Pro-war speakers ignorant of own country’s actions
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 21, 2002 9:00 p.m.
I was taken aback by last week’s pro-war rally held by the
Bruin Republicans. Not that I was surprised that the speakers would
go along with Bush and support a massacre in Iraq, but rather that
they, at the same time, support such a strike against the United
States.
According to the Daily Bruin, the speakers “cited
(Iraq’s) long history of aggression, its failure to disarm
weapons of mass destruction, the fact that it never apologized for
what it did to Kuwait, its decimation of the Kurdish people, and
major human rights violations as justifications for the war
effort,” (“Pro-war rally held in Meyerhoff Park,”
News, Oct. 16). Sadly, the Bruin Republicans must think another
attack on our soil is warranted, as the United States more than
fulfills all the requirements for being a victim of a
“preemptive strike.”
For being relatively young, the United States has a pretty long
history of aggression. Since 1798, the United States has been in
involved in 239 armed conflicts. Think about all the times
we’ve gone into other countries to take land or resources, or
to replace a leader who didn’t “suit our needs,”
and the millions of lives lost in those bloody coups.
Anyone can look at recent events and see that the United States
still dabbles in “weapons of mass destruction.” Maybe
I’m just naive, but I doubt the thousands of Afghans who lost
their lives in the continuing military campaign were killed with
fairy dust. And just consider the thousands of nuclear weapons we
still have stored, or how much of our tax money is funneled toward
military expenditures. Bush’s proposed $396.1 billion 2003
military budget is 15 percent more than the average Cold War
military budget (in today’s dollars). In addition, the
current administration has repeatedly shown its support for
research into the use of nuclear warheads in “bunker
buster” bombs, while refusing to back the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty.
I don’t even need to go into how rarely the United States
apologizes for its actions, antagonism and atrocities.
Speakers talked about Iraq’s “decimation of the
Kurdish people,” but did they discuss the fact that the
United States not only knew about this genocide, but they even
secretly supported the regime that carried it out with military and
economic aid, not to mention intelligence that was used to produce
the chemical weapons used against the Kurds? And didn’t the
United States sponsor the decimation of the Native American
population, a more thorough and cruel series of massacres than
Saddam Hussein ever carried out?
Finally, the United States for centuries has been the child
prodigy of human rights violations, both at home and abroad. How
many cruel dictators have we supported, and still continue to
support? Call my bluff, but Saudi Arabia and Kuwait aren’t
exactly advocates of democracy. And, last time I checked,
carpet-bombing an Afghan wedding ceremony was a violation of human
rights. Closer to home, the U.S. government has been holding
indefinitely suspected terrorists some of them American citizens,
using sleep deprivation and other cruel psychological tactics to
get them to talk. In addition, the way the government treats the
poor and indigent and rewards the wealthy isn’t any more
indicative of a fair human rights policy.
So either the Bruin Republicans who spoke last week believe that
a war against the United States is justified, or they are just
plain ignorant of their own country’s failings.
To those in the latter category, I say, “Wake up!”
Blind nationalism does not equal true patriotism.
