Peace Protestors: Anti-War or Anti-US?

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New York Post
Anti-War or Anti-US?
By AMIR TAHERI

March 5, 2003 -- 'THE rebirth of the peace movement." This is how sections of the Western media describe the marches that attracted 30 million people in some 600 cities, in 25 countries, across the globe in recent weeks.

Last week, a group of "peaceniks" gathered in London to discuss ways of nursing the "reborn" child into adulthood. By coincidence, today marks the 50th anniversary of Josef Stalin's death.

The Soviet dictator was the father of the first "peace movement," which for years served as an instrument of the Kremlin's global policy.

Stalin's "peace movement" was launched in 1946 at a time when he had not yet developed a nuclear arsenal and was thus vulnerable to a U.S. nuclear attack. Stalin also needed time to consolidate his hold on his newly conquered empire in eastern and central Europe while snatching chunks of territory in Iran.

Pablo Picasso, a "fellow traveler" with the French Communist Party, designed the famous dove of peace as the emblem of the movement. French poet Paul Eluard, another fellow traveler, composed an ode inspired by Stalin. The "peaceniks" were told to wear white shirts, release white doves during their demonstrations and shake their clenched fists against "imperialists and revanchistes."

Soon it became clear that the "peace movement" was not opposed to all wars, but only to those that threatened the U.S.S.R., its allies and its satellites.

For example, the peaceniks did not object to Stalin's decision to keep the entire Chechen nation in exile in Siberia. The peaceniks did not march to ask Stalin to withdraw his forces from Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. When Stalin annexed 15 percent of Finland's territory, none of the peaceniks protested.

Neither did they march when the Soviets annexed the Baltic states. Nor did they grumble when Soviet tanks rolled into Warsaw and Budapest, and a decade later also in Prague. But when America led a coalition under a U.N. mandate to prevent North Korean Communists from conquering the south, peaceniks were on the march everywhere.

The movement targeted Western democracies and sought to weaken their resolve against the Soviet threat.

Over the years nobody marched against any of the client regimes of the Soviet Union that engaged in numerous wars, including against their own people.

The wars that China's Communist regime waged against the peoples of Manchuria, Tibet, East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia, lands that were eventually annexed and subjected to "ethnic cleansing," provoked no protest marches. Even when China attacked India and grabbed Indian territories the size of England, the peace movement did not budge.

In the 1960s the movement transformed itself into the campaign for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Here, unilateral meant that only the Western powers had to give up their arsenal, thus giving the Soviets a monopoly on nuclear weapons.

The peaceniks spent much of the '60s opposing U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

The 1980s gave them a new lease on life, as they focused on opposing American Pershing missiles in Western Europe.

The Pershings represented a response to Soviet SS-20 missiles that had already been stationed in central Europe and aimed at Western European capitals. But the peaceniks never asked for both the Pershings and the SS-20s to be withdrawn, only the American missiles.

President Ronald Reagan's proposal that both the SS-20s and the Pershings be withdrawn was attacked and ridiculed by the peaceniks as "an American Imperialist trick." Francois Mitterrand, then France's Socialist president, put it this way: "The missiles are in the East but the peaceniks are in the West!"

No peacenik, not even Joschka Fischer, now Germany's foreign minister, marched in support of tearing down the Berlin Wall and allowing the German nation to regain its unity.

All that is now history. The "evil empire" of communism has gone for good, but the deep anti-West sentiments that it promoted over the decades remains.

It is this anti-West, more specifically anti-American, sentiment that provides the glue of the new peace movement.

Last month, the British daily The Guardian asked a number of peaceniks to explain why they opposed the use of force to liberate Iraq?

The main reason they felt they had to support Saddam Hussein was that he was disliked by the United States.


When the Tanzanian army invaded Uganda and removed Idi Amin from power, no one marched because the United States was not involved.

When the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia and changed the Khmer Rouge regime there, no one marched. Again, the United States was not involved.

When French troops invaded the Central African Republic and changed its regime, again no one marched.

The reason? You guessed it: America was not involved.

