 Aloha. Welcome. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. And today we are going across the sea to Washington, D.C., to speak with Anne Wright. Anne Wright is a retired United States Army colonel and State Department official. She is also a lawyer and also earned a master's degree in national security affairs. She was in the U.S. Army and the Reserves for about 29 years. She was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. embassies around the world. She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the Civil War in Sierra Leone. However, in March of 2003, Anne resigned from the U.S. State Department in protest of the invasion of Iraq. And she is now a very vocal piece, an anti-war activist. She has been involved in many matters, recently involving Korea and Iran as part of citizen peace movements and trying to make legislators aware of what's going on. Anne, welcome. It's good to see you. You're in Washington, D.C. in between travels, as I understand. That's correct. I've been in Washington to work on this Korea Peace Now campaign that we have, trying to get our government to sign a peace agreement with the North Koreans. And so we've had women parliamentarians from South Korea who have been here with us talking to U.S. legislators and trying to make sure that our government knows that the people of South Korea want an agreement to end the 70-year war that has gone on on the Korean Peninsula. And I want to ask you, in a few minutes, what the results of that have been. But first, I want to ask you a little bit about your background. You have been a soldier. You've been someone in the State Department and obviously involved in matters that involve national security. But at some point in time you decided to go a different road, to become a peace activist, anti-war activist. How did that come about? What transition happened in your life or not? What made you move, and as I understand, become very vocal in the anti-war movement? Well, as you mentioned, I had been in the U.S. military for 29 years, 13 on active duty and 16 in the reserves. I retired as a colonel. I then was in the U.S. Diplomatic Corps for 16 years and served in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Markronesia. I helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December of 2001 and then went on to what turned out to be my last assignment, which was the deputy ambassador for the U.S. embassy in Mongolia. It was 16 years ago today that I resigned from the government. I resigned in opposition to the war that was going to start within hours on Iraq. I had served under eight different presidential administrations, starting with the Lyndon Johnson administration back in the 1960s. That was during the Vietnam War. That's when I joined the military. If you go with the eight presidents that I served under, there were plenty of policies that were our government's policies that I did not necessarily agree with. But as a government employee, you learn to hold your nose to a lot of things that you may not personally agree with. Resignation is a pretty big step. Most people will just find ways that they can find some program in the government that they can work on and feel like they're doing what they need to do, that they are working for the good of the country, even though there may be other policies that are going on that they may personally disagree with. That's how I ended up staying in the government for so long. But finally, 16 years ago in March of 2003, I just could not, I couldn't come to grips with the decision of the Bush administration to invade and occupy the oil-rich Arab Muslim country of Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9-11. It just mystified me why my boss, Colin Powell, was making such statements at the UN, and you probably remember the briefing, the big briefing he gave. That was sort of meant to justify the invasion. I didn't believe it. The country of Iraq had been under sanctions for 10 years at that time since the Gulf War I. We, the United States, had had hundreds of weapons inspectors in there over the years, under the guise of the UN nuclear inspectors and weapons of mass destruction inspectors, and they had all come out saying there are none. It mystified me if there was a quarantine around the country for 10 years, and the US had bombed virtually every installation in Iraq. Over 400,000 air sorties had been done on Iraq in that 10-year period. So I just, I didn't believe my own boss. And knowing that there were going to be lots of people that are going to die on this. There were going to be a lot of Iraqis that were going to get killed, and there were probably going to get, there were going to be some Americans killed, and I just did not think it was right. So I became one of three federal employees who resigned over the Iraq war right then. But that made you snap. I mean, there was some, it was, it was just, you must have been thinking about this for some time, and then boom. Well, that's right. I was, I had been waking up in the middle of the night in Mongolia. I think about this and writing notes to myself about, you know, what my concerns were. And finally, that culminated in my sending what's called a descent cable to the State Department. It's a channel that diplomats have, whether you can go all the way from your desk in Ulimbatura, Mongolia, around your ambassador, around all of the bureaucracy in the State Department, and your cable lands on the Secretary of State's