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Protesters Urge Upton To Repudiate Document

Thursday, March 27, 2003

BY DAVE PERSON
KALAMAZOO GAZETTE

Every day this week anti-war protesters have been streaming into U.S. Rep. Fred Upton's Kalamazoo office.

Scheduled in half-hour shifts as individuals or small groups, they want to talk.

Specifically, they want the congressman to repudiate a document produced by a conservative Republican think tank that they say advocates American world supremacy.

"It's designed to be respectful, but true democracy in action," Tobi Hanna-Davies, a local anti-war activist, said of the protest.

An Upton aide has been assigned to meet with the protesters visiting the St. Joseph Republican's office at 157 S. Kalamazoo Mall. The aide is urging the protesters to put their concerns in writing.

"He (Upton) looks forward to reading their specific concerns and then responding to them," said Sean Bonyun, Upton's press secretary.

"The beauty of democracy ... is that citizens have the right to come together and have their voices heard. We welcome them to our office and we welcome their right to protest."

At issue for the protesters is the Project for the New American Century, a think tank established in 1997 that calls for strengthening the U.S. military. Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were among the signatories to establish the project.

Protesters say a 2000 document prepared by the institute is the basis for the present invasion of Iraq, which they say is only the beginning of a U.S. plan of world domination.

"It's really just coming to light; everywhere people are just coming to understand the impact of this Project for the New American Century really means an American empire," Hanna-Davies said.

But Bonyun said the protest "is more about Operation Iraqi Freedom" than the Project for the New American Century.

He said Upton, who is in Washington, is interested in hearing from his constituents but that Upton remains steadfastly behind Bush.

"Fred obviously supports the president and his efforts to support Americans at home and abroad and will continue to do so," Bonyun said. "Obviously during these trying times differences of opinion are unavoidable, but we're all Americans and our thoughts and prayers are with our troops."

Bonyun also said Upton wants his constituents to know routine business is still being conducted at his Kalamazoo office.

"We're still focusing on getting that Social Security check to our senior citizens on time (and) making sure our veterans have access to quality health care," Bonyun said.

Protesters decided to zero in on Upton after he said at a town meeting in Parchment earlier this month that he was unaware of the Project for the New American Century.

"He said he'd never heard of it, but the whole war in Iraq is based on it," Hanna-Davies said.

At a Sunday anti-war vigil sponsored by Kalamazoo Nonviolent Opponents to War, Hanna-Davies said, some 200 people signed up to take turns visiting Upton's Kalamazoo office this week.

The protesters are concerned not only with the number of members of the Bush administration who played a part in the creation of the Project for the New American Century, but that Bush's "National Security Strategy of the United States of America," issued Sept. 20, 2001, appears to be reflective of the project's "Rebuilding American Defenses," which was published a year earlier.

"Rebuilding American Defenses" was produced because the Project for the New American Century was "concerned with the decline in the strength of America's defenses, and in the problems this would create for the exercise of American leadership around the globe and, ultimately, for the preservation of the peace."

According to the document, which came out right before Bush's election to the presidency, "the 1990s have been a 'decade of defense neglect.' This leaves the next president of the United States with an enormous challenge: He must increase military spending to preserve American geopolitical leadership, or he must pull back from the security commitments that are the measure of America's position as the world's sole superpower and the final guarantee of security, democratic freedoms and individual political rights."

Anti-war activist Wade Adams said Bush's "National Security Strategy," which came on the heels of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "is very close to what the September 2000 document from the Project for the New American Century ('Rebuilding America's Defenses') looked like."

A key concern of the anti-war activists in "Rebuilding America's Defenses" is the chapter called "Four Essential Missions."

Those are homeland defense, retention of "sufficient forces able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars," retention of "forces to preserve the current peace" and exploitation of "the so-called 'revolution in military affairs' sparked by the introduction of advanced technologies into military systems."

The document concludes: "Global leadership is not something exercised at our leisure, when the mood strikes us or when our core national security interests are directly threatened; then it is already too late. Rather, it is a choice whether or not to maintain American military pre-eminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership, and to preserve the American peace."

If the war on Iraq follows the Project for the New American Century agenda, Hanna-Davies said, "it's part of a much bigger series of attacks to dominate the globe."

"The main point is, the whole document is inconsistent with American values, it's anti-democratic and it puts us in the aggressor role around the world," Hanna-Davies said. "That's why so many people signed up to call on Rep. Upton to publicly repudiate it. ... It's such wrong-headed thinking."

Dave Person can be reached at 388-8555 or  dperson@kalamazoogazette.com

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