Proud people don’t like to be occupied. Nor do they relish their own genocide.

From a speech Ed Kinane gave regarding Iraq and the question, “What next?”
Clinton Square, downtown Syracuse
Noon to 1pm, November 3, 2004
By Ed Kinane

Friends, if - as seems likely — Mr. Bush is finally elected President, he will move very quickly to consolidate his agenda. Given this frightening prospect, let me recall three classic words of advice: illegitimus non carborundum, don’t let the bastards wear you down. Mother Jones said it even more proactively, Don’t mourn, organize. When we leave this rally today, we have no choice but to get back to work.

Now, just because the candidate many of us voted for may still be in the running doesn’t mean the election wasn’t stolen from us. Fact is, the corporations stole our elections and our democracy decades ago…. But if we found ourselves voting for a candidate whose major policies we majorly disagreed with, this election was further stolen from us.

Our task, beginning today, regardless of who wins, is to retrieve our stolen goods, to retrieve our democracy. The first step, I believe, is to work like hell to end the US war on Iraq. It is that war I want to talk about today.

Mr. Kerry frames his policy toward the war not as a matter of conscience. This, I believe, has been his fatal flaw. His policy was to outflank Mr. Bush, to steal Mr. Bush’ thunder. Mr. Kerry decided to show the US power structure that he’s reliable, that he can be counted on to defend the US empire’s interests, especially its oil interests. That he too - and this is using his own language — could be a killer. But in doing so he failed to show the electorate that he had an authentic vision, that he had authentic values of his own.

In Iraq US forces are besieged and spread thin. The Iraqi resistance is growing ever more confident. The Iraqi people are becoming ever more hostile to US occupation.

How could it be otherwise? Last week Lancet, the British medical journal, published a study. It concluded that 100,000 Iraqis have been killed or have died prematurely because of the US invasion and occupation. Proud people don’t like to be occupied. Nor do they relish their own genocide.

Let’s profile this war, which now rages with increasing fury:

First off, this war is undemocratic. It was initiated unilaterally by an unelected president given emperor-like powers by a Congress corrupted by corporate interests.

This war is cowardly. It mostly targets civilians. Many times more civilians than soldiers have died in this war. This is in part because the invader relies on aerial bombing and because it has targeted the infrastructure necessary to sustain civilian life - electricity, water supply, and so on.

This war is stupid. It squanders forever billions of dollars of resources. These could be used to improve the lives of every human on this planet.

This war is dishonest. No need here, I hope, to belabor Mr. Bush’s lies about Saddam’s links to 9/11 and al Qaeda, or about those elusive weapons of mass destruction….

This war is corrupt. It provides obscenely lucrative contracts for war material and “reconstruction.” These billions went without bidding To Halliburton and other corporate buddies of the Bush/Cheney regime.

Despite the religiousity of Mr. Bush, this war is unchristian. It tramples the Judeo-Christian laws, “Thou shalt not bear false witnesss against thy neighbor”, “Thou shalt not steal”, “Thou shalt not kill.” Having been raised Catholic, I’m appalled that our supposed moral leaders, the bishops, have yet to condemn the war and those who perpetrate it.

This war is distracting. Presidents use foreign “threats” to obscure their personal failings and their domestic agendas. George W. Bush uses such threats to mask his soak-the-poor schemes. His domestic agenda makes corporations and the very rich, very much richer. And in its nastiness, that agenda deliberately impoverishes and disempowers the poor.

This war is illegal. Like Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, the war is aggressive, not defensive. It’s waged in defiance of the Geneva Conventions and international law. Its perpetrators are war criminals. The Nazi leaders were traitors to the German people. Likewise the perpetrators of this war are traitors to the US people. They should be tried for war crime in those international courts Mr. Bush - for good reason - opposes.

This war is nuclear. The US, both in the first and in the current Gulf War, has attacked Iraq with vast amounts of munitions fortified by depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is both toxic and radioactive. Depleted uranium poisons the soil, the water, the wind. It concentrates in living tissue, including that of fetuses. Depleted uranium results in congenital deformities. These appear among the offspring of both the Iraqis and their invaders. Depleted uranium is no passing poison: it will endure in the environment for hundreds of thousands of years… Or rather longer than the human species is likely to endure.

This war is imperialistic. It’s mostly about controlling Iraq’s vast reserves of oil. By controlling those reserves, the US seeks to prolong its hyper-petrolized economy; it seeks to provide all those SUV owners with cheap fuel. But controlling Iraq’s oil isn’t just about devouring the world’s resources, Or pumping up oil company profits - it’s about the US controlling the many countries of the world dependent on oil imports.

Bush Inc. has no intention of liberating Iraqis, granting Iraq sovereignty, or going home. Rather the US is quietly building several long-term military bases there. Mr. Kerry’s policy toward Iraq, by the way, fits right into this imperial strategy, into this drive for global domination. This helps explain why the NYTimes and other elements of the US power structure were willing to endorse Mr. Kerry.

Lastly, this war is pro-terrorist. It takes the heat off bin Laden in Afghanistan and diverts US troops from capturing him there. Further, the war multiplies hatred of the US among the Iraqis and among Moslems the world over. It is al Qaeda’s chief recruiting tool. The US claims it’s fighting terrorists in Iraq. But who are the terrorists there?
The country’s defenders or the country’s invaders? Wouldn’t many of us use whatever means we had to repel any war machine invading our homeland?

Given this profile, what must we conclude?

We must conclude that all US forces must be pulled out of Iraq. The US presence can only harm Iraq…and harm the United States. And will only keep the pot boiling.

Will violence in Iraq continue if the US pulls out? Yes…probably - especially now that things have been so mucked up. But such violence will be for Iraqis to sort out among themselves. Among other things, that’s what sovereignty means.

Now, in closing, let me complicate matters and turn my own argument upside down. I want to ask you to consider a strange notion: that - given the givens - it’s a good thing that the US military is now bogged down in Iraq. Why? Because trapped in this quagmire, the US war machine is spread so thin it is less able to rampage elsewhere.

Few here line up with the Iraqi resistance ideologically. But it’s the Iraqi resistance - in all its diversity - who are in the front lines against the US Empire. If that is an uncomfortable thought, shouldn’t we make sure that we’re the ones in the front lines against the US Empire?

Ed, based in Syracuse, NY, worked with Voices in the Wilderness in Baghdad before and during the 2003 invasion and under the occupation last fall.