desk with your concerns about policies. You use it at your peril. They say no retribution, no retaliation, but everybody knows that's not true. So if you decide to use it, you better be ready for the consequences. And I was thinking, well, I'm ready for them. I want to, I want it on record that I am very concerned about these. And I want to see what the response is back from Washington. And the response was nothing that gave me any sort of confidence that there was a real national security interest reason for us attacking another country. And so I resigned. And then there's a big step then from resigning, now becoming active in anti-war and moving people towards peace. What step, how did you get to that step? Well, it took a while. As a nearly a 40-year U.S. government employee, speaking out in public about challenging U.S. government policies was not one of the things that we did. I knew more dissonance in the various countries that I lived in because part of the job of a diplomat was meeting people from all walks of life and some that agreed with government, some that disagreed. So I knew more people outside our country who disagreed with their government than I knew in my own country of people that were disagreed. And yet there were millions of people disagreeing with the decision to invade and occupy Iraq. The largest anti-war marches in the history of the world were held in February of 2003 before the actual invasion and occupation. But it really didn't matter to the Bush administration and to the coalition of the willing partners what their populace was saying. They were just going to do it anyway. Why do you think they were so dedicated to doing it? Well, you know, the United States has this little streak in it called war mongering. And they were, if you look at the people that were in office, it was George Bush's president, but you had Vice President Cheney, you had John Bolton, you had Elliott Adams or Elliott Abrams who all are, the last two of them are coming back into power now on the Trump administration. And the Compact for the New American Century, which was a neoconservative roadmap to U.S. dominance, not only the Middle East but of the world, was already laid out there that they needed to take down the regimes in Iraq and Iran, North Korea. And you remember, George Bush had said in January of 2002, a year before that, I was in Afghanistan when Bush at the State of the Union message, I was sitting in front of a tiny little TV in Kabul, Afghanistan. And here, Hamid Karzai, the interim president, had been flown all the way to Washington to sit in the halls of Congress to listen to the State of the Union. And President Bush barely recognized Hamid Karzai, but before he then said, and there are things other places in the world that we're very concerned about, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, the axis of evil. And so they were already planning this decision, they were making the decision to go ahead and invade and occupy Iraq. While we were in Afghanistan, we couldn't figure out why we weren't getting the resources we needed while we were in Afghanistan, and they were already being diverted to what became the invasion of Iraq. So this is a, as you see it, a national policy towards aggression in order to achieve prominence in the world? I'm afraid that's true. If you look at our history, I think the people of the world know our history much better than we U.S. citizens do. We have this feeling that we are, you know, that we're peace-loving, we're, you know, we don't want hurt anybody else. But if you look at the history of it, we have caused more wars than any other country. So I think we do have to look at our history. And that's after having been in the military 29 years and as a diplomat 16 years, I say that we need to look at our history. And I think also the fact that you met with a lot of people in different countries and talked to them, I can see that had an influence on you, making you see things that perhaps people that don't get out to other countries don't see. People who don't meet with foreigners have no idea of perceptions perhaps. Well, it's true. I mean, as a U.S. diplomat, you listen to people and you listen to their concerns about their own government as well as the impact of U.S. government policies on them. And it's really telling when some of the very first things that new people that you're talking with start talking about the history of the United States and when the U.S. invaded this country or that country, you know, the Latin American policies, the Monroe Doctrine that said that we, you know, that the hemisphere was ours. And when you look at what the U.S. did, it was ours. We invaded all sorts of countries multiple times. So that's obviously made you into a person that advocates for peace. And what was the first type of advocacy you did in that respect? Well, it took a while for me to gain my confidence to speak out in public. You know, as a, if you remember right after the invasion of Iraq, all the media was gung-ho, you know, go get them. And if you see the statistics on how much pro-war media coverage was, it was like 98%. And the natural media was giving about 2% to those who were disagreeing with this war. So it was not a popular thing at all. And I actually, I didn't know anybody in the peace community in the United States. As I mentioned before, I knew more people outside who were challenging their own government. So it took a while for me to find my footing with some of the organizations, like Veterans for Peace that I've belonged to and other organizations, to feel comfortable speaking out and telling my story of having been in the government for so long, and why now I am advocating for peaceful resolution of problems. And that's what I, supposedly for 16 years as a diplomat, that's what you're supposed to be doing. But there would seem like diplomats are succeeding at that. Well, look, we're going to take a one minute break and then we're going to come back and I want to find out what you're doing now, what activities are going on that involve peace advocacy, anti-war advocacy. So they could break and we'll be right back with Anne Wright. Thank you. Hey, loha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because security matters. