The War and International Law - F.Boyle

From: Per I. Mathisen (Per.Inge.Mathisen@idi.ntnu.no)
Date: 30-10-01


---------- Forwarded message ----------
The War and International Law - F.Boyle

source - Nizkor Int. Human Rights Team 24Oct01

TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH DELIVERED BY PROF. FRANCIS A. BOYLE AT ILLINOIS
DISCIPLES FOUNDATION, OCTOBER 18, 2001

[unedited transcript, copy-edited by NY Transfer News]

No War Against Afghanistan!

Thank you and I'm very happy to be here this evening once again at
the Illinois Disciples Foundation which has always been a center
for organizing for peace, justice and human rights in this area
ever since I first came to this community from Boston in July of
1978, and especially under its former minister, my friend Jim
Holliman. And I also want to thank Joe Miller of the Vietnam Veterans
Against the War and Jeff Machoda for inviting me to speak here this
evening.

People of my generation still remember how important it was for
the Vietnam Veterans Against the War to be organized and to speak
out against the Vietnam War, and they continue to serve as a voice
for peace in the world for the past generation and likewise for
Jeff Machoda.

Whenever anyone calls me and -- say I want to organize something
on peace, justice, human rights, social welfare I always say talk
to Jeff. He's the best in this entire area for something of that
nature.

I want to start out with my basic thesis that the Bush
administration's
war against Iraq cannot be justified on the facts or the law. It
is clearly illegal. It constitutes armed aggression. It is creating
a humanitarian catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan.

It is creating terrible regional instability.

Right now today we are having artillery barrages across the border
between India and Pakistan which have fought two wars before over
Kashmir and yet today are nuclear armed.

The longer this war goes on the worse it is going to be not only
for the millions of people in Afghanistan but also in the estimation
of the 1.2 billion Muslims of the world and the 57 Muslim states
in the world. None of which believe the Bush administration's
propaganda that this is not a war against Islam. Now let me start
first with the facts.

As you recall, Secretary of State Colin Powell said publicly they
were going to produce a white paper documenting their case against
Osama bin Laden and their organization Al Qaeda. Well, of course,
those of us in the peace movement are familiar with white papers
before. They're always laden with propaganda, half-truths,
dissimulation, etc. that are usually very easily refuted after a
little bit of analysis. What happened here? We never got a white
paper produced by the United States government. Zip, zero, nothing.

What did we get instead? The only statement of facts that we got
from an official of the United States government was Secretary of
State Colin Powell himself. And let me quote from Secretary Powell.

This is the October 3 edition of the New Speak Times. "The case
will never be able to be described as circumstantial. It's not
circumstantial now."

Well as a lawyer, if a case isn't circumstantial, it's nothing.

The lowest level of proof you could possibly imagine is a
circumstantial
case.

Yes, the World Court has ruled that a state can be found guilty on
the basis of circumstantial evidence, provided there is proof beyond
a reasonable doubt. But here we have Secretary of State Colin Powell
admitting on behalf of the United States that the case against Bin
Laden and Al Qaeda is not even circumstantial.

If it's not even circumstantial, then what is it? Rumor, allegation,
innuendo, insinuation, disinformation, propaganda. Certainly not
enough to start a war. In the same issue of the New Speak Times
the U.S. Ambassador who went over to brief our NATO allies about
the Bush administration's case against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was
quoted as follows: "One Western official at NATO said the U.S.

briefings. which were oral without slides or documentation, did
not report any direct order from Mr. Bin Laden nor did they indicate
that the Taliban knew about the attacks before they happened."

That's someone who was at the briefings! What we did get was a
white paper from Tony Blair. Did anyone in this room vote for Tony
Blair?

No. And the white paper is, in that hallowed tradition of a white
paper, based on insinuation, allegation, rumors, etc.

Even the British government admitted the case against Bin Laden
and Al Qaeda would not stand up in court and as a matter of fact
it was routinely derided in the British press. There was nothing
there. Now I don't know myself who was behind the terrorist attacks
on September 11. And it appears we are never going to find out.

Why? Because Congress in its wisdom has decided not to empanel a
joint committee of both Houses of Congress with subpoena power,
giving them access to whatever documents they want throughout any
agency of the United States government including FBI, CIA, NSA,
DSA.

