Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Not A Victory - Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran

Turned on MSNBC for a change last week and caught live footage of the last American combat vehicles (allegedly) leaving Iraq. I was hit by a flood of memories of the trauma of the September 11th attacks being an excuse for war against others, the fear of escalation to a larger war, the day after day organizing of or attending of peace protests, watching the freaking neocons lie about the reasons for war day after day on cable television, seeing Iraq torn apart by conflicts among Iraqis resulting from the U.S. invasion, seeing tens of thousands of innocents killed.

And it's not over yet. Ariel Sharon said "Iran's next" way back in 2002 and the neocons and Israel have been pushing for the United States to attack it ever since. The scares come and the scares go - and back they come again. Now the U.S. congress is backing such an attack and Obama hardly resists it. He - or his handler Rahm Emanuel - may see it as a way to distract people from economic troubles and press down the government boot even harder. I wrote my song "Not A Victory" in 1999 as a march tune for the "Not a Victory" parade peace activists in Washington DC held after the end of the 1999 US/NATO attacks on Serbia. I proposed the title of the parade which then inspired the song.

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