And what about a march in support of the Chechens? Oh, no, that won't do: The United States is not involved.

The peace movement would merit the label only if it opposed all wars, including those waged by tyrants against their own people, not just those in which America is involved.

Did it march when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran? Not at all.

Did it march when Saddam invaded Kuwait? Again: nix!

(Later, they marched, with the slogan "No Blood for Oil," when the U.S.-led coalition came to liberate Kuwait.)

Did it march when Saddam was gassing the Kurds to death? Oh, no.

Stalin died 50 years ago to the day.

But if he were around today he would have a chuckle: His peace movement remains as alive in the Western democracies as it was half a century ago.

Iranian author and journalist Amir Taheri is based in Europe.

E-mail: [email protected]

 

[rsnoble]

Peace activists: It's their fucking opionion leave them the fuck alone. You dont have to be anti american to not be for the war or hate Bush. When you don't have the right to you opinion were in deep shit!

 

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did you not read the fucking article? are you too stupid to see the blatant hypocrisy of these people?

 

[IhateOsama]

Peace Protestors: Anti-War or Anti-US?

Anti-US

Peace activists: It's their fucking opionion leave them the fuck alone. You dont have to be anti american to not be for the war or hate Bush. When you don't have the right to you opinion were in deep shit!

ROUND THEM UP AND HANG 'EM BY THEIR TINY BALLS AND MILK GIVING NIPPLES.

 

[Norman Bates]

I´m not anti- US , nor is anyone of my friends.
And there are protests to other nations, for example to the French nuclear tests in Muroroa.

 

[Baby Gorilla]

Truth....

I think it's just the world going mad.

I don't blame the protesters. They're part of a larger problem.

Saddam gasses people. We do nothing. Saddam murders family members. We do nothing. Saddam refuses to comply with resolutions imposed by the UN after being beaten in Desert Strom. We do nothing.

Milosevech is ACCUSED of ethnic cleansing in a region where the two ethnicities in question have been murdering each other for generations. Not one named victim is shown to be killed by Milosevech either directly or by his order. We go in, kidnap him, put him on trail, put him in prison.

There's a ban from selling weapons to Iraq. France and Germany violate this. Nothing is done.

The USA (after openly declaring war on ALL terrorists) finally decide to end the Iraq threat (regardless of how you view the need to do it now, it's something that would inevitably come). We are painted as the bad guys.

People around the world embrace socialism. Socialism hasn't produced a single prosperous economy. It basically is the equal distribution of misery. "I don't like being poor while others have wealth. If I can't be rich, we should all be poor."

Capitalism (for all it's unfairness or inequity), creates prosperity for those who will work for it. It creates an incentive for people to do their best rather than just do enough to get by. It's seen as evil.

The Bible says a time will come where people will call good evil and evil good. I think that "madness" has finally come.

 

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ANSWER's Steering Committee: Traitors, and Commies, and Jew-haters - oh my!

ANSWER's Steering Committee
By Ryan Anderson O’Donnell

The group at the forefront of the recent anti-war rallies, International A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is in reality a front organization designed to further the radical agenda of several extremist movements from the political Left. Despite the media’s assertions to the contrary, present incarnation of the peace movement, led by ANSWER, is anything but representative of mainstream America.

ANSWER’s steering committee reads like a "Who’s Who" of radical political organizations. The most influential member of ANSWER’s steering committee, Ramsey Clark’s pet project known as the International Action Center (IAC), is considered by many observers to be little more than a communist front organization for an obscure Stalinist organization known as the World Workers Party (WWP). Yet, the IAC is not the only member of ANSWER’s steering committee committed to extremist causes. The Korean Truth Commission and Pastors for Peace are staunch allies of Kim Jong Il and Fidel Castro, respectively, and both groups continue to support these murderous regimes’ violation of International law. In addition to its role as a front for the support of totalitarian/communist governments in North Korea and Cuba, members of ANSWER’s steering committee such as the Muslim Student Association and the Free Palestine Alliance continue to provide ideological, logistical and financial support for organizations devoted to the destruction of the state of Israel, including the terrorist group, Hamas. A comprehensive investigation of the members of ANSWER’s steering committee make it clear that the organization is in actuality one of Peace’s greatest enemies.