And to put these people under oath and testify as to what happened
under penalty of perjury.

We are not going to get that investigation and yet today we are
waging war against Afghanistan on evidence that Secretary of State
Powell publicly stated is not even circumstantial. Now let's look
at the law.

Immediately after the attacks President Bush's first statement that
he made in Florida was to call these attacks an act of terrorism.

Now under United States domestic law we have a definition of
terrorism and clearly this would qualify as an act or acts of
terrorism.

For reasons I can get into later if you want, under international
law and practice there is no generally accepted definition of
terrorism.

But certainly under United States domestic law this qualified as
an act of terrorism. What happened?

Well, again according to the New Speak Times, President Bush
consulted with Secretary Powell and all of a sudden they changed
the rhetoric and characterization of what happened here. They now
called it an act of war. And clearly this was not an act of war.

There are enormous differences in how you treat an act of terrorism
and how you treat an act of war. We have dealt with acts of terrorism
before. And normally acts of terrorism are dealt with as a matter
of international and domestic law enforcement.

And in my opinion that is how this bombing, these incidents, should
have been dealt with. International and domestic law enforcement
-- indeed there is a treaty directly on point. Although the United
Nations was unable to agree on formal definition of terrorism they
decided -- let's break it down into its constituent units and deal
with it piece-wise. Let's criminalize specific aspects of criminal
behavior that we want to stop.

The Montreal Sabotage Convention is directly on point. It criminalizes
the destruction of civilian aircraft while in service.

The United States is a party. Afghanistan is a party. It has an
entire legal regime to deal with this dispute. The Bush administration
just ignored the Montreal Sabotage Convention. There was also the
Terrorist Bombing Convention. That is also directly on point and
eventually the Bush administration just did say, well, yes, our
Senate should ratify this convention. It's been sitting in the
Senate for quite some time lingering because of the Senate's
opposition to international cooperation by means of treaties on a
whole series of issues.

Indeed, there are a good 12-13 treaties out there that deal with
various components and aspects of what people generally call
international terrorism. That could have been used and relied upon
by the Bush administration to deal with this issue. But they rejected
the entire approach and called it an act of war. They invoked the
rhetoric deliberately of Pearl Harbor -- December 7, 1941.

It was a conscious decision to escalate the stakes, to escalate
the perception of the American people as to what is going on here.

And of course the implication here is that if this is an act of
war then you don't deal with it by means of international treaties
and agreements.

You deal with by means of military force. You go to war. So a
decision was made very early in the process. We were going to
abandon, junk, ignore the entire framework of international treaties
and agreements that had been established for 25 years to deal with
these types of problems and basically go to war. An act of war has
a formal meaning. It means an attack by one state against another
state. Which of course is what happened on December 7, 1941. But
not on September 11, 2001.

And again, I repeat here Secretary Powell saying there isn't even
a substantial case.

The next day, September 12, the Bush administration went into the
United Nations Security Counsel to get a resolution authorizing
the use of military force and they failed. It's very clear if you
read the resolution, they tried to get the authority to use force
and they failed.

Indeed, the September 12 resolution, instead of calling this an
armed attack by one state against another state, calls it a terrorist
attack. And again there is a magnitude of difference between an
armed attack by one state against another state an act of war and
a terrorist attack. Again, terrorists are dealt with as criminals.

They are not treated like nation states. Now what the Bush
administration tried to do on September 12 was to get a resolution
along the lines of what Bush Sr. got in the run up to the Gulf War
in later November of 1990.

I think it is a fair comparison, Bush Jr. to Bush Sr. Bush Sr. got
a resolution from the Security Counsel authorizing member states
to use "all necessary means" to expel Iraq from Kuwait. They
originally wanted language in there expressly authorizing the use
of military force. The Chinese objected - so they used the euphemism
"All necessary means." But everyone knew what that meant. If you
take a look at the resolution of September 12 that language is not
in there.

There was no authority to use military force at all. They never
got any. Having failed to do that the Bush administration then went
to the United States Congress and using the emotions of the moment
tried to ram through some authorization to go to war under the
circumstances. We do not know exactly what their original proposal
[was] at that time.

