I am speaking today at a Prayer Rally for Ukraine. I must admit that I am not much for praying for peace, since, in my experience, the people who control the massive military apparatuses around the world (and I note that this applies in particular to the country where I live) aren't moved by prayers, but rather by $$$ and power, which in our society are basically the same thing.
Below are the remarks I will make. In that connection, I am also posting an article which I found relevant to my message.
Remarks at the Rally for Ukraine in Wilmington, NC
My name is George Vlasits and many of you know me as an activist for public education, for reform of the criminal justice system and for racial equity. But today I’ve come here as an antiwar activist who has opposed wars since the 1960s from Vietnam to Iraq, wars that have cost the lives of millions of people of color in the Global South.
YES, I am appalled by the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine
and believe that we must condemn Russia and demand an immediate end to their
invasion,
BUT, I am also appalled by the fact that the same media that carries heartbreaking stories of Ukrainian civilians caught in the warzone, has ignored the plight of civilians caught in warzones in the Middle East and Central Africa, most of who have no place to flee to, or the civilians, mostly children, who face starvation in Afghanistan because the US has seized their country’s assets
YES, I am horrified by the bombs dropped on a hospital in
Ukraine,
BUT, I am old enough to remember carpet bombing and napalm in Korea and Vietnam, not to mention “Shock and Awe” in Iraq. It reminds me of the biblical canon – let he who has not sinned, throw the first stone.
YES, I support the idea that we should pray for peace,
BUT, I know from almost 60 years of experience we have to do more. We have to counter those who beat the drums of war and militarism here in the US. We must demand that the US & NATO encourage and engage in negotiations, rather than provide more arms to Ukraine which only prolongs the conflict.
AND, at home, we must demand that our own military/industrial complex not be allowed to profit from this. We must oppose what the Congressman who misrepresents our area wants and I quote him: “We must send more weapons, more planes, more missiles, whatever is needed. The Ukrainians are going to fight to the very end.” And what then, Mr. Rouzer?
Escalation is not the way to peace. More weapons to
Ukraine and more sanctions on the Russians will not end the war, only increase
the human suffering. It is not the way
to save lives in Ukraine. It is the way to more death and destruction.
From Juan Cole's Weblog, Informed Comment
The US
20-year war and occupation in Afghanistan, waged to avenge the September 11
terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, has taken the lives of more
than 71,000 Afghani and Pakistani civilians. A massive increase in civilian
deaths ensued there in 2017 when the US military loosened its rules of war
regarding airstrikes. After the US withdrawal in 2021, in part because of
severe US sanctions, millions there face food insecurity.
The country is left littered with unexploded ordnance, which
kills and injures unknowing civilian adults and children as they move through
their land. The war also forced six million people to flee their homes, almost
half as refugees to other countries.
None of this tragedy of the US war in Afghanistan has been
in our mainstream news. Could it be because at the war’s onset, George W Bush
advised Americans to “go shopping” and forget about our war in a poor, remote,
non-Western country?
During the war in Afghanistan, the US poured money into the
country, money that flowed to oligarchs within regimes our government propped
up, and to US military contractors, civilian contractors and warlords, for
which there is little to show. The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction concluded, in his March 2021 assessment of the 20 year war, that
much of the [US] spending has been “woefully out of touch at best, and
delusional at worst” and much of it has gone to simple graft and corruption by
US and Afghan profiteers.
When the US fled Afghanistan eight months ago, most foreign
funding upon which the country was dependent for its GDP and 75 percent of its
public funding also left. According to the UN, Afghanistan has a 41% rate of
stunting in children under five, among the world’s highest; and one-half the
population of 40 million are suffering a record level of acute hunger.
After fleeing the country, the US quickly enacted economic
sanctions against the brutal Taliban government. These sanctions, inevitably
borne by the Afghani people, “are on track to take the lives of more civilians
in the coming year than have been killed by 20 years of warfare,” according to
economist Mark Weisbrot.
Why is our news media silent on the US inhumane economic war
there?
On February 11, 2022 President Biden signed an Executive
Order to free $7 billion of frozen Afghani assets held in the Federal Reserve
in NYC – savings of ordinary citizens not the Taliban government – and to split
them between humanitarian aid for starving, sick Afghanis and legal fees of
surviving relatives of the September 11 attacks. Even the former US-supported
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called on Biden to reverse his decision and
to return the full $7 billion to the Afghanistan Central Bank.
His words: “Withholding money or seizing money from the
people of Afghanistan…is unjust and unfair and an atrocity against the Afghan
people.”
Half of Afghani citizens were born after the US launched war
in Afghanistan. And yet, they are being punished by our homicidal economic
sanctions and the subsequent theft of Afghani citizens’ savings in the Federal
Reserve Bank in New York City. Further, the Afghani people did not plan and
attack the United States on 9/11. It was primarily Saudi Arabian members of
al-Qaeda, who hatched their plot in Germany out of anger for the US setting up
military bases in their country and perpetrating war in the Middle East. No
Afghan people were involved. Why didn’t the US use the CIA, noted for sleuth,
entrapment, and assassination of its targets in foreign countries and
governments, to capture or, more to their habit, assassinate, Osama bin Laden?
The logical and ethical response to compensating 9/11
victims’ families would be to withhold the millions of dollars in military aid
that our government gives to Saudi Arabia each year to finance their purchase
of U.S. military training and equipment, and to use that “blood money” for the
9/11 victims. Doing so, the US would also limit our government’s collusion with
Saudi Arabia in the most extreme humanitarian crisis today – the military war
on Yemen with its bombing of hospitals and schools and blockades of food and
medical supplies. Two-thirds of the 20 million Yemeni people are in critical of
food, shelter, medicines, and health care.
And why is none of this in our news media?
Because the greatest military empire in history failed in
Afghanistan?
Because poor, darker-skinned, Muslim, non-Western people on
the other side of the world are of no financial or security value to our
government?
Because the 700 Congressional lobbyists for the weapons
industry have turned Congressional attention to their new business opportunity
– war in Ukraine?
Because the US government has now subordinated its War on
Terror to a testosterone-filled Great Power conflict with Russia and China, now
inflamed by Russia’s threat of using nuclear weapons.
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