Bush says Iraq war will go on

As the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq grinds on and the numbers of dead and wounded mount, President George W. Bush and Democratic Party leaders, the supposed opposition, continue to reject the growing call to bring the troops home.

New York protest during Bush’s speech. WW photo: G. Dunkel

In Bush’s State of the Union address to Congress on Jan. 31, he stuck to his “stay the course” position and claimed he has a “plan for victory” despite all evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, mother of slain soldier Casey Sheehan, was arrested for “unlawful conduct” when she tried to attend the event wearing a T-shirt that read “2,245 dead—How many more?” That number refers only to U.S. dead.

Sheehan had just come from a press conference called the “People’s State of the Union,” which included Congressperson John Conyers and New Orleans activist Malik Rahim.

Activists across the country protested during Bush’s address. Over 1,000 people rallied near New York’s Times Square in an action called by World Can’t Wait, which has also called a demonstration in Washington, D.C., for Feb. 4.

The World Social Forum has called for coordinated international protests against the war on March 18-19, the third anniversary of the U.S. attack. One group already planning such protests is the Troops Out Now Coalition, which will focus on military recruitment centers.

TONC said Bush’s speech outlined “the same brutal plan that he has been following for three years. He did not mention the more than 100,000 Iraqi people who have died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation. Nor did he address the fact that every reason he gave to justify the war has now been exposed as a deliberate lie. Despite his talk of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’ the ghastly torture chambers of Abu Ghraib, the continued bombing of Iraqi homes, the use of depleted uranium, phosphorus, napalm and other illegal weapons of mass destruction, all reveal the brutal nature of the war against the people of Iraq.”

In New York, TONC will hold morning coordinated actions at local recruitment centers on March 18. They will later converge for a mass protest at the recruiting center in Times Square. The coalition has vowed to uphold its right to freedom of speech by protesting there, with or without a permit from the New York Police Department.

TONC’s call to action stresses the need for unity in the movement to stop the war; the need to link the struggles of poor, oppressed and working people across the United States to the struggles of poor and working people abroad, fully embracing both struggles as one; and the need for an independent movement that does not rely on the Democrats, who have, at best, protested the tactics and strategy of the war but not the war itself.

For more information on March 18-19 activities, visit www.troopsoutnow.org.