Working for peace

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: June 17, 2008

So passionate was he about peace that the late Sen. Vance Hartke, a Democrat from Indiana, abandoned his friendship with President Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War.

“I have the unshakeable conviction that we have it within our power to end this war and the syndrome of war itself,” Sen. Hartke said in the 1960s, as recently recorded in the Congressional Record at the request of his colleague, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

“For in the end, it is the dreamer who is the greatest realist.”

Some 40 years later, hundreds gathered near the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C. June 5 to honor that dream at a groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Institute of Peace — a nonpartisan institution created by Congress.

The $185 million facility will face the Lincoln Memorial and is slated for completion by the end of 2010.

Seventh District Congressional candidate Anita Hartke, a Culpeper County Democrat and the late senator’s daughter, attended the
groundbreaking in recognition of his work for peace and in anticipation, perhaps, of similar work ahead.

In fact, Sen. Vance Hartke helped forge the path for the U.S. Institute of Peace when he co-sponsored legislation in 1976 leading to its eventual creation.

Ms. Hartke, a real estate broker and chairperson of the Culpeper County Democratic Committee, hopes to build on her father’s work for peace in today’s violent world as she faces incumbent Congressman Eric Cantor, a four-term Richmond Republican many consider unbeatable.

Regarding the war in Iraq, she considers Cantor a Bush clone.

Like in Vietnam, Hartke said, America is now involved in a civil war and an occupation in Iraq.

But she’s looking ahead.

“It doesn’t help much to go back and say, ‘Why did we get into this war, what has Bush done wrong, what has Eric Cantor done wrong?’ Eric Cantor has voted 92 percent of the time with George Bush,” Hartke said.

“This war is a mistake. The Pentagon’s done a report on itself where they’ve said this has been a mistake. They should have sought negotiations first, but we can learn from this mistake. Looking back at history at Vietnam and now the war in Iraq, you can say we need to be out of this war.”

Hartke was just a little girl when her dad cut ties with the president over Vietnam, but she remembered.

“He broke his friendship with Lyndon Johnson when I was 4 years old and this was when I had Johnson’s initials engraved on my pants so they had a tight friendship,” she said.

“My father was out there, he led (thousands of) people on the Washington Mall standing outside of the Capitol chanting, ‘Out now! Out now!’” she said of a Vietnam-era protest.

It was an unpopular stance at the time, Hartke said, but it eventually led to change. It’s the kind of change America needs now, she added, closely aligning herself with Barack Obama and Mark Warner, Virginia’s former Democratic governor now seeking a U.S Senate seat.

“In the military, you work to have a good strategy when you fight, but you also need intelligence and training to bring about diplomacy — particularly in a world like today where we have nuclear weapons,” Hartke said.

She said she was encouraged by the realization of a permanent home for the U.S. Institute of Peace and more importantly the global message it will send.
The Institute already has “peace ambassadors” operating on the ground in conflict zones like Afghanistan and Colombia.

President Bush, speaking at the Institute’s groundbreaking, said, “It’s in America’s vital interest to help all these nations combat ideologies of hate. It’s in our security interest to eliminate safe havens for terrorists and extremists. It’s in our national interest to develop institutions that allow them to govern their territories effectively and improve their lives.”

The U.S. Institute of Peace will also serve as a center of education for high school and college students and a headquarters of peace research and support for policymakers.

Ms. Hartke, a divorced mother of two college-age children and a 7-year-old son, said forging peace around the globe would require other measures as well.
Again, she looked to her dad for inspiration.

“My dad also worked on the International Executive Service Corps, just like the Peace Corps, people who go out and promote business for other countries,” she said, “so that you have this relationship that reaches beyond the United States to other countries.

“I think having working relationships with other countries for business, for peace ends up doing best for our country and as a world leader we need to lead the way and pave the path.”

Hartke said her dad, who died nearly five years ago after a day at the office — he was a lawyer in Falls Church after nearly two decades in the U.S. Senate — would find joy in his daughter’s work today.

“I think he would be very happy with me. Often times, I think it’s too bad he’s not here, but on the other hand he would not have let up. He would have pressured me every minute of the day to do more, to work harder.

“I don’t know if I could have taken that much pressure without backing down because he was a pretty strong person.”

Sen. John Kerry, as recently recorded in the Congressional Record, said Sen. Hartke’s stand for peace was inspiring.

“William Butler Yeats famously wrote: ‘my glory was I had such friends.’ To know Vance Hartke as a cherished friend, as an ally to all who are not just unashamed but actually proud to seek peace, as a fellow Navy man, and particularly as a mentor, protector, and champion for those of us who returned from Vietnam to oppose the war — really, that was all the glory or honor any of us ever really need or deserve.”

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or .

About the U.S. Institute of Peace
The U.S. Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan institution established by Congress to help prevent and
resolve violent international conflicts. The $185-million facility will face the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall and is slated for completion by the end of 2010.
Top political figures, including President Bush and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, attended the June 5 groundbreaking. Seventh District Congressional
candidate Anita Hartke, a real-estate broker from Culpeper County, also was there. Her father, the late Sen. Vance Hartke, a Democrat from Indiana, laid the
cornerstone that led to the Institute’s creation.

See it on Webcam:
oxblue.com/pro/open/usip