IF YOU WANT PEACE, WORK FOR JUSTICE...
Pope Paul VI

I remember the first time I heard the sound of war drums. It was the week of August 21, 1968 during a six week study tour with members of my German class from Loyola High. At the border crossing between West Germany and Austria, the border guard had both fear and tears in his eyes that morning as he told us that just hours before, Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops had invaded Czechoslovakia. Travel that day through East Germany on our way to Berlin was even more charged because eleven Russian tank divisions had stormed into Prague and other parts of that country via East Germany. I will also never forget the huge billboard visible from our train as we approached the outskirts of West Berlin that same night. In bold letters it shouted, “Mord im USA” (Murder in the USA) with pictures of JFK, RKF and Martin Luther King below which was a Communist diatribe aimed at the shortcomings of democracy in America. From the pulpit at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, amidst the gatherings outside Checkpoint Charlie and throughout the print and television media during the week that followed the invasion, the question was the same: Would the U.S. commit its military might to rescue the people of Prague whose experiment with freedom of the press and other civil liberties was violently extinguished? If so, would U.S. action ignite World War III?

Although he condemned the invasion as a violation of the U.N. Charter, LBJ declined to lead the nation on such a rescue mission, partly because we were already knee-deep in the Big Muddy of Vietnam at that time.

Fast forward to the Bush-Cheney White House that is sounding a call to arms against Iraq. Exactly what are “weapons of mass destruction?” How imminent is the actual threat of bioterrorism? Would unilateral U.S. invasion violate international law? Before we are drawn into another war, we need information and answers to these questions.

On Thursday, October 17 at 5:00pm at the County Council’s hearing room on the second floor of the Old Court House, the BCBA will host a special program featuring Michael Greenberger who heads the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security, and Dr. Jim Campbell of the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Center for Vaccine Development. Professor Greenberger served as principal associate attorney general at the U.S. Justice Department, where he was responsible for counter-terrorism issues. Because of the importance of issues associated with homeland security and the threat of bioterrorism, we have opened the program to members of the Baltimore County Medical Society and a complimentary reception will follow.

At the Association’s stated meeting last June, I promised that we would focus our efforts on important work on behalf of our members and respect one another’s time constraints. With that in mind, we will reorganize the format of our October 17 stated meeting by eliminating the lengthy litany of committee reports. This is not to suggest that the work of our committees does not warrant reporting, but we should use our time together to deal with significant matters of interest to the Bench and the Bar. The preferred method of periodically updating each other about the progress of BCBA committees should be announcements in The Advocate. It is increasingly difficult to lure lawyers to the stated meetings when the Zoning Committee report is 25 committee reports and 45 minutes down the road from the always-spellbinding Treasurer’s Report.

Certainly, one effective means to muffle the rumble of war drums is for us to arm ourselves with reliable and accurate information. I hope you will join us on October 17 and bring a friend.