Warriors For Peace (Kucinich speaks to Veterans For Peace)

The Nation

There have always been veterans for peace. War makes veterans warriors for peace." With those words, David Cline, wounded and decorated in Vietnam, and national president of Veterans For Peace, opened the organization's eighteenth annual convention, on August 8, in San Francisco.

Hundreds of veterans who'd served from World War II through the Persian Gulf War gathered here from every corner of the country for two full days of workshops, plenaries and informal conversations, focused largely on ways to express and amplify opposition to the current war with Iraq and to the new patterns of domestic repression that mark the past two years.

One featured speaker, Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, mapped the vets' progressive agenda onto the mainstream of electoral politics before the packed convention. The audience generally took heart that one candidate for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party would articulate views antagonistic to the broad strokes of the Administration's foreign and domestic policies during the approaching run of primaries. ---