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<p align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt"><u>Remarks
prepared for delivery at the demonstration by <i>Iraq Veterans
Against the War</i></u></font></p><p align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt"><u>on
the tenth anniversary of the US government's attack on Afghanistan:
UIUC Quad, 7 October 2011</u></font></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">The
president of the United States murdered two Americans last week -
Anwar al-Awlaki (b. 1971) and Samir Khan (b. 1985) - in Yemen, a
country with which the US is not at war. Their assassinations violate
the Bill of Rights (the Fifth Amendment states that no person shall
be "deprived of life ... without due process of law"),
which was specifically designed to limit what the president and the
federal government could do. In the 20th century, successive
presidents, Republican and Democratic, explicitly banned
assassinations, in reaction to murders by the CIA. (And the arguments
adduced to justify Obama's murders would also condone, say, the
Castro government's sponsorship of Kennedy's assassination...) </font>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">But
why should we be surprised, you say? After all, Obama has killed lots
of people, including children in Pakistan (another country with which
we're not at war) with drone strikes - and more than a thousand
Americans in Afghanistan alone, since being elected as the peace
candidate and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize...</font></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">In
fact, President Obama is simply more brutal and efficient at killing
people than President Bush ever was. In the third year of his
presidency he is killing people in six wars - Libya, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia - to which should be added
Palestine, where the US chief client ("our cop on the beat,"
as the Nixon administration said) is oppressing an entire people. </font>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">Furthermore,
President Obama is lying about the reason for all those corpses (and
all the maimed and agonized wounded). He says he's "fighting
terrorism & protecting civilians," but the whole world can
see that he's killing civilians and creating terrorists.</font></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">Why
is he doing such a thing? He's too smart to believe his own
propaganda. In fact, he's conducting just one large war (the
Pentagon, which doesn't need to listen to propaganda designed for the
American public, simply calls it "The Long War") for
control of the region with the world's greatest supply of energy
resources - oil and natural gas. </font>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">Control
and not just access is what the US government wants. We in fact
import very little oil from the Mideast, contrary to what you've
heard. But control of the oil spigot gives the US an unparalleled
advantage over its oil-hungry economic rivals in Europe and Asia.</font></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">Today
the US government is threatening, invading, and occupying countries
from North Africa to the Indian subcontinent, and from Central Asia
to the Horn of Africa - a vast circle with a 2,000-mile radius,
sometimes called the Greater Middle East: the US military calls it
"Central Command."</font></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">Our
government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars month after
month to control that circle because China needs oil, and our
government wants to control where they get it. The driving force is
the profit of US corporations, financial & industrial. The Obama
administration is working for them - no more than 1% of the
population. The result is the looting of the economy, and killing
around the world.</font></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">But
as the brave people participating in Occupy Wall Street and similar
actions make clear, the interests of the 1% are diametrically opposed
to the interests of the rest of us, the 99%. They want war for the
control of oil, and we don't. Two-thirds of Americans are opposed to
the war, but because our government is so undemocratic, two-thirds of
the Congress supports the war, as does the President. </font>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><font size="2" style="font-size: 11pt">And
they are now desperately trying to tell us that politics is confined
to the largely meaningless presidential election. (Note how much
difference it made last time...) They hope it will work as a
distraction - but as Naomi Klein (who has written so well in <i>The
Shock Doctrine</i> and elsewhere about corporate violence) recently
said about Occupy Wall Street, "Protesters are seeking change in
the streets, because it won't come from the ballot box!" ###</font></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; ">
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