NEW YORK — More than 1500 organisations and individuals have endorsed the call by the International Act Now to Stop War and Racism (ANSWER) coalition's call for a massive demonstration in Washington DC on October 25 to demand an end to the US occupation of Iraq. The most recent endorsements include Veterans for Peace and the Not in Our Name coalition. Below is the text of International ANSWER's call.
The people in Iraq want the US occupation to end. The US soldiers in Iraq want to come home. On Saturday, October 25, tens of thousands of people in the US, joined by delegations from countries around the world, will go back into the streets to demand "End the occupation, bring the troops home now!". Under the banner, "The world unites against US militarism", the demonstration, marching from the Justice Department, to the White House [and on] to the Pentagon, will also demand an end to the looting and destruction of social programs by the US administration of President George Bush.
The Bush administration lied to the people, to the Congress and to the United Nations as it raced to wage war against Iraq. The Bush administration is now carrying out a cover-up of its lies and deceptions.
Every day, people are dying as a consequence of this illegal occupation. Every day, human misery expands in the drive for world empire and corporate globalisation. Every day, vital social programs that serve and protect working people in the US are being destroyed as the Bush administration cynically manipulates the slogan of the "war on terrorism" to carry out the social transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. The "war on terrorism" has served as a public relations ploy for their Robin-Hood-in-reverse politics. Stopping Bush's war abroad and his war at home is a matter of life and death. None of us has the luxury of waiting. The time to act is now.
Colonial occupiers
Tens of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of US GIs have been killed and maimed. As the anger of the Iraqi people will inevitably grow, the body count on both sides will sharply increase.
As the anti-war movement predicted, the Iraqi people view US forces as colonial occupiers, not liberators. US troops, frightened by the hostile environment and encouraged by the racist climate created by the military brass, are killing and being killed in a war that serves only the interests of US oil monopolies and corporate elites — George W. Bush's real constituents. US soldiers and their families are now realising that high government officials, mostly millionaires who shuttle between corporate boardrooms and government posts, are using US troops as a private security detachment for corporate America's plunder of Iraq's oil riches.
The October 25 International March on Washington will include delegations invited from countries around the world, whose banners will represent resistance to the threat posed by the Bush administration's hyper-aggressive "preemptive war" strategy. The Bush administration has also just won approval from Congress to proceed with the creation of a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons explicitly designed to be used in the Third World in coming conflicts. The march will demand an immediate end to this new nuclear arms race.
As we continue the movement in opposition to the occupation of Iraq, we must also oppose the daily threats against the people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran, Korea, Cuba, the Philippines, Colombia, Liberia, Zimbabwe and all others that are targets of the Bush administration.
The demonstration will be followed on October 26 by an assembly with delegates from the global anti-war movement to assess and strategise, challenging the Bush administration's war drive and the component assault on civil rights and civil liberties taking place in many countries under the cloak of "national security" laws, including the Patriot Act in the US
War at home
The Bush administration will spend US$2.7 trillion in a vast expansion of the US military-industrial apparatus, while eliminating or severely cutting taxes for corporate America and the richest 1% of of the US population to the tune of $1 trillion. The administration is pursuing a calculated strategy to create a fiscal crisis inside the US so that lawmakers will be compelled to cut or eliminate social programs for which there will no longer be funds.
Pentagon officials now admit that they intend for the US to maintain at least 150,000 troops in Iraq for the "foreseeable future", while the cost of the US war in, and occupation of, Iraq is nearly $4 billion a month, a "burn rate" that will also continue.
The government of the richest country in human history is spending more for war than any government in human history and has its troops stationed in more than 750 military installations and bases located in more than 130 countries all over the world. This is the means by which the Bush administration, the Pentagon and corporate America are advancing the goal of empire.
The rapid expansion of US militarism under the Bush administration is not only a threat to the people of the world, it is a calculated assault on the standard of living and rights of working people. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz have a plan to destroy every social reform that has been achieved since the 1930s.
What are they seeking to destroy or privatise? Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, affirmative action, civil rights, women's rights, reproductive health, lesbian/gay/bi/transgendered rights, environmental protection and any other program or social right that is perceived as either a restriction on corporate power and profits or is a focus of attack by the ultra-right's political program.
Under the Bush administration, the war at home has also meant a rise in attacks against communities of colour. Police brutality against the African-American and Latino communities in particular have escalated, from New York City to Ohio and across the country.
The October 25-26 weekend is also the second anniversary of the signing of the so-called Patriot Act authorising political arrests, indefinite detentions and domestic spying. As the Bush administration — which only came to power due to massive racist disenfranchisement and voting fraud — violates international law it has been systematically engaged in a campaign of division and repression in the US, including a wholesale assault on the Bill of Rights, the institutionalisation of racial profiling, and aggregation of near dictatorial powers to the executive branch of government.
The October 25 demonstration will be a political challenge to the attack on civil rights and civil liberties and the expansion of the system of repression in the US and in countries around the world, which have also adopted new repressive national security laws.
The people of the world went into the streets in unparalleled global mobilisations before the Iraq war started. On October 25, we will go into the streets again. The anti-war, civil rights and social justice movement, whose ranks are being joined in ever-increasing numbers by the family members of military personnel and US veterans, can create the effective political force that will end the occupation of Iraq and bring the troops home immediately.
It was only the people's movement that ended the US invasion and occupation of Vietnam and it will be the global people's anti-war movement that will help end the US occupation of Iraq.
[For a full list of endorsements for the October 25 demonstration in Washington DC, go to <http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/o25/endorsers.html>.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 20, 2003.
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