International Action Center – 2005-07-09 00:30:00
While the people of London and worldwide were grieving for those who were slain and injured, and as the International Action Center extends heartfelt sympathy and condolences to all who have lost loved ones in today’s bombings in London, the Bush Administration has wasted no time in taking advantage of tragedy to once again advance its own agenda of endless war and colonial occupation.
The news is not that bombs killed more than 40 people today; it is that those people live in London rather than Basra. The US and British occupation of Iraq causes the death of an average of 20 people a day, every day.
Bush and Blair do not stop their meetings to grieve over these deaths, nor do the news channels stop everything to give round the clock updates on these casualties because the victims of these crimes are Iraqi civilians and their deaths are considered unimportant by the corporate-owned media and politicians.
In his response to the events in London today, Bush declared,”the war on terror goes on,” signalling that he will cynically use this tragedy to justify the continued occupation of Iraq, an occupation that brings death, destruction, and torture to the people of Iraq on a daily basis.
Bush and Blair claim to be fighting terror, but everything they have said so far has been a lie. The truth is that their illegal war and the ongoing occupations of Iraq, Palestine, Haiti, and Afghanistan are themselves acts of terror.
We cannot allow George W. Bush to manipulate genuine feelings of grief and anguish to justify a violent occupation of Iraq, which has left families grieving for 100,000 dead, many more injured, and thousands imprisoned and tortured. The incident today cannot be used to rain greater destruction on the people of Baghdad, Najaf, and Gaza.
The Bush Administration raised the terror alert to orange and Bush said that he had been in contact with the Department of Homeland Security and other police and security forces, instructing them to be “extra vigilant.”
We know from the past several years what this “vigilance” has meant to Arab and Muslim communities — mass roundups and detentions, deportations, disappearances, and rendition. We must be vigilant and take action to stop the Administration from using today’s tragedy to perpetrate more harassment, violence, and abuse on Arab and Muslim people.
We do not know who was behind the events today. We do know that as hundreds of thousands of people were gathered to protest the G-8 policies of corporate global plunder, Bush and Blair are exploiting today’s tragedy to advance their agenda of global domination. We know that we must continue to do everything in our power to oppose that agenda.
The only way to respond to today’s bombing is to extend condolences to the families of those who perished or were injured; build solidarity with people around the world struggling against war, racism, and colonial occupation; to stand in solidarity with Arab and Muslim communities who have been targeted by the Bush Administration; and to continue building the movement to stop the oppression that inevitably brings resistance.
The International Action Center http://www.iacenter.org mail to:iacenter@iacenter.org
