Board-Ansicht
Mix-Ansicht- Nicht alle Amis sind für diesen Krieg. - marsch, 16.10.2001, 18:44
Nicht alle Amis sind für diesen Krieg.
International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Brian Becker, Co-Director, International Action Center
Press Statement - September 24, 2001
The coalition that has formed - Act Now to Stop War and End Racism or A.N.S.W.E.R. - is organizing a growing part for the population here who agree that the answer proposed by George W. Bush last Thursday was not an appropriate one to the horrific killing of thousands of civilians on September 11.
Thousands of people are coming to Washington DC for the first national anti-war protest this Saturday, September 29. We are marching in front of the White House. We will be marching down Pennsylvania Ave. to the Capitol.
We are telling President Bush and Congress that the answer is not war and racism. The President's proposals will lead to a catastrophe. He is proposing an endless war. Tens of thousands, likely hundreds of thousands, of young men and women in the armed forces will be sent to the Middle East, to the Persian Gulf, to South Asia, to fight an undefined enemy in a war without limits.
President Bush said that all weapons will be used by the U.S. in this war. Does this include biological weapons, chemical weapons, germ warfare, nuclear weapons, carpet bombings, surgical bombing, commando units, ground troops and a new generation of high tech weapons of mass destruction?
President Bush's program for endless war is insanity. Does anyone in their right mind believe that this would end the cycle of violence, which is taking the lives of civilians everywhere.
We are heartened by the response to our call for a national protest. No demonstration of this size and magnitude took place at the beginning of the Vietnam War. In fact, the war had dragged on for a couple of years before a demonstration of the size we are projecting for September 29 took place.
Yes, the people in the United States are mourning and grieving. They are angry and sad. But it would be a major political miscalculation if the Bush administration believes its own propaganda that there is unanimity in the population for a new war.
People have asked us, if war and racism are not the answer, what is the answer? Are we for doing nothing? No. We believe the U.S. must do something if it wants to end the cycle of violence. It must remove the tens of thousands of U.S. troops - and the military bases and the warships and war planes and cruise missiles -- that are permanently stationed in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. The overwhelming military force of the U.S. in this oil-rich region are viewed by the people of the Middle east not as a force for liberation but as an occupying and colonial force. Those troops and war ships should be brought home and those U.S. bases closed.
If one wants to pursue peace, it requires that the United States government end the economic sanctions on the people of Iraq, which according to the United Nation's own statistics, have led to the death of over 1.2 million people. This month and every month 6,000 to 10,000 Iraqi's die from sanctions. Most of those who have died from hunger and malnutrition-related diseases are children under the age of five. Iraqi people and all Arab people believe that their children are the innocent victims of a genocidal policy. And the United States must stop supporting Israeli occupation and aggression against the Palestinian people and the Occupied Territories.
On September 29, we will also assert that Arab people, Muslim people and people from South Asia are our sisters and brothers and not our enemies. We will offer a hand of solidarity to these besieged communities that have been demonized and victimized by racism and violence since September 11.
A third plank of our demonstration will be to support long cherished civil rights and civil liberties that are now threatened by John Ashcroft and the Bush administration's reactionary attempt to destroy privacy, immigrants' basic democratic rights, attack organizations in the United States that are vocal opponents of U.S. foreign policy while expanding the powers of the FBI and the CIA to surveil and carry out covert actions against people in the United States.
<font size=-2>BRIAN BECKER, Co-Director, International Action Center Becker was the national coordinator of the January 20 Counter-Inaugural Protest in Washington DC. He is a co-author of Challenge to Genocide: Let Iraq Live and author publications. He is a frequent commentator on Fox TV. Recently he was the co-coordinator of the Korea Truth Commission. Becker was one of 678 people illegally arrested April 15, 2001, in a mass preventive detention arrest at an International Action Center protest on the first day of the convergence against the IMF and World Bank</font>
<ul> ~ Amerikanische Friedensbewegung</ul>
<center>
<HR>
</center>
Thread gesperrtgesamter Thread:
