items tagged with war

A growing group of individuals and organizations has designated Saturday, February 4, as a “National Day of Action” aimed at preventing a war against Iran. The manifesto is simple: “No War, No Sanctions, No Intervention, No Assassinations.”

Nothing is more urgent than stopping the march to war now underway. Economic warfare has begun already. Sanctions and embargoes are belligerent acts under international law; such policies goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941. The U.S. State Department recently reassured Israeli leaders, who along with their American lobby are in a bigger hurry for war than President Obama is, that the sanctions will devastate the Iranian economy – more precisely, the Iranian people.

America’s troops may be returning home from Iraq, but we’re far from done paying the costs of war. In fact, at the same time that President Obama is reducing the number of troops in Iraq, he’s replacing them with military contractors at far greater expense to the taxpayer. In this way, the war on terror is privatized, the American economy is bled dry, and the military-security-industrial complex makes a killing – literally and figuratively speaking.