[Peace-discuss] Flyer from today's Main Event demo

[C. G. Estabrook]

	THE U.S. MAKES WAR IN PAKISTAN
	--Members and friends of AWARE,
	the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort
	of Champaign-Urbana - June 2009

The United States is not at war with Pakistan. Nevertheless our government is 
now attacking civilians in that country, from the air and on the ground, with 
the excuse that we're "fighting terrorism."  The result has been to cause 
immense suffering, outrage the population of this huge country -- Pakistan has 
two-thirds the population of the US and a larger army -- and produce a vast 
exodus of refugees, now numbering over two million people.

The US began Vietnam-style raids into Pakistan last fall.  US ground troops were 
landed from helicopters and stormed into villages, killing as usual women and 
children.  The ground attacks were accompanied by rocket attacks from remotely 
guided planes – drones.  Defense Secretary Gates had been advocating for months 
a secret plan for a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces inside 
Pakistan.  The Obama administration said that the initial raids were only "baby 
steps," and that they would be doing much more.  To carry out that plan, Obama 
put Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of the group that made the first raids 
into Pakistan, in command of the American war in "AfPak" (as the US government 
refers to Afghanistan and Pakistan).

Why is the Obama administration doing this?  Everyone can see that, far from 
fighting terrorism, the frightfulness of the American assault is producing armed 
resistance -- what we call "terrorism."  But the US government is willing to put 
up with that -- and the death and destruction that we cause -- because of the 
long-standing US policy that insists that the US alone control the Middle East 
and its energy resources.  AfPak is the eastern part of what the US military 
calls "Central Command" and is generally known as the Middle East -- the 
"central front," according to president Obama, "of the war on terrorism."

The American assault on Pakistan is in fact part of what the Pentagon calls the 
Long War, which stretches back deep into the twentieth century.  During World 
War II the US State Department described the Mideast as the “most strategically 
important area of the world,” and the area's vast energy resources – oil and 
natural gas – as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the 
greatest material prizes in world history.”  In the years since then, oil 
companies and their associates have reaped colossal profits, but -- even more 
importantly to the US -- control over two-thirds of the world’s estimated 
petroleum reserves – uniquely cheap and easy to exploit – provides what Obama's 
foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski called “critical leverage” over our 
economic rivals in Europe and Asia -- what the State Department many years 
earlier had called “veto power” over them.

The US has conducted a generations-long war (with Israel as its "local cop on 
the beat," as the Nixon administration put it) for the control of energy 
resources in a 1500-mile radius around the Persian Gulf -- from the 
Mediterranean Sea to the Indus valley, from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia – 
and not because the US is dependent on Mideast oil: less than 10% of the oil the 
US imports for domestic consumption comes for the Middle East.

The people whom we're trying to kill in the Middle East – whether we call them 
al-Qaeda, Taliban, insurgents, terrorists, or militants – are those who want us 
out of their countries and off of their resources.  In order to convince 
Americans to kill and die and suffer in this cause, the Bush administration 
repeatedly lied about the situation, from trumpeting the non-existent weapons of 
mass destruction to outright forgery.  But the Obama administration continues to 
utter the biggest lie, that the US is fighting a "war on terror," as they expand 
the war to Pakistan, which they see as the center of opposition to US control of 
the region.

The government of Pakistan has in fact been trying to make peace with their 
local insurgents, and indeed produced a peace treaty for a region called the 
Swat Valley.  But the United States ordered the Pakistani government to tear up 
the agreement, and ordered the Pakistani army to attack the Swat region.  They 
did so, and by the end of May the UN High Commissioner for Refugees put the 
number of "internally displaced persons" -- refugees from the fighting -- at 
nearly 2.4 million.  More than a hundred thousand people flee the fighting every 
day, sending millions of terrified civilians into camps set up in various parts 
of the northwest Pakistan since the beginning of May.  That massive displacement 
is Pakistan's biggest movement of people since the country secured independence 
from Britain in 1947.  That seems to be how the Obama administration “fights 
terrorism”  -- how in fact it prepares much future terrorism...


	WE AT AWARE THINK THAT MOST AMERICANS WOULD BE SHOCKED IF THEY KNEW
	WHAT WAS BEING DONE BY OUR GOVERNMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The US war from Palestine to Pakistan will continue until enough Americans speak 
up loudly and reject it.  If you are appalled that our government is conducting 
an unjustified war in the Middle East – and misrepresenting the reason for it – 
call your Congressional representatives and demand an end to it.  Congressman 
Tim Johnson, Senator Roland Burris, and Senator Dick Durbin can be reached 
through the capitol switchboard at 202.224.3121.  Tell them that the US has no 
business killing people in the Middle East who resist our invasion and 
occupation.  We're doing it – not to “fight terrorism,” as the US government 
claims – but to control the resources of the region.

You can also join a local peace group that is working to end the war.  In 
Champaign-Urbana, one local peace group is AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism 
Effort, members and friends of which produced this leaflet for the “Main Event” 
– our monthly peace demonstration in downtown Champaign – on June 6, 2009.  We 
meet every Sunday 5-6:30pm in the Wahlfeldt Room in the basement of the old post 
office in Urbana – 202 South Broadway.  Visitors and new members are welcome.

"AWARE on the Air" is presented each Tuesday at 10pm on Urbana Public 
Television, cable channel 6, by members and friends of AWARE.  Each week we 
bring you comments on the war and the opposition to it, both locally and 
nationally, by Americans who oppose our government's betrayal of our democratic 
principles.  And see the AWARE website at <http://www.anti-war.net>.
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