"Not in our Name" is Not Enough!

sf.indymedia.org by Kellia Ramares Saturday February 15, 2003 at 04:05 PM

tomorrow in SF: "You’ve got to tell them that their actions will have serious consequences, not in the afterlife, not in the next election, but soon. They know you are marching against the war. Don’t bother advertising that. Go with signs demanding impeachment."...

"Not in our Name" is Not Enough!

By Kellia Ramares (of KPFA news)

As you get ready for the latest round of marches and rallies, please consider the character of the people whose conduct you are protesting. These are ruthless usurpers, militaristic imperialists who have repeatedly shown that they don’t care what people think. Warmongers, fearmongers, and liars.

So Colin Powell gets caught citing a plagiarized report? Go to Orange alert (that buried the plagiarism story in a hurry) and start making New York and Washington D.C. look like armed camps. (Hey, where were all those armaments and planes on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001?)

Some countries in NATO and the U.N. Security Council not going along with the program? Come up with another "Osama bin Laden tape" and claim that it proves a "partnership" between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, when the best it shows, even assuming it’s authentic, is that Osama is saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend…for now."

Are France and Germany not bowing to the browbeating of Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld about them being "Old Europe" and France in particular being "a second-rate country?" Start saying there could be terrorist attacks as early as this week and people should by duct tape and plastic sheeting. (Duct and cover? or shall I say, "Duct tape, peanut butter and bottled water: The economic stimulus package for the rest of us).

And what if the informant whose story supposedly led to the Orange Alert couldn’t pass a lie detector test? Claim other sources. Gotta keep that Orange Alert! After all, it’s handy for judges to use to say, "Sorry, kiddies, it’s too dangerous to march by the U.N."

So please, don’t get the idea that any amount of yelling, "What do we want, Peace? When do we want it, NOW!" is going to matter to the Bush Cabal. No number of celebrities on the podium, and no number of singers, dancers, drummers and spoken word artists performing to show how diverse the movement is, is going to mean anything to these liars and warmongers. Certainly no amount of shouting, "Not in our name," is going to dissuade them from bombing Iraq. Go ahead, disclaim the war all you want. They don’t care. They’re not doing this for you. Sure, they’re using your tax dollars, they are using the bodies of you and your loved ones, but this war is not in your name really. This is their war, for their purposes. Your bodies and your money are just the tools. No one values the opinions of tools.

And please, politicians, (attn: Rep. Barbara Lee), no talk about voting them out in ’04 or taking back the Congress then. Have you ever really considered that there may not be an election in ’04? That a timely bioterror attack could make it too unsafe to hold an election?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t march. The more the better. But you’ve got to have a message that is going to mean something to warmongers. You’ve got to tell them that their actions will have serious consequences, not in the afterlife, not in the next election, but soon. They know you are marching against the war. Don’t bother advertising that. Go with signs demanding impeachment.

I completely endorse nonviolence. But it seems that somewhere along the line we forgot how to be militant while we are being nonviolent. My impression of the big January rally in San Francisco was that protesting is becoming another form of entertainment. As a friend of mine pointed out, "We march down empty streets [e.g. San Francisco’s Financial District on a weekend], into an empty plaza, where we talk to and sell food to each other."

Remember the fall of the Eastern bloc? Demonstrators didn’t fill the squares with signs full of cutesy slogans. They were there for one purpose, to get rid of their regimes. That was the unified message. Yes, regime change begins at home. How do we do that in this country? With impeachment. A threat to their careers might make the warmongers sit up and take notice.

Massive demands for impeachment would also send a message to the Congress that we expect them to have the backbone to do their constitutional duty and that we will support their efforts to do the correct thing. We need to convince Congress that it is politically necessary for them to impeach and political suicide for them not to.

Now what the warmongers will do in response to large demonstrations for impeachment, I can’t say. Given their ruthlessness, their answer to a massive impeachment drive may very well be another terrorist attack on our soil. Or it may be another unfortunate plane crash for an outspoken member of congress, which is why impeachment has to be initiated by a group of about 20 or 30 members, not one or two brave souls.

But certainly, namby-pamby calls for peace will be met with war. The best way to stop the war is to take the warmongers out of the positions from which they can start it. In our country, peaceful regime change between elections is accomplished by impeachment. Given how opposition from several countries has set their timetable waaaay back, an impeachment may be more than they can handle. It might help other nations that disagree with the warmongers' course of action the courage to stand up and be counted, which will give other members of Congress the courage to say, "Look, more and more of the international community is against this," and so forth.

Then after the marching, you can back up your calls for impeachment with other forms of political action: Write to the embassies of France, Germany, Belgium, Russia and China and express support for their efforts to achieve a peaceful solution to the crisis in Iraq. Boycott major corporations that have funded the Bush regime. Continue to demand a REAL investigation of the events of September 11, 2001. Have your city council pass a resolution calling for local police to not cooperate with the Feds in implementing the unconstitutional "Patriot Act." Lobby your Senators and Representatives not to pass the so-called Patriot II, that Ashcroft is planning, even if there is another terrorist attack.

And if there is another terrorist attack, anywhere in the world, tune out the corporate media, and start asking yourselves how the warmongers benefit from terror.

But put away the calls for peace and take to the streets demanding that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Powell be impeached. If we can’t stand up for our Constitution, we might as well sit back and watch the slaughter on television.