by Debra Sweet
With six months until the presidential election and eight months left in Bush’s term, it’s time to hold an important discussion and assessment of what we’ve been able to accomplish with the World Can’t Wait’s mission to drive out the Bush Regime and what the future of this movement should be.
We have not been able to achieve the level of mass resistance and public repudiation needed to drive out the Bush Regime. The huge reservoir of people who are deeply distressed over the direction in which the Bush regime is dragging the country — and the world — has not risen to the kind of widespread political revolt needed. Yet its existence is widely being recognized as a potential political force and factor, one that is being appealed to by the Democrats and mobilized in particular by the Obama campaign as people demanding a change from the horrible course of the Bush years.
This level of discontent would not exist without what we and
others have done to mount resistance. The debacle this regime has created is
clearly part of the political flux going on in the country. But the sea change of sentiment on the war,
and the disgust and shame people feel about torture and war crimes and the
hatred people feel for a president caught lying who then keeps on lying, would
not be at all what it is without us.
The debate in World Can’t
Wait over the Obama campaign is an important one to have. I think that the kind of change people are
looking for won’t be found with Obama, and that elections are never the way
decisions about matters of substance are made.
Others in World Can’t Wait are supporting Obama for a variety of
reasons. But all of us in this debate
think that the direction this society has gone is extremely dangerous, and that
unless there is massive and public repudiation from the people of this country,
much of this direction will be continued, and even if reshaped, maintained and
normalized. We can’t in our name allow
torture, rendition, pre-emptive wars of aggression, attacks on civil liberties
and civil rights, assaults on women and immigrants to continue. The WORLD STILL CAN’T WAIT to bring all of
this to a halt.
It’s not time to count us out!
There are factors that may well make possible driving out the Bush Regime even
in this last year: the possibility of Bush bombing Iran, the potential of “torture
gate,” opening up, just to name things that are already on the landscape. Even on the last day Bush is in office, it
would make a world of difference if the PEOPLE were able to effect “a political
situation where the Bush regime’s program is repudiated, where Bush himself is
driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is
reversed”.
But as we move into these
last months of the regime, we also have to look soberly at the fact that
politics in the US
are increasingly dominated by and being corralled into the Presidential
election.
I am still convinced that
politics as usual will not meet the enormity of the damage that has been
done. We will not reverse it, or stop
the Bush program from being codified and sanctioned by the next administration
without the people acting independently of the kind of politics being defined
and allowed by an election. As we said
in January, “George Bush is unrelenting in his determination to drive the
savageness of his agenda into the next administration”.
The World Can’t Wait. Is that still true?
This month the world – and
most acutely the people of Iraq
– will have suffered five full years of an illegitimate occupation based on
lies, perpetrated by the proven liars of the Bush regime. According to a British
study in September over one million Iraqis have been killed
in the mass destruction and dislocation of the occupation, and 4.5 million are
displaced from their homes. Half of
those have been forced from Iraq. This is going on NOW.
But what are the parties in
this election talking about? John McCain
has adopted the Bush scheme to “win,” with a surge that has temporarily lowered
death tolls by walling in and emptying neighborhoods, setting the scene for a
civil war that is beginning to erupt. U.S. commanders
and their Iraqi puppets can’t even leave the Green Zone. The puppet Prime Minister Maliki is making
deals with Bush, around the will of Iraq’s
elected body, for unlimited US
presence in Iraq. McCain is threatening Iran and joking
about it.
What do Obama and Clinton say
about the region? They will “re-deploy”
troops in the region and keep the huge US Embassy and bases open in Iraq. Everything Obama says is in service of domination
of the US empire over the Mideast, and has nothing to do with justice or
sovereignty of the countries involved. In the Texas
debate Obama said that staying in Iraq
“is going to distract us from Afghanistan.
That was a mistake,” echoing Joe Biden, in the New York Times, who warned that Afghanistan is
“the real central
front in the war on terrorism.” Obama says “We should be going after al
Qaeda and making sure that Pakistan is serious about hunting down terrorists,”
and that all the focus on Iraq keeps the US “diverted from focusing on Latin
America,” so they can’t suppress the influence of Hugo Chavez and other leaders
who criticize the US.
