평화군축센터 미분류 2003-03-20   542

We Condemn Bush’s War

Following is the statement issued by groups of civil society and social movement organisations gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in Korea in an ad-hoc anti-war demonstration immediately following the news of American bombing in Iraq.

March 20, 2003

The American attack on Iraq has begun. The New York Times has reported that more than 3,000 precision guided bombs and missiles would shower over Iraq within 48 hours of the beginning of the attack. This would be 10 times the amount of bombs dropped on Iraq in first two days of the 1991 Gulf War.

Some 200,000 Iraqi people were reported to have died due to the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations has warned that some 500,000 Iraqi people would die in the course of the new war. Direct and indirect victims of the war, the injured, those starved to death, and people forced to flee into vagary would total 10 million.

A State Department official who took part in the design of the attack on Iraq, named “Shock and Awe”, spoke of the American intention: Iraqis will be physically, emotionally, and psychologically, completed depleted within two, three, four, or five days. The plan is to sap the spirit of the Iraqis to fight. The goal is to achieve an effect like the Atom bomb on Hiroshima within, not some days or some weeks, but in few minutes.

In his ultimatum speech on March 18, George W. Bush asserted that the war was to disarm Iraq. A CIA document obtained recently by the Newsweek, however, shed light on the lies being told by Bush. A former high Iraqi official, who was a close confidant of Sadam Hussein, but turned against him, in Summer of 1995, told the CIA, the British intelligence agents, and the UN weapons inspectors that, Iraq had, following the 1991 Gulf War, destroyed all chemical weapons and the missiles which could deliver them.

The UN weapons inspectors have recently reported that they did not discover any weapons of mass destruction. It is the U.S. which is possess the largest quantity of weapons of destruction on the earth. It is also the greatest weapons exporting nation in the world.

George W. Bush speaks about liberty for Iraq, but the U.S. has for a long time supported the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein. In 1968, the American CIA gave support to the blood coup d’etat orchestrated by Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. In 1988, when Hussein massacred Kurds with poison gas, the U.S. acted as Hussein’s shield against a condemnation by the U.N. Last year, the New York Times exposed that the U.S. actually designed the war plan for Iraq in its against Iran, where Hussein used chemical weapons.

We know clearly that the Bush Administration harps on disarmament and democratisation of Iraq to justify its war that is aimed purely to secure an iron control over Middle East oil and its global hegemony. George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Jos? Mar?a Aznar started the war in total disregard to the world-wide opposition.

The Korean government of president Roh Moo-hyun has decided to send Korean troops for America’s war in Iraq. Mr. Roh Moo-hyun is eager to be a loyal supporter of America’s policy of world domination, as all his predecessors have done. We cannot let the Korea government to support Bush’s war. Why should the people’s tax and our young be mobilised for America’s shameful war. We call on President Roh Moo-hyun to call off the plan to send troops for America’s war for oil and domination. The war we should fight is not against Iraqis but one against unemployment and poverty.

War is nothing but a planned mass butchery. People all over the world opposed to war have arisen to oppose George W. Bush’s war against Iraq. The global anti-war movement will mount even strong action as the war has started. Many have already resolved to wage strikes, student occupation, boycott of the transportation of war material.

The anti-war peace movement in Korea will be one in this world-wide struggle against the war. Let us rise to stop this “barbaric war” that will drive women and children and innocent people to death, bring about environmental catastrophe, and the decimation of the cultural heritage of the Sumer and Mesopotamia civilizations which have ushered in the dawn of the history of humanity.

We will confront the savage war of invasion led by Bush through the following actions:

We will gather en masse at the Kwanghwamun Square, downtown Seoul, at 7 p.m. today to demonstrate our anger

We will hold a mass rally on Saturday at the Jongmyo Park, downtown Seoul, against the war

We will step up our action if the resolution to dispatch troops to Iraq is tabled at the National Assembly to force the parliament to reject it

We will organise action to prevent the dispatch of Korean military units to Iraq

We Call on George W. Bush to End the Pre-meditated Mass Butchery!

We Call on the Roh Moo-hyun Government to Cancel the Plan to Dispatch Troops to Iraq!

Center for Peace and Disarmament

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