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Rules for Demonstrations

We encourage all who wish to speak out against war as to join us in demonstrations (see Events for dates). 

However, we ask that all read and agree to the following rules for demonstrations:

During these demonstrations:

We will carry no weapons.

We will not vandalize.

We will not swear or use insulting language.

We will not assault - either verbally or physically - those who oppose or disagree with us, even if they assault us.

Dayton, Ohio anti-war groups

THE FAILED POLITICS OF HEGEMONY

It was the new Millennium that ushered in the notion of “Superpower,” and the Christian Republican conservative government of George W. Bush.  Until 9/11 the coast was clear of all enemies, except for the aberrant “rogue” states who denied the “natural superiority”  (read “manifest destiny”) of the United States.

Then, following 9/11, things changed.  A scapegoat had to be found and Saddam Hussein presented himself to the Washington elite.  No matter the evidence that there were no WMD and that the Iraqi army was only halfheartedly defending its homeland, diplomacy failed when faced with battlefield losses, but wars do not often go as planned.  

In order to accept folly abroad, consent had to be manufactured at home and so was born the repressive obsession with Homeland Security (read ”Profiling & Spying”), prisoner interrogation (read “real or threatened torture”) and renditions (read ”enforced civilian kidnapping”).

The folly of war was rationalized by “preemptive” (read “aggressive”) reasons, “Threats to our Security” (read “Paranoia about Iraqi military capability”) and “collaboration with al-Queida” (read “ the migration of dissident and insurgent Arab underground fighters into Iraq”).  This justified the loss of life and the drain on the Treasury, but did it justify the “collateral damage” (read “civilian deaths”) to the nation of Iraq?

If anyone doubts that Paranoia can be induced as a group phenomenon, they should consider the following: First, that Paranoia is a common expression of subconscious individual or group vulnerability.  Secondly, they should research a slice of history, to wit, “Younghusband Expedition” to Lhasa in 1904.  Dispatched by Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, because of suspicions of a Russo-Chinese agreement over Tibet and of Russian arms and soldiers infiltrating there, the only outcome was a military encounter in which 628 Tibetan soldiers lost their lives.  No Russians were ever found in Lhasa, nor was Russian weaponry.  So much for the imaginary Russian threat to invade India.  

As to Hegemony, it is obvious at the close of 2006, that the U.S. cannot indefinitely sustain a military presence in Iraq in the face of a civil sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunnis.  After the failure to secure oil supplies and to build an acceptable government, the road to U.S. military withdrawal is open, but at the cost of losing face and of the disenchantment of many friendly countries about the administration’s use of U.S. military power as a tool of its foreign Policy, with grave forebodings for the future.

Clarence DeLima
12/28/06

THE WAY AHEAD

Some in the antiwar community are still heady from the electoral defeat of the Republican party, they are hopeful that the Democrats will get us out of the quagmire in Iraq. My analyses lead me to far different conclusions. While I hope that the Democrats have the internal fortitude to end the war, the actions and statements of the party leadership indicates the opposite. For the truth of the matter is that both parties are attached to the vision of the United States being an imperial power, although the Democrats see this as a power for doing good. Neither party dares to say that invasion was wrong at a fundamental level, that we should not invade other countries. But the forces of the Iraq people will make us leave Iraq whether it is in six months or six years. And we in the antiwar movement must increase our efforts to end the war as soon as possible, but, maybe our most important task, will be to educate the public on the institutional and systemic causes of the war.

As several progressive thinkers, including Immanuel Wallerstein, have written, we in the United States will face a day of reckoning when the war ends. We, as a nation, have accepted the imperial mantle although we deny it verbally. We have over 731 military bases around the world. We have allowed, in President Eisenhower’s words, “the military-industrial complex” to become a fundamental part of our existence so that it has tremendous control both economically and politically.

In Germany after World War One, the talk from the imperial camp was that Germany was not defeated, but was stabbed in the back by the Jews and the liberals. Our imperialists, the neoconservatives and those addicted to imperial power, will make a similar statement that the liberals, the gays, the blacks and the antiwar movement lost the war. We will then be faced with a demand to create a more imperial state, a less liberal state, a state similar to Nazi Germany where the true Americans can be in control and we can fulfill our manifest destiny.