Obama says the US has to keep the “strongest military in the
world,” and his campaign acknowledges that he would have to increase the
numbers of private contractors like Blackwater in Iraq
to do so, and add 100,000 troops to the U.S. military. The 1996 Solomon Amendment, which both Obama
and Clinton recently voiced their continued support of, provides for the
Secretary of Defense to deny federal funding to institutions of higher learning
if they prohibit or prevent ROTC or military recruitment on campus. That’s the
kind of politics being defined by and allowed by the political process, politics
that go after suppressing any actions of the people that might meaningfully stop
this war.
None of the Obama or Clinton
plans to withdraw troops in 60 days ends the war, but only reshapes it in the
service of a broader reach for empire.
Let’s just be for real. None of the substantive questions of policy are
even up for discussion in the election.
The differences among all the candidates are taking place within very
narrow margins: every potential president is pledged to use military force
against al-Qaeda, Iran, and Afghanistan, and to an unbending alliance with Israel.
Torture at Bagram, Abu
Ghraib, Guantanamo
and at the secret “black sites” of the CIA was approved and orchestrated by the
Bush administration since early 2002.
When the news that some tapes had been destroyed was leaked, the CIA was
forced to admit the torture. Now Bush
and Cheney and the replacement attorney general Mukasey are upholding torture
as a necessary part of the “war on terror.” Six detainees from Guantanamo are to be tried in military
commissions under the threat of death, and we find
out from the horses mouth, Col. Morris Davis, former chief
prosecutor for the military commissions, that “no acquittals will be allowed,”
causing him to quit in protest and testify for the defense. This is going on NOW.
But NO candidate is making
the obvious moral call for impeachment based on lying to Congress, obstruction
of justice and for war crimes, or insisting on the repeal of the Military Commissions
Act of 2006, which made harsh interrogation methods legal, gave the president
arbitrary powers to designate who could be held without charges or access to
lawyers, and provides amnesty from prosecution in international courts for
torture or those who authorize it, going back to 2001. Both Obama and Clinton
voted for re-authorizing the USA Patriot Act, with even less burden on the
government to justify searches and surveillance. Neither Obama nor Clinton voted at all when
the recent law against the CIA using torture came up, while McCain voted against
it, because, while he says he’s against the military using torture, he doesn’t
want to stop the CIA from using it.
This is NO break with the
torture state put together by Bush.
A whole U.S. city was
rapidly emptied of Black and poor people; first because of a natural disaster
and refusal by the Bush regime to rescue those hurt by Katrina, and then
through federal destruction of public housing and schools and deliberate exile
of 40% of the city’s population by government decree and private
development. A wave of threatening
“nooses” were hung across the country, as if reverting one hundred years in the
culture to commonplace lynching is still the way to keep Black people “in their
place.” This is going on NOW.
McCain recently refused to
distance himself from supporter John Hagee, a radio preacher who says the cause
of Hurricane Katrina was the “homosexual sin” in New Orleans.
In the face of open white supremacy, and white supremacists screaming
about his former minister’s condemnation of the ongoing effects of slavery on
Black people, Obama says, “we”re all one nation.” Clinton
supports what she calls the “smart” way to police the fence being built along
the Mexican border. Where is there any
condemnation of the ICE raids breaking up families, the detention centers where
people without papers are held like criminals for months?
In The Democrats”
Sleight of Hand Dennis Loo wrote that the Democrats “will not take
on and repudiate, they will not fight against and expose, the fundamental lie
of the Bush White House – that anything and everything is acceptable, including
torture, massive, illegal spying, indefinite detentions, and mass murder – in
the name of “defending American lives” and in the name of
“national security.” In fact, the Democrats
will not take on anything that vaguely hints at challenging the rightness of
American Empire and American dominance and plunder. No civil liberty, no civil right, no law, nor
Constitutional provision, no international law or institution (e.g., the UN
Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or the Geneva Conventions),
no common human decency, and no scruple is safe from their aggressive and
immoral assertions that it’s OK to do monstrous things as long as you wrap it
in the garb of “protecting Americans’ lives and property.””
THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT has been out in front of everyone else, setting
the pace, the mood, the anger, for the national indignation against the war,
for impeachment, against all the Bush policies. Howard Zinn, February 2008
Being able to examine what is
still needed has to be looked at from the perspective of why we came together
to begin with. One way of seeing this is
to try and imagine what things would be like if World Can’t Wait had not ever
existed. What would the political
atmosphere be like without us? What kind
of example did we set? Would things
be better or worse if we had not attempted to do what we set out to?
In July 2005, we issued a Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime, at a time when
many people were feeling hopeless about Bush’s reelection, and even questioning
whether there were people who could act to stop him. World Can’t Wait became a vehicle and voice
for the people who refuse to be ruled in this way. This system has never been
just. But we are not just looking for a
strategy to get a lot of people together. We came together with a concrete mission and
objective to seize every opportunity to build mass opposition to the crimes of
the Bush regime in order to actually drive it from power. We built it to “join in with and give
support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want
this regime to be stopped.”
Have we been proven right or
wrong in the analysis made in our Call?
Our Call says, “The Bush
regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist
way, and for generations to come.” We
put all of what was happening into a comprehensive understanding of the whole
direction and first raised the warning, “that which you do not resist and
mobilize to stop you will learn – or be forced – to accept”. Some people said that using the
“f” word was “too extreme,” and that we were saying things in our Call that
shouldn’t be said. The secret and
illegal violations of the FISA law were revealed in December of 2005, and
suddenly saying that “People look at Bush and think of Hitler” wasn’t such a
stretch.
In the last year, two books
with “fascist” in their titles sold well.
Chris Hedges sounded the alarm about the fascist movement being built by
the Christian Right and Naomi Wolf traced the fascist shift taking place in government. Anyone who thinks that the Christian Fascists
are gone is wrong in dismissing the Huckabee campaign, the fascist social
movement it continues to build, and the homage and dues McCain is paying them.
What if there was no mass
opposition building resistance and challenging the people to act against all
this being done in our names? What if
there had been no focus on the moral challenge this whole package puts before
us? And if we hadn’t backed it up with
concrete political action? World Can’t
Wait and others who have been working to change the very bad dynamics at work
in this society, where an ethos that anything goes – torture, pre-emptive war,
scuttling legal norms that protect the rights of people not to be spied upon,
arrested with out cause, right to a lawyer and hearing the charges against you
– were given legitimacy in the name of keeping Americans safe from the “terrorists”. Without what we and others have done to
resist this, we would not be seeing this kind of massive sentiment for a change
among such a broad swath of society. There
would not be the mass discontent trying to find a vehicle through the
elections.
Thousands of people joined in
mass mobilizations, raised public awareness and started a needed discussion on
what YOUR Government is doing and the responsibility of people to stop it. Not
enough did. But were we wrong in
anything we said about the disaster caused by the Bush regime?
If anything, it’s gone
further than many who signed our Call expected.
The Democrats have been accomplices in much of this, from voting in
their majority for every single fund request from Bush to kill Iraqi civilians,
re-authorizing the USA Patriot Act, passing the Military Commissions Act, to approving
two Supreme Court justices who have already tipped the Supreme Court further in
favor of corporate rights over persons, white supremacy over the goal of
desegregation, and upheld the first ban on abortion.
What would be the situation
now if the Democrats had really opposed and filibustered just one Supreme Court
nomination? They would have had the backing and support of millions. But they didn’t because they share, at the
most fundamental level, the objectives and interests of their opponents in
government, and not the objectives and interests of the people at the base of
the party they lead. Back in 2001, we
were told by the liberal Democrats not to get upset about the PATRIOT Act’s
broad attacks on civil liberties, because those provisions would expire in
2006. What happened then? It was re-authorized with more powers for the government to sneak
and peek and repress people, with the support of all the Senators who ran for
president.
They have disgusted and
disheartened millions who are still looking for a savior from the Democratic
Party.
“That which you do not resist
and mobilize to stop you will learn – or be forced – to accept.” We often, in taking out the NO TORTURE
banners, find people who still have no idea that the US
government tortures people, or even that the war in Iraq is still going on. And you wouldn’t know any of this either
if your only reference was the presidential debates or FOX News.
