Reply #208: Here- you can read the entire document [View All]

Nowhere are suicide bombers or killing US soldiers mentioned. Nowhere... simply a request that we support the Iraqi people's just resistance to colonialization. I am totally, unequivocally against our colonialization of other peoples. If US soldiers, a tool of colonialization, are killed as people resist, it is not the fault of the antiwar movement or of the organization organizing that antiwar movement- it is the fault of those who sent them on that dirty mission and of those who are excusing/encouraging their presence there.

I say this as an ex-soldier with close friends over there. And it's kind of funny, but I'm not so sure it was the Iraqi resistance attacking the UN headquarters or even the Red Cross. The group I absolutely refuse to give any support to, let alone unconditional support, is the Bush Imperial Cabal and that puts me squarely in ANSWER's corner. It is unfortunate if any US soldiers are killed in the battle but hey, that is the nature of serving in the Armed Forces of an invading country- people rightfully resist your invasion. I do NOT support the war or the occupation. I support the right of people to resist it and if singing Kumbaya doesn't get Bush's attention then you can't blame the IAC if the Iraqis are forced to go to "by any means necessary" to get Middle America awake enough to "just say NO". I personally don't think Kumbaya is going to do it since people are such cement heads who only think that American blood is worth anything. It all flows red and I won't value one above the other.



They called me 'a teacher, a fomentor of violence.' I would say point blank, 'That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice. I feel that if white people were attacked by Negroes-if the forces of law prove unable, or inadequate, or reluctant to protect those whites from those Negroes-then those white people should protect and defend themselves from those Negroes, using arms if necessary. And I feel that when the law fails to protect Negroes from whites' attack then those Negroes should use arms, if necessary, to defend themselves.'...'I am speaking against and my fight is against white racists. I firmly believe that Negroes have the right to fight against these racists, by any means that are necessary.' from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, pgs. 373-374.

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The pamphlet is authored by the following man, a red-blooded American:
A Biography of Richard Becker

Richard Becker is the Western Region Co-Director of the International Action Center (IAC), which was founded in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Becker was a leading activist in the movement against the Gulf War in the Bay Area, and an organizer of the January 19, 1991 march of 200,000 in San Francisco. Following the war, he helped coordinate the International War Crimes Tribunal. The Tribunal held hearings in 20 countries and 30 U.S. cities on war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace committed by the U.S. government before, during, and after the Gulf War.

In January 2000, Becker was co-leader of the third Iraq Sanctions Challenge, made up of 51 people from five countries which delivered life-saving medicines valued at more than $2 million to Iraq. Becker first traveled to Iraq in February, 1994 with an IAC fact-finding delegation headed by Ramsey Clark on the third anniversary of the war, and represented the IAC at an international meeting to oppose the sanctions on Iraq, in Baghdad. Upon return, he was co-producer of the video: "Blockade: The Silent War Against Iraq," documenting the catastrophic effects of the U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Becker co-authored The Children Are Dying, a book published by the IAC (1996) documenting the effects of sanctions on the Iraqi people, and was also a contributing author of the book, Challenge to Genocide: Let Iraq Live (1999) which documented the movement against the U.S. war and sanctions in Iraq. Becker was co-producer of the award-winning video, "Genocide by Sanctions" (1998).

Becker led an IAC fact-finding delegation to Palestine in October-November, 2000, delivering medicine to Palestinian hospital and bringing back an eyewitness report on conditions in the occupied territories. His eyewitness accounts of Israeli rocket and tank attacks on Palestinian residential areas and unarmed demonstrators were carried by may U.S. media. From 1984-90, Becker served on the National Board of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, and was part of a fact-finding delegation to Jordan, Syria and the occupied West Bank and Gaza. In 1988, he traveled to Athens, Greece to be an international observer on the Al-Awda Ship of Return, carrying illegally expelled Palestinians back to their homeland. The ship was destroyed by explosives before sailing. Becker frequently writes and speaks on the subject of Palestine, Israel, and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

In 1992, Becker helped to initiate the international Peace for Cuba Appeal (IPCA), which launched an international campaign to end the U.S. blockade of Cuba and normalize relations between the two countries. IPCA held mass rallies in New York and San Francisco the same year, the largest ever held in this country against the blockage. IPCA has since organized many demonstrations, forums and other activities calling for an end to U.S. hostility toward Cuba, and has sent more than $5 million in medical aid to the island nation. Since its beginning in 1992, Becker has been active in the U.S.- Cuba Friendshipment Caravans organized by Pastors for Peace.

Becker is co-author of the IAC book, NATO in the Balkans (1998) and was a founder of the Emergency Mobilization to Stop the War (1999). He spoke at many teach-ins, forums and other events on the 1999 U.S./NATO war in Yugoslavia.

Becker has represented the IAC at many national and international events. Among these were the Gensuikin annual conference commemorating the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in Japan in 1991, and the Fete L'Humanite in Paris, Francis in 1993. In August 1995, Becker attended and was a founding member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Economic Sanctions in London. The Commission issued an International Appeal to End the Sanctions, signed by many prominent individuals and organizations. In September, 1998, he participated n the first independent U.S. delegation to investigate the U.S. bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant and was a producer of the video, Eyewitness Sudan. The destroyed facility had supplied 50% of the Sudan's medicine needs.

