World Can’t Wait / San Francisco – 2015-03-18 00:48:39
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/calls-to-action/8668-sign-on-letter-to-people-of-iran
ACTION ALERT: Sign-on Letter to People of Iran
Debra Sweet / World Can’t Wait
(March 14, 2015) — Since some reactionary US Senators wrote a threatening letter to the government of Iran (which has its own legitimacy problems), we are circulating a sign-on letter from people in the US to the people of Iran.
The ANSWER coalition initiated this yesterday. We’re adapting it and asking you to sign on, and share it widely. The letter makes two key points:
1. The United States is in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed by the Senate, and having the force of law under the US Constitution. The violations are failure to eliminate the US nuclear arsenal under its Treaty pledge of “general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” It possesses thousands of operational nuclear weapons that it is not destroying.
The US is also failing to “pursue negotiations in good faith” with other nations for the achievement of nuclear disarmament.
2. The United States also provides more than $4 billion in military and economic aid to the state of Israel although Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or allow outside inspectors, and does not deny that it possesses a considerable arsenal of nuclear weapons.
â–º Sign the Open Letter to People of Iran from People in the US
While we’re protesting next week, around the US on the 12th anniversary of the US invasion & occupation of Iraq, we will be demanding no US attack on Iran. Since 9/11, US presidents have either been openly threatening Iran (Bush II) or imposing heavier sanctions and bullying diplomacy (Obama). None of this is the interests of the worlds’ people, particularly when the belligerent with all the weapons is the only one who has ever used nukes.
This is a good time to take the IRAN: Who Is the Real Threat? Quiz — even though you now have an unfair advantage by reading the letter!
Question #1
What country in the Middle East refuses to confirm or deny that it has a nuclear weapons program and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferaion Treaty?
Question #2
What country agreed to be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and opened up its country to IAEA inspectors?
Question #3
What country has the IAEA severely criticized for falsifying information on Iran’s nuclear program?
Question #4
What country(ies) has/have ever used nuclear weapons on civilian populations?
12 Years Since the “Shock & Awe”
Invasion of Iraq: Stop the Endless War!
No More War US War on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen
World Can’t Wait
(March 11, 2015) — US bombings, economic strangulation through sanctions, and occupation of Iraq for 24 years are responsible for uncounted deaths — possibly over 1 million — leaving a third of the population displaced, in need of emergency aid or dead. The US began bombing Iraq again this summer, and now Syria, based on the lie that Islamic State groups represent an immediate threat to the US
The current problem is NOT that the US finally withdrew military forces from Iraq in 2012, but its illegitimate invasions in 1991 and 2003. The US occupation was conducted in a lawless way, destroying their education, legal, medical, water, sewage, security and electrical systems. When Iraqis rebelled, Bush’s “surge” in 2007 handed out arms to Sunni and Shia, supporting death squads on both sides to set them against each other.
The US withdrawal left what had been a relatively secular country split along sectarian lines, with a weak puppet government, and a huge opening for Islamic fundamentalists to push for religious rule.
Islamic State = BAD
US War for Empire = Even WORSE
No party in this fight, not Islamic militias, not the new Iraqi government — paid for by the US — and certainly not the war machine of the US itself, has “right” on its side. Tomahawk missiles fired from US carriers in the Persian Gulf, drone strikes and bombs can only bring unimaginable suffering to the Iraqi people.
We in the US must speak out against any US attacks on Iraq & Syria. By exposing and standing against the lies and crimes of our government, whether by Bush or Obama, we can make a difference in how people see what’s going on.
Months of cable “news” repeating Pentagon press releases, has created a situation where people in the US are supporting more war on Iraq — and now on Syria — based on lies.
Huge numbers — enough to elect a Democrat as president in 2008 — had come to oppose the Bush regime’s unjust and immoral war on Iraq. But now, too many people are drawn back into accepting new wars, on the basis that “something has to be done about ISIS.”
The Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) is both a direct result of US occupation and policies. ISIL’s leadership core was also literally produced by US torture in Iraqi prisons; by billions of dollars in US arms strewn about the region; and funded by close US allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, societies where people also have scarcely any rights. The Islamic State offers a disastrous future for the people, and is no damn good.
Bush’s 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) set into motion the drone war, torture, and mass warrantless spying. Under Obama’s proposed AUMF the government will be free to wage endless, expanding wars all over the world without geographic limits. All of this imperial military doctrine is absolutely illegal, whether Congress approves it or not.
But US occupations, bombs, economic exploitation, and support of every reactionary regime in the region have done more damage, by far, than any Islamic fundamentalist group in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the Bush regime that sold the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq — countries which never attacked the US — on the basis of defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda, only to have strengthened the basis on which they operate.
The US military cannot do anything to stop the violence of ISIS. NOTHING good can come from US bombing, and we need to say so immediately and widely. Join us.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
