[Peace-discuss] Flyer for Saturday 1/3: Afghanistan & Gaza

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The formatted flyer is attached.  The text -- difficult to read without the 
formatting -- is below.  --CGE]

[recto]

	U.S. WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST: AFGHANISTAN

Some people think that Barack Obama is poised for an historic presidency that 
could unite this country and lead us to a better future.  He has talked of 
ending wars and negotiating diplomatically with world leaders.  Earlier this 
year he said, "I don't want to just end the war, I want to end the mindset that 
got us into war."  This talk and these positions gave us some hope for peace in 
the world and an end to the millions of killings.  And millions of our people 
voted for Obama.

Just recently, though, he spoke of sending a surge of tens of thousands of 
troops into Afghanistan.  Whoa!  We already have more than 30,000 U.S. troops 
there, in addition to more than 140,000 troops and maybe 50,000 mercenaries in 
17 permanent bases in Iraq.  And we will never "win" the war in Iraq, nor the 
one in Afghanistan.  How can we not have learned at least that much?  How can we 
kill one more person, one more old man, one more woman, one more child?  And how 
can we stand losing even one more of our young men and women?  And did you know 
that the recent U.S. military death count in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq?

Obama has made major appointments of people who have supported the wars and the 
killings; these evoke serious concerns.  He must defy the War Party and the 
corporate interests surrounding him, and pay homage to the millions of Americans 
who want real change -- and the ones who voted for him and made him president.

That which we do not resist, we may be forced to accept.  Millions of us want 
the wars to stop -- recent surveys suggest as many as 70%-80%.  Then anti-war 
movement needs to move immediately to oppose this shift of the "central front" 
of the fraudulent "war on terror" to Afghanistan.  We must not be silent and let 
the "surge" of American troops into Afghanistan become a reality.

The U.S. "war on terror," which began after the crimes of September 11, 2001, 
was not just a campaign against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden, but 
a broad global war to control Afghanistan and to the keep the U.S. the global 
superpower with permanent domination over the Middle East.  It will be fought 
the same way that the war in Iraq is being fought, where most of he people 
killed are civilians.  There is no such thing as a good war on terror -- as 
Benjamin Franklin wrote on another September 11, in 1773,

	"After much occasion to consider the folly and mischiefs of a state of warfare, 
and the little or no advantage obtained even by those nations who have conducted 
it with the most success, I have been apt to think that there has never been, 
nor ever will be, any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace."

We must show the people in the Middle East and in the world that in the U.S. 
there is a difference between the people and the government.  And we must stand 
up and show our government that the great majority of us do not agree with more war.

Silence and passivity don't work. We can't wait and see. The "surge" must be 
stopped before it is started.  We must be visible, and we must be heard.  Our 
world does not need any more war.

We can write letters and make phone calls now -- right now!  Obama (and Bush) 
needs to hear from us (202.456.1111) -- perhaps we can remind him of his desire 
to "end the war [and] end the mindset that got us into war."  Congressman 
Johnson needs to hear from us (202.224.3121), and Senator Durbin needs to hear 
from us (202.224.3121), and any other person whom we can tell needs to hear from 
us.  And we can all write and make phone calls...

{This comment, by Linda Weber, was cablecast on AWARE on the Air on 23 December 
2008.  The program -- seen every Tuesday at 10:00pm on cable channel 6 ­-- and 
this flyer are presented by members and friends of the Anti-War Anti-Racism 
Effort of Champaign-Urbana <http://www.anti-war.net>, a local peace group.}

	###

[verso]

	U.S. WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST: GAZA

{For more than a generation the United States government has made war on the 
Middle East to control its energy resources, not because the US needs them for 
domestic consumption -- only about 10% of our oil comes from the Middle East -- 
but because such control gives the US a major advantage over its economic rivals 
in Europe and Asia.  In that time the US has backed the racist state of Israel, 
the largest recipient of US foreign aid, as our "local cop on the beat" (as the 
Nixon administration said), a "stationary aircraft carrier" to help us control 
the region. Far from being a detached observer, the US has approved and 
supported Israel's attacks on it neighbors, culminating in this week's attack on 
Gaza, where Israel has killed or wounded over two thousand people.  Seumas Milne 
of the British newspaper The Guardian gives a better account of Israel's 
barbarism than can be found in the compromised US press:}

