The Minneapolis (Minnesota) Star Tribune accurately portrayed the local peace march and rally that took place this past Sunday and appropriately featured it as Monday morning’s number one story ‘above the fold’ on it’s front page along with an excellent photograph:
Thousands of Minneapolis protesters march against Iraq war (Minneapolis Star Tribune, Monday, March 19th, 2007).
This is yet another sign of steadily growing citizen opposition to the disastrous, failed policies of President Bush along with Saturday’s March on the Pentagon and similar protests around the nation and the world. The effectiveness of citizen protest and calls for peace, however, is certainly questionable as peace advocates marched once again in what is becoming an Iraq invasion anniversary tradition.
President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made it abundantly clear that no matter what the new majority of Democrats in Congress pass as legislation in opposition to the war it will be vetoed, ignored or otherwise circumvented. This war will continue. Innocent Iraqis will continue to suffer terribly – caught in the middle between their American occupiers, the ‘insurgent’ resistance and the battling opposing forces of the burgeoning Sunni-Shiite civil war.
By this time next year another thousand American families will have flag-draped caskets come home instead of sons, daughters, fathers or mothers. The number of horrendously damaged souls doomed to be relegated to holding cardboard signs on our street corners over the next couple of decades goes up every day.
No amount of protesting, no amount of candle-wax burned, no amount of letter writing, calls or e-mails of complaint to our Representatives and Senators will end this war.
The war was illegal from the start as a preemptive War of Aggression banned by the Geneva Accords. The Bush Administration clearly knew Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States and yet ordered the attack and occupation anyway of the sovereign nation whose only real crime was having the audacity to live on top of one of the world’s largest oil fields.
We American citizens were lied to. The world was lied to. Most critically, Congress was lied to. The “intelligence was fixed to justify the policy” as made clear by the Downing Street Memo.
The plans to invade Iraq were clarified in 1998 according to the ‘Project for a New American Century’ think tank Neo-cons who just needed a “new Pearl Harbor” to justify it. This was made clear in an article published as: Rebuilding America’s Defenses (page 51).
Participants in PNAC included:
- Vice President Dick Cheney
- Cheney’s recently convicted former top aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby CIA leaker
- World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz
- U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad
- Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Not Gone?
- Former Florida Governor and George W. Bush’s brother Jeb Bush
- Former UN Ambassador John Bolton
- Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage CIA leaker
- Former “Drug Czar” William Bennett
- Former Vice President Dan Quayle
- Fellow high profile conservatives Richard Perle, William Kristol and others.
The authors of the PNAC document got their “New Pearl Harbor” wish on September 11th, 2001 and the Bush Administration has ardently suppressed and derailed legitimate attempts to thoroughly investigate the financing, planning, execution and cover up of the crimes of 9/11 ever since.
Despite there not being an iota of truth to the Administration’s claims of Saddam’s connections to Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or 9/11, they are still talking about them all in the same breath repeatedly to manipulate the uninformed. Even so, America’s patience with this war is plummeting, yet public opinion holds no sway with these war criminals the Hague is considering prosecuting along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The “War on Terror” is an eternal commitment to imperialism, it isn’t a conflict that can be won because the declared enemy isn’t a nation state nor is it a people group. It is a quasi-military tactic. We might as well declare war against bullets.
The Iraq War is not ending, it is escalating. The next escalation is already assured. Covert pre-op military actions are already taking place across the border in Iran. Iran is almost certain to be attacked by the U.S. and/or Israel within the next few months. National Democratic Party leadership pressure and American Citizen pressure may have delayed this, but it is still in the works. There is a fourth aircraft carrier group heading to the Gulf as a “replacement” to arrive very soon. The likely timing for an attack is while all four carrier groups are there and before one group is rotated out.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) had the courage, the integrity and basic common sense to recognize that there is only one way to pull the plug on this American war-for-profit machine last Thursday when he spoke to the House of Representatives:
“This House cannot avoid its Constitutionally authorized responsibility to restrain the abuse of Executive power.
The Administration has been preparing for an aggressive war against Iran. There is no solid, direct evidence that Iran has the intention of attacking the United States or its allies.
The US is a signatory to the UN Charter, a constituent treaty among the nations of the world. Article II, Section 4 of the UN Charter states, “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. . .” Even the threat of a war of aggression is illegal.
Article VI of the US Constitution makes such treaties the Supreme Law of the Land. This Administration, has openly threatened aggression against Iran in violation of the US Constitution and the UN Charter.
This week the House Appropriations committee removed language from the Iraq war funding bill requiring the Administration, under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution, to seek permission before it launched an attack against Iran.
Since war with Iran is an option of this Administration and since such war is patently illegal, then impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran.”
| “Impeachment may well be the only remedy which remains to stop a war of aggression against Iran.” – Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) |
If we American citizens are not working for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney and the removal from office of their entire Administration we are not working for peace. Other efforts are noble, well-intended and honorable but absolutely impotent in the face of this voraciously bloodthirsty evil.
Martin Luther King had to take his legion across the bridge into a bloodbath provoked by a racist police force in Selma, Alabama and Mahatma Ghandi marched his followers to the sea in resistance to the British military in order for true change to occur. It is long past time for the citizens of this nation, so many of whom call themselves Christians, to ‘storm the temple’ as Jesus of Nazareth did and evict the moneychangers in the White House utilizing the authority granted us in our Constitution. That authority and mechanism for accountability and justice is called impeachment.
Who is ready to march with a petition of memorial to their Representative insisting on justice through impeachment for war crimes? We’ve been asking nicely for peace for four years (much longer for many, I know). It is time that we demand the Justice that is the only way through which Peace will come:
Parents, when ‘asking nice’ accomplishes absolutely nothing, know the next method of healthy discipline for their children is to be more authoritative. It is time to take away their toys.
Time out Mr. Bush.
Time out Mr. Cheney.
Time out.
Peaceful marchers: See you at next year’s rally or are you ready to realize “the only remedy that remains” to secure the peace you seek is impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney?