that it would take Iran several years to build a usable nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.
There is no immediate danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon.
And also, I think you're right, there is no clear evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, and ElBaradei himself has alluded to this recently, there are outstanding questions about past Iranian nuclear activities that the IAEA has still not been able to get answers to and would very much like answers to.
At the same time, as long as the IAEA inspectors are there, the cameras are running, there is no possibility that Iran could be diverting the uranium that it's enriching to a low non-weapons grade level for weapons purposes.
So the situation now is stable.
But there are outstanding questions that the IAEA as well as Western governments would like to resolve.
And I think it would be good both for Iran and for the rest of the world if those questions could be resolved.
And at the same time, if the rest of the world would recognize the right that Iran has under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to engage in enrichment activities, provided there are ironclad IAEA safeguards in place.
Well, let me ask you this.
This might be a tricky one from your point of view.
I'm certainly for, you know, if my girlfriend had I dreamed of genie powers, I'd have her get rid of all the nukes on earth in a moment.
Would you recognize the unalienable right of Iran as the nation state to go ahead and withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and actually make nuclear weapons?
Or do you think that that actually would be an excuse or a causus belli to prevent them from doing so?
I don't think it would be under international law a causus belli.
I do think it would put a severe strain on the politics in the U.S. and in other countries in the West and could well precipitate U.S. or other military action that would not be consistent with international law, but would nonetheless, I mean, that's really beside the point.
It would be a disaster for the Middle East and for the global community.
But I think there's another important connection here that hasn't been paid sufficient attention, and that's the connection between disarmament and non-proliferation.
The U.S. is a signatory to the NPT, has an obligation to reduce its nuclear stockpiles and eventually to eliminate them.
And no surprise of all surprises, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and others, Republicans and Democrats have actually begun to call for the complete nuclear disarmament of the U.S. and the world.
That's a very important objective, one that we at FCNL have been working on for 20 years or 30 years.
At the same time, any Iranian move to develop nuclear weapons would put a severe strain on the non-proliferation regime in the Middle East.
Other countries would be prompted to follow suit almost certainly.
So I see a very important opportunity here to not only keep Iran within the NPT, but to persuade Iran to agree to conditions that will remove the shadow of a doubt that it has the capability to break out of the NPT and move into a nuclear weapons capacity, and the need to persuade the U.S. to take steps to reduce and eventually eliminate its nuclear stockpiles.
I think the regional interest in the Middle East, the global interest, is in working on an agreement that supports the NPT in the Middle East and moves the U.S. and other countries down the road to meet their obligations under the NPT.
Well, and we all know that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons.
Do you know of any good reason why they shouldn't just go ahead and sign the NPT as a nuclear weapons state?
It's not like they'd have to give up their nuclear weapons to join the treaty, right?
Israel can hardly join the NPT as a nuclear weapons state.
What I think is at the edge of the doable is a nuclear-free Middle East agreement that would persuade Israel eventually to declare its nuclear weapons capability and to disarm its nuclear weapons capability.
I think that an agreement that preserves the status quo in the region is an important stage on that ultimate trip, but I think it's a nuclear weapons-free Middle East that should be the ultimate goal.
Yeah, well, agreed.
Nuclear weapons-free world, if you ask me.
And it is interesting, isn't it, that all these people, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn and all these people are coming out, even talking about how they think that the United States should even give up our hydrogen bombs.
Oh, absolutely.
And it's one facet, I think, of what I see as an emerging consensus that has implications for Iran and wider Middle East questions.
I mean, there's a funny thing going on here, I think, Scott, that the positions that the peace community has been advocating for decades are being picked up by what you can only call the foreign policy establishment in the United States.
I think you see it very clearly, beginning with the Iraq Study Group report in December of 2006, Jim Baker from the Republican side, Lee Hamilton from the Democratic side, co-chairing that commission created by Congress to look at alternatives to the Bush administration policies in Iraq.
First thing that they say is that you have to engage with Iran.
It's a regional player.
The U.S. and Iran have interests, a mutual interest that ought to be advanced through an agreement.
Syria is another country that the U.S. has minimal relations with, but it has not brought into a serious negotiating process.
