[Peace-discuss] Why are we in Iraq?

[Morton K. Brussel]

I like the flyer. It was highly appropriate as a counter point  for  
the 4th of July parade theme,  and bears repeating. How convincing it  
will be to Joe Sixpack I don't know, but that shouldn't prevent us  
from saying it like it is. Dulcet tones will not awaken the somnolent.

Chomsky in the Monthly Review and Nader (Democracy Now! yesterday),  
and others,  are saying the much the same.

I would only remark that there are other factors as well as the  
corporate juggernaut which "drive" our wars---nationalism expressed  
through militarism and cultivated through a nationalist educational  
system, (religious) prejudice, ignorance, … Prior wars did not  
require the corporate effect, but that was then.

Those that disagree please make your case(s). Write your own thoughts  
for a flyer, and let us look at it.

My thanks to Carl.

--mkb


On Jul 10, 2007, at 1:29 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> The lead article in The Politico this morning includes the following
> observation:
>
> "...the leading Democratic candidates are trying to run as hawk and  
> dove
> simultaneously. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama
> (Ill.), for instance, are both moving rhetorically and substantively
> against the Iraq war while calling for an increased military  
> presence to
> fight terrorists in Afghanistan."
>
> I posted something yesterday about Obama's tergiversations on the war
> (which have led the commentator Alexander Cockburn to refer to him as
> "Senator Slither"), but Clinton's been just as bad:
>
> "In the past year, she has advocated stances she once opposed, both  
> on a
> set timetable for withdrawal and in utilizing the 'power of the purse'
> to end the war in Iraq. But last month, at a Take Back America
> conference of liberal activists, she offended some by treading a  
> careful
> rhetorical line. 'The American military has succeeded,' Clinton
> declared. 'It is the Iraqi government that has failed.' That drew boos
> from the hall. Clinton's rhetoric seemed 'almost calculated to draw a
> negative response' before the liberal audience..."
>
> Given that Democratic party obfuscation of America's war in the Middle
> East is being added to the administration's lies about it, it will
> probably become increasingly difficult to see what really has happened
> and is happening in the massive and ongoing blood-letting that we're
> allowing our government to commit.
>
> The first thing that is required is that we oppose it. But effectively
> to oppose it requires understanding it.  Why are we in Iraq?  Are the
> actions we're responsible for as criminal as they seem to be -- or is
> the Bush administration in some way justified in destroying nations in
> the Middle East and killing a million people?
>
> I tried to answer that question in the briefest possible way in the  
> July
> 4 flyer (and expand the answer with a comment on this list about the
> role of Israel).  If AWARE is going to be able to convince our fellow
> citizens to take action against the war, we need to discuss not only
> what actions we can do but why we're doing them.
>
> So I offer the text of the flyer again for discussion.  How should the
> argument be corrected, modified, or added to?  Why are we in Iraq?
>
> ==================================
>
> 	"...the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a  
> matter of 'right or left' but 'right and wrong' ... I believe that  
> partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of  
> thousands of people are dying for a war, based on lies, that is  
> supported by Democrats and Republicans alike ... if we don’t find  
> alternatives to this corrupt 'two' party system our Representative  
> Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly  
> descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate  
> wasteland."
> 	--Cindy Sheehan, 28 May 2007
>
> ...As Americans we hold that all people are created equal, "that  
> they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,  
> that among
> these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  Our rights to
> life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness mean that our enterprise
> should be free -- we should not be compelled to use our talents for
> purposes not our own.  The lives of "the hireling and slave" are
> condemned in "The Star-Spangled Banner."
>
> But we find as we grow up in present-day America that our  
> enterprise is
> not free.  In order to live we have to sell our work in an economy
> directed by ever-larger corporations, and they are only buying some
> things -- not necessarily what we want to do with our talents.
>
> In the early days of the United States, corporations were granted
> charters by the states only if they were formed for a beneficial
> purpose, and then only for a limited time.  But by the beginning of  
> the
> 20th-century, corporations maneuvered themselves into being "legal
> persons," with all the rights that the Bill of Rights granted to
> individuals.
>
> This corporate economy now dominates the world and directs the  
> policies
> of the United States.  Our vast system of corporate media, public
> relations, and marketing -- the world's largest by far -- pretends  
> that
> the interests of the few who dominate the corporate economy are
> essentially the same as those of the majority (we're all "persons,"
> aren't we?), but in fact they're contradictory: the corporate economy
> has to dominate the enterprise of the majority to continue to  
> enrich itself.
>
> Democracy and the corporate economy are contradictory.  Democracy
> implies equality: "one person, one vote."  But the corporate economy
> implies inequality: power in society depends on how much money is
> controlled -- "one dollar, one vote." A few people in control of
> corporations decide what should be produced and therefore what jobs
> should be available.
>
> The corporate economy drives America's criminal wars and  
> occupations in
> the Middle East.  Both Democratic and Republican administrations  
> demand
> that the US control Middle East energy resources -- even though we
> import very little oil from the Middle East for use in the US --  
> because
> that gives the US control over America's principal economic  
> competitors,
> Europe and northeast Asia (China, South Korea and Japan).
>
> Free enterprise and peace are impossible until the corporate  
> economy is
> brought under democratic control.
>
> 	--CGE
> (I wrote about this theme just before the invasion of Iraq in "Anti- 
> war = Anti-globalization" http://www.counterpunch.org/ 
> estabrookglobal.html.)
>
>
>
>
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