[Peace-discuss] Eschew fascism

[C G Estabrook]

> On Mar 13, 2018, at 9:36 PM, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2018-March/047882.html
> _______________
> Obviously, Carl does not want us to denounce Trump as the Fascist that he is. LOL! fab.

TRUMP IS NOT THE PROBLEM; U.S. WAR-MAKING IS. 
AMERICANS MUST RENOUNCE WHAT OUR LEADERS ARE DOING.
~
Trump inherited eight wars from Obama, who was the first U.S. president ever to be at war throughout two presidential terms: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and the Philippines. 

More than a quarter million U.S. military personnel are today deployed in a thousand foreign U.S. bases, most of them ringing Russia and China. Obama’s drone assassinations, which killed thousands and were accurately called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times,” continue under Trump - as do the war provocations against Russia and China, from Ukraine to the South China Sea. The 70,000-members of the U.S. ‘Special Operations Command’ are active in no less than three-quarters of the countries of the world. Their activities include kidnapping (‘rendition’), torture, and murder. Much of the world regards them as nothing less than American death squads. 

If American leaders were put on trial today as German leaders were, at Nuremberg after World War II, for “launching aggressive war,” they - like the German leaders - would be hanged.   

President Obama was elected as an anti-war candidate, but in office he sent thousands of additional U.S. troops into America’s longest war, in Afghanistan. President Trump, who promised caution and non-interventionism in foreign policy - and described Hillary Clinton as a “trigger happy warmonger” - has now done the same thing himself. He is perhaps the weakest U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge.

But what both Obama and Trump knew is that, in spite of intense media propaganda, most Americans don’t want U.S. troops engaged in foreign wars and don’t see the killing as justified; both candidates had to seem to be opposed to the wars, in order to get elected.

But the ‘one percent’ - the U.S. economic elite - do want the wars.

When World War II ended in 1945, the U.S. was the least-damaged major country on either side, and controlled the world economy. America’s wars since then - in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and the Mideast - have killed between 20 and 30 million people for the purpose of maintaining that control. Ordinary Americans have paid for these vicious wars, but they haven’t profited from them. 

The Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger wrote before the election, "The CIA has demanded Trump not be elected. Pentagon generals have demanded he not be elected. The pro-war New York Times - taking a breather from its relentless low-rent Putin smears - demands that he not be  elected. Something is up. These tribunes of 'perpetual war' are terrified that the multi-billion-dollar business of war by which the United States maintains its dominance will be undermined if Trump does a deal with Russian president Putin, then with China’s president Xi Jinping. Their panic at the possibility of the world’s great power talking peace – however unlikely – would be the blackest farce were the issues not so dire...”

We must demand that foreign military bases be closed, U.S. troops (and weapons) be brought home, and social support - including free medical care, education, and a universal basic income - be provided for Americans immiserated by generations of U.S. government wars.
~
[This flyer is distributed at events sponsored by AWARE, the ‘Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort’ of Champaign-Urbana <https://www.facebook.com/groups/305897426305/>.
AWARE meets every Sunday evening from 5 to 6pm at Hammerhead Coffee, 608 E. University Avenue - at Wright St. (parking on north side).
Everyone who opposes U.S. wars and wishes to build a local anti-war movement is invited to join us.]

—CGE