[Peace-discuss] Remarks for Thursday protest, noon on campus

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Apparently Bob Naiman and I are to divide AWARE's five minutes at 
tomorrow's demo.  Here's my 2.5 minutes (delivered at the usual rate of 
the news notes at the meeting).  Suggestions welcome.  --CGE]


[1] AWARE is a local anti-war group formed just after the 9-11 attacks, 
by people around here who realized that the "Global War on Terrorism" 
was a fraud -- a cover for American imperialism.  The name stands for 
"Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort," and it includes people from 
Champaign-Urbana from their mid-teens to their mid-eighties, university 
and non-university.

[2] Among other things, AWARE holds monthly demonstrations against the 
administration's wars -- past, present and future; we also arranged for 
the local referendums in last fall's elections, when people in 
Champaign-Urbana voted FOR withdrawal from Iraq and FOR the impeachment 
of Bush and Chaney.

[3] Across the country Americans voted against the war last fall, so 
some politicians, particularly Democrats, had to begin to say that they 
were against the war.  But we should realize that there are two ways to 
be anti-war now, one real and one fake.

[4] The first way is to recognize that the US government has 
consistently misrepresented the situation in the Middle East -- from the 
9/11 attacks through the Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" to the 
attack on Lebanon -- to justify murderous and criminal policies, up to 
and including launching aggressive war -- which the Nuremberg Trials 
called "the supreme international crime" (that is, worse than 
terrorism).  The US should therefore withdraw completely from Iraq (and 
Afghanistan), as a large majority of Iraqis wish; pay reparations; and 
hold accountable those guilty of prosecuting this war, beginning with 
impeachment.

[5] But the second way to call yourself anti-war is to call for a 
"re-deployment" of US forces in the Middle East, so that the central 
point of the long-term US policy in the region -- control of the 
region's energy resources, a decisive advantage for the US over Europe 
and Asia -- can be maintained, while the US washes its hands of any 
responsibility for the countries it has invaded and devastated.  That is 
the way of most of our anti-war Democrats, including Mr. Obama, and it 
is a cynical pretense.

[6] AWARE wants to help build a real anti-war movement.  We meet every 
Sunday night at 5pm at the Old Post Office in Urbana.  Come join us.  We 
have a war to end.

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