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of Konnichiwa Hawaii, Japanese talk show on Think Tech Hawaii. Konnichiwa Hawaii is all Japanese broadcast show and is streamed live on Think Tech at 2 p.m. every other Monday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. I'm Yukari Kunisue. Mahalo. Aloha. We are back and I am talking with Ann Wright. Ann is a former U.S. Army colonel and work for the State Department and now is a peace advocate and anti-war activist. Ann, you're in Washington D.C. right now and you were telling us a little bit about what you're doing. What about Korea? What is going on with that particular matter? And I want to also ask you about Iran and eventually about the Golden Rule. Indeed. Thank you. Well I'm here in Washington for a new campaign we have which is peace now on the Korean Peninsula. We're trying to get our members of Congress to support President Trump on his initiatives for peace on the Korean Peninsula. I don't agree with the President on a lot of things but on this one I certainly do that we do need to finally bring it into this war that has been well a war declaration that's been going on for 70 years. Thank God there's not been huge military actions since 1953 but the threat of military action has been there and we hope that President Trump will be able to secure an agreement that satisfies the security needs of us and of the North Koreans. Who is your group and who's involved in it? Well one of the groups that's involved in this is called Women Cross the DMZ. A group of 30 women international women from 15 countries in 2015 went to North Korea. I was one of them. Christine Ahn who lives right here in Honolulu was the spearhead of this group. We had a peace conference with 250 North Korean women. We marched for peace in Pyongyang with 5,000 North Korean women and then had a symposium in Kaesong and another part of North Korea and then were the only the third civilian group to be allowed to actually cross the DMZ to go down into South Korea where we then had a symposium for peace with South Korean women and then a march along the DMZ and since then in 2016, 17 and 18 we've had marches along the DMZ for peace and we've met with North Korean women in various places in Asia. So we have been as citizen diplomats trying to bring stories of people in North Korea who want peace. People in South Korea we do a lot of public speaking and do a lot of writing of articles. Is there any hope for peace in this? I mean it seems to me you know if you watch the evening news you never know what's going to happen there. Well that's true and sometimes the evening news has its own agenda and sometimes it's you know it may be supporting one one part of the government policy or a different part of it. There is a huge huge movement in the Korean Peninsula both in North Korea and South Korea to finally have peace. While Kim Jong-un has met only twice with President Trump he's met officially three times with President Moon of South Korea and there have been 38 meetings below the presidential level between the North and South Koreans since April when the very first meeting took place between President Moon and Chairman Kim. There are all sorts of things that are happening in on the Korean Peninsula. The DMZ is being demined. The mines are being taken out of that. The sentry posts are being taken down. The railroad that connects North and South Korea has already been inspected and once the sanctions are lifted there will be for the very first time in 70 years it'll be possible for a train to go all the way from South Korea all the way to Europe because it would have gone through North Korea. So there are lots of things that are happening and of course we're concerned about the the nuclear weapons that the North Koreans have but as if if the United States will give honest security guarantees to North Korea the Chairman Kim has already said you know they they are willing to denuclearize his whole program ever since he's been in power has been on security and economic security and when you look at the the press only covers his state of the the nation which he gives on January 1st they only cover the the military aspect of it which is about 20 percent of his speech 80 percent is talking about economic development for his country. So he wants to give peace a chance and he's willing to get rid of nuclear weapons it sounds like what you're saying if if he can get some economic benefit from that. Indeed and if he can get the security guarantees that the United States is not going to attack North Korea that's the main thing and certainly the decision of the Trump administration you were talking about it the trip