By Allen Lang, 2/4/07
“We, the students and staff of UC Santa Barbara, want to challenge our generation to put an end to the U.S. conquest of Iraq. Right now most opposition to the war is only symbolic. Congress is being sheepish and choosing not to end the war because we, the people, are not forcing them to act. Thus, if we really want to affect policies we need to withdraw our compliance and stop business as usual.”
These opening lines of a challenge issued by a loose collection of students from UC Santa Barbra have stirred up a much-needed debate on college campuses around the country.
Some students have taken up the challenge, some of have decided to turn it down and unfortunately most students have not heard it…yet. Over the past week, cores of students have discussed and debated questions surrounding February 15th; questions that concentrate much larger issues that millions of people are agonizing over and compelling them to look for solutions.
It’s the Wrong Time and There’s Not Enough Time
Every day it feels like society and the world are being ripped apart at the seams. Iraq has gone past civil war into an endless nightmare. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, a draft; can these really be the only options?
As David Lindorff recently wrote:
It is widely assumed in Europe that the U.S. is planning to attack Iran…The U.S. is deeply mired in a losing war in Iraq and also losing Afghanistan to a resurgent Taliban. The Pentagon is scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to come up with the measly 21,500 additional troops Bush has vowed to send to Iraq. Iran, meanwhile poses no immediate threat to the U.S. But it does have a huge, battle hardened army, much better equipped than Sadaam Hussein’s rag-tag troops, and equipped with some very sophisticated weaponry courtesy of Russia and China…
Nuclear experts agree that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only slow down its efforts, not end them, and moreover, would encourage the country to redouble its efforts to get the Bomb and achieve the kind of protection against future attack that countries with the bomb have…An attack on Iran would be an international crime under the Nuremberg Charter, which calls the invasion of a country that doesn’t pose an immediate threat a “Crime Against Peace”.
The students at Santa Barbara have written the challenge and it is history that will judge us. Millions of people, including the highest voter turnout among college-age students in history, went to the polls to take a stand against the war and felt like they participated in the political process. Before many were finished breathing their sigh of relief Bush announced an escalation of the war and when asked whether he would persist in this policy despite congressional opposition, he replied: “Frankly, that’s not their responsibility.” We are living in a different world than we were last year and a bold message of resistance has the potential to resonate with people differently than it would have last year. But this will require struggle, sacrifice and raising the bar – not pitching it low and to the center.
Now is the time to strike; waiting it out will miss an opportunity. That opportunity is not an opportunity to hold a successful protest or even to strengthen the anti-war movement, but is an opportunity to make a significant step to ending this war and changing the course of history. There is too much at stake in the world to wait for gradual build up; history is made by the people seizing on moments where the impossible can become possible because of earth shaking events rapidly unfolding.
Push the Envelope, Break New Ground and Take it Higher
When all is said and done- are we going to remain silent or are we going to resist? Mobilizing campuses and high schools to strike or protest on February 15th will send a message to the rest of the world that this generation is breaking ranks with the terrible trajectory the Bush regime is taking society and will provide better grounds to galvanize students to protest in the future. Many people I have talked to are concerned about raising the bar too high, raising people’s expectations and then having a low turn out. The concerns are real, but our resistance must be commensurate with the reality we face.
If you don’t feel that uncertain, uncomfortable feeling in your gut, than what are you doing with your life? And more importantly, what kind of world are you going to live in? As the generation of youth who live under a government that is responsible for committing massive war crimes and threatening the very existence of the planet, it is our responsibility to end such an illegitimate war and remove the administration perpetrating those war crimes and causing massive death and destruction.
A nationwide conversation about the Bush administration’s guilt in committing war crimes will dramatically transform the nationwide conversation about how to END the war. If Bush encounters the signboard of “impeachment” at every turn he takes, this could serve to politically cripple him and his administration – including in their ability to execute this illegal war. No, impeachment is not an unrealizable pressure tactic to end the war, this is serious and it must happen. If the people in this country allow this President to finish his term, it sends a message that we have accepted every intolerable and illegal thing carried out by this administration with terrible repercussions for the future.
Historian Howard Zinn recently wrote:
There seems to be a special viciousness that accompanies the current assault on human rights, in this country and in the world. We have had repressive governments before, but none has legislated the end of habeas corpus, nor openly supported torture, nor declared the possibility of war without end”.
The time is right, then, for a national campaign calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney”Impeachment hearings all over the country could excite and energize the peace movement. They would make headlines, and could push reluctant members of Congress in both parties to do what the Constitution provides for and what the present circumstances demand: the impeachment and removal from office of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Now is the time to act. Go beyond the students and contact every professor at your university to participate with the strike or protest at your school. February 15th needs to go beyond the University, with High School walk-outs generating a flood of students in the streets to demand:
End the War Now!
Impeach Bush for War Crimes!