In this climate we will need to attack the problem directly by not only saying no to an authoritarian regime, but by convincing the people of the United States to abandon the imperial mantle and find a democratic and just solution to the problems in the world.

This will not be an easy task but the moves towards authoritarianism are apparent: The Patriot Act, the power to spy without judicial authorization, and the acceptance of the use of torture. We need to act now so that we do not evolve into this repressive society.

Hilary Lerman
11/21/06

IRAQ, THE NEOCONSERVATIVES, AND THE FUTURE

Too often, the Peace Movement and the Left in general focuses on the war in Iraq as a matter that will easily be remedied by a change of administration. I will discuss, in a series of articles, the history of United States aggression, the steps that led to the invasion of Iraq, and the wider context within which true advocates of a better world must focus. But for this discussion, I will examine a recent movement that is dominating United States foreign policy: the neoconservatives.

While some of the threads of neoconservative policies and institutions go back to the start of the Cold War, the real push is with the Reagan administration where many of the most prominent members of this trend began their politics, such as Wolfowitz and Pearle. The journal, the Weekly Standard under William Kristol is the main voice of these people. But their main entrance into national politics begins with their publication of the article, Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in which their geopolitical vision was stated in 1994.

The neoconservative trend is a group of secular intellectuals, some with Leftist and/or Jewish background. This pamphlet states that the United States must transform the countries of the Middle East into the economic, social, and political equivalents of this country. The timing of the release of the article is very important- 1994. This is soon after the First Gulf War where the United States, after defeating the Iraqi army and entering Iraq, ended the war. The strategists of the first Bush were from the realist school of international politics and felt that the defined goals of United States foreign policy were achieved, here the ouster of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The neoconservatives viewed this as a wrong policy and felt that the United States should have conquered and totally transformed Iraq.

But the neoconservatives have a wider perspective than just the Middle East, they have a vision for the United States in the coming years. While there may be some dispute on the particulars, the neoconservatives see that the United States is slipping economically, that a united Europe and especially a dynamic China (possibly linked with Korea, Japan and Vietnam) will be able to produce goods more economically than the United States, that their goods will cost less. In this world in which the United States is starting to lose its dominance, the neoconservatives see that the this country must exert itself militarily, that to protect the future we must take risks in the present.

To achieve this end, they see two areas to project the United States’ military strength: the Middle East, as they described in the PNAC article, and China which is seen as the rising economic and military power. Once these premises are accepted, the trend of United States foreign policy since September 11th is crystal clear. While aspects of the invasion of Iraq can be seen as a response to 9/11, our military remains in the area and the United States government has established bases there and in several countries in Central Asia which were formally part of the Soviet Union; the better to control the people and resources of the Middle East. But the true indicator of the government’s objectives was the invasion of Iraq. This was in no way connected to al-Qaeda and even the excuse of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) was quickly eliminated as even the administration’s experts proved that Iraq had no such weapons. This corroborated the understanding that the administration was working on the neoconservative’s agenda and not that of the ‘war on terrorism.’

This view is further reinforced by the extremely bellicose rhetoric surrounding Iran and its nuclear program. It makes no sense to attack Iran and even less sense to use nuclear weapons for the first time since the end of World War II. But this is the logic of the neoconservative movement: what may seem illogical to ordinary people fits into their world-view. Prior to the last election, the reporter, Ron Suskind, related that a member of the Bush administration stated that critics were in a ‘reality-paradigm.” On first reflection this does not make sense, but the neoconservative logic is that they are changing the world and that everyone else is forced to deal with the newly created reality. This is why intelligent people to say that the administration will not do a certain action because it is illogical, are not aware of the tremendous strength of the neoconservative ideology. They firmly believe and feel this is the only chance to save the United States.

The second part of their action plan is to confront China. Any careful observer of the articles coming from Washington will find that a carefully laid scenario is unfolding with China as the rising enemy, such items as emphasizing the Chinese military budget, wondering why China would expand it military, calling on the other nations of East Asia to form tighter security networks.

