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A Rouge Forum Broadside
and whereas, the US has cobbled together something called "sovereignty," which is really a serial puppet regime, reminiscent of the many shifts of marionettes in Vietnam, "sovereignty," which will not be recognized by Iraqis who recognize massacres that are paraded as democracy building, and whereas, the last twelve months brought open, armed resistance, which grew more coordinated with hundreds of U.S. troops and well over 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed and untold thousands were wounded, and whereas the Iraq invasion has not halted terrorists, but organized them, since foreign occupation breeds resistance, turns the citizens into real or imagined enemies, unleashes the torturers, creates terrorists, and whereas U.S. troops are nowhere safe, giving up on controlling neighborhoods and some whole cities, and the best way to support the troops, everywhere, is to bring them home, and whereas a series of nooses is being employed against the working class youth who are targeted to fight the imperial war, from extending existing enlistments indefinitely, to mobilizing unwilling National Guard troops, to snaring youth in high schools via the lies of military recruiters, and the restrictions of the NCLB, demanding the identities of potential military bodies, and whereas many voices now decry the torture and humiliation of prisoners, the racist contempt for Iraqi religion and culture, the slaughter of civilians fueled in part by that contempt, the military disasters, the diplomatic blunders, and whereas US leaders fabricated an Iraqi threat to the U.S. and trumpeted their righteous shock over Baathist rule (once a favorite of the US)in order to advance a project designed long before 9/11, ie., control of oil reserves and pipelines, military bases to dominate Iraq and the whole region, docile governments in Arab countries, a clear path for Sharon's Israel to shut Palestinians up in Bantustans forever; in short, to buttress the hegemony of the U.S. government and its multinational corporate sponsors, with tough, mean, old fashioned, direct, military imperialism, and whereas the more people in the US participate in the war, the more they enslave themselves as their civil liberties are eradicated, and whereas the cost of the war will demolish what remains of the US social safety net, as well as life on the job where health benefits are under steady attack by an economy going to ruin; the schools stripped of resources, yet the curricula and teaching methods regimented by a society dedicated to perpetual war, and whereas the falsified reasons for engaging this war set the stage for a shift in formal US policy, to pre-emptive war, which teaches every local dictator of the need for a nuclear weapon, and whereas the invasion of Iraq has encouraged some top US leaders to seriously consider an invasion of Iran, which would speed World War Three by forcing action from both Russia and China, both equally in need of the region's oil, and whereas Iraqi teachers and students and teachers and students in the US have more in common with each other than they do with their national leaders, BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that we DEMAND THE US GET OUT OF IRAQ NOW. WE SUPPORT RESISTANCE INSIDE THE MILITARY, AS IN TROOP REFUSALS, RESISTANCE IN THE SCHOOLS, AS IN TEST BOYCOTTS AND REFUSALS TO SUBMIT TO MILITARY RECRUITERS, AND RESISTANCE ON THE JOB, AS IN DOCKWORKERS' STRIKES AGAINST THE WAR. Signed, Rich Gibson, Wayne Ross, Perry Marker, Amber Goslee, Greg Queen, Katie Queen, Bill Boyer, Beau Bennett, Sergio Tanasescu, and sponsored by the Rouge Forum.
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