Since its inception in the early nineties, Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center has been documented to be a front organization for the World Worker’s party. While the WWP’s history and support for murderous regimes and bloody crackdowns on communist/totalitarian dissidents has already been extensively documented by Front Page Magazine, as well as other several media outlets, through a deliberate infiltration strategy in which key WWP operatives have assumed high level positions in Clark’s organization, the WWP has been able to exert tremendous ideological sway over the IAC, and subsequently, ANSWER. As noted by Kevin Coogan, a contributor to the Hit List who has extensively investigated the WWP-IAC connection, "it is undeniable that without the presence of scores of WWP cadre working inside the IAC, the organization, for all practical purposes would cease to exist."

It was Ramsey Clark’s seduction by the WWP that marked the beginning of the WWP’s movement to the forefront of liberal activism. In 1991, the National Coalition was born out of the ashes of another WWP front organization known as the People’s Anti-War Mobilization (PAM). The WWP’s role in the creation of the National Coalition was immediately made apparent through the selection of prominent WWP member Monica Moorehead as the head of the new organization. The National Coalition quickly established its headquarters in a Manhattan office building adjacent to the offices of Ramsey Clark, which was already infested with WWP members. Gavriella Gemma, a WWP and National Coalition coordinator, was a legal secretary in Ramsey’s office, and was allegedly instrumental in bringing Clark into the WWP fold. Clark quickly fell under the sway of the WWP, and within months was announced as the organization’s official spokesman.

Clark’s appointment as National Coalition spokesman marked the beginning of his alliance with the WWP, an alliance that resulted in the formation of the International Action Center. Workers’ World, the official newspaper of the WWP announced the creation of the IAC, describing it as a "center of international solidarity." However, with Clark as its spokesman, and WWP member Sarah Flounders as its coordinator, IAC was clearly designed to be the National Coalition’s successor as a sanctuary for WWP front groups and other affiliated organizations, including the National Coalition to Stop U.S Intervention in the Middle East, the Hati Commission, the Campaign to Stop Settlements in Palestine, the Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama, the Movement for a People’s Assembly, and the International War Crimes Tribunal (Coogan, p. 3). Brian Becker, member of the secretariat of the World Workers Party, is now a national co-director for the IAC. Other WWP members overtly associated with IAC are Sarah Sloan (youth coordinator), Teresa Gutierrez (co-director) and Gloria La Riva (correspondent, Workers World.) Of course, IAC WWP members are never identified as such at ANSWER rallies. Ostensibly, this lack of WWP identification is because their positions at the IAC are to be the focus of the rallies. While this may be superficially accurate, one wonders how many of the anti-war demonstrators at ANSWER events would be pleased to know their time and donations are aiding a group (WWP) that supported the Tiananmen Square massacre?

The IAC’s formation of the Korea Truth Commission, another ANSWER steering committee member, provides further evidence of WWP’s heavy hand in the ANSWER coalition. Presumably incorporated to uncover some form of "truth" about the Korean War, the KTC has proven itself to be little more than a mouthpiece for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), and the communist nation’s lackeys in the IAC and WWP. Once again, the infamous Ramsey Clark is the organizer behind this entire charade. Under guidance of Clark’s IAC, the KTC has sent eight delegations to the Korean Peninsula in order to gather "evidence" of war crimes allegedly committed during the Korean War. These fact-finding delegations unsurprisingly included all of the usual suspects: Ramsey Clark, Gloria La Riva, and Brian Becker. Most of these delegations accomplished little more than finding every excuse to vilify the United States, while praising Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea. The reports filed by these delegations were often short on concrete fact, choosing instead to spend pages extolling the virtues of the communist regime in the North. For example, the eighth delegation reported back:

To the visitor, Pyongyang leaves the impression of a clean, modern world capital. It is a city of two million people with an efficient public transit system, wide, tree-lined streets, and all the cultural amenities, hospitals, schools, parks and sports facilities that one would expect to find in a large metropolis. Industry has been located on the perimeter of the city to avoid the problem of pollution as much as possible…the people of Pyongyang present themselves as cultured and purposeful. There is no sign of vagrancy or homelessness. Instead of billboards with product advertising, the streets are adorned with posters, banners and inscriptions exhorting citizens to work together to build a powerful nation.