That has to be done.
And you have to look in the region more broadly to readdress the Arab-Israeli conflict.
If you want to solve the problem of violent Islamic extremism, that's comparable, I think, to the call from Nunn and Kissinger and others to abolishing nuclear weapons.
Here's a call from the heart of the establishment to engage Iran, to talk about a grand bargain to guarantee regional security that goes from the eastern Mediterranean into Afghanistan and beyond.
Then you see things like the National Intelligence Estimate coming out in November of 2007, saying, I think, really remarkably, this blew me away when I read it, saying that to reach agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue, on its support for radical groups, for the violence of radical groups in the area, you not only need to have disincentives, like the sanctions that are in place, but you need to offer Iran opportunities to secure its influence, its own security, and its regional objectives.
I mean, that's the language of the National Intelligence Estimate, recommending that you have to offer Iran opportunities to guarantee its security and its influence in the region.
That inclusive approach is just the kind of thing that peace organizations have been advocating for a decade or more, and you see it coming right from the heart of the intelligence community.
You see even General Petraeus speaking mostly about Afghanistan, but saying you have to talk to your enemies.
So there's a conversion.
Well, Petraeus says that we know it's true.
We know it's true.
We've known that nuclear weapons have been a curse on humankind, but now we begin to see that there is almost a radical center emerging that is taking up the convictions that we've held for many, many years.
And you know, when you talk about a grand bargain with Iran, we had our chance in 2003.
I don't know if they'll take us up on it now.
I guess they certainly have a lot of reasons to go ahead and take us up on it.
But if we would give them a grand bargain back in 2003, they had offered to switch sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or at least put pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah.
Sure, they're interested in a just outcome, but they took a moderate position on the future of future recognition of Israel.
That's true.
And you know, I think that 2003 memorandum that outlined all of the issues to be discussed – Iran's nuclear program, support for violence by Hezbollah and Hamas, help to stabilize Iraq, U.S. and Western commitment to end sanctions, to support Iran's integration into the international economy, to give access to Iran to Western oil and other technologies – those issues remain the core issues for Iran and for the United States.
And I have one particular reason for thinking that the chance of getting back to that moment and then moving forward is really good.
We met – a number of organizations present – with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad three weeks ago when he was at the UN General Assembly session in New York.
Oh, really?
Yes.
And it was a couple of meetings, one organized by peace groups.
And at that session, we were able to ask the Iranian President 11 different questions on different issues of concern to us.
And I mean, the short of it is, he touched, he pressed all of the softest Iranian buttons on all of the issues that any Iranian spokesperson has sounded over the last several years.
And for the first time of any Iranian official, he confirmed that those 2001 to 2003 negotiations had taken place.
Up until then, the Iranians had been very coy about it.
They'd never confirmed that that had taken place, never confirmed that they had signed a summary of discussions to date to the U.S., and then had it rejected.
But Ahmadinejad confirmed that those negotiations took place, and he pointed out to us, it was you referring to the United States who cut it off.
We didn't cut it off, and we are ready for a reasonable dialogue with the United States.
So I think he affirmed that that was the agenda that had been developed and indicated that Iran, if the U.S. would be reasonable from their perspective, was ready to go forward on that.
He also again said that while his preferred solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict would be to hold a referendum to determine the outcome of the future of Israel-Palestine, of course the subtext of that is that there would be a large Arab-Palestinian majority in the referendum, he also said that if a legitimate Palestinian government accepted a two-state solution with Israel, then no one should oppose it, and Iran would accept it.
So I think out there at the end of the day is a solution, a grand bargain, that could bring security to Israel, the Palestinians, the countries of the region, and lead the U.S. into a transformed relationship with the Arab and Islamic worlds.
Well, and if I remember right, from the 2003 offer through the Swiss diplomat, basically, well, correct me if I'm wrong, fill me in on the details I'm missing, I thought all they wanted was security guarantees.
You just promised not to bomb us, and we're willing to do all this in return.
Was there anything more that they were asking for Marsha?
Oh yeah, I think a stable and durable agreement is going to include more than that, but you're certainly right to point out that that is priority number one on the part of not just the current government in Iran, but every government since the Iranian revolution.
