Pittsburgh national antiwar conference demands ‘Out Now!’
2009 2009-08Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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VOL. 29, NO. 8, AUGUST 2009 WWW.SOCIALISTACTION.ORG U.S. / CANADA $1 Over 250 antiwar activists from 26 states and the District of Columbia participated in the second nation al antiwar conference sponsored by the National As sembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Oc cupations (NA), on July 10-12 in Pittsburgh. They were joined by two central leaders of the recent Guadeloupe general strike, a top Haitian trade-union official, Pales tinian leaders, and several Canadian antiwar activists from Toronto and Vancouver.
Recent years have seen a major downturn in antiwar and other protest activities, and the wars in Iraq, Af ghanistan, and Pakistan continue to escalate despite majority opposition.
The glaring contradiction between the mass U.S. op position to imperialist wars abroad and to the everdeepening attacks on working people at home, on the one hand, and the absence of major challenges in the streets to impose the will of this majority, on the oth er, served as the backdrop to virtually all conference discussions and debates. How and when this logjam could be broken informed the major conference delib erations.
A July 23 Associated Press poll reported in the Min neapolis Star Tribune noted that 63 percent are op posed to the U.S. war in Iraq and 53 percent opposed to the Afghanistan War. Pre-2008 election polls indi cated that 83 percent believed that an Obama admin istration would withdraw most U.S. troops during his first term. That figure is now down to 68 percent, as more and more people are beginning to realize that the policies of the current government in Washington, hyperbole aside, differ little from those of the Bush ad ministration.
Obama’s military appointees in Iraq blatantly report that the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) accords signed last year regarding timetables for a U.S. with drawal will be negated by joint U.S./Maliki government agreements to extend the stay of U.S. forces. Indeed, both Obama and Maliki, during the latter’s recent visit to the United States, made it clear that U.S. troops, in varying forms, were expected to remain in Iraq in definitely—the now well-understood prerequisite to maintaining the neo-colonial order. Suppression of the popular opposition to the U.S. occupation by the ma jority of Iraqis—Shiite and Sunnis alike—can only be maintained by force and violence.
U.S. belligerency and saber-rattling in the region was further highlighted by a mid-July statement by Vice President Joseph Biden affirming that Israel had the “sovereign right” to bomb Iran should it feel its “na tional security” was threatened. This is not the first time that the U.S. has sanctioned—or better, orches trated—Israeli bombing attacks on nuclear research facilities in the Middle East. Syria and Iraq have both been victims.
The larger than expected conference attendance, coming at a time when illusions in the Obama admin istration’s “good intentions” still run high and when working people have suffered defeat after defeat with out a significant concerted response, helped to raise the spirits of antiwar activists, who are far from dis Eros Hoagland / NY Times (Above) U.S. Marines patrol in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, July 6. Thousands of Marines were recently sent to this Taliban stronghold.
counting the movement’s potential. Indeed, it was clear to all that the U.S. is entering a period of more, not less, wars of plunder and occupation at the ex pense of oppressed people around the world and at the expense of American working people.
The conference was attended by leading represen tatives and/or activists of all of the national antiwar coalitions—ANSWER, UFPJ, World Can’t Wait, Interna tional Action Center, Bail Out the People Coalition, and others. Participants came prepared to hammer out a plan of action aimed at achieving a greater degree of unity than in past years and at preparing for a resump tion of the powerful massive mobilizations that can (continued on page 8, in “Obama orders ‘softer’ tactics in anti-immigrant crackdown”)
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