'We're not there for democracy. We're not there for freedom.'

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The Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler is a leader of the Church of the United Community, Roxbury, Mass.

We must understand that Western powers for decades have played a chess game with land in the Middle East and in the Gulf. They have put rulers in and taken rulers out. They have arbitrarily divided land and established boundaries against the indigenous peoples' will. They have given people's land to other people, and then they sit back and act surprised when uprisings happen and unrest in that region occurs.

The troubles in the Middle East and the Gulf are because the West has stirred their 'George Bush needs to understand the logic that if Iraq needs to leave Kuwait, then Israel needs to leave occupied Palestinian land.' cauldron of greed and domination, and in that they have denied people their own identity and sovereignty—and it's about time that it stopped.

We end up in this situation time and time again—in Africa, in Asia, in the Caribbean, in the Middle East, in Central America, in South America, in North America. That is only evidence to my argument. Every time we turn around, some indigenous people are dispossessed because of white Europeans' greed. It must come to an end.

I'm concerned-and there's no one here who can change my mind, because I've been in the thick of it for the last two to three years--what started the so-called "gang problem" in our city was the Vietnam War.

Soldiers like me who came back halfcocked, who didn't give a damn, would shoot you as quick as look at you. You can't give no poor nigger a gun, send him over there and tell him to shoot and die and fight for freedom, and then let that poor brother come back here and not service him when he comes back addicted to drugs, as a direct result of shooting and dying and fighting for other folks' freedom. And not expect him to react?

I've been to funerals of a lot of brothers who came back from Vietnam. And don't get me wrong when I say "brothers," because I'm a Vietnam vet. When I say brothers I'm talking about white brothers, I'm talking about Black brothers, I'm talking about Puerto Rican brothers, I'm talking about brothers that were over there dying.

And now we're back, and our government has forsaken us. Are you going to do the same thing again? Are we going through thiş one more time?

We've got to understand this. Already, eight GIs were killed on a cargo plane in Germany destined for the Gulf. With that figure more U.S. troops have been killed in the Gulf than died in the naked aggression in Panama. Put it into perspective. If troops remain there, I'm afraid that we will become so used to seeing body bags return to the States, as used to it as we are to seeing homeless people on the streets. Most of us, I don't think, even notice it anymore.

I'm tired also of the TV and the news media and the radio not telling me the truth. Every day some blonde-headed or brownheaded white kid soldier gets his mother on TV, but we know-because we have the records of the history of Vietnam-that when the shooting starts, Black and Brown men and women are going to fight and die in greater disproportionate numbers to their representation in the population. It's always the case.

When it comes to Black and Brown folks, in this white supremacist mentality there are three things: send them to war to die, put drugs in their arms, or lock them up in jail.

They will send Black and Brown people to fight and die in a war for the white man's dream and the white man's greed, even though they will still physically and mentally be lynched here at home because of the pervasiveness of racism.

The white man will send Black and Brown people to defend the flag and oil profits even though we are denied an equal education, housing, and heal h care and all. They will send Black youth and Brown people to die abroad, and they can't live with dignity or respect at home. It doesn't make sense.

George Bush needs to understand the logic that if Iraq needs to leave Kuwait, then Israel needs to leave occupied Palestinian land. The U.S. didn't deploy 200,000 troops to protect Palestinian land. They didn't ask for 200,000 troops when South Africa invaded Angola.

They didn't ask for 200,000 troops as monies are expended from South Africa to fund a group of bandits in Mozambique who kill children and destroy schools and blow up hospitals. They are not concerned about democracy, or freedom or hope or dignity. They are only interested in what they can get their dirty, grubby little hands on.

I know that my role is to tell every Black and Brown kid that I run into: Don't you go down to that post office and give them your name to register for no draft! Don't you'go and fight in a white man's war! Roger Sheppard Inwer nations, that he can level Panama, that he can tell how many thousand men and women of this country are going to die?

Who does this man think he is, that he summons the mighty and powerful of the world, and the deceitful. They congratulate each other that they can cooperate in the strangulation of Iraq. They toast each other in Helsinki. Gorbachev, the "savior" of the Soviet Union-what do the Azerbaijanis think? They're Islamic. Do they think Gorbachev is for the sovereignty of nations? My neighbor has a yellow ribbon tied around a tree by my driveway. It's for her brother-in-law, a telephone worker called up to Saudi Arabia. That yellow ribbon means, "I want Gene home alive, as soon as possible."

We're building a movement to reach out to everybody: the vets, the Marines, everybody. Those yellow ribbons that are all around this country mean "we want all our troops home NOW!"