09/06/10 – Kathy Kelly – The Scott Horton Show

Hey everybody, I'm Scott, this is Anti-War Radio.
Kathy Kelly is on the line, she's from Voices for Creative Non-Violence.
Hi Kathy, how are you?
Hello Scott, I'm good, thank you.
I really appreciate you joining us today.
So what, they're putting a bunch of people on trial, are you one of them?
What's the dang deal here?
Yes, I'm one of them.
We were in April of 2009 at Creech Air Force Base, and at that point I think some of us were just beginning to become alerted to the reality that the United States was using instead of the surge tactic that was used in Iraq, a tactic that some of the generals in Iraq thought was actually more effective, and that was targeted assassinations and the usage of drone warfare accomplishes that.
There are many other ways in which these combat drones are being used in Afghanistan for surveillance and for actually attacking people, and we realized that Creech Air Force Base was the central place where the Predators and the Reapers were being used in training so that people could, in faraway places like Afghanistan, lift the drones off the runways in, say, Bagram Air Force Base, and then as soon as they were airborne, the air personnel at Creech Air Force Base would operate them.
So we stayed outside of the base for about ten days with signs, and it was very obvious that we were there for a purpose, and that it had even been announced in the newspaper the morning of our action that we planned to enter into the base to deliver a letter and some bread and water just to hope to initiate some dialogue with people inside the base.
And it was reported that we had forced our way onto the base, but actually there's video footage of us more or less sauntering onto the base.
We encountered soldiers who were quite frightened, honestly, and immediately clicked their rifles and seemed very, very nervous.
And then we went...
Well, you guys were all dressed up in camouflage and carrying rifles, or what?
No, we looked like the usual suspects.
We immediately then either sat or knelt down and then carried on a dialogue for, I think, an hour or more with the soldiers and with policemen who came from Las Vegas to arrest us, and we were held overnight in a county jail.
And charges were dropped.
But then they were reinstated.
I have a hunch that maybe they'd like to create a deterrent.
And so we now have a trial on September 14th, and we're quite fortunate in who the defendants are, actually.
I mean, it's inclusive of people who are themselves just some of the finest people walking on this planet, really.
Louis Vitale, a Franciscan priest, and Jerry Zawada, likewise a Franciscan, John Deere, who crisscrosses the country speaking about peace and nonviolence, Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest who's done six years in prison already for disarmament actions and faces more charges, Megan Rice, the same former prisoner of conscience at the School of the Americas.
I mean, I can go on and on with this very fine listing of people, but we also have as expert witnesses Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, Bill Quigley, the Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director, and Colonel Anne Wright, who actually opened up the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan before she resigned her post in 2003.
Well, you know, that's very interesting.
I just had an idea, and maybe it's ridiculous, but what if you found, like, a really good right-wing lawyer to join in as one of the expert witnesses as well, somebody like Bruce Fine or something, who can get up there and make an argument to protect you from the right flank?
Well, you know, this may sound a little crazy, but we're representing ourselves.
We are bringing people in as expert witnesses, but we believe that it's important for people to take personal responsibility, you know, if we're willing to articulate that we're acting under our obligations under international law to be very, very familiar with the Nuremberg trials and with the citizens' responsibilities to intervene when attacks are being launched against unarmed civilians and that these are in violation of international law, then we have to be able to stand up and articulate this for ourselves.
So we're most grateful for right or left or any kind of wing lawyers who want to be interested in this case.
We think we're raising some of the most vital issues of our time, but we're assembling in advance so that we can make sure our skills are fairly sharpened at representing ourselves in the courtroom.
And actually, on June 14th of this year, I was surprised with the Witness Against Torture trial that a number of us participated in in D.C.
We were all acquitted.
Yeah.
Isn't that nice?
Occasionally, the independent third branch of government, so-called, will stand up for citizens against the executive branch.
Occasionally.
We also call your listeners' attention to a very important case that occurred in Ireland when an Irish jury acquitted five activists who had done quite a bit of damage to a U.S.
Navy warplane parked on the tarmac in Shannon Airport in Dublin, just outside of Dublin.
And then that has issued a whole series of actions, and you can't find an Irish jury to convict the activists who have gone into Raytheon factories, opened the windows, dropped the computers right out the windows, and all been acquitted.
That's an interesting history, but I think we do, whether we like it or not, or know it or not, we have responsibilities under international law to interfere with our governance when the government is in violation of the law.
Hey, and the bottom-up natural law as well, of course.
And you make such an important point there, in kind of an offhand way, about the Irish.
They can't find a jury to convict these people.
It sort of doesn't matter, really, whether the law in Ireland says it's wrong to sabotage an American plane on its base's tarmac there.
You can't find anybody to convict them.
And that's how liberty is enforced, from the bottom up.
Nope, sorry, you're not allowed to take Kathy Kelly to jail, not on my watch.
Well, I think you're right, and in fact, while I would invoke international law, I'm much more interested in building up our communities of nonviolent resistance here in this country so that people would begin to recognize the terrible affliction that we're causing to people who, I would say, have meant us no harm.
I'm thinking about teenagers, you know, on mountainsides in Afghanistan, who are so poor they're out trying to collect scrap metal and risking their lives and limbs because they go after the, you know, embedded landmines, just hoping they can go and sell the brass.
And these kids, they may not even know where my city of Chicago is, but then all of a sudden they become targeted by the drone surveillance, which I guess isn't so good, because they couldn't distinguish these children from insurgents, and next thing you know, they're blasted right out of their little lives' existence.
Well, this is a very short-sighted tactic that General Petraeus and before him, certainly General McChrystal, I believe President Obama, have wanted to use, thinking this is the tactic of choice.
Drone surveillance, targeted assassinations, we'll have our list of high-value targets and we'll just go on down the list, and if it takes us to Somalia and Yemen or North Korea, we just will be so powerful and strong with our superior technology.
Well, it's short-sighted, because in the long run, people are furious.
The families, the relatives, the onlookers, and the onlookers are a big group of people.
Look at the menacing might of the United States and our haphazard violations of international law, and I think people won't put up with it.
So the security of the people in the United States is being jeopardized.
Right.
Well, you know, I'm sure you remember well, and probably sadly as I do, how dedicated people were in their loyalty to George W. Bush as great leader, and no matter what criticism Cathy Kelly could ever come up with, the answer always was, well, Cathy Kelly has a problem, not George Bush, not what we're doing.
And we're living through this exact same thing again.
I just met a nice guy here in L.A. last night, friendly guy, we were hanging out talking, and he had no idea that Barack Obama wasn't really getting us out of Iraq, but was leaving 50,000 infantrymen and even more mercenaries and contractors.
He had no idea that Barack Obama had expanded the war by, I forget how many dozens of divisions in Afghanistan, and expanded the drone strike war and covert war in Pakistan, as well as Yemen and Somalia.
He just had never heard of any of these things.
He's still under the impression that, you know, Barack Obama, the speechgiver candidate that he bought into a couple of years ago, just must be doing things right, sort of in the same way that Saddam must have done 9-11, or else why are we attacking him kind of thing.
People still think Obama's great.
It's going to take till New Orleans drowns again or something for people to snap out of it.
Cathy?
Well, I think the major corporations that benefited as war profiteers under the Bush administration are still in power.
John Perkins talks about the swirling clouds, and I think these corporations have just as much power in the Obama administration.
I think that President Obama had key opportunities when he could have, and he should have, broken up.
He may have sacrificed his possibilities to be a second-term president, but he would have saved many lives and limbs.
And he didn't speak up, but that doesn't lessen our responsibilities.
All right, I'm sorry, we've got to leave it there, Cathy, but it's Voices for Creation.
Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
Cathy Kelly, good luck to you at your trial.
Here's hoping for your acquittal, and we'll talk to you soon.
Thanks again.
Thank you, Scott.
Take care now.
Anti-War Radio.