[Peace-discuss] Anti-war letter

[C. G. Estabrook]

Letter to the Editor, News-Gazette
Submitted on Tuesday, December 29, 2015 

For 14 years the Bush-Obama administrations have been killing people in the Mideast. They say they are fighting terrorism, but they are in fact creating terrorists in response to US military control over Mideast energy resources, which benefits only the world-wide economic control of the American 1%. The US doesn’t need oil from the Mideast, but Mideast gas and oil are needed by America’s economic competitors in Europe and Asia, and so control over them gives the US government a major  advantage over China, Germany, and other countries.

President Obama has attacked eight countries (two more than President Bush), and his ongoing drone campaign (the NY Times says he chooses the targets himself) has already killed more than 6,000 people, including US citizens and hundreds of children. He directs a private presidential army (‘special operations forces’) of more than 70,000, active in more than 3/4 of the countries in the world. Their activities include kidnapping (‘rendition’), torture and murder.

We must demand of Obama and his successor (probably Clinton), that he
(1) end his drone killings;
(2) bring all US troops (and mercenaries) home;
(3) close the 1,000 foreign US bases in the Mideast and elsewhere (no other country has more than twelve);
(4) end the provocations of Russia (in Ukraine) and China (in the South China Sea);
(5) end support for Israel's apartheid policy; and
(6) support negotiations to end the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars among the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey.

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