Pasadena, CA, 13 November, 2002--At least 700 people turned out to hear former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter talk about the growing danger of U.$. war against Iraq and Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capacity. Ritter's principal arguments -- that war is deadly and should only be taken up after the gravest consideration, and that the Bush administration is only using the threat of WMD as a pretext for war -- met with broad agreement from the crowd.
MIM also agreed with much in former u.$. Marine Scott Ritter's presentation. He called the Amerikan itch for another war against Iraq "imperialism," and criticized the u.$. as the "world's biggest terrorist" for the fact that it is killing 3-5,000 Iraqi children every month with economic sanctions. Arguing correctly that all Amerikans are responsible for these deaths for as long as we fail to prevent them, Ritter shot out: "we kill kids by the hundreds of thousands. You kill those kids, I kill those kids, we all kill those kids."
Ritter also did his best to instill a sense of the emergency facing Amerikans today. He pointed out that the deadlines laid down in the recent UN Security Council resolution leave just enough time for Iraq to make an inventory of its WMD, have inspectors find this inventory faulty, have another week-long debate in the Security Council, and then go to war by mid- to late-December when the u.$. will have the overwhelming air power of four aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf region. MIM has not made any predictions about when the u.$., alone or behind a UN veil, will attack Iraq. We simply note in the words of Prof. Jose Maria Sison that "the United States is using the pretext of waging a war on terrorism in order to wage a war of terrorism against the revolutionary peoples and against countries assertive of national independence."(1)
The issue for people in the United $tates should not be whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but whether their own government does and to what end it will wield them as a threat against the world's people. As Ritter correctly pointed out, it was never possible for the U.$. and USSR to have the bomb without China, Israel, India and Pakistan acquiring it too. He even went so far as to argue that Amerika's willingness to launch a war against Iraq counts as evidence that Iraq does not have WMD, as the united snakes would not walk into such a threat. MIM points out that even if the United $tates is assured that Iraq has no WMD, it remains a horribly dangerous gamble to launch a war of aggression. Bush's own Mad Warrior Rumsfeld has admitted that nuclear attacks against the United $tates are inevitable, which to MIM means it is past time for Amerika to be making its reckoning with the international community, not looking to piss off more enemies and allies alike.
Our disagreements with Ritter relate to definitions of imperialism and terrorism. Ritter understands that people around the world hate Amerika because "maybe the way the U.S. dominates the globe deprives others of the chance at life," and that "no imperial power lasts forever." Still, he is an Amerikan patriot and says so. He rejects current U.$. policies because he thinks they violate this country's principles of democracy, which in his opinion were basically intact before the Persian Gulf War. Ritter thinks Amerika is imperialist and terrorist now because it is so blatantly planning a war for control of Iraqi oil, and because it is killing Iraqi civilians for no reason (i.e., using WMD as an excuse for war even though Iraq has so few as to be irrelevant).
While we certainly agree that these things mark Amerika as imperialist, terrorist, and an international criminal, these specific conditions are not the basis for our analysis. Where Ritter's analysis leads him to think that the UN should have pulled its inspectors out of Iraq and begun a new bombing campaign back in the summer of 1991, MIM says the United $tates and the UN never had any business in Iraq in the first place. This country has killed millions of people around the world through wars of aggression and the daily violence of imperialist exploitation. From the Indian Wars to the conquest of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, to the present-day war against as many Arab and Muslim countries as Bush can name, Amerika has applied the infamous Dred Scott decision to the rest of the world: No country has a right to national sovereignty that Amerika is bound to respect.
MIM circulated its petition to Defend the Rights of Prof. Jose Maria Sison at the event. Prof. Sison is a political refugee in the Netherlands and Chief Political Consultant to the National Democratic Front of the Philippines negotiating panel in the Netherlands. The u.$. and Dutch governments have smeared Prof. Sison as a "terrorist" in an effort to demonize him, and to terrorize overseas Filipinos and the revolutionary and anti-imperialist movement internationally. While we were only able to talk to a small fraction of the people at the event, responses from those who stopped to talk about the petition were positive. Several people signed without hearing MIM's pitch, saying they had heard an interview with Prof. Sison on the radio.(2) Most people who refused to sign said they needed "independent" or "objective" information on this case. But even these people asked for a copy of MIM Notes to read our interview with Prof. Sison, and spent time discussing his case and the so-called War on Terrorism.
Overall, we are heartened to see such a big crowd for an anti-war event on a weeknight. The crowd flooded the main auditorium and an upstairs room with audio-visual hook-up. The last two hundred people arriving seated themselves outside to listen to Ritter's talk on outdoor speakers.
The black mark on this event for MIM was when a CalTech security guy snatched our comrade's clipboard, telling h that s/he was not permitted to petition at the event and hiding the clipboard behind a locked door. After being told that s/he was not even permitted to petition outside the building, the comrade started notifying people in line for the event that s/he was being prevented from petitioning. Our comrade continued to hand out MIM Notes, and to discuss Prof. Sison's case. S/he also polled the audience informally to find out what people thought of an activist being barred from petitioning against the "war on terror" at an event devoted to discussing that war.
Roughly half the people we spoke to thought the University's policy was bogus and that the security guard was wrong to interfere with our comrade's work. The other half initially said that because CalTech is a private university it is the school's right to bar people from petitioning or leafleting on the campus. Though when pressed for their own opinions, many of these volunteered that they oppose the current U.$. war policies and think these policies should be opposed. Our comrade argued that the country's war footing warrants breaking the rules for the sake of preventing further bloodshed, yet many held to their views that CalTech can set its own anti-speech policies for its own private property. Fortunately, our comrade got h clipboard back shortly after the event started, and was able to continue petitioning out of the security guard's view. People we spoke to after the event seemed to reject the CalTech policy much more readily, perhaps because they had just finished listening to Scott Ritter argue that in time of war more than any other time, it is vital that the people speak out, question and argue against government actions they disagree with.
Notes:
1. "Interview with Prof. Jose Maria Sison," MIM Notes 270 November 15, 2002.
2. Audio files of an hour-long interview with Professor Sison are available on MIM's website.