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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/91832_ltrs20.shtml
Letters to the Editor
Sunday, October 20, 2002
ANTI-WAR MARCH
Man flies 3,000 miles to make important point
I am flying to Washington, D.C., to join the anti-war march on Oct. 26. This is a considerable commitment of time, money and energy. Why am I doing it?
In April 1971, when I was an impulsive, long-haired pacifist of 16, I joined my sister in the Moratorium March on Washington against the Vietnam War with 200,000 others. My youthful idealism was reinforced and sustained as the force of public opinion turned the wheel of history, and the Vietnam war machine ground to a halt.
Some of my idealism has survived the ensuing decades. At the same time, I consider myself fairly well informed about the politics and government of our era, and I am deeply distrustful of the current administration.
A recent article, "The Push for War" by Anatol Lieven in the London Review of Books, lays bare a convincing and deeply disturbing picture of the goals of the Bush administration. The hawks and wolves in the president's shadow envision a world dominated by U.S. military might, where corporate interests, the oil industry in particular, can operate unchallenged anywhere in the world. Implicit in this new doctrine is that when opposition to U.S. policy anywhere in the world is made impossible, opposition at home will be no less so.
The dots in my own mind are connecting, and I am convinced that it is time for Americans again to blow the whistle on the government. Our freedoms not only entitle but obligate us to resist illegal and immoral actions by our government in our name.
Millions of Americans long for a nation that uses its ingenuity, wealth and generosity to help eradicate hunger, disease, inequity and the intractable ravages of violence and reprisal. But the wheels of the military-industrial-energy complex, so deeply embedded in our economy and in the current administration, grind forward, and it will take a lot of bodies in the streets to bring them to a halt.
It can be done; we must insist upon it.
Like the rash teenager that I was, America must move beyond adolescence and learn to use its idealism and strength peacefully and humbly among civilized nations to create a secure world.
William W. Rose
Seattle
Link HERE.
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The anti-American scum is gonna be out in force on 10/26. Be ready for 'em!