So, even though people said,
“you shouldn’t do that”, we stepped in to the debate among the torturers over
whether waterboarding is torture, and did public, professionally acted
demonstrations of what the technique is. Would anyone know this if courageous people
hadn’t set out to make the wearing of orange jumpsuits, the black hoods and
shackles detainees are forced to wear, real?
Two years ago people were stepping over us as we knelt on the ground in
orange jumpsuits and hoods. Today,
torture became a featured subject at the Academy Awards, seen by one billion
people, when Taxi to the Dark Side won, and its director spoke out. Professional associations like the American
Psychological Association divided over participation in torture, a crisis among
the writers of the TV show “24” that made torture acceptable and examples that
something is shifting in public sentiment.
Along with the dozens of
witnesses, researchers, the judges and organizers of the Bush Crimes
Commission, we pursued and proved an indictment of the Bush administration on
the basis of international standards, concluding that, on five counts, they are
guilty of crimes against humanity. Some
counseled that you can’t talk this way if you want impeachment. But the evidence is there and continues to
come forward for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Even George McGovern, in his January 2008
call for impeachment giving torture, war crimes and Katrina as grounds for
impeachment, quoted a political commentator speaking on Katrina, who said that
he had “never seen anything has badly handled and mismanaged.”
World Can’t Wait, through our
consistent identification of the Bush program as a package of extreme danger,
has contributed to changing the way millions of people see the Bush regime as
criminals who should have “been gone”.
Before we came together, people thought there was nothing that
individual people could do on a scale that millions could see a newspaper ad or
a protest so directly saying what they think themselves. World Can’t Wait represents something the world
needs.
David Swanson writes that
World Can’t Wait is “willing to take consistent principled positions based on
listening to the concerns of a wide segment of the population, with no hint of
contamination by money, power, or partisanship.
Rarely do you find an organization able to consistently mobilize
significant numbers of people into action.
Very rarely do you find groups able to work well with other groups in
coalitions. Rarest of all is a campaign
that unites all three of these things and does so consistently and
unrelentingly over a period of years, bringing inspiration to people struggling
against defeatism and resignation. The
best example of this on the national scene is the World Can’t Wait.”
John Nichols awarded us “most
valuable crusade” because when “no one else seemed to be getting serious about
challenging the Bush-Cheney administration’s taste for torture, THE WORLD CAN’T
WAIT movement developed an orange campaign” a smart, uncompromising challenge
to untenable practices and an untenable status quo.” And James Abourezk: “When most of the country
was trying to decipher what was wrong with the direction to which America was
heading, Debra Sweet and her organization had already figured out what was
wrong and what to do about it. They believed
in organizing like-minded people to build a resistance to the Bush onslaught of
stolen elections, unnecessary wars, torture as a policy.”
Yes, people are hoping the
elections will bring an end to all the outrages visited upon the world and the
country by the Bush regime. Whether all
that hope gets channeled into the elections and into candidates who will
continue the war on terror, or if the intense politicization that is bringing
people into activity can also bring people into mass resistance.
Is it still true the world
can’t wait for such action? Or can it? What we do matters
There are openings now for
civil repudiation that must unfold and blossom and peak this year if we want theses
crimes against humanity to actually be brought to a halt.
Are we willing to go along
with any of this? What will the world –
people in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, in the Lower
9th Ward – think if we allow it?
A lot depends on what WE do.
Where will the hopes of the
WORLD rest if we sit back and wait on Obama or Clinton to reverse the Bush
program? What will things look like the
day after the elections if we were to sum up we”ve been wrong and abandon bringing
this whole disastrous direction to a halt?
When I hear people in World
Can’t Wait say “I’m tired,” I understand the difficulty we are confronting, and
the desire for things to be easier than they have been. But I look at why we are doing this, and look
at how tired of this war the whole world is, not
to mention how desperate the people who have taken the brunt of it are. We do have a choice, from the
When someone says, “I want to
believe the soothing words of Obama and hope there is a savior,” I can’t get
with that. Will there be a savior, or
will there not? Even people in World
Can’t Wait who disagree with me on Obama — this is something we should discuss
and debate as we go forward — see the need for people to not be passive
observers and victims, but to act themselves to make history.
