The U.S. has surrounded the sealed off City of Fallujah and is preparing to launch the complete destruction of the city.
They have told the people that any traffic on the street is now subject to attack and any males between the ages of 15 and 55 who go outside will automatically be killed by the U.S. soldiers. The U.S. is terrorizing and bombing the citizens of Fallujah every night, recently targeting and fully destroying its emergency hospital, collapsing homes around families, dismembering children. Many of the 300,000 population have fled for their lives, everything they have ever had left behind or destroyed.
Now the top enlisted Marine in Iraq has called on his troops to commit war crimes against the tens of thousands of remaining residents and what stands of that proud and historic city. Referring to the assault on the ancient citadel city of Hue, destroyed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, Sgt. Maj. Carlton W. Kent told an assembled group of 2,500 Marines in a “pep-talk”: “You’re all in the process of making history. This is another Hue city in the making. I have no doubt, if we do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to do what you have always done – kick some butt.” (AP, November 7 2004)
The U.S. moved to reoccupy Hue after Vietnamese forces has liberated it in the Tet Offensive of 1968. The Under Secretary of the Air Force, Townsend Hoopes, described the results of the U.S. assault on Hue in a March 1968 memo as leaving “a devastated and prostrate city. Eighty per cent of the buildings had been reduced to rubble, and in the smashed ruins lay 2,000 dead civilians… Three quarters of the city’s people were rendered homeless and looting was widespread, members of the ARVN [U.S. backed South Vietnamese troops] being the worst offenders.” (Noam Chomsky’s forward to the papers of the 1967 International War Crimes in Vietnam Tribunal)
The resistance in Iraq is carrying out coordinated efforts across the country to dislodge U.S. occupation forces with attacks on police stations and other targeted representatives of U.S. puppet installations. In recent days many U.S. soldiers have been badly wounded and there is more to come as the U.S. military leadership predicts the most bloody urban fighting since Vietnam. The U.S. is using all of its firepower, night vision, high-tech weaponry, and bombing capacity against defenseless civilians as well as resistance fighters primarily armed with Kalishnakov rifles and improvised explosive devises. With all this military might, the U.S. is unable to stop the Iraqi people from fighting for their national sovereignty. The U.S. installed “prime minister” of Iraq has today declared martial law in Iraq for the next two months aggregating even greater unilateral authority.
This is no time for anti-war and progressive people in the U.S. to “mourn,” dwell and lament on the failure of the Democratic Party candidate to defeat the Republican Party candidate, at least not those who are really committed to ending this criminal war and securing justice at home. If nothing else, we all know that if Kerry was President-elect, nothing would be different for the people of Iraq right now. Kerry has not condemned the bombings of Falluljah at any point, nor the attacks on the Iraqi people, nor the use of U.S. soldiers as cannon fodder in this war of aggression and conquest.
Now the people of Fallujah wait for the next attack, and the U.S. soldiers wait for their orders to carry out actions that they will have to reconcile for the rest of their lives, if they survive.
VoteNoWar members across the U.S. are planning emergency demonstrations the DAY AFTER a reinvasion of Fallujah. We call on other committed organizations and activists to also initiate such actions, at local federal buildings, recruiting stations, or traditional public assembly locations.