	Israel's decision to launch its devastating attack on Gaza on a Saturday was a 
"stroke of brilliance", the country's biggest selling paper Yediot Aharonot 
crowed: "the element of surprise increased the number of people who were 
killed". The daily Ma'ariv agreed: "We left them in shock and awe".
	Of the ferocity of the assault on one of the most overcrowded and destitute 
corners of the earth, there is at least no question. In the bloodiest onslaught 
on blockaded Gaza since it was captured and occupied by Israel 41 years ago, at 
least 310 people were killed and more than a thousand reported injured in the 
first 48 hours alone.
	As well as scores of ordinary police officers incinerated in a [graduation] 
parade, at least 56 civilians were said by the UN to have died as Israel used 
American-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters to attack a string of civilian 
targets it linked to Hamas, including a mosque, private homes and the Islamic 
university. Hamas military and political facilities were mostly deserted, while 
police stations in residential areas were teeming as they were pulverised.
	As Israeli journalist Amos Harel wrote in Ha'aretz at the weekend, "little or 
no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians", 
[just like] US operations in Iraq. Among those killed in the first wave of 
strikes were eight teenage students waiting for a bus and four girls from the 
same family in Jabaliya, aged one to 12 years old.
	Anyone who doubts the impact of these atrocities among Arabs and Muslims 
worldwide should switch on the satellite television stations that are watched 
avidly across the Middle East and which - unlike their western counterparts - do 
not habitually sanitise the barbarity meted out in the name of multiple wars on 
terror.
	Then, having seen a child dying in her parent's arms live on TV, consider what 
sort of western response there would have been to an attack on Israel, or the US 
or Britain for that matter, which left more than 300 dead in [two] days.
	You can be certain it would be met with the most sweeping condemnation, that 
the US president-elect would do a great deal more than "monitor" the situation 
... But that is in fact all [Barack Obama] did do ... There has, of course, been 
no western denunciation of the Israeli slaughter - such aerial destruction is, 
after all, routinely called in by the US ... in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
	Instead, Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza are held responsible for what has 
been visited upon them. How could any government not respond with overwhelming 
force to the constant firing of rockets into its territory, the Israelis demand, 
echoed by western governments and media.
	But that is to turn reality on its head. Like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip has 
been - and continues to be - illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Despite 
the withdrawal of troops and settlements three years ago, Israel maintains 
complete control of the territory by sea, air and land. And since Hamas won the 
Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel has punished its 1.5 million people with 
an inhuman blockade of essential supplies, backed by the US and the European Union.
	Like any occupied people, the Palestinians have the right to resist, whether 
they choose to exercise it or not. But there is no right of defence for an 
illegal occupation - there is an obligation to withdraw comprehensively. During 
the last seven years, 14 Israelis have been killed by mostly homemade rockets 
fired from the Gaza Strip, while more than 5,000 Palestinians were killed by 
Israel with some of the most advanced US-supplied armaments in the world. And 
while no rockets are fired from the West Bank, 45 Palestinians have died there 
at Israel's hands this year alone. The issue is of course not just the vast 
disparity in weapons and power, but that one side is the occupier, the other the 
occupied ... Israel and its western sponsors have set their face against an 
accommodation with the Palestinians' democratic choice and have instead thrown 
their political weight, cash and arms behind a sustained attempt to overthrow it...

{Former Democratic party Congresswoman and 2008 Green party Presidential 
candidate Cynthia McKinney (and a friend of our late AWARE colleague Robert 
Wahlfeldt) was aboard a boat bearing medical supplies to Gaza that was rammed by 
U.S.-supplied Israeli ships.  She writes as follows:}
	I have called for President-elect Obama to say something.  The Palestinian 
people in the Gaza strip are seeing the worst violence in 60 years, it is being 
reported.  To date, President-elect Obama has remained silent.  The Israelis are 
using weapons supplied to them by the U.S. government.  Strict enforcement of 
U.S. law would require the cessation of all weapons transfers to Israel. 
Adherence to international law would require the same.  As we are about to 
celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, let us remember that he said:
   1. The United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, and
   2. Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about things that matter...

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