Home > A Vietnam-War-Style Anti-War Movement Needed to Awaken Americans

A Vietnam-War-Style Anti-War Movement Needed to Awaken Americans

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 29 May 2005
15 comments

Wars and conflicts International USA

"Under international law, it is illegal, as Lord Goldsmith said, to attack a sovereign country for the purpose of toppling the government. It is illegal to even plan to do so. These crimes are known as conspiring to wage aggressive war and waging aggressive war. They were the two main offences for which Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg." Dan Gardner CanWest ’British Memo a Smoking Gun’

What will it take to finally awaken Americans to the illegal, cynically pre-mediated war?

American activists may agree that violence would be a poor tactic - playing right into the hands of those who only understand Liberty Valence-style politics - and the right tactic might therefore be economic or Vietnam-style marches and boycotts or maximum disruption non-violence.

Americans need to wake up to the reality that Iraq is Czechoslovakia and appeasement in ’38 all over again, but this time it’s us - an imperialist United States - expanding military belligerence globally, with Iran, the Caspian Basin and the South China Sea as possible trip wires for a near-future World War Three?

The recently leaked British memo cements together so much already known public evidence that the Bush Administration was going to attack Iraq regardless and that the WMD-terrorist, self-defense, argument for war was a cynical, deceitful construction. This is the globally understood reality.

There is abundant evidence of self-interest temptation - geo-strategic control of Iraq as control of the oil rich Middle East only the most important reason for regime change - and of premeditation and planning for a war of aggression stretching back into the 90’s, including public documents signed on to by key members of the Bush Administration.

Combine this real story of Iraq with America’s new, much more unilateralist foreign policy under the Bush Admin, and the aggressive military buildup including US military bases surrounding Russia and China, both of which have substantial nuclear weapons, and you have to wonder whether the American people and especially the American corporate media haven’t been slipped a mickey.

How is it possible that the fifth estate of the world’s greatest democracy can’t comprehend that Iraq is the crime of the century? That Bush’s contempt of truth, democracy and the rule of law is THE huge story, so much bigger than Watergate, than Iran-Contragate?

That we are living in the equivalent of Germany in the ’30s; and that dimly most Americans even realize that government has been captured and that America is the aggressor in Iraq and pushing in Asia towards possible nuclear war? That a very provocative America is sending a clear signal that it will use it’s overwhelming military power to secure what America needs - period?

If you lived in Germany in the 30’s and could see what was coming, would you have an obligation to try to stop Hitler’s government? The US corporate press is already captured; you couldn’t stand up and organize public education and dissent - although you could move to a neutral country to do so, but maybe ineffectively. You could have gone to Spain to try and help make a stand.

But given the nature of Nazi repression, given the lack of opportunity for legal, effective dissent - isn’t a Vietnam-War-Style nation-wide anti-war movement a necessity against an aggressive imperialist state stupidly pushing us all towards disaster?

(There are far too many citations to list concerning illegal war in Iraq, Bush Admin imperialism and the dangers of WW3. The Enviros Against War site’s Featured Reports page is a comprehensive source on these topics, including up to date commentary on the British memo’s importance in understanding the crime of the century.)

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%...

Forum posts

  • You are right. But it is even worse: let’s commit war crime and accuse others!

    The same nation which was once the driving power in Nuremberg should be in the same court today.

    Americas/British government is guilty, but the American press which performs an incredible propaganda act to justify any kind of war crime is even more guilty.

    ...forgive them, they don’t know what they do!

  • This is truly sad. Self determined rule requires communication among the people. That communication is the press. That is why the founding fathers made the first admendment the freedom of speech and the press. Without it only a despotism will arise in its place as it has today, and the press which is under the influence of money is only a prostitute doing her pimps bidding. America is now owned by the whore of money, and her backers. She no longer stands for the home of the free and the brave. We are now the home of the heartless, self serving, and the opressive power being led by men blinded by the power of profits and control above all else.

    It has happed before and it happened in the time of the founding of this country with the King of England who had become a tyrant unto his own people, and thus we as a group of individuals pressed forward and commited treason against such a force and penned the Declaration of Independence, and with in it are these sacred lines upone which we must act today, if we wish to preserve ours rights as men and women of honor, men and women of self respect, and men and women who love more than money our fellow humans and to live in peace with them not under the authority of those that seek to use our lives for their own ends, and those ends being untrue and unfit for the character of honor, truth, and human civility. At the heart of our independence lies our primary responsiblity - our oath to freedom as it were.. penned in on July 4th 1776 ....

    "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

    This then let it be our resolve as true patriots of our land, of America, let her rise up and stand against this tyranny against the people of America, Iraq, Palestine, and all over the world where those commit harm in our name ... It shall never happen again.