According to a statement made by Senator Byrd in the New Speak
Times, however, if you read between the lines it appears that they
wanted a formal declaration of war along the lines of what President
Roosevelt got on December 8, 1941 after Pearl Harbor. And Congress
refused to give them that. And [for] a very good reason. If a formal
declaration of war had been given it would have made the president
a constitutional dictator. We would now all be living basically
under marshal law. Congress might have just picked up and gone home
as the House did today. Which, by the way, was encouraged by
President Bush.

It was his recommendation. And you'll recall, as a result of that
declaration of war on December 8, 1941, we had the infamous Koromatsu
case where Japanese- American citizens were rounded up and put in
concentration camps on the basis of nothing more than a military
order that later on was turned out to be a gross misrepresentation
of the factual allegation that Japanese-Americans constituted some
type of security threat. If Bush had gotten a declaration of war,
we would have been on the same footing. And the Koromatsu case has
never been overturned by the United States Supreme Court.

Instead, Congress gave President Bush Jr. what is called a War
Powers Resolution Authorization -- under the War Powers Resolution
of 1973 that was passed over President Nixon's veto, namely a 2/3rds
majority in both houses of Congress and designed to prevent another
Tonkin Gulf Resolution and another Vietnam war.

Now if you read the resolution, which he did get, and only one
courageous member of Congress, Barbara Lee, an African-American
representative from Oakland, voted against it as a matter of
principle. This resolution, although it is not as bad as a formal
declaration of war, is even worse than the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

It basically gives President Bush a blank check to use military
force against any individual organization or state that he alleges
-- notice his ipso dictum -- was somehow involved in the attacks
on September 11 or else sheltered, harbored, or assisted individuals
involved in the attacks on September 11.

In other words, Bush now has a blank check pretty much to wage war
against any state he wants to from the United States Congress. And
it was then followed up by Congress with a $40 billion appropriation
as a down payment for waging this de facto war. Very dangerous,
this War Powers Resolution Authorization. No real way it can be
attacked in court at this point in time. In the heat of the moment,
Congress gave him this authority. It is still there on the books.

Again, let's compare and contrast this resolution with the one
gotten by Bush Sr.

in the Gulf Crisis. Bush Sr. got his security counsel resolution.

He then took it to Congress for authorization under the War Powers
Resolution and they gave him a very precise authorization to use
military force for the purpose of carrying out the security counsel
resolution that is only for the purpose of expelling Iraq from
Kuwait. And indeed that is what Bush Sr. did. He expelled Iraq from
Kuwait. He did move north. He stopped short south of Basra saying
that's all the authority I have. I'm not here to approve what Bush
Sr. did in that war but simply to compare it to Bush Jr. Now Bush
Sr.

has been criticized, [people] saying well you should have marched
all the way to Bagdad but he had no authority by the security
counsel to do that and he had no authority from the Congress to do
that either.

Again, compare that to Bush Jr.'s resolution of September 14 that
basically gives him a blank check to wage war against anyone he
wants to with no more than his ipsa dictum. It's astounding to
believe.

Even worse than Tonkin Gulf. In addition Bush Jr. then went over
to NATO to get a resolution over from NATO and he convinced NATO
to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Pact. Article 5 of the NATO Pact
is only intended to deal with the armed attack by one state against
another state. It is not, and has never been, intended to deal with
a terrorist attack. The NATO Pact was supposed to deal in theory
with an attack on a NATO member state by a member of the Warsaw
Pact and the Soviet Union. With the collapse of both the Warsaw
Pact and the Soviet Union, there was no real justification or
pretext anymore for the continued existence of NATO.

Bush Sr. then in an effort to keep NATO around, tried to transform
its very nature to serve two additional purposes. 1) policing
Eastern Europe and we saw that with the illegal war against Serbia
and 2) intervention in the Middle East to secure the oil fields.

And the NATO counsel approved this. The problem the NATO Pact, the
treaty setting up NATO, provides no authorization to do this at
all and indeed would have to be amended by the parliaments of the
NATO member states to justify either policing Eastern Europe or as
an interventionary force in the Middle East. The invocation of NATO
Article 5, then, was completely bogus.