They are terribly afraid that the United States intends to undermine and subvert and eventually overthrow the Islamic Republic, and so they want a declaration, and they also want tangible signs that the U.S. is no longer engaged in the process of regime change.
But they also want to be removed from the list of pariah states.
They badly need access to the international economy and to Western technology.
I think one thing that proponents of sanctions never mention, and probably don't even realize, is the extent to which Iran has been thwarted and blocked by the status quo on sanctions and the refusal of the U.S. and many other Western governments to deal with them in an equitable way.
Twenty years after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Iran has still not been able to rebuild its petroleum refining capacity.
Hence, they have to import 40% of their gasoline needs.
Their petroleum production is actually declining.
Already, they're unable to meet their OPEC quota in oil production.
So their economy is already under tremendous pressure by the sanctions that are imposed at present.
They have a tremendous incentive to reach an equitable agreement with the U.S. and the West to permit them to end the economic stranglehold that they're forced to deal with now.
Alright, now if we can switch gears to Iraq for the last few minutes of the interview here.
You guys have put out some press statements criticizing the President for a new signing statement that he's added to a law which forbids him from spending money to control Iraq's oil resources.
What did that signing statement say?
Well, this is a very interesting development and not enough attention has been paid to it.
Congress for the last two years has attached to every funding bill and authorization bill for the Iraq war language that says none of this funding may be used to build permanent bases in Iraq and none of this funding may be used to control Iraqi oil.
This year, the President has adopted the habit of attaching signing statements to his signature of these bills.
The first, about eight months ago, said he objected to the entire paragraph that included both the permanent bases and the control of Iraqi oil.
He said that it was incompatible with his authority as Commander-in-Chief and one assumed that what he was really concerned about was the restriction on spending for permanent bases although he had signed this into law in the previous year without comment.
This time, he took the incredible step of saying nothing about permanent bases but he said that his authority as Commander-in-Chief was in contradiction to the prohibition of spending funds to control Iraqi oil.
So essentially, he's asserted that as Commander-in-Chief, if he deems it necessary to protect national security, he has the power to use the U.S. military to seize Iraqi oil fields and control Iraqi oil.
It's a stunning assertion.
It seems preposterous on the part of a President who has only three months more to serve but it will leave on the record what I think ought to be considered as a corollary to the Bush Doctrine of preventive war.
It will leave on the record a Presidential assertion that the U.S. has the right to seize the natural resources of foreign countries if it deems it necessary to protect its own national security.
Well, it sure says something about the relative powers of the Congress to the President.
I thought they were co-equal branches here and that if he signed a law, that was it.
What, did they legalize the line item veto or something?
The legal force of the President's signing statements has no definitive determination.
The courts have not ruled on these things.
There are some analysts who dismiss these signing statements and say, well, they really have no legal force.
The problem with that is, at least in this case and in many others, the signing statements are on subjects where the President will act before Congress knows what's going on or before any court could be brought in to prevent Presidential action.
The President will act or some future President could act and cite these signing statements as the basis for their action.
After the act is committed, then yes, you could well have a court challenge of the legality of the President's action in relation to the law that Congress passed, but by then, A, the damage is done, and B, the judiciary is historically very reluctant to intervene to countermand an action that the executive has already taken.
So I think this is a very dangerous development, and it ought to be criticized and challenged by Congress and by the legal authorities.
Well, you know, it looks like, as far as we can tell without outright predicting the future, it seems as though Barack Obama is going to be the new President, and it also seems like all the pressure on him will be to prove that he's not some foreign terrorist.
All the time, any kind of, you know, reasonable deal-making that he tries to do, you know, talking with Iran or anything else, is always going to be portrayed in the worst light, and all the pressure is going to be on him to be more hawkish rather than more peace-like.
And in fact, I think in the last debate he mentioned when speaking about Iran that, you know, one thing we could do is the oil blockade.
That's better than war, and, you know, here he is taking up the defeated bill in Congress.
Scott, I think you've put your finger on the important issue that we're going to face in a new administration, particularly if it's an Obama administration.
There will be strong pressure to try to deter and dissuade any opening towards a more constructive and more inclusive approach to the Middle East.
