[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [IAC] CALL to ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: Stop war on Iraq before it starts!

[Michael Walcher]

  Action Center <actioncenter at action-mail.org> wrote: To: 
From: "Action Center" 
Subject: [IAC] CALL to ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: Stop war on Iraq before it
starts!
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 18:50:57 -0400

A CALL TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT:
Stop the war on Iraq before it starts!

By Brian Becker
(The writer is a co-director of the International Action 
Center and a member of the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition steering 
committee.)

It is imperative that all progressive working class and 
anti-war organizations organize now to try to stop the 
pending U.S. war against Iraq.

These progressive organizations should base their strategy 
and tactics on the assumption that the Bush administration 
is determined to attack Iraq and replace the current 
government with a puppet regime like the one that exists 
in Afghanistan. 

Despite this Bush administration goal, however, there 
exist sufficient potential deterrents -- in the U.S. and 
around the world -- that could still prevent a new 
invasion. 

A war on Iraq is a war of imperialism against an 
oppressed, formerly colonized people. It is a war for Big 
Oil against a country that dared to nationalize its oil 
fields and tried to use the revenues from that oil to help 
Iraq emerge as an independent modernizing regional power 
in the Persian/Arabian Gulf -- an area that contains 
two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves. The U.S. 
reserves for itself the right to be the only regional 
power in this oil-rich area.

Working people must not be taken in by the war propaganda 
of the White House. It's just propaganda aimed at 
justifying aggression against Iraq.

Bush and the Pentagon are planning a war not because they 
fear Saddam Hussein's potential to develop weapons of mass 
destruction, or because they are sickened by the 
undemocratic nature of the Iraqi government. Washington 
supports dictatorial monarchies like Saudi Arabia and 
Kuwait. It sends $15 million a day to Israel while that 
government has invaded Lebanon, occupied the Palestinian 
territories and created a large, illegal arsenal of 
nuclear weapons.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR AS PRELUDE TO INVASION 

The Bush administration for the last two weeks has engaged 
in a full-scale psychological war against the Iraqi regime 
and the people there. It is going out of its way to create 
an aura of inevitability about the coming conflict. This 
is a coordinated high-profile campaign designed to split 
the Iraqi government as a prelude to U.S. military action.