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Just in time for the 2006 Election – Bush Warms Up for a War with Iran
By U.S. Labor Against the War
In the face of mounting international isolation, eroding popular support and growing discontent even within the U.S. political and corporate elites, the Bush Administration has put the nation and the world on a collision course with Iran. This new diversionary effort to manufacture a crisis could well lead to another act of military aggression that will needlessly sacrifice thousands more innocent civilian lives in Iran, result in hundreds or thousands of additional deaths among U.S. military forces, and raises the risk of escalating into a war that could spread across the Middle East and beyond to a confrontation with Russia, China and other major powers.
A majority of the labor movement, the American people, and even (according to a recent survey) U.S. troops in Iraq agree, the U.S. must exit Iraq. Yet, despite this overwhelming sentiment for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, most of the members of both parties in Congress remain paralyzed and silent (or worse, complicit).
The invasion of Iraq was predicated on a campaign of misinformation, deception, manipulation of public sentiment, outright lies and propaganda orchestrated by the Bush administration and aided and abetted by the corporate media. We must not allow that to happen again with Iran. We cannot permit the administration to attempt to reverse its rapidly declining political fortunes by manufacturing a rationale for military aggression against yet another country.
The real immediate threat is not Iran. The most serious threat to our security and peace in the world is created by an administration in Washington that sits on the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in the world and has a declared policy and practice of unilateral preemptive military action in pursuit of its goals. Real security can only result from effective use of diplomacy and negotiation, which should be opened with Iran without pre-conditions. If the administration in Washington were serious about reducing the threat of nuclear weapons, it could begin by dismantling its own nuclear arsenal, which is larger than that of all the rest of the world combined, and cease its research on a new generation of tactical, theater and strategic nuclear weapons. It should renounce its threat of a preemptive or preventative attack on Iran, forswear use of nuclear weapons of any sort, and cease its efforts at destabilization and regime change in Iran – the very kinds of action that propel countries to seek nuclear arms as a deterrence.
The American people must insist that Congress stand up to the administration’s apparent determination to escalate the confrontation with Iran. Real security for our country and the world depends on it. If the administration is navigating our country and the world toward another disaster and Congress fails to act, the American people must do so – with our voices, with demonstrations and with our votes. If Congress fails to change the course of this administration, the people must change Congress.
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U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)
www.uslaboragainstwar.org
Email: info@uslaboragainstwar.org
PMB 153
1718 "M" Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036
Voicemail: 202/521-5265
Co-convenors: Gene Bruskin, Maria Guillen, Fred Mason,
Bob Muehlenkamp, and Nancy Wohlforth
Michael Eisenscher, National Organizer & Website Coordinator
Virginia Rodino, Organizer
Adrienne Nicosia, Administrative Staff
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"Real security can only result from effective use of diplomacy and negotiation, which should be opened with Iran without pre-conditions."
No, real security can only come from respecting the individual rights of others, as manifest by way of respecting the soverignty of their country.
It is not for Washington to judge whether Iran is a "unfree" country and even so much as take intrusive propaganda action against the current regime, let alone the already pre-determined nuclear assault which the Washington warmongers have next on their schedule.
History shows how a free nation achieves it's autonomy primarily if not exclusively through it's own efforts. Example: U.S.A.
When the U.S. government uses it's military force to impose "freedom", all that results is the replacement of that nation's own dictator with Washington's dictator. Examples abound; Cuba, Haiti...
The nature of the method employed allows for no other possiblity. This is due to the fatal compromise of the victim nation's sovereignty
At it's most fundamental base, that sovereignty consists of the culmulative effect of the individual rights of each of it's citizens to their own self-determination.
No, we don't need to employ "diplomacy" or "negotiation" with Iran because there is nothing to negotiate.
They are well within their NPT rights to advance nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
But the war-drumming MSM would have their reports that Washington is "concerned" about Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions as foundation for accepting that these "concerns" are valid and true.
In the manner of Iraq's WMDs and collusion with al Qaida?
What does this impeccable source have to do to lose it's crediblity? Claim the earth is flat?
If the religious leaders of Iran can be trusted to impose strict religiously founded rules of conduct for the citizenry, at risk of loss of popular support, then why should they not be trusted to impose bans on nuclear weaponry?
What motivation would Iran have to obtain nuclear weapons if they were not threatened from the west?
If they are so motivated, no doubt it is by contrasting the Washington regime's behavior towards them with that towards North Korea, or Russia.
Not just no military action; no diplomacy, no negotiations. Just respectfully leave them alone.
Promise not to initiate the used of military force against them. Establish, in good will, diplomatic relations. Lift all trade and travel restrictions.
Peace is the absence of governance.
"If Congress fails to change the course of this administration, the people must change Congress."
What is being advocated here? A change from a Republican congress that takes care of it's strawman Democrat competitors to a Democrat congress that takes care of it's strawman Republican competitors?
That is not change.
Under the circumstances of today, the only meaningful change is a fatal blow to the Dem/Rep power structure. The destruction of both institutions.
The established parties must be destroyed.The only way to destroy them is to withhold votes.
Do not vote for the lesser of two evils; vote for the good where available (at this point, any candidate that is neither Republican or Democrat will do), and conscientiously abstain when not.
---The Bikemessenger