I”ve been looking at what different people
I respect are saying about the elections:
Dennis Loo asks again, “Are we willing to follow
the immoral sleight of hand trick that the major candidates are purveying? Even
if you feel that getting someone else into the White House in January 2009 is
critical, are you willing to say that the daily torture and the daily new
outrages of shredding any legal protections against dictatorial and fascistic
actions are something that can be allowed to continue every single day
for the next year?
Paul Haggis, who helped
spread orange ribbons at the Oscars last month, said in 2006, “As heretical as
this may sound, I am more afraid of the wrong Democrat winning the White House
than I am the wrong Republican — because then we will feel the need to support
“our” president, and his or her “difficult decisions” on how to “do the right
thing for Iraq” and “withdraw with honor.”
We will divide, and conquer, ourselves.”
The revolutionary Bob
Avakian: “If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not, and never will
be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are.”
Cindy Sheehan: When she quit
the Democratic Party almost a year ago – the second time the Democrats voted to
fund the occupation of Iraq
after they pledged to end the war, sher wrote of them “You have bought yourself a few more
months of an illegal and immoral bloodbath.”
What if in the hundred or so
years it took to abolish slavery in this country, the Abolitionists had stopped
half way, and said, some slavery is really OK in some states? Were the people
who defied Hitler right, even if they were a minority, or were the people who
went along with Nazi rule right? And
does the outcome show that if they did not succeed in stopping the final
solution, they were wrong? Was it not
worth it to put their lives on the line to attempt to stop it?
Because the majority of
people in Iran
went with Khomeini when he captured the leadership of the Iranian Revolution in
1980, did that make the people who were fighting for a secular society and
against imperialism wrong, and the Islamic fundamentalists right? Has the measure of any moral position ever
been that it must gain a majority – or a big following – to stand the test of history?
In 2005, a lot of people
said, nice idea removing Bush, but it’s never going to happen. “You can’t say drive out the Bush
regime. You”ve got to work through the
established political processes.” We
said those politics as usual have proven to be a disaster, leading to political
demobilization and passivity that allows all this to go on. If the people don’t stop it, why do you think
those in power will?
Were we wrong in what we said
was needed?
And, how do we go
forward?
- 1. We still have a lot of work
to do among the people. World Can’t Wait
has dared to identify and challenge some of the “conventional wisdom” in this
society that has tended to retard political resistance to Bush’s crimes:
- The shared assumption of many people that the “war
on terror” is justified and needed, and that the war on Iraq was a mistaken diversion from
it. - Invading and occupying Iraq is a major piece of the Bush regime’s
strategy to seize control of the Middle East,
as an unchallenged and unchallengeable superpower. Bush’s strategy of 5 countries in 5 years hit
a big obstacle in Iraq, but
that hasn’t kept him from planning regime change in Iran, putting together the network
of secret prisons, rendition and torture that created a war of terror. It’s been the anti war sentiment around the
world and the debacle of the Iraq
war that have prevented them from moving forward with their whole agenda and
mission. - Within the US, people have allowed the country
to get used to level of surveillance and repression of dissent that would shame
Big Brother. Where even ten years ago,
courts gave the edge to privacy for citizens, and openness to government, this
has been dramatically reversed. The Bush
regime has spied on citizens” private email and phone calls, against US law and
constitutional protections. - 2. An acceptance that Islamic fundamentalists are
the “enemy” to be feared, providing tacit support for openly racist campaigns
such as “Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week” and the erosion of civil
liberties. What happens if, as some
conservative pundits hope, Obama becomes the face to unite youth and others
more effectively against the Islamic countries of the Middle
East? - 3. A shared assumption in much of the anti-war
movement that “we support our troops.”