The Bush administration was attempting to get some type of
multilateral
justification for what it was doing when it had failed at the United
Nations Security Counsel to get authorization. The Bush (Jr.)
administration tried again to get more authority from the Security
Counsel and all they got was a presidential statement that legally
means nothing. They tried yet a third time, September 29, before
they started the war to get that authorization to use military
force and they got stronger language. But still they failed to get
any authorization from the Security Counsel to use military force
for any reason. Then what happened? The new U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations, John Negroponte, sent a letter to the Security
Counsel asserting Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Now some of us are familiar with Negroponte. He was U.S. Ambassador
in Honduras during the Contra War. He has the blood of 35,000
Nicaraguan civilians on his hands and the only way Bush could get
him confirmed was that he rammed him through the Senate the day
after the bombings. So whenever you see Negroponte on the television
talking to you, remember this man has the blood of 35,000 people,
most of whom are civilians, on his hands. That's seven times anything
that happened in New York. Seven times. The letter by Negroponte
was astounding. It said that the United States reserves its right
to use force in self-defense against any state that we feel is
necessary in order to fight our war against international terrorism.

So in other words, they failed on three separate occasions to use
to get formal authority from the Security Counsel and now the best
they could do is fall back on another alleged right of self-defense
as determined by themselves.

Very consistent with the War Powers Resolution authorization that
Bush did indeed get from Congress on September 14. I was giving an
interview the other day to the San Francisco Chronicle and the
reporter said is there any precedent for the position here being
asserted by Negroponte that we are reserving the right to go to
war in self-defense against a large number of other states as
determined by ourselves. I said yes, there is one very unfortunate
precedent.

That's the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1946 where there the lawyers for
the Nazi defendants took the position that they had reserved the
right of self-defense under the Kellogg Breand Pact of 1928 the
predecessor to the U.N. Charter. And self-defense as determined by
themselves.

In other words, no one could tell them to the contrary. So at
Nuremberg, they had the chutzpah to argue the entire second world
war was a war of self-defense as determined by themselves, and no
one had standing to disagree with that self-judging provision. Well
of course the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected that argument and said
no, what is self-defense can only be determined by reference to
international law. That has to be determined by an international
tribunal. No state has a right to decide this for themselves.

Clearly what is going on now in Afghanistan is not self-defense.

Let's be honest. We all know it. At best this is reprisal,
retaliation,
vengeance, catharsis -- call it what you want, it is not self-defense.

And retaliation is never self-defense.

Indeed that was the official position of the United States government.

Even during the darkest days of the Vietnam War when former Under
Secretary of State Eugene V. Rosca tried to get the state department
to switch their position, they refused and continued to maintain,
"No, retaliation is not self-defense." And this is not self-defense
what we are doing in Afghanistan. Since none of these justifications
and pretexts hold up, as a matter of law, then, what the United
States government today is doing against Afghanistan constitutes
armed aggression. It is illegal. There is no authority for this.

Indeed if you read on the internet certainly not in the mainstream
U.S. news media, you will see that is the position being taken in
almost every Islamic country in the world. Where are the facts?

Where is the law? They aren't there. This is apparent to the entire
world.

It's apparent in Europe. It's apparent in the Middle East. It is
obvious to the 1.2 billion Muslims of the world. Are any Muslim
leaders involved in military action against Afghanistan? Unlike
what happened with Iraq, no. Have any of them volunteered military
forces to get involved here. A deafening silence. They all know it
is wrong.

Now the government of Afghanistan made repeated offers even as of
yesterday to negotiate a solution to this dispute. Even before the
events of September 11, negotiations were going on between the
United States and the government of Afghanistan over the disposition
of Bin Laden. They had offered to have him tried in a neutral
Islamic court by Muslim judges applying the law of Sharia. This
was before the latest incident. We rejected that proposal. After
September 11 they renewed the offer. What did President Bush say?

"no negotiations.

There's nothing to negotiate. Here is my ultimatum." Well the
problem is again the United Nations Charter requires peaceful
resolution of disputes. It requires expressly by name negotiations.

Likewise that Kellogg Breand Pact I mentioned, under which Nazis
were prosecuted at Nuremberg to which Afghanistan and the United
States are both parties, requires peaceful resolution of all disputes
and prohibits war as an instrument of national policy. And yet
that's exactly what we are doing today. Waging war as an instrument
of national policy. And then again on Sunday as he came back from
Camp David with the latest offer again by the government of
Afghanistan we are willing to negotiate over the disposition of
Mr. Bin Laden. I don't know how many of you saw the President get
off the helicopter.

