[Peace] 3,000, Saddam, and the New Year

Sat Dec 30 13:50:49 CST 2006

3,000th troop casualty, Saddam, and the New Year…

Dear Friends for Peace:

We are fast approaching the New Year, a time to pause and reflect on the state
of the world and on our personal roles in affecting social change. 

As of noon on December 30th, 2,998 U.S.
troops have died in Iraq (see Iraq Coalition Casualties here). 
At the current rate of attacks on U.S. forces, within the next 24
hours, 3,000 troops will have become casualties of a war for oil and
empire that has no end in
sight.  3,000 is a significant marker.  U.S. casualties now outnumber the
victims of 9/11 and have reached the highest levels since the Vietnam War.  Yet 3,000, while significant and a symbol of national
shame, pales in comparison to the number of Iraqi casualties that have soared
to 654,965 deaths as of July, 2006, according to the British medical journal, The Lancet (see study here). 

Our anger and grief extends to both the Iraqi people whose lives have been
destroyed by our government's policies and to the U.S.
servicemen and women, many of whom are working-class, poor and poorly educated,
and include even "green card soldiers," those serving in order to gain U.S.
citizenship (read about "green card soldiers" here).  As Eugene Debs so
eloquently argued in his fiery Canton,
 Ohio Speech in 1918: "The master
class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the
battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the
subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose — especially their lives." 

Debs' passionate speech earned him a prison sentence of 10 years under the
Sedition Act.  He served two years and
eight months for merely voicing dissent towards militarism and war.  Debs actions are a reminder of the long
history of struggle and resistance to immoral and unjust wars that have been a
hallmark of American radicalism. 

But in a less quoted passage from Debs' famous speech, his words
provide guidance for rebuilding the struggles for social justice today.  When confronted with the threat of jail, Debs
called on activists to take inspiration and to do their part: "Do not worry over
the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that
involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any
good cause on earth. . . .destroy all enslaving and degrading capitalist
institutions and re-create them as free and humanizing institutions. . . . We
are inviting—aye challenging you this afternoon in the name of your own manhood
and womanhood to join us and do your part" (full text of Debs' speech here).

Heeding Debs words, we urge you to "do your part."  Now more than ever, the need to rebuild and
reinvigorate the antiwar movement could not be more urgent.  Make a New Year's Resolution to join the
movement to stop the war and bring the troops home now.  But even more, dedicate time in your life to help
convince others of the need to make 2007 the year of social change!

Below are FOUR ACTIONS that you can do to make a difference:

1. 

Join hundreds of groups, and
thousands who oppose the

war in a national PROTEST IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

***JANUARY 27, 2007***

Transportation is being organized from the University of Illinois
at 

Urbana-Champaign by the Campus Anti-War Network and the 

International Socialist Organization.  Now, more than ever it is 

crucial to demand the U.S.
get out of Iraq.

EVEN after millions clearly showed their opposition to

the war by voting out the Republicans in November, the

White House and Congressional leaders (of both

parties) are talking about sending as many as 40,000

more troops to Iraq!
We need to demonstrate to show

that we want the war to END NOW!!!

Please RSVP and reserve your spot in our transportation caravan.  

We are working towards securing a bus. 

Contact Tom Miebach at: miebach2 at uiuc.edu

OR 

Call: 217 377-9022

No more blood for oil!

Bring the troops home now!

2. 

Attend "The Main Event" Monthly
Anti-War Demonstration. Join us on the first Saturday of each month, 2 - 4 pm,
this January 6, at the corner of 
Main
St. and Neil St. rain, wind or shine. Our primary theme is "OCCUPATION
IS NOT LIBERATION". For more information contact Ricky at 328-3037 or by e-mail to baldwinricky at yahoo.com
.

3. 

*****please SIGN and CIRCULATE
widely****

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/OutNow/

Why we stand for immediate withdrawal of all U.S.

troops from Iraq

THE U.S. occupation of Iraq
has not liberated the

Iraqi people, but has made life worse for most Iraqis.

Tens of thousands of U.S.
service people have been

killed or maimed, and hundreds of thousands of

innocent Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of

the U.S.
invasion in 2003, the ongoing occupation, and

the violence unleashed by them.

Iraq's infrastructure has
been destroyed, and U.S.

plans for reconstruction abandoned. There is less

electricity, less clean drinking water, and more

unemployment today than before the U.S. invasion.

All of the justifications initially provided by the

U.S. for waging war on Iraq have been exposed as lies;

the real reasons for the invasion; to control Iraq's

oil reserves and to increase U.S.
strategic influence

in the region; now stand revealed.

The Bush administration has insisted again and again

that stability, democracy, and prosperity are around

the next bend in the road. But with each day that the

U.S.
stays, the violence and lack of security facing

Iraqis worsen. The U.S. says
that it cannot withdraw

its military because Iraq
will collapse into civil war

if it does. But the U.S. has
deliberately stoked

sectarian divisions in its ongoing attempt to install

a U.S.-friendly regime, thus driving Iraq towards

civil war.

