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A STRONGER AND MORE INCLUSIVE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT TO END THIS OBSCENE WAR
By Peter Bohmer

Delivered to the Ehren Watada rally at the gates of Ft. Lewis, WA
February 5, 2007

--Note: Remarks have been edited slightly for posting.

The Vietnamese resistance to the U.S. occupation in Vietnam, together with the growing resistance inside and outside the U.S. military, forced the U.S. to withdraw from Vietnam. We can and will do the same in Iraq, hopefully sooner than later.

The Bush administration has given many reasons for its invasion and occupation of Iraq.

First, regime change, which actually began under Clinton. Then, supposed WMD including nuclear weapons, also Iraq government support for 9/11 and Al Qaeda. And since April 2003, bringing democracy to Iraq, then rebuilding it, then stopping a civil war inside Iraq and a bloodbath if we withdrew, and now stopping a regional war and Middle East instability and/or stopping Iranian expansionism. The only constants are the lies and the destruction of Iraqi society that continues and worsens -- deaths, lack of electricity and water, unemployment, insecurity, and unimaginable and growing violence, almost two million fleeing the country.

What is behind the U.S. invasion and continued occupation?

It is not a mistake. Unfortunately U.S. covert and overt intervention to dominate other countries economically and politically to serve the profits of U.S. corporations has shaped U.S. foreign and military policy for over one hundred years and in the Middle East for seventy years.

The word for this is U.S. imperialism, which is about economic domination. In Iraq it means U.S. corporations like Exxon and Chevron controlling the exploration, refining, and marketing of oil; it means policy aimed at creating a neoliberal Iraq where taxes on rich Iraqis and foreign corporations are low and production is for profit, privatization, minimal social programs, so-called free trade, and most goods are imported -- in short, an unequal and unjust Iraq. U.S. policy makers also hope to create permanent military bases in Iraq to control the Middle East. They are committed to military domination and unchallenged military dominance of the world and of the Middle East and to turning that region into a U.S.-controlled neoliberal model for Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. These are neoconservative delusions. They have not been successful, but they haven’t given up.

Our response must be to demand immediate and complete U.S. withdrawal and no U.S. military bases.

The only acceptable U.S. role is payment of reparations to the Iraqi people, paid for by taxes on those have so obscenely profited, like Halliburton, and distributed to the Iraqis through neutral non-U.S. agencies. If the Iraqi people want peacekeepers, the Arab League and the U.N. should provide them. The U.S. isn’t and shouldn’t be trusted.

No more Iraqi lives destroyed! No more U.S. lives! Not in Our Name!!

What about a bloodbath if the U.S. withdraws? It is already happening. The U.S. military occupation makes it worse daily. Let Iraqi groups who are concerned about Iraq negotiate with each other about a peaceful and future Iraq. The U.S. withdrawal will isolate those involved in sectarian killing. Moreover, a major cause of violence -- the attacks on the U.S., and U.S. aggression and returning massive firepower to these attacks -- will end. There are no easy answers, but the U.S.’s continued presence makes the situation for Iraqis more dangerous and deadly, daily. We cannot be part of the solution.

The war is wrong. Winning should not be the goal. For the most part, the Democrats, and the Iraqi study group, disagree with the Bush administration only on tactics, how to maintain some control -- e.g., of oil. They ask the wrong questions. Our principled position must be like Ehren Watada’s -- the war is illegal and immoral. Our demand is for total U.S. withdrawal, before May Day, and support for military resisters. For the war is more than just bad policy.

“Support the troops” must mean also calling for U.S. withdrawal and ending the war -- otherwise our only concern is U.S. lives and we are not valuing Iraqi lives as equal to U.S. lives -- 700,000-plus Iraqis dead by now.

Let us mourn each one of these Iraqis and also mourn the more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers and the hundreds of their allies killed, with many times that number on both sides wounded for life.

Most people join the military here because of limited economic opportunities for themselves and their families. We should support the troops by organizing to create alternatives to enlisting by working for universal, single-payer health care, by fighting racism, by winning living wage jobs for all and the right to organize unions, as most troops are working-class people who are facing with their families an unjust and unequal society when they return. So supporting the troops means working for economic and social justice at home as we challenge this war and possible future wars, like in Iran. It also means supporting those who resist.

The estimates for the indirect and direct costs of the war are two trillion dollars and rising -- $20,000 per household in the U.S., and many times more than that in Iraq, plus the deaths, which do not have a price tag. Think what that money could do if it funded human needs like daycare, healthcare, reproductive rights, education, etc.

I am struck by how similar U.S. government strategy is in Iraq and New Orleans -- privatization of schools, militarization, destruction of housing, not valuing the lives of poor people in New Orleans or the Iraqi people, racism. We need to connect the war going on at home, here in the U.S., to the one in Iraq, by building movements for economic and social justice and peace. For example, I urge that people support and visit the Tent City in downtown Olympia on State and Columbia, where homeless people and their allies have built a peaceful tent city. Support their demands that the repressive, anti-street-people laws that went into effect on February 1 that outlaw panhandling, sitting on the sidewalk, and playing music without a license in downtown Olympia be repealed, and that more affordable housing be built.

No Justice! No Peace!

The Democrats are not without a strong movement in the streets going to end the war in Iraq nor create a decent society at home. At best, they can be pressured to do the right thing a little bit more easily than the Republicans. We are living in a period where the majority of people in the U.S. strongly oppose the war. They are looking for people like Ehren Watada, war resisters like Darrell Anderson, Agustin Aguayo, Suzanne Swift, and many other courageous individuals, and everyone here today to stand up and be bold and to give guidance by their actions and deeds on ending this obscene war. We need to build on this week’s actions to build a stronger and more inclusive antiwar movement that uses all tactics, from teach-ins to petitions to lobbying to large rallies to massive legal demonstrations to civil disobedience to protests, such as trying to stop war supplies that flow through our ports in Olympia and Tacoma, where we put our bodies on the line to stop this war and future ones and build a sustainable and just society based on need not greed.

Talk to and encourage your friends, families, neighbors, and co-workers to take small and big steps for justice and peace. Support Ehren Watada, support Iraq Vets Against the War, and all resisters, inside and outside the U.S. military to this unjust war.

Power to the People. Thank You!!