Therefore, we must accept continued funding in the war to show that
support. We place more value on American
lives than Iraqi lives. 70% of the
population wants the war over now, and a big portion of those would never have
sent the US military to Iraq,
and don’t want their children to go. But,
contrary to conventional wisdom that the starting place is “we all support the
troops,” I say we should ban the phrase “support our troops.” - The troops are being recruited into an institution waging an
unjust war, trained and ordered to carry out war crimes as a matter doctrine
and course. What part of any of that do
we support, and what makes them “ours?” If the military has the “right” to recruit,
what about the “rights” of people in Iraq to live? Everyone in the US military has the responsibility
to decide where they stand, just as Americans do when their government is
waging an unjust war, and refuse to commit such crimes.
Don’t we have to go further
on challenging these shared assumptions, and stake out a more radical position
of conscience to clarify matters? Where
will people be after the election if the “anti-war” movement has not created an
alternative for people from “you”re either with us or with the terrorists,”
even if said in a kinder tone and with a different spokesman than Bush?
The clarifying role of
resistance
The dramatic difference
between the course the Bush regime has bullied ahead on, and the interests and
felt needs of the majority of the people is stark. The latest poll shows Bush has a 19% approval
rating, which must be a historic record low. But being alienated, and thinking
how wrong it all is, is not enough. And
many people who are against the war have accepted these crimes passively.
We-millions and millions of
us-need to stand up against the crimes going on NOW. The question of whether torture continues
legally is being decided now.
Will those, even in the Bush regime, who are against the use of torture
insist that it now go on; refusing to go along with the program? Will the inner workings and cover-ups be
exposed? This will happen only if our
people shake up the world, demanding that torture stop and Guantanamo and secret renditions are ended.
What could things look like
and how could things change if the organized forces of opposition succeed in
opening the pathways for mass resistance to really take hold – setting much
different terms for society than the elections are. Students who have been feeling impotent as a
political force in society and anaesthetized, find their voices and a way to
stand up directly against the war, even those filling up the Obama rallies, can
find a meaningful and immediate way to act.
These outrages are happening
NOW. The people have to act now.
1. Taking on the Military Recruiters & Their
Pro-War Supporters in Berkeley
& Spreading Across the Country
A new military recruiting
office in downtown Berkeley
CA, near the high school, became
a flash point this year because of what the recruiters do. While we aren’t experiencing the war
directly, we have a clear cut example of the war machine and Bush agenda right
in the schools. It’s not remote for high
school students, it’s every day real.
And we hear constant reports of students around the country having to
pass by recruiters on the way to the cafeteria, outside on the corner, or in
the subway.
The Berkeley City Council,
who really started the controversy by taking a brave stand that the Marine
recruiters were “unwelcome intruders” in Berkeley, caved in when right wing
bloggers howled, and US and California officials threatened to take funds
away. Had they stood firm against the
recruiters, whatever the short term consequences, they could have done a lot of
good towards stopping the war. Vermont
Law School
is the only one to refuse cooperation with military recruiters, and lost one
million in federal funds because of the Solomon Amendment. How can we get cities and universities and
institutions persuading people not to be the supply of cannon fodder for an
endless and criminal war?
Outside City Hall as the
debate with pro-war demonstrators raged, the students from Berkeley High, and
others, came into the battle and changed
the political atmosphere as they
confronted the pro-war protesters. Their
message, as they debated all day, and into the evening, got arrested for
arguing, and in one case, punched out, was basic: the war in Iraq is wrong,
and you”re trying to force youth into it.
Leave us alone. We don’t want to
fight in that war.” They asked “Where
are the weapons of mass destruction?” “What about the one million dead Iraqis
and five million who had to flee their homes?”
Is the question settled of
whether military recruiters will be able to run rampant in high schools and
colleges across the country? No. What we say and do has everything to do with
whether the next generation gets suckered in to serving in an illegitimate war
of empire.
2.
Unrelenting Opposition to the US Torture
State.
One of the enduringly true
statements in the Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime is “that which you do not resist
and mobilize to stop you will learn – or be forced – to accept” If there is any aspect of the Bush program
to which this applies more than the torture state they”ve created, I don’t know
what it could be.
What part of the structure of secret detentions,
destruction of habeas corpus, “enhanced” interrogation methods will go away
when Bush leaves office? The whole
apparatus has been given a new justification from the Justice Department: even
if particular methods or practices are illegal on international law, that’s
irrelevant because the president of the U.S.
has the authority to override those laws based
on the US
national interest, as he/she defines it.