Becker was member of the Bay Area Anti-Apartheid Network Steering Committee for many years. He has written many articles and commentaries on Middle East affairs, and has been interviewed by numerous national and international media, among them the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, CNN, BBC, Asahi Shimbun, Pacific National News, KPFA and KPFK radio, the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, Los Angeles Times and others. He has represented the IAC as a speaker at hundreds of campus and community forums in the United States, Canada, England, Japan, Greece, Yugoslavia, Jordan and other countries.

http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~jerdonek/dwgg/iraq/becker.html


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Here's the IAC document for anyone who cares to read it. I've pasted more than 4 paraggraphs since they have a specific request to distribute and propagate this information:

In April 2003 the U.S. and British rulers finally achieved what they had wanted to do since July 1958: the counter-revolution in Iraq. But erasing 45 years of independence from a people's consciousness is no easy task, and the occupiers face a future of resistance to their imperial rule.

The counter-revolution in Iraq--executed by the vastly superior firepower of the world's lone superpower--is a heavy blow not only to the Iraqi people, but to all those struggling for liberation in the Middle East.

The imperialist takeover of the biggest and most populous Arab state in the Gulf region gravely threatens Syria, Lebanon, Iran and the Palestinian people. It is not a coincidence that the crushing of Iraq was immediately followed by the unveiling of Bush's "road map" for the Palestinians. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first President George Bush launched the now- defunct Oslo "peace process."

<snip>

U.S. leaders and their corporate media have relentlessly promoted the idea that their goal of "regime change" simply involved removing the ultra-demonized Hussein and his immediate circle. In reality, Washington's aim was to destroy everything that made Iraq an independent state.

Everything is gone--from the military to the government ministries to the state-run food-distribution and health-care systems.

In the aftermath of the war, Iraq is under a Pentagon military dictatorship. Meetings of U.S.-picked Iraqi "leaders" are now being held to set up a puppet "interim government."

<snip>

THE IRAQI REVOLUTION

But on July 14, 1958, a military rebellion led by Brigadier Abdul Karim Kassem and the Free Officers movement turned into a country-wide revolution. The king and his administration were suddenly gone, the recipients of people's justice.

The 1958 revolution put an end to colonial domination and marked the beginning of Iraq's real independence. Although the Iraqi Communist Party was the biggest organized force among the revolutionary forces, the revolution did not lead to a socialist transformation of the country. The ICP strategy was alliance with the anti-colonial nationalist bourgeoisie.

Though not a socialist revolution, the Iraqi Revolution created panic in Wash ington and on Wall Street. President Dwight Eisenhower called it "the gravest crisis since the Korean War."

The day after the Iraqi Revolution, 20,000 U.S. Marines began landing in Lebanon. The day after that, 6,600 British paratroopers were dropped into Jordan.

The U.S. and British expeditionary forces went in to save the neo- colonial gov ernments in Lebanon and Jordan. Had they not, the popular impulse from Iraq would have surely brought down the Western-dependent regimes in Beirut and Amman.


But Eisenhower and his generals had something else in mind as well: invading Iraq, overturning the revolution and re-in stalling a puppet government in Baghdad.

Three factors forced Washington to abandon that plan in 1958: 1) the sweeping character of the Iraqi Revolution; 2) the announcement by the United Arab Republic--Syria and Egypt were then one state that bordered Iraq--that its forces would fight the imperialists if they sought to invade; and, 3) strong support for the revolution from the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. The USSR began to mobilize troops in the southern Soviet republics close to Iraq.

The combination of these factors forced the U.S. leaders to accept the existence of Iraqi Revolution. But Washington never really reconciled itself to the loss of Iraq.


Over the next three decades, the United States applied many tactics designed to weaken and undermine Iraq as an independent country. At various times--for instance after Iraq completed nationalizing the Iraqi Petroleum Company in 1972 and signed a defense treaty with the USSR--the United States gave massive military support to Kurdish elements fighting Baghdad and added Iraq to its list of "terrorist states."

Washington supported the more rightist elements within the post- revolution political structure against the communist and left- nationalist forces. For example, the United States backed the overthrow and assassination of President Abdel Karim Kassem in 1963 by a right- wing military grouping. And Washington applauded the suppression of the left and unions by the Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party governments in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s, the United States encouraged and helped to fund and arm Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, in its war against Iran. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger revealed the real U.S. attitude about the war: "I hope they kill each other."

Bourgeois governments in both Iran and Iraq pursued the war for expansionist aims. The war was a disaster for both Iran and Iraq, killing a million people and weakening both countries.


<snip>

It would have been inconceivable even a few years earlier that Soviet leaders would have stood by while the United States sent more than a half-million troops to attack a nearby country with which the USSR had a mutual defense agreement.

Rather than ushering in a new era of peace, the counter-revolutionary overturn of the government of the USSR and throughout the socialist camp was seen in Washington as the green light for a new round of wars and interventions from Panama to Somalia to Yugoslavia.

The counter-revolution in the Soviet Union paved the way for U.S. aggression and counter-revolution in Iraq, the negation of Iraq's sovereignty and the destruction of the structures that made it an independent state.

Having achieved their victory, however, the occupiers now confront a people who have a long and proud history of resistance. The anti-war movement here and around the world must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance.


http://www.iacenter.org/iraq_resist4.htm
http://www.internationalanswer.org/pdf/iraqresist.pdf for the pamphlet itself