[Peace-discuss] The need for repentance & atonement

[C. G. Estabrook]

Remarks prepared for delivery at the demonstration by Iraq Veterans  
Against the War
on the tenth anniversary of the US government's attack on Afghanistan:  
UIUC Quad, 7 October 2011

The president of the United States murdered two Americans last week -  
Anwar al-Awlaki (b. 1971) and Samir Khan (b. 1985) - in Yemen, a  
country with which the US is not at war. Their assassinations violate  
the Bill of Rights (the Fifth Amendment states that no person shall be  
"deprived of life ... without due process of law"), which was  
specifically designed to limit what the president and the federal  
government could do. In the 20th century, successive presidents,  
Republican and Democratic, explicitly banned assassinations, in  
reaction to murders by the CIA. (And the arguments adduced to justify  
Obama's murders would also condone, say, the Castro government's  
sponsorship of Kennedy's assassination...)

But why should we be surprised, you say? After all, Obama has killed  
lots of people, including children in Pakistan (another country with  
which we're not at war) with drone strikes - and more than a thousand  
Americans in Afghanistan alone, since being elected as the peace  
candidate and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize...

In fact, President Obama is simply more brutal and efficient at  
killing people than President Bush ever was. In the third year of his  
presidency he is killing people in six wars - Libya, Iraq,  
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia - to which should be added  
Palestine, where the US chief client ("our cop on the beat," as the  
Nixon administration said) is oppressing an entire people.

Furthermore, President Obama is lying about the reason for all those  
corpses (and all the maimed and agonized wounded). He says he's  
"fighting terrorism & protecting civilians," but the whole world can  
see that he's killing civilians and creating terrorists.

Why is he doing such a thing? He's too smart to believe his own  
propaganda. In fact, he's conducting just one large war (the Pentagon,  
which doesn't need to listen to propaganda designed for the American  
public, simply calls it "The Long War") for control of the region with  
the world's greatest supply of energy resources - oil and natural gas.

Control and not just access is what the US government wants. We in  
fact import very little oil from the Mideast, contrary to what you've  
heard. But control of the oil spigot gives the US an unparalleled  
advantage over its oil-hungry economic rivals in Europe and Asia.

Today the US government is threatening, invading, and occupying  
countries from North Africa to the Indian subcontinent, and from  
Central Asia to the Horn of Africa - a vast circle with a 2,000-mile  
radius, sometimes called the Greater Middle East: the US military  
calls it "Central Command."

Our government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars month after  
month to control that circle because China needs oil, and our  
government wants to control where they get it. The driving force is  
the profit of US corporations, financial & industrial. The Obama  
administration is working for them - no more than 1% of the  
population. The result is the looting of the economy, and killing  
around the world.

But as the brave people participating in Occupy Wall Street and  
similar actions make clear, the interests of the 1% are diametrically  
opposed to the interests of the rest of us, the 99%. They want war for  
the control of oil, and we don't. Two-thirds of Americans are opposed  
to the war, but because our government is so undemocratic, two-thirds  
of the Congress supports the war, as does the President.

And they are now desperately trying to tell us that politics is  
confined to the largely meaningless presidential election. (Note how  
much difference it made last time...) They hope it will work as a  
distraction - but as Naomi Klein (who has written so well in The Shock  
Doctrine and elsewhere about corporate violence) recently said about  
Occupy Wall Street, "Protesters are seeking change in the streets,  
because it won't come from the ballot box!" ###

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