to Iran that I just got. Yeah I want to hear about that and also I want to hear about the golden rule that's coming to Hawaii so tell us about both of those. Okay well just to tie in North Korean Iran one of the reasons that that it's it's difficult right now with the North Koreans because I don't think they trust the United States very much because of what President Trump did with this the the negotiated agreement framework with the with the Iranians I mean it took four years to finally get this probably the best deal that is around and then the Trump administration backs out of it so it doesn't give the North Koreans any sense of security that even if they sign something with the United States will it hold well we certainly hope it will and we hope that President Trump relooks the agreement with with Iran. The other five partners in that agreement are still holding tight to it the International Atomic Energy Association, AEI as each quarter has confirmed that the Iranians are complying with the with the agreement we were in Iran we took 28 people to Iran just two weeks ago we wanted to talk to government officials we wanted to talk to think tanks we wanted to talk to the ordinary people of Iran to get a sense of what's happening and and the effect of the very brutal strong sanctions that the international community has put on Iran we were able to meet with the foreign minister of Iran for about an hour and a half which was incredible it turned out he resigned the afternoon after we talked with him hopefully it wasn't because of us but his his resignation was not accepted by the president of Iran and 36 hours later he was back in the same position but his his comments to us were that the Iranian people were very upset with him because he had negotiated this this very comprehensive agreement of inspections of their nuclear not weapons they've never developed a weapon but their nuclear energy production so they were very dejected and then the continuation of all of these sanctions which the Iranian people were thinking that's going to be the benefit of giving up the inspection rights into the nuclear facilities but instead more sanctions are being put on and that is not helping in the few minutes we have left tell us about the golden rule what what that is and when it's coming to Honolulu and how people can get involved wonderful the golden rule is a great project of veterans for peace it is a historic anti-nuke boat that was in Hawaii in 1958 four Quakers were going to sail it all the way to the Marshall Islands to try to stop atmospheric nuclear testing the Coast Guard stopped them three different times threw them in jail they finally gave up the boat disappeared for 50 years and we found it about five years ago it's been renovated and been sailing up and down the coast of california and the west coast talking about the dangers of nuclear weapons and we are going to sail it it's a 32 foot boat it'll take 28 days to sail across from San Diego to arrive in Hilo about the first part of June and then it'll be in the Hawaiian Islands for three months and we'll be giving educational tours and discussions about nuclear weapons then it will sail to the Marshall Islands to Guam and then on to Okinawa and then on up to Hiroshima to be there hopefully by August of 2020 the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and the goal is to bring attention to nuclear weapons and to hopefully convince people that that's not the way to proceed indeed that oh correct and we'll we'll be asking schools to send students down so that we can talk to students about this it's their future that we're talking about so we hope that we'll get a good welcome for the golden rule once she arrives here if schools or anyone else would like to get a hold of you what what should they do or find out about the golden rule how who should they contact yes you can contact me through veterans for peace we have a facebook that's up we also have a golden rule website and you can talk directly to the operations officer for that it's the golden rule dot org okay now we have a minute left and i kind of want to ask you a serious question we have a lot of animosity in the world and a lot of violence is there are you hopeful i mean is there still a chance for peace in our world well indeed i am hopeful i mean when you look at the majority of people in the world they are peaceful nonviolent people that do not want wars on their soils they don't want mad men shooting up people they they just want to have a calm peaceful life that's the overwhelming majority of the people of the world it's only the outliers that are causing us these these problems and it's up to us the people of peace that want peace to help our neighbors it's up to us to speak out and to uh to work on our government to get its war policies uh under control like stop them uh and the same in our own communities that we support people that uh that that work for the betterment of our communities to help people that may have mental problems and uh you know things like that that we as a society need to to work on so that everyone has a an opportunity for a peaceful productive life and thank you very much i very nice talking with you best wishes to you and i i i guess you'll be over here with the golden rule in a short time oh yes i'm looking forward to coming home again and uh being with everyone aloha aloha thank you everybody we'll be back in another two weeks with another law across the sea program