Anyone familiar with the Pyongyang regime knows such a glowing representation of the city and its government is inaccurate. However, since much of the KTC is controlled by Kim Jong-Il’s fan club at the WWP and the IAC, such misrepresentations should come as little surprise.

In fact, at the time of this article’s publication, the KTC does not even have its own website; the IAC has simply devoted a portion of its Iacenter.org to information on the KTC. While other organizations are active in the KTC, it is clear that Ramsey Clark and the IAC/WWP alliance dictate the commission’s agenda.

The KTC’s flurry of activity in the late nineties culminated with an International War Crimes Tribunal on U.S. Crimes in Korea, a shameless travesty that made a mockery of the Tribunal concept. Once again, the WWP and IAC’s fingerprints were all over the tribunal. Sarah Flounders served as the Tribunals co-chair, while Ramsey Clark appointed himself Chief prosecutor. Brian Becker was listed as a Tribunal Sponsor, while Sandra Smith, Gloria La Riva and Anne Becker all led discussion groups related to the tribunal. Unsurprisingly, with the WWP running the show, the tribunal, like many of today’s anti-war protests, dissolved into an orgy of anti-Americanism, with little adherence to its stated purpose, the truth.

WWP influenced groups like the IAC and the KTC are not the only members of ANSWER’s steering committee that back rogue dictatorships. Another of ANSWER’s steering committee members, Pastors for Peace (PFP), is partially funded by the ARCA foundation, an organization devoted to supporting pro-Castro groups in the United States. In the last decade alone, ARCA has granted well over one hundred thousand dollars to PFP. According to PFP, these grants go towards humanitarian relief cargo such as medicine, computers, and school buses. Of course, PFP fails to note that in Cuba, everything is owned by the state. And that Castro is the State. So essentially, PFP is using ARCA’s grant money to prop up Castro’s worker’s paradise.

Reports from Cuba indicate that the medicine PFP claims has gone directly to the Cuban people is in fact often sold at the government’s "foreigners only" stores. Since regular Cubans are not allowed to own computers, the government immediately seizes the machines. As for the school buses donated by PFP to the Cuban people? Cuban refugees have reported these buses are now used by the police for raids against anti-Castro dissents.

Not only do these humanitarian shipments aid Castro, but they are also in flagrant violation of US law. Although the 1992 Cuban Democracy act allows for private humanitarian donations to Cuba, "appropriate licensing and inspection procedures must be met by all donors." PFP has repeatedly failed to follow such procedures, as illustrated in a letter composed by a group of US Congressmen to the Director of the Office of Foreign Asset controls. The letter documents PFP’s numerous violations of the Cuban embargo, concluding that "Pastors for Peace has publicly and intentionally violated the law in an attempt to challenge US policy towards the Castro dictatorship. If Pastors for Peace was truly the peaceful humanitarian organization which it claims to be, it would not make its travel and resources contingent on political posturing, or violently violate the law and injure customs officials."

In its zeal to bolster Castro’s Communist cabal, the PFP has even resorted to violence in order to defy the Cuban Democracy act. Despite the fact that the PFP could ship humanitarian goods to Cuba if licensed under the Trading with Enemies Act , the group has consistently sought out confrontation with United States authorities. The most violent of these clashes occurred in 1996 when thirty vehicles carrying two hundred activists and three hundred computers was stopped at the Mexican border by US customs officials. PFP activists then exited their caravan and attempted to break through the blockade. A physical confrontation quickly erupted between the Customs officials and the activists, and although PFP profess adherence to "non-violent techniques," the melee resulted in serious injuries to four customs officials, three of which required hospitalization. A single PFP activist received minor injuries.

