[PEACE] Antiwar Statement

December 17, 2017
Dear GVCP member,

Here’s an important document from our friends Judy Bello and Doug Noble.  There’s no organization’s name on the document, but I assume it’s represents the views of Rochester Peace Action & Education.  As I see it, it’s not a statement of purpose, but rather a statement of goals to repair shameful and harmful defects in U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

I don’t think GVCP has to adopt it, but maybe we could use it as a working document for 2018.  Please review the document.  (It looks long, but you can read it within a minute or two.)  Decide if you believe it represents GVCP’s goals as well as PA&E’s goals.

Then let’s discuss this at our next GVCP meeting on Sunday, January 21st.

Peace,

Arnie Matlin for GVCP  


Peace Action and Education Antiwar Statement
 
By Judy Bello   Judith@papillonweb.net <http://Judith@papillonweb.net>
     
& Doug Noble   dougnoble@gmail.com <http://dougnoble@gmail.com>
November 21, 2017
 
[
We consider ourselves to be the heart of the antiwar movement in Rochester.] 
 
We oppose US wars of aggression around the globe, including the proxy wars that have blossomed through the last decade.   We take a strong stand against US hegemonic ambitions which our government pursues at the expense of impoverishing our own citizens and undermining our freedoms here in the United States.   We are horrified at the devastation caused by a US foreign policy based on the principle of ‘might makes right’ rather than diplomacy and respect for the sovereignty of other nations.  
 
We call for the dismantling of the network of bases the United States supports around the globe, surrounding Russia and China, drawing on the hospitality of our allies and interfering with the sovereignty of third world nations across the Pacific, throughout the Middle East and most recently flooding across Africa.   Recent surveys show that the peoples of these nations consider the United States the biggest threat to global peace and to their own security.   
 
We call for an immediate end to drone warfare and targeted killing, and particularly the use of large drones like Reapers that are armed with hellfire missiles and 500 lb bombs.    US Drones fly over countries that we are not at war with, targeting putative enemies for execution, resulting in the slaughter of a much larger number of civilians.    The physical drones reside on bases across the Middle East, West Asia and Africa, while men and women who fly these drones stay in the US but suffer PTSD as severe as that suffered by soldiers in direct combat. They do not sign up to be executioners. Drones alienate and create new enemies within the populations of countries we target. They are cheap and not scientifically complex, so their use is already proliferating among our enemies. This is not a future we want to see.
 
We condemn the intensified, reflexive violence and pervasive militarism perpetuated throughout our society, from the police to video games to sports.
 
We condemn the cowardly abrogation of Congress in its Constitutional responsibilities to declare war and oversee runaway military spending, and in its uncritical acceptance of the 2003 AUMF [
Authorization for Use of Military Force] to  permit the unrestricted expansion of the so called ”war on terror.   

We oppose the current plan to renovate our nuclear arsenal and instead would like to see the United States ratify the United Nations Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and then begin the work of de-nuclearization under the recently adopted United Nations Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.  

We support the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), otherwise known as the ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’.  This is an important piece of international diplomacy, and should not be abrogated by the US President or Congress.    International inspectors have reported that Iran is in full compliance with the treaty, and for the US to violate it would be destructive to our own peace and security and to that of the Middle East.   It would also show a complete disrespect for our partners in the negotiations.   

We call for diplomacy with North Korea and a formal end to the war that began there in 1950, and for an immediate end to threatening offshore military exercises and all manner of violent and unproductive rhetoric directed at North Korea.   

We call for an end to US support for the Saudi Arabian government so long as it pursues hegemonic ambitions throughout Muslim lands by training and deployment of terrorists to destabilize sovereign states including Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Myanmar and others.   We call for an end to US support for the horrific Saudi war against Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East.   We support H. Con. Res. 81, calling for the US to end all assistance to the Saudi War on Yemen including the provision of weapons, maintenance of weapons and refueling bombers on the wing, nautical and political participation in the blockade that has resulted in famine and disease for the people of Yemen, and all manner of political cover including support at the United Nations.

We call for the immediate withdrawal of all US forces from Syria and a staged withdrawal from Iraq.    We call for an end to US funding and arming of proxy forces in Syria.  We call for an end to sanctions against the sovereign government of Syria and the facilitation of international aid  so that they can better meet the needs of the people, including the many refugees that remain within the Syrian  Republic.    We call for an end to all direct US military, monetary and political support for the insurgencies in Syria and Iraq, and for the US to end all agreements with proxies such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia to provide such support.  

We call for an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan of all US troops and support for ongoing negotiations between the government and the Taliban.   Afghanistan must find its own peace.   After 16 years of a war, at the cost of untold Afghan lives and numerous American lives, we have accomplished none of our goals there.   In early 2002, the Taliban were driven out of power, but since then they are resurgent.   No efforts to mold Afghan culture in our own image have succeeded.  Instead, the people there continue to suffer under the rule of competing warlords and the poppy crops, eradicated by the Taliban government at the end of the 90s, have become a fixture in funding the war.    A flood of cheap Afghan heroin has caused a deadly epidemic of previously unknown proportions in the US and around the globe, taking the lives of more people than the wars themselves.

We call for an end to political and economic support to Israel until the Palestinian people are restored to full citizenship in their own land.  We cannot afford to spend billions of dollars every year to support an apartheid nation that affords lesser civil rights to Palestinian citizens.  Israel violates international law with impunity, through the arbitrary murder and imprisonment of Palestinians in the occupied territories,  through water and land theft in the occupied territories, through the restriction of travel and limits on basic food, water and medical equipment in the occupied territories, through vicious bombing campaigns in the occupied territories,  and through a genocidal disregard for the human rights of the Palestinian population of the occupied territories.

We call for an immediate end to the censorship of information and discussion on the Internet that is outside the mainstream formulation.  This new McCarthyism is a violation of our civil liberties and undermines the US democracy by limiting open discussion of the issues of war and peace as well as critical domestic problems.   

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