The November elections in the United States
sent a

clear message that voters reject the Iraq
war, and

opinion polls show that seven in 10 Iraqis want the

U.S.
to leave sooner rather than later. Even most U.S.

military and political leaders agree that staying the

course in Iraq
is a policy that is bound to fail.

Yet all the various alternative plans for Iraq
now

being discussed in Washington, including those

proposed by House and Senate Democrats, aren't about

withdrawing the U.S.
military from Iraq.
Rather, these

strategies are about continuing the pursuit of U.S.

goals in Iraq and the larger
Middle East using

different means.

Even the proposal to redeploy U.S.
troops outside of

Iraq, a plan favored by many
Democratic Party leaders,

envisions continued U.S.
intervention inside Iraq.

With former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

insisting that a military victory in Iraq is no longer

possible and (Ret.) Lt. Gen. William Odom calling for

"complete withdrawal" of all U.S. troops, the antiwar

movement should demand no less than the immediate

withdrawal of the U.S. military; as well as

reparations to the Iraqi people, so they can rebuild

their own society and genuinely determine their own

future.

We call on the U.S. to get
out of Iraq;
not in six

months, not in a year, but now.

4. 

On New Year's Day, wear your Anti-War Shirt and Buttons.  Tell a friend about
the Anti-War Movement and how to get involved.  Make the New Year
the start of your greater involvement in rebuilding the movement to BRING THE
TROOPS HOME NOW!

The execution of Saddam…What We Think!

We Created Him.  We Destroyed Him.

The U.S.
relationship with Saddam Hussein began when the CIA recruited him to organize a
1959 assassination of radical nationalist Iraqi president Abdel Karim Qasim.
Saddam botched the job. So the CIA helped him escape to Syria, and then paid to support him in Egypt for the
following four years, according to United Press International (UPI) reporter
Richard Sale.

The CIA chose Saddam's authoritarian, anticommunist Baath Party "as its
instrument" in Iraq,
former National Security Agency staffer Roger Morris told Sale. Sale's
informants disputed whether the CIA--and President John F. Kennedy--was behind
the 1963 Baathist coup that overthrew Qasim. But they all agreed the CIA took
advantage of the situation to eliminate challengers to Baathist rule.

The CIA supplied Baathist national guardsmen with lists of communists and
activists. The Baathists used the list to torture and execute thousands. Saddam
presided over the mass executions. "We were frankly glad to be rid of
them," a former U.S. State Department official told the UPI reporter.
"You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to [be] kidding. This was
serious business."

Despite all the huffing and puffing about Saddam's cruelty emanating
from Washington and the media punditocracy, the history shows
that the U.S.
built up Saddam and the Baathist dictatorship it now claims to oppose.

Iraqi-U.S. relations had a renaissance in the early 1980s after the U.S. lost its preferred Persian
 Gulf strongman, the Shah of Iran, in the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Recently declassified documents posted on the National Security Archive's Web
site tell the story of U.S.
collaboration with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Only a few months after Reagan took power in 1981, the U.S. interests section in Baghdad
wrote the State Department to urge increased ties with Iraq because there was "a greater
convergence of interests with Iraq
than at any time since the revolution of 1958."

As it increased military, intelligence and economic aid to Iraq, the U.S.
knew that Iraq
was using chemical weapons against Iranian and Kurdish forces. "We also
know that Iraq has acquired
a CW [chemical weapons] production capability, presumably from Western firms,
including possibly a U.S.
foreign subsidiary," a memo to Secretary of State George Shultz said.

The U.S. strategy was to criticize Iraq's use of chemical weapons, but to
more strongly condemn Iran's "intransigent refusal to deviate from its
avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring
Iraq," a 1984 "talking points" memo circulated in the State
Department read.

In 1984, the U.S. helped
to derail a Security Council resolution condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons.
Commenting on behind-the-scenes maneuvering to water down the resolution, a
State Department memo assured that the accepted text "contains all three
elements [Iraq's
UN ambassador] wanted."

Another 1984 State Department memo recommends the U.S. allow trade with "Iraqi
nuclear entities" known to be developing nuclear weapons.

President Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld on two high-level missions to Iraq   in 1983
and 1984. A State Department cable summarizing Rumsfeld's 1983 meeting speaks
of Saddam's "obvious pleasure" with a letter from Reagan that
Rumsfeld delivered.

Of course, all of these good feelings came to an end when Iraq
invaded Kuwait in 1990. Overnight, Saddam's
regime went from being allies to Hitlerian fascists. But Saddam hadn't
changed.
Washington's
assessment of his reliability had. And so he had to be removed and
utilized in a new light.  Saddam became a scapegoat for the failed
strategies of U.S. policy in the Middle East and a false symbol of
Iraqi resistance.  False that is, because the resistance to U.S. empire
extends far beyond the former Baath Party to include widespread anger
over the U.S. occupation by the Iraqi people themselves.  Saddam had to
be executed, as a symbol for all that had gone wrong...

For both Republicans and
Democrats, the execution of
Saddam isn't an event marking the end of crimes against humanity or for
Iraqis to control their own lives. Rather, it's a
signal for even more U.S. violence in Iraq and greater attempts by the
U.S. "master class" to exploit Iraq for oil--and increase the
repression necessary to facilitate it.  

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