Democrats are Exploiting Antiwar Sentiment for Political Gain

Green Party of the United States -- Democrats are Exploiting Antiwar Sentiment for Political Gain

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders strongly criticized a proposed Democratic resolution in the U.S. calling for withdrawal by September 2008, and demanded that Congress take action to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq with legislation that would effect an immediate withdrawal.

The Green Party of the United States has opposed the U.S. war on Iraq since late 2002, when President Bush announced plans for an invasion, and has called for impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for a list of high crimes and misdemeanors, including lying to the American people to justify going to war.

Continue reading "Democrats are Exploiting Antiwar Sentiment for Political Gain..."

And after you've read the above, join other Burlington and Vermont citizens TODAY in Phase Two of “Let’s Get Some Action from Our Delegation on the War” --

Citizen Sit-In and Call-In at Senator Bernie Sanders' Office to Protest War Funding
Meet in front of Burlington City Hall on Church Street at 2pm Tuesday, March 27 to plan
Walk to Bernie's Office, 1 Church Street, between 2:20 and 2:30 pm

Relatedly, Howard Zinn --

When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them. We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.

Timetables for withdrawal are not only morally reprehensible in the case of a brutal occupation (would you give a thug who invaded your house, smashed everything in sight, and terrorized your children a timetable for withdrawal?) but logically nonsensical. If our troops are preventing civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at all? If they are in fact doing the opposite - provoking civil war, hurting people, perpetuating violence - they should withdraw as quickly as ships and planes can carry them home. . .

We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth. That, history suggests, is the most realistic thing a citizen can do.