To truly stop the war in Iraq and prevent further attacks the peace and Left movements must be armed with a thorough understanding of the ideas and plans of these people.

I will continue this discussion with a history of United States intervention since WW2 and how this is related to the world economic system.

Hilary Lerman
7/31/06

PEACE POWER IN DAYTON

In recent months there has been a surge of activity in the Dayton area for peace, the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the end of our nation's efforts to force its will over the rest of the world.

In September, Barb Roberts of the Dayton Office of the American Friends Service Committee convened a group of organizations to open the Eyes Wide Open exhibit at Crosscreek Church. Over 1,000 pairs of boots representing American deaths in Iraq were displayed. Since that time, the number of sets in this traveling display has increased by over 400. The display, which is traveling around the nation, also contains shoes representing some of the over 100,000 Iraqis who have died since the attack by the U.S. began.

Not long after that, the Dayton International Peace Museum was opened with the help of an overflow crowd in the former United Methodist Headquarters in Dayton. The museum's founders are Ralph and Chris Dull along with Fred Arment and Lisa Wolters, Steve Fryburg is volunteer staff.

In November, a number of people from Dayton, including a large contingent of students and faculty, including Joe Kunkel from the University of Dayton, went to Ft. Benning, Georgia. This annual protest calls for the closing of the School of the Americas, a primary tool for control over the internal affairs of other nations in the Americas - all potential future Iraqs. Two University of Dayton students, Meagan Doty and Brian DeRouen, were arrested and received prison sentences of three and four months. An "Other Voices" article by DeRouen appeared in the January 31 issue of the Dayton Daily News.

Peggy Gish, of the Christian Peacemakers Teams, spoke at Wright State University about the human tragedy in Iraq and U.S. control of decision-making in that nation.. Her appearance was organized by the members of the Wright State University Peace Lectureship Fund Committee - Carl Brun, Dave Hurwitz, Nancy Garner, Anna Bellisari and Jeff Wehmeyer. Also present at the talk was Rick Polhamus, a Dayton area resident and member of the Christian Peacemakers, who has also traveled to Iraq

In the latter part of 2004, Steve Fryburg initiated a local chapter of Veterans for Peace; and Military Families Speak Out got off the ground thanks to Beth Lerman and Deb Hagerman.

The September 11th Coalition has continued to organize activities, under the leadership of Hilary Lerman and Jim Lucas, calling for the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. On December 4 a rally was held at Cooper Park and each Wednesday a protest has held from 4:30 - 5 pm on Third St. in Dayton across from the Federal Building.

Dayton Peace Action held a program at the Dayton International Peace Museum, where Wisconsin Peace Action's George Martin spoke. He shared techniques of community organization and his recollections from a recent visit to Iraq about the brutal occupation of that nation.

Two members of the Dayton Pledge of Resistance traveled to Colombia, a nation in South America, which is a recipient of U.S. military aid designed to repress a truly democratic process in that nation. Margaret Knapke went to offer support to the Association for the Families of the Detained and Disappeared (ASFADDES), and later she authored an article on that subject which will appear in the February issue of the Nonviolent Resister, a publication of the War Resisters League. John Ewers went later to Colombia as a member of the Accompaniment Program of the Presbyterian Church Peace Fellowship. Both are available to speak about their experiences.

Logan Martinez called together a group of people concerned about U.S. domination over the internal affairs of Haiti; the group meets on a regular basis at Sinclair Community College, and has submitted a position paper on this topic, which has been accepted by the national Green Party.

On January 8 Gloria Leigh, of a local interfaith group, organized a parade for peace and the end of the occupation of Iraq. About 150 people with police escort marched from the International Peace Museum to Courthouse Square where a rally was held.

Also on January 8 a group picture was taken of about 50 local people behind peace signs saying Assalamu Alaikum and Peace Be With You. This picture is now on the websites of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the September 11 Coalition and will also be circulated to other parts of the world to show that some Americans wish them peace.

In January, the yearly commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King was organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It was Dr. King who said that the U.S. was the major purveyor of violence in the world, and who surely would be leading marches today to end the occupation of Iraq.

James A. Lucas
2/18/05