[van-discuss] CALL to ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: Stop war on Iraq beforeit starts!

[ernie yacub]

A CALL TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT:
Stop the war on Iraq before it starts!

By Brian Becker
(The writer is a co-director of the International Action Center and a 
member of the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition steering committee.)

It is imperative that all progressive working class and anti-war 
organizations organize now to try to stop the pending U.S. war against Iraq.

These progressive organizations should base their strategy and tactics on 
the assumption that the Bush administration is determined to attack Iraq 
and replace the current government with a puppet regime like the one that 
exists in Afghanistan.
Despite this Bush administration goal, however, there exist sufficient 
potential deterrents -- in the U.S. and around the world -- that could 
still prevent a new invasion.
A war on Iraq is a war of imperialism against an oppressed, formerly 
colonized people. It is a war for Big Oil against a country that dared to 
nationalize its oil fields and tried to use the revenues from that oil to 
help Iraq emerge as an independent modernizing regional power in the 
Persian/Arabian Gulf -- an area that contains two-thirds of the world's 
known oil reserves. The U.S. reserves for itself the right to be the only 
regional power in this oil-rich area.

Working people must not be taken in by the war propaganda of the White 
House. It's just propaganda aimed at justifying aggression against Iraq.

Bush and the Pentagon are planning a war not because they fear Saddam 
Hussein's potential to develop weapons of mass destruction, or because they 
are sickened by the undemocratic nature of the Iraqi government. Washington 
supports dictatorial monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It sends $15 
million a day to Israel while that government has invaded Lebanon, occupied 
the Palestinian territories and created a large, illegal arsenal of nuclear 
weapons.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR AS PRELUDE TO INVASION
The Bush administration for the last two weeks has engaged in a full-scale 
psychological war against the Iraqi regime and the people there. It is 
going out of its way to create an aura of inevitability about the coming 
conflict. This is a coordinated high-profile campaign designed to split the 
Iraqi government as a prelude to U.S. military action.

 From July 11-13, a CIA-supported gathering of hundreds of Iraqi military 
and political foes of Saddam Hussein in London announced a virtual 
government in exile. Notably present at the meeting was Jordan?s number two 
leader Crown Prince Hassan. Although Jordan has publicly opposed a new war 
against its larger neighbor, the western media on July 12 widely reported 
that the pro-U.S. monarchy has "agreed secretly to allow U.S. special 
forces to operate from two of its air bases" when the invasion takes place. 
(The Herald of Scotland, July 12)
Other lead articles have appeared in the major press of U.S. allies with 
screaming headlines like that in the July 16 National Post of Canada: "Iraq 
is bound to lose, quickly, completely." On the same day British Prime 
Minister Tony Blair went out of his way to tell the members of Parliament 
that his government will not be compelled to discuss with them any British 
participation in the coming war.

On July 14, Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's second ranking official and a 
leading cheerleader for the war, held a press conference in Turkey -- one 
site from which the U.S. attack is likely to be launched -- announcing that 
Turkey would reap ?economic" benefits from the overthrow of the Iraqi 
government. Turkey is experiencing a severe economic crisis and its 
government was on the verge of collapsing as Wolfowitz executed his widely 
covered saber-rattling media performance.

IMPACT OF ?LEAKED" WAR PLAN

The administration's psychological war, or Psyops as it is known in 
military parlance, began with special intensity when a top secret, 
five-inch thick, dossier detailing plans for an invasion of Iraq with 
250,000 troops was "leaked" to the New York Times. The Times on July 5 
featured the story prominently on the front page. It's follow-up editorial 
two days later did not dispute the legality or rightness of the planned 
aggression -- as it did so famously with the publication of the secret 
Pentagon Papers in June 1971 that increased public opposition to U.S. 
policy in Vietnam. The Times follow-up editorial to the July 5 Iraq 
invasion story only called for the tactics of the war plan to be debated in 
Congress and elsewhere.
Since the Times story on July 5, the print media and television have been 
dominated by a discussion of the tactics of the coming war. Should it be a 
large-scale invasion of hundreds of thousands of troops or a lightning-fast 
Special Operations accompanied by strategic bombing? The debate, limited 
exclusively to the "best tactics" of war, is designed to leave everyone -- 
in Iraq and among the public at home -- with the distinct impression that 
the military conflict is unavoidable, inevitable and thus impossible to 
resist.
  Which raises the question of who leaked the classified document to the New 
York Times in the first place?
"The Observer of London [newspaper] has been told that the leak ... came 
from within the Pentagon, from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the 
top professional soldiers who drew it up in the first place." (The 
Observer, July 14)
CAN THE WAR BE STOPPED?

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz grouping are creating an aura of 
inevitability around the war with two audiences in mind. They are hoping to 
split the Iraqi military -- hoping that sections of the Iraqi High Command 
will defect rather than face certain annihilation. But Bush and company are 
also trying to demoralize any, at home or abroad, who desire to challenge 
the war before it starts.
Bush and the Pentagon know the history of the Vietnam war and they actually 
fear the potential of massive anti-war resistance from Washington, D.C., to 
the streets of Cairo and Amman.
While the centers of pro-establishment liberalism are playing their usual 
frightened and collaborationist role in the face of the ultra-militarists, 
the genuine progressives and anti-imperialist fighters need to do 
everything in their power to mobilize grassroots opposition on every 
campus, high school, workplace and community.

While Bush slashes funds for education, housing, jobs and health care he is 
calling on the sons and daughters of the working class to kill and be 
killed in the desert of the Arabian peninsula for the sake of Exxon/Mobil, 
Texaco, Chase, Citibank and his corporate constituents. This war doesn't 
have to happen.  Now is the time for the anti-war movement to intensify its 
mobilization among working and poor people, and especially young people -- 
including those in uniform.

All anti-war forces should unite right now to launch an energetic and 
determined mobilization of the people -- in the United States and around 
the world. It is time to remind the war-makers of the inevitability of 
resistance to their plans for slaughter and destruction.

GET INVOLVED!
Go to http://www.internationalanswer.org for information about upcoming 
activities against a new U.S. war in Iraq, including the October 26 
Internationally Coordinated Day of Mass Actions and the January 18, 2003, 
National March on the White House in Washington DC.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
dc at internationalanswer.org
New York: 212-633-6646
Washington DC: 202-332-5757
Chicago: 773-878-0166
Los Angeles: 213-487-2368
San Francisco: 415-821-6545

International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.internationalanswer.org

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