Yes, Afghanistan is in our sights as people who care about humanity.
And yes, the people of Afghanistan and the whole region are in the gun sights of the most destructive military force on the globe, commanded by a regime under the rubric of “America first.”
15 years ago yesterday, on beautiful Sunday, 25,000 gathered in Central Park, and thousands elsewhere in the U.S. to say “NOT IN MY NAME” to a war on Iraq. We came together exactly a year after the U.S. invaded and bombed Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on the globe, and one whose population had nothing to do with the attack on 9/11.
A report at the time said, “The East Meadow of Central Park was filled with a spirit of defiance and determination – over 25,000 people stood together, firmly and resolutely, to pledge resistance. Together we pledged to resist the Bush Administration’s endless war, detentions and roundups, and attacks on civil liberties.”
Watch video from Democracy Now 2002.
Today, we marched in NYC to stop these endless wars, and remember our dear friend and member of World Can’t Wait’s advisory board, Cherif Bassiouni.
the pledge to resist:
we believe that as people living in the united states it is our responsibility to resist the injustices done by our government in our names.
not in our name will you wage endless war.
there can be no more deaths.
no more transfusions of blood for oil.
not in our name will you invade countries, bomb civilians, kill more children, letting history take its course over the graves of the nameless.
not in our name will you erode the very freedoms you have claimed to fight for.
not by our hands will we supply weapons and funding for the annihilation of families on foreign soil.
not by our mouths will we let fear silence us.
not by our hearts will we allow whole peoples or countries to be deemed evil.
not by our will and not in our name.
we pledge resistance.
we pledge alliance with those who have come under attack for voicing opposition to the war or for their religion or ethnicity.
we pldege to make common cause with the people of the world to bring about justice, freedom and peace.
another world is possible and we pledge to make it real.