It was surreal. He went ballistic. "There'll be no negotiations.

I told them what to do. They better do it."

Again, those are not the requirements of the United Nations Charter
and the Kellogg Breand Pact. Indeed, if you read the ultimatum that
President Bush gave to the government of Afghanistan in his speech
before Congress you will see it was clearly designed so that it
could not be complied with by the government of Afghanistan. No
government in the world could have complied with that ultimatum.

And indeed, striking similarities with the ultimatum given by Bush
Sr. to Tarik-Aziz in Geneva on the eve of the Gulf War. That was
deliberately designed so as not to be accepted, which it was not.

Why?

The decision had already been made to go to war. Now, that being
said, what then really is going on here? If there is no basis in
fact and there is no basis in law for this war against Afghanistan,
why are we doing this? Why are we creating this humanitarian
catastrophe for the Afghan people? And recall it was Bush's threat
to bomb Afghanistan that put millions of people on the move without
food, clothing, housing, water or medical facilities and that has
created this humanitarian catastrophe now for anywhere from 5 to
7 millions Afghans. And all the humanitarian relief organizations
have said quite clearly the so-called humanitarian food drop as
doctors without borders Nobel peace prize organization put it, this
is a military propaganda operation which it clearly is.

Bush calling for the children of America to send $1 to the White
House. This is propaganda. This is not serious. And the winter is
coming in Afghanistan. Latest estimate that I've seen is that maybe
100,000 or more are going to die if we don't stop this war. So
what's really going on here? Why are we bombing Afghanistan? Why
are we doing this? Is it retaliation? Is it vengeance? Is it so
bloodless?

No, it isn't.

The people who run this country are cold calculating people. They
know exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it. And during
the course, now, since the bombing started in the last twelve days,
it's become very clear what the agenda is. Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld flew to Uzbekistan and concluded an agreement with the
dictator who runs that country, accused of massive violations of
human rights, that the United States government will protect
Uzbekistan. Now first, the Secretary of Defense has no constitutional
authority to conclude such an agreement in the first place. Putting
that issue aside, however, it's very clear what's going on here.

The Pentagon is now in the process of establishing a military base
in Uzbekistan. It's been in the works for quite some time.

They admit, yes, special forces have been over there for several
years training their people. Partnership for peace with NATO and
now it's becoming apparent what is happening. We are making a
long-term military arrangement with Uzbekistan. Indeed it has been
reported, and you can get press from that region on the internet
-- India, Pakistan -- tha area that Uzbekistan now wants a status
of forces agreement with the United States. What's a status of
forces agreement? It's an agreement that permits the long-term
deployment of significant numbers of armed forces in another state.

We have status of forces agreements with Germany, Japan and South
Korea. We have had troops in all three of those countries since
1945.

And when we get our military presence, our base, that is right now
being set up in Uzbekistan, it's clear we're not going to leave.

It's clear that this agreement, unconstitutional agreement, between
Rumsfeld and Karimov is to set the basis and say we have to stay
in Uzbekistan for the next 10-15-20 years to defend it against
Afghanistan where we've created total chaos. This is exactly the
same argument that has been made to keep the United States military
forces deployed in the Persian Gulf now for ten years after the
Gulf War. We are still there. We still have 20,000 troops sitting
on top of the oil in all these countries. We even established a
fleet to police this region in Bahrain. More currently, six to
date. We never had any intention of leaving the Persian Gulf. We
are there to stay.

Indeed planning for that goes back to the Carter administration --
the so-called rapid deployment force renamed the U.S. central
command that carried out the war against Iraq and occupied and
still occupies these Persian Gulf countries and their oil fields
and is today now executing the war against Afghanistan and deploying
U.S. military forces to build this base in Uzbekistan. Why do we
want to get in Uzbekistan? Very simple. The oil and natural gas
resources of Central Asia. Reported to be the second largest in
the world after the Persian Gulf. There has been an enormous amount
of coverage of this in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, not
the New Speak Times.