    May 30th, 2005 - Patriots of The New America

  • What is a prosperous, free Westerner doing parroting Al-Jazeera?

    In your haste to prove that Iraq is Vietnam, you urge people to engage in "Vietnam-War-Style" protests.

    Haven’t you been able to come up with anything new in the past 35 years?

    • Of all the things that will enable peace it will be the freedom of speech and demonstration that will be as it always has and will be the central act of expression against despontism. Only the commercial media that serves their immoral masters of money will claim to serve the people without giving the people a voice to express themselves. They being of the mind that the rest of the world is but for the taking and as they shall see the world belongs to no corporation, but to a free and peace loving people. For the day is nearing that the great merchants and her harlot the commercial media will fall. For only so long shall the people endure her ways, soon the people of the world will unite to declare their global independence from the corporation and her false god money.

      The Patriots of Peace

    • I compared today’s America with late ’30s Germany: captured gov’t, illegal war for imperialistic reasons, military build up and unilateralist foreign policy. I haven’t seen this on al-Jazeerah - could you post me the link.

      Two kids, a wonderful life in Gibsons, more rugby games played in the last 30 years than all but a very small handful of guys have played, the definitive Suistained Yield website and a ton more. What have you been doing - trying to appear prosperous?

    • "Havent you been able to come up with anything new in the past 35 years?"

      It is better to go with the tried ant true, stick with what works. Never let them silence you keep shouting the truth until no one will believe the lies any longer......

    • "Hasn’t the anti-war movement thought of anything new in the past 35 years?" Give me a break...haven’t you warmongers thought of any other way to solve problems in the past 35 years? Hell no, you all haven’t learned one thing and now my 20 year-old son, a reservist with the National Guard (as in America’s National Guard) is now pulling International Guard duty in Iraq. All because you folks swallowed Bush lies , haven’t you figured out he’s raping this country? You will when your standard of living drops to the third world status.
      Sorry you had to see it on AlJazeera-they won’t print anything that doesn’t pass the White House test in this country....Thanks for nothing, sucker....now we all pay.

  • When are these hippies and lefties going to leave the country? They keep threatening to leave for Canada and Sweden and they still haven’t left. Now this idiot is asking for an anti-war movement when the war for the most part is already over. This moron should just go back to his acid trip.

    • When are the idiot righties going to get their asses over to Iraq and let the Iraqis give them a bullet in the head or a good car bomb. The world needs a good cleansing, put the trash out....

    • The "righties" are just loud mouthed cowards like Bush himself haven’t you noticed. They love Bushco and their Iraq mess as long as their lives are not impacted by it just like Bush. As the army national guard is now unable to fill its quotas for enlistment, I think it should turn to the voter list and anyone who voted for the murdering Bush bastard should have to go to Iraq to fight in his war and any others he starts while he is still occupying the white house.

    • Yes indeed, I like the idea of using the voter list to draft-it’s really the only moral thing to do...get my son home from the hell hole he didn’t sign on for...then take out the trash, the world will be a much better place with less yahoos and more heros-like people who choose the Constitution over W.

    • Nobody signs on for a war but if you enlist in the military you have to be ready for a war to happen. Also what do you mean by choosing the constitution over W? The attack on Iraq was ratified by our own legislative body by an overwhelming majority.

    • 68.***.161.** has good intentions, but should read The Constitution more closely!

    • Little by little, we’re winning this back. The Iraqi resistance will never quit and slowly our economy is crumbling.

      Sure the righties will say, "you hate America," and I’ll tell them they’re part right and part wrong. The America I love is the one which doesn’t wage wars for money, isn’t controlled by corporations, rigged elections, corrupt politicians, a deluded, moronic, apathetic public and a controlled press.

      The America I love champions freedom, equal rights for all, fairness, justice and honesty. I don’t see that in America today and espeically not in the government and corporate America.

      So yes, I hate the America of 2005, and I want to replace it ASAP. Shut the right wing down, impeach the criminals and let’s get back to being a good citizen of the world.

      My adivce is simple. Tell everybody how you feel. Keep telling them how you feel. Only yesterday, my aunt, an elderly admirer of Bush, admitted that she thought we’d been in Iraq too long and the boys (and girls) should come home. On Memorial Day, of all days, it really made my day!

      An anti-war movement will never occur without a draft, so forget the protest tactic. Economic protests, such as strikes, removing all your funds from you retirement plans (don’t worry about the 10% penalty, you’ll probably lose that much in the next year if you leave the money where it is), stop shopping at Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobile, basically destroy the corporate bastards with non-support.

      Keep the faith!

    • But you left out the part that it was ALL BASED ON LIES, just a little fact overlooked? Na you just don’t want to face facts like all of the selective knowledge of the right wing not very bright supporters.