According to Antonin Scalia, “no one likes torture” but Scalia, who
is likely to be writing the majority opinions for the Supreme Court, won’t
define torture as “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Constitution.
Obama promised to close Guantanamo and restore habeas corpus. But when the vote came to ban the CIA from
using waterboarding, he didn’t show up to vote.
Illegitimate occupation for empire requires a
cowed population. Torture is used,
openly, by the Bush regime, to scare people in the MidEast
who are immediately subject to it. But
it’s done to affect people here, too, sending a message that political
opponents can be crushed and disappeared.
When it becomes “standard operating procedure” it’s already part of the
law as it’s practiced. Will the legal
system fix that? Many people in the
legal arena think not, given the fascist remaking of the courts already
completed, although every effort should be made to expose the international
laws broken.
The principals in the torture scandal are worried they are liable for torture,
legally and politically. That’s why John
Ashcroft expressed concern back in 2002 that discussions over choreographing
interrogations in the White House were dangerous. That’s why the Military Commissions Act was
written with retroactive immunity for anyone carrying out or ordering enhanced
interrogation techniques. It’s why the
principals are not allowing their underlings, and refusing themselves, answer
Congressional subpoenas. The mainstream
media is beginning to talk about “war crimes” prosecutions and international
law as if there might be a problem for the Bush regime.
Since more has been released about John Yoo’s
memos justifying torture for the White House, more people have stepped forward
to hold him accountable. The National
Lawyers Guild is calling for him to be fired from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, the
law school where he has tenure and teaches a course in ethics. Law students and professors, as well as
people in the community, are strategizing on how to make UC Berkeley a hotbed
of opposition to torture.
We should spread that spirit, spread the color of
orange as resistance to torture, continue and step up the orange jumpsuits and
waterboarding demonstrations. Through
media coverage these protests are impacting many people, and implanting the
idea that torture is being opposed. And,
specifically, World Can’t Wait should join in working to have Yoo removed from
his teaching post as a way of de-legitimizing the torture state.
3. Preventing an attack by the Bush regime on Iran.
We have warned for more than two years that the
Bush administrations” threats on Iran should be taken
seriously. The arguments against an
attack are: 1) The US is having too much difficulty militarily
subduing Iraq; 2) the
finding in the National Intelligence Estimate that Iran is not actively pursuing
nuclear weapons capability; 3) George Bush as a lame duck president can’t get
the political support to make such an attack.
But, as Iran has only
been strengthened by everything the US
has done in Iraq, the
necessity the Bush regime, and whoever follows him, faces to control the Middle
East may mean that they can’t not
attack Iran.
We don’t know, and may not know until the orders
have already been given, when or if such an attack will actually occur. Certainly, military preparations are
occurring, whether for real or for political show. Many observers, including in articles posted
on worldcantwait.org, think the likelihood increases of an attack as the
election gets closer. That’s 70 million
people, a huge portion of them under 30 years old, sitting in the cross hairs
of a military commanded by someone who believes he’s on a mission from
God.
The comments by Hillary Clinton, auditioning to
be accepted as a tough commander in chief, that she would “obliterate” Iran with nuclear weapons if they attacked Israel,
point to the issue not being settled by Bush leaving office.
Everyone with a conscience living in this country
has got to be alarmed, and on alert.
World Can’t Wait should reach out to everyone in the antiwar movement,
and beyond, to be read to act to prevent such an attack.
Bush and Cheney are committing war crimes
in Iraq,
We refuse to be silent.
Bush and Cheney are readying another war
on Iran,
We refuse to be complicit.
As people of conscience, we declare now:
We will do everything possible to stop a war on Iran.
We pledge to bring business as usual to a halt if the US bombs Iran.
We will draw forward many others to act.
We pledge our resistance now because the world cannot wait.
Iraq – Get Out!
Iran – Stay Out!
Bush and Cheney – Drive Out!
4. The Democrats Meet in Denver: NO to more of the Bush program
August 25-29 Stay tuned for information on protest plans.