Council for a Livable World & The World Can’t Wait & Revolution – 2014-08-10 01:27:13
http://livableworld.org/iraq2014_august8/
ACTION ALERT: No New War in Iraq
Angela Canterbury / Council for a Livable World
WASHINGTON, DC (August 8, 2014) — This morning, the US military launched airstrikes on targets in northern Iraq in an effort to counter the Islamic militants who call themselves the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). These are the first US bombs dropped on Iraq since we ended the war in 2011.
There is no military solution to the awful events unfolding in Iraq. It’s imperative that the US refrain from getting pulled back into war in the Middle East. US involvement in Iraq has gone from a few hundred troops, to a few hundred more, to — as of this morning — dropping bombs.
While it’s important for us to protect US personnel in Iraq, and provide non-lethal humanitarian assistance to help the victims there, another US-led military campaign cannot solve Iraq’s situation in the long term.
This isn’t a war we can win: Bombs will not end the conflict and they risk doing more harm than good. Let’s not fight it at all.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress agree with us: just a few weeks ago, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan resolution that called for Congress to vote on any expanded military engagement in Iraq. This shows extraordinary across-the-board opposition to a new war.
We’ve been down this road before. Please sign our petition to tell President Obama: No more war in Iraq! Thanks for making your voice heard.
Angela Canterbury is the Executive Director of the Council for a Livable World.
US Bombs Won’t Save Iraqi Lives
The World Can’t Wait
(August 8, 2014) — George H.W. Bush; Bill Clinton; W. Bush and now Barack Obama have an unbroken streak of bombing Iraq.
Let us say as strongly as we can, that the bombing begun overnight in Kurdish areas — no matter who “asked” for it to be done — is outrageously dangerous, will not “save civilians,” but instead will endanger them further. Rather than protecting people in harm’s way, US bombs and secret operations are a message to other powers that no one else will be allowed to run Iraq.
The US always says it’s bombing/selling arms/torturing to “keep us safe” from whatever group it identifies as the most dangerous target of the “war” on terror.
Each time, a US president bombed Iraq, from 1990 on, whether the stated reasons were removing Saddam Hussain, breaking a fabricated connection with Al Qaeda, or finding weapons of mass destruction, the actual national security need was always keeping control of that strategic, oil-rich region.
This time, it is complicated. US military domination of the region, from Afghanistan across a sweep to Egypt, has increased the attraction of Islamic fundamentalism as a way of resisting western empire. US occupation in Iraq and support for the murderous, torturing Maliki regime created the conditions by which Iran has been strengthened in the region, and ISIS has gained a following. But US re-intervention in Iraq will only create more instability.
Thanks to World Can’t Wait activists in Chicago, San Francisco Bay area, and Seattle, who have gotten right out on the streets to protest the US bombing of Iraq.
Protesters Gather in San Francisco Over US Military Action in Iraq
Bay City News
The United States is the
SOURCE of the Problem in Iraq,
Stop the Bombing!
Revolution Newspaper
(August 8, 2014) — Today, the US started bombing Iraq. Again.
They say they are about protecting people from brutal Islamic fundamentalists who threaten tens of thousands of refugees on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. But more than anything else, it is the United States that has created the nightmare that is Iraq today.
The US ruthlessly bombed Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, killing 100,000-200,000 people. The US continued to bomb and sanction Iraq for the rest of the decade, killing over 500,000 children — with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright saying in response to being questioned about those deaths, “We think the price is worth it.” At the time that Madeleine Albright made this statement, she was the US ambassador to the United Nations.
The US bombed Iraq massively during the 2003 invasion, a war and eight-plus-year occupation that caused the death of over 600,000 Iraqis, and drove over 4 million people from their homes. The US wars and occupation fueled and escalated conflicts between different religious sects and religious fundamentalism in Iraq.
And all this was justified by claims that the US actions were “humanitarian,†or they were acting to liberate the Iraqi people. The LAST thing the people of Iraq need is more “humanitarian†help from the country RESPONSIBLE for the humanitarian crises in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, and everywhere else the US drops its bombs.
Madeleine Albright: The Deaths of 500,000 Iraqi Children ‘Was Worth It’
(December 27, 2012) — Madeleine Albright and Bill Richardson asked about killing 500,000 Iraqi children in the 1990s. The sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s caused, according to the United Nations the death of 500,00 Iraqi Children.
Genocide-Enablers Have No Right
To Talk About “Preventing Genocide”
Revolution
(August 8, 2014) — In announcing US bombing raids on Iraq on 8/7/14, Barack Obama declared:
“[T]housands — perhaps tens of thousands — are now hiding high up on the mountain, with little but the clothes on their backs. They’re without food, they’re without water. People are starving. And children are dying of thirst.”
And “innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.”
And that under these conditions, “the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide.”
This from the head of state of the country that has for decades, and in recent weeks on a savage and horrific scale, is enabling Israel to massacre the Palestinian people of Gaza, to kill their children, to bomb their schools and power plants, to starve nearly two million people and maintain a constant state of destruction and terror.
The head of state of the country that is ENABLING GENOCIDE in Gaza at this very moment has no right to speak when it comes to “preventing genocide.”
