[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Bennis-Jensen / Moving beyond anti-war politics / May 06

[Morton K. Brussel]

What we must continually remind ourselves of is stated here.  --mkb


> From: ZNet Commentaries <sysop at zmag.org>
> Date: May 6, 2007 8:52:36 PM CDT
> To: brussel at uiuc.edu
> Subject: Bennis-Jensen / Moving beyond anti-war politics / May 06
>
> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-05/05bennis-jensen.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> Moving beyond anti-war politics May 06, 2007
> By Phylis Bennis and Robert Jensen
>
> As Congress sends its bill requiring partial troop withdrawals from  
> Iraq to the White House for a certain veto, it has never been  
> clearer that mobilizing against this war is necessary, but not enough.
>
> Congressional Democrats may be willing to stop there, but demanding  
> the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is only the first of our  
> obligations to help create the conditions for real justice and  
> peace in the Middle East and around the world. It's crucial that we  
> also advocate for an entirely new foreign policy based on  
> opposition to the long U.S. drive toward empire.
>
> That first step is, of course, crucial. When 78 percent of the  
> Iraqi people oppose the presence of U.S. troops and 61 percent  
> support attacks on those troops, it's clear that our presence in  
> the country is causing -- not preventing -- much of the violence.  
> Pulling out U.S. troops (including the 100,000-plus mercenaries who  
> back the U.S. military) won't eliminate all Iraqi-on-Iraqi  
> violence, but it will remove the reason many Iraqis are fighting.  
> That would take away the protective umbrella that the widely  
> supported anti-occupation violence currently gives the real  
> terrorists -- those engaged in killing civilians for political or  
> sectarian reasons. Once U.S. forces are gone and the reason for the  
> legitimate resistance to foreign occupation is eliminated, the ugly  
> terrorist violence will be exposed for what it is - and it will be  
> possible for Iraqis themselves to isolate the terrorists and  
> eliminate them as a fighting force.
>
> But what comes after a U.S. withdrawal? We clearly owe the Iraqi  
> people massive reparations for the devastation our illegal invasion  
> has brought. Only in the United States is that illegality  
> questioned; in the rest of the world it's understood. Equally  
> obvious around the world is that the decision to launch an  
> aggressive war was rooted in the desire to expand U.S. military  
> power in the strategically crucial oil-rich region, and that as a  
> result the war fails every test of moral legitimacy.
>
> As we organize against the occupation, we also must work to end  
> U.S. support for Israeli occupation and try to prevent an  
> aggressive war against Iran. But all of this is part of a larger  
> obligation of U.S. citizens: We must challenge U.S. empire. The  
> U.S. troop withdrawal and reparations should be accompanied by a  
> declaration of a major change of course in U.S. foreign policy,  
> especially in Iraq and the Middle East. We need a new foreign  
> policy based on justice, relying on international law and the  
> United Nations, rather than the assertion of might-makes-right.
>
> This takes us beyond a critique of the mendacity of the Bush  
> administration, to recognize that similar dreams of conquest and  
> domination have animated every administration, albeit in different  
> forms. From the darling of the anti-communist liberal elite (John  
> F. Kennedy) and the champion of so-called "assertive  
> multilateralism" (Bill Clinton), to the crude Republican realist  
> (Richard Nixon) and the patron saint of the conservative right  
> (Ronald Reagan), U.S. empire in the post-World War II era has been  
> a distinctly bi-partisan effort.
>
> In his 1980 State of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter  
> called for domination of the Middle East: "An attempt by any  
> outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be  
> regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States  
> of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means  
> necessary, including military force." In other words: We run the  
> region and control the flow of its oil.
>
> George W. Bush took earlier administrations' power plays to new  
> heights of reckless militarism and unilateralism, seizing the  
> moment after 9/11 to declare to all nations: "Either you are with  
> us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any  
> nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be  
> regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." In other words:  
> We demand global capitulation.
>
> The only way to transcend this ugly history is through an honest  
> national dialogue and a promise of a sea change in U.S. policy.
>
> Look around the world at the results of U.S. strategies. Rhetoric  
> about democracy and free trade has masked the enforcement of  
> political and economic subordination to the United States and U.S.- 
> based multinational corporations. The people of Latin America, much  
> of Africa and the Middle East, and many parts of Asia can offer  
> compelling testimony to the impact of those policies, enforced now  
> through more than 700 U.S. military bases spread across the globe  
> in over 130 countries.
>
> Such empires are typically brought down from outside, with great  
> violence. But we have another option, as citizens of that empire  
> who understand how this pathology of power damages our country as  
> well as the world. Imagine what would be possible if we -- ordinary  
> citizens of this latest empire -- could build a movement that gave  
> politicians no choice but to do the right thing.
>
> Imagine what would be possible in the world if an anti-empire  
> movement were strong enough to make it clear that ending military  
> violence requires a just distribution of the resources of this world.
>
> Imagine what is possible if we work to make inevitable one day what  
> seems improbable today -- the justice that makes possible real peace.
>
> *************************
>
> Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and  
> author of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN  
> Defy U.S. Power. She can be reached at pbennis at ips-dc.org.
>
> Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of  
> Texas at Austin and author of Citizens of Empire: The Struggle to  
> Claim Our Humanity. He can be reached at rjensen at uts.cc.utexas.edu.
>
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20070506/6dfa93f1/attachment.htm