At the demonstration last week to mark UFPJ’s Iraq Moratorium we marched from City Hall to the IVAW guard tower installation in Acacia Park. On the way we chanted a call: “WHOSE WAR?!” with the response: “BUSH’S WAR!” It was not the time to quibble between protesters, but should it really not have been “YOUR war?”
It is OUR war now isn’t it? We are engaged in it, the Democrats in congress are funding it, we support the troops who are fighting it. It’s OUR war. We might prefer to say it belongs to the idiots among us, but now they’re pointing the finger back at us. It’s our war, YOUR and MY war unless you have an alibi.
It seems to me the antiwar effort can no longer even be about THE war, nor just about Iraq or Afghanistan. The objective now is to resist empire. Repudiate imperialism.
It’s no longer about extracting our boys to bring them home. We’re over there for keeps, to share the fate of the victims of the destabilized hell we have unleashed. Now the antiwar pacifist message has become defeatist, by imperialist standards. We must ask our soldiers now to take their fingers off their joy sticks, quit playing the conquering occupiers, become a repentant reconstruction force, and serve their time working to pay off our nation’s war debt.
Just when it appears that the citizenry of this country must be the ones to stand up and put a stop to this illegal war, the House of Representatives has dropped another bomb. This time on its own citizens.
Under a suspension of the House rules on passing legislation this October, the House of Representatives passed the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act in an overwhelming 400 to six House vote.
Is there any wonder that there was absolutely no coverage of this bill in any of the media that would claim to be informing us? It not for the program Democracy Now!, I wouldn’t have known about it.
The bill was based on a report by the Rand Corporation, who incidently, had a link to the counterinsurgency campaign during the Vietnam War. It focuses primarily, not on religious extremist groups, but on anti-globalization groups, environmentalists and anarchists. Groups who, by coincidence, the Bush administration is currently having disaggrements.
However, it was the Democratic majority (House) that passed this bill so quickly and quietly with the help of their Republican counterparts.
What will this mean for these groups and others in the USA who oppose the policies of current and future administrations.
Wrong frame! It’s not a war. We won the war. We’re now in occupation mode. Occupations are not won or lost. Occupations are ended. If this occupation is not ended and soon it will morph into another war (with Iran).