I mentioned earlier that I thought there was an emerging consensus with the foreign policy establishment moving in the direction that the peace community has advocated for years.
But what I didn't say then, but it's important to point out now, I think, is how far Congress is behind that emerging, behind, not supportive, but is behind accepting that emerging consensus.
More than a year ago, the House voted on a resolution that would have required congressional consent for any military action against Iran.
Only 136 members said, yes, it's important for Congress to authorize any military action against Iran.
Almost three-quarters of the House said, well, it's not any of our business.
Well, I didn't even think they had a chance to vote on it.
I thought Nancy Pelosi took it out before it even got to the vote.
First time.
There was a separate vote on the bill, and only 136 votes were mustered to say, yes, Congress must authorize any attack on Iran.
We've been supporting and encouraging members to co-sponsor a series of resolutions introduced in the House that support comprehensive regional diplomacy.
We're all told we've gotten 128 separate members to support one or another of those resolutions.
In contrast, we mentioned earlier, 280 members of the House have co-sponsored the Iran blockade resolution.
So I think we've seen much more constructive positions coming from the heart of the foreign policy establishment, former secretaries of state, five of whom have said we have to have direct negotiations with Iran, the National Intelligence Estimate, Secretary of Defense Gates, General Petraeus talking about the need to engage so-called enemies.
But Congress is quite a bit behind the curve, and if there is a constructive initiative in a new administration, we're going to have to do a lot of work to support and defend that against its detractors.
Well, and it's the Israel lobby, it's AIPAC, isn't it?
That's what the Washington Times said when Nancy Pelosi took the second time when they were going to have the you-can't-bomb-Iran-without-permission thing.
That's who we're talking about, right?
It's the Friends Committee versus AIPAC in the House.
Well, in that match-up, I wouldn't be too sanguine about the results, but I think, A, you're right, H. Conres 362, the so-called blockade resolution, for example, was one of the legislative priorities of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, but it was a large number of peace, religious, and progressive Jewish organizations, the new J Street lobby and Americans for Peace Now lobbied explicitly against that resolution.
It was all of those groups together that have stopped it in its tracks, and I think the hopeful note is that there are signs of change.
You have the emergence of the J Street lobby, which styles itself the pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby.
I think that's very important.
Americans for Peace Now have been around for a long time, but they're moving beyond the concern for Israeli-Palestinian peace to recognize how central the U.S.
-Iran relationship is in all of these things.
And we've got people like Thomas Dine, former executive director of AIPAC, who has joined in a new group study called Changing Course, New U.S. Relations with the Muslim World.
And the first thing that that group, former Secretary of State Albright, as well as Dine and others, said is that you have to engage Iran in negotiations.
And the second thing they said you have to do is make a concerted U.S.
-led effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.
I think there are more and more people in every quarter of American society that are coming to recognize how critical our situation is and how close to a needless and devastating second war in the Middle East we are, and we need to muster all of our diplomatic prowess to reach a new basis for our relationship in the Middle East.
Well, let's hope as some members of the establishment start to snap out of it that coalition building here on the outside, like what you're talking about, can be more effective and we can really start pushing toward rolling back this empire.
It's the essential challenge we face, and I think we need to remember that we are not on the margins.
We are at the center of American society and a growing concern for dramatic change in how we relate to the rest of the world, and especially to the Middle East.
All right, everybody, that's Jim Fine.
He's Legislative Secretary for Foreign Policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
The website is fcnl.org.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today.
Scott, thank you.
It was a pleasure.
All right, folks, that's Anti-War Radio.
I'm sorry I'm already a little over time here.
I think there's just a rerun coming up next.
Hope I'm not stepping on anybody's toes.
Yeah, up next, a rerun of DJ MoFo and the Rogue Sound System.
Tonight, from 9 to 11, Texas time, we'll be a guest of James C. Smooth and El Demento on the Smooth and Demented show here on KAOS.
If anybody wants to tune in to that.
Other than that, thanks, everybody, for listening.
We'll be back here tomorrow, 11 to 1, Texas time, Anti-War Radio on KAOS 927 in Austin.
