Submitted by VFP Vice President, Gerry Condon
On the 14th anniversary of the notorious September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people, the mainstream media is full of the usual infotainment, with virtually every possible point of view, except for the truth. Many people question the official story of 9/11. There are certainly many reasons to doubt that story, and many contending theories for what actually happened on September 11, 2001.
What is clear that U.S. warmongers used the fear of the tragedy to move quickly into action to carry out long-standing designs to remake the Middle East, more to their liking. Despite the rhetoric, this had nothing to do with bringing democracy to the Middle East. Certainly, what it has meant in practice is regime change, destruction of critical infrastructure (war crimes), stirring up ethnic and religious conflict, pouring weapons into the region, and killing hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere.
To forward their aims, then and today, the warmongers do not hesitate to kill innocent people (collateral damage) or send U.S. men and women who wish to honorably serve their country to die or be physically and mentally maimed. Over eight thousand coalition forces died in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of thousands were wounded, many returning home with Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury. Military forces do not deploy or recover alone. Families who agonized while their loved one was in harm’s way, now too live with the mental and physical trials faced by those who made it back home. Far too many people wake up each day without a friend or family member who died by suicide. Far too many people face the war abroad brought home.
Now another kind of fallout it descending upon Europe: hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees fleeing from war and ruin. More than anyone, the U.S. administrations under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, along with the U.S. military, are responsible for creating a hell throughout the Middle East, resulting in millions of homeless refugees.
The damage done is so severe as to be irreversible. The Middle East nations may never recover, will never be the same, and may never be whole. There may remain no strong countries to resist domination by U.S. imperialism and the former European colonial powers. NATO, a European alliance still dominated by the U.S., has become an international force for military intervention on behalf of a corporate agenda.
But Iran still stands. That is why it is being frantically targeted by militarists in Israel and the U.S.
The multinational agreement with Iran is interfering with – and hopefully replacing – the plans to carry out war against Iran, with both bombs and more economic warfare, the so-called “sanctions,” which have devastated the Iranian economy and the lives of normal Iranian citizens.
In this context, the peace movement can claim one small but possibly very significant victory: we have succeeded in bolstering Congressional support for the Iran nuclear deal, overcoming a huge rightwing campaign and a $40 million effort by AIPAC, the Zionist lobby in the U.S. Many VFP chapters and members participated in this important, strategic campaign, along with virtually the entire U.S. peace movement.
In the face of all the devastation that the U.S. has wreaked in the Middle East, could this be a turning point? Have President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry finally done something that we can thank them for?
The peace movement has had few enough victories to celebrate of late. So let us bask in this one for a few moments. Then we must figure out how we can build momentum for diplomacy over war, and the eventual abolition of all nuclear weapons and all war. This is the only true way to pay tribute to all the victims of the war that began on September 11, 2001. It is also the ultimate goal of Veterans For Peace.
Wage Peace! Abolish War!