The movers and shakers, they paid enormous attention to Central
Asia and the oil resources there. Indeed shortly after the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the assent independence of the states in
1991. You saw all sorts of articles in the Wall Street Journal
about how Central Asia and our presence in Central Asia has become
a vital national security interest of the United States. We've
proceeded to establish relations of these states of Central Asia.

We sent over special forces. We're even parachuting the 82nd Airborne
in Kazakstan. All reported in the Wall Street Journal. And in
addition then since Central Asia is landlocked you have to get the
oil and natural gas out. How do you do that? Well one way is to
send it west but we wish to avoid Iran and Russia -- a highly
circuitous route, costs a lot of money, very insecure.

The easiest way to do it construct pipelines south through
Afghanistan,
into Pakistan and right out to the Arabian Sea. Unocal was negotiating
to do this with the government of Afghanistan. That's all in the
public record. Just as the Persian Gulf War against Iraq was about
oil and natural gas, I'm submitting this war is about oil and
natural gas and also outflanking China and getting a military base
south of Russia. We are going to be there for a long time. At least
until all that oil and gas has been sucked out and it's of no more
use to us.

In my opinion that's really what is going on here. We should not
be spending a lot of time about who did what to whom on September
11. We need to be focusing on this war, on stopping this war. We
need to be focusing on stopping the humanitarian tragedy against
the millions of people of Afghanistan right now, today. And third,
we need to be focusing on what could very easily become a regional
war.

The Pentagon launched this thing. Obviously they felt they could
keep it under control. That's what the people in August of 1914
thought, too, when you read Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August."

Everyone figured the situation could be kept under control and it
wasn't, and there was a world war. Ten million people died. We're
already seeing after President Bush started this war artillery
duels between India and Pakistan.

Massive unrest in all of these Muslim countries and the longer the
war goes on I submit the worse it is going to become, the more
dangerous it is going to become, the more unstable it is going to
become. In addition, finally, comes the Ashcroft Police State Bill.

No other word to describe it. Bush failed to get that declaration
of war which would have rendered him a constitutional dictator.

But it's clear that Ashcroft and his Federalist Society lawyers
took every piece of regressive legislation off the shelf, tied it
all into this antiterrorism bill, and rammed it through Congress.

Indeed if you're reading any of the papers yesterday and the day
before, members of Congress admit, yes, we didn't even read this
thing. Another Congressman said, right, but there's nothing new
with that. Except on this one they're infringing the civil rights
and civil liberties of all of us moving us that much closer to a
police state in the name of fighting a war on terrorism, security,
this, that, and the other thing. Notice the overwhelming message
from the mainstream news media: "well we all have to be prepared
to give up our civil rights and civil liberties."

Even so-called liberals. Alan Dershowitz: "Oh, let's now go along
with the national identity card." Outrageous. Larry Tribe, writing
in the Wall Street Journal: "well we're all going to have to start
making compromises on our civil rights and civil liberties." That's
what's in store in the future for us here at home; the longer this
war against Afghanistan goes on and as Bush has threatened will
expand to other countries. We don't know how many countries they
have in mind. At one point they're saying Malaysia, Indonesia,
Somalia, Iraq, Libya. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz talking about
"ending states"

which is clearly genocidal. I could take that statement to the
World Court and file it and prove it as genocidal intent by the
United States government. So the longer we let this go on the more
we are going to see our own civil rights and civil liberties taken
away from us.

As you know aliens - what we call aliens, foreigners - their rights
are already gone. We now have 700 aliens who've just been picked
up and disappeared by Ashcroft and the Department of Justice. We
have no idea where these people are. They're being held on the
basis of immigration law, not criminal law.

Indefinite detention. What's the one characteristic they all had
in common - these foreigners? They're Muslims and Arabs, the
scapegoats for this. Everyone needs a scapegoat and it looks like
we have one.

Let me conclude by saying that we still have our first amendment
rights, despite Ashcroft's best efforts. Despite the cowardice of
both houses of Congress where, interestingly enough, the so-called
liberal democrats were willing to give Bush and Ashcroft more than
the conservative republicans in the House. We still have our first
amendment rights, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom
of assembly, freedom to petition our government for redress of
grievances. We are going to need to start to exercise those first
amendment rights now. For the good of the people of Afghanistan,
for the good of the people of that region of the world and for the
future of ourselves and our nature as a democratic society with a
commitment to the rule of law and the constitution.



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