PFP has no qualms about placing the health and safety of American citizens at risk, as demonstrated by its involvement with "biorat." In July of 2001, Customs Officials seized more than thirty pounds of "biorat" from PFP activists. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, "Biorat is not admissible into the United States," because "it poses a public health risk worldwide." The report cites a "1996 article in the British medical journal Lancet asserting that the product could easily cause food-borne disease in people."

Through his sympathizers like Pastors for Peace, Castro continues to export toxins into the U.S. that could harm the American people. The desire of Pastors for Peace to smuggle contraband biochemicals into the United States needs to be scrutinized carefully, especially as our nation remains on alert against biological and chemical terrorism.


While not directly associated with the WWP or the rogue regimes in North Korea and Iraq, two other ANSWER Steering Committee members, the Muslim Student Alliance (MSA) and the Free Palestine Alliance (FPA), continue to contradict ANSWER’s alleged commitment to peace and ending racism. The Free Palestine Alliance is an outspoken supporter of the intifada, the Palestinian Uprising that has killed thousands of Israelis. Started by the Islamic Jihad, the Intifada has been guided by the PLO and strongly influenced by terrorist organizations like Hamas, which carry out suicide bombings. While the FPA does not overtly endorse the terrorist elements of the Intifada, much of the same rancor and anti-Semitism that drives the Hamas suicide bombers is on display at FPA events. For example, this past April, ANSWER sponsored a Free Palestine Rally, marchers bore signs reading " ‘Chosen People’ : It's Payback Time." The Nation’s Liza Featherstone reported "Some demonstrators' signs bore swastikas and SS symbols [that while] intended to draw parallels between Hitler and Sharon, [could] easily [be] construed as pro-Nazi."

While the FPA’s support of the Palestinian Intifada, an uprising that has claimed the lives of thousands of Jewish civilians and will continue to claim more, is disturbing enough, the Muslim Student Association has indirectly contributed to numerous terrorist organizations, including Hamas, and perhaps even Al-Qaeda. The MSA has actively solicited donations for the Holy Land Foundation.10 Treasury Department Secretary Paul O'Neill named the HLF, as well as two Palestinian-based financial organizations, as "Hamas operated organizations." President Bush described Hamas as "one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world today," which seeks the total destruction of the State of Israel. Altaf Husain, national president of the MSA, said his organization has no plans to stop raising money for various groups unless federal authorities crack down. He called suspicions about terrorist links post-attack "hype," and said it is up to the government to trace the money. "We are as American as anyone else. Why should we be the ones looking for all these so-called 'sleeper cells' or whatever?"

Mr. Husain’s indifference towards aiding terrorist organizations seems to have infected many of MSA’s student chapters. For example, according to the Supreme Islamic Council, "The MSA's Ohio State University chapter produces a Web newsletter called MSA News, which has included news releases from the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, which is on the State Department list of terrorist organizations that Americans are forbidden to support or finance, and the Islamic Salvation Front, a fundamentalist party banned in Algeria."

MSA's terror connections appear to even extend beyond Hamas and into the shadowy realm of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror organization. In 1998, while investigating the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the FBI recovered diaries maintained by Wadih El Hage, a bin Laden Lieutenant. In Mr. El Hage’s journals, investigators discovered passages that referred to a "joint venture" with the Holy Land Foundation. In addition, Mr. El Hage's address book contained the name and phone number of an alleged Hamas figure who worked with the HFL, Ghassan Dahduli.14 If the HLF was indeed involved with El Hage, then it seems indisputable that some MSA money has gone to fund al-Qaeda. Subsequently, a strong argument could be made that members of International ANSWER’s steering committee indirectly contributed to the September 11th attacks that massacred 2,792 women and men. Quite an impressive feat, for an organization dedicated to "peace."

The tolerance for anti-Semitism and violence against Jews that taints the MSA and IFA also manifests itself in the WWP. When a WWP delegation, lead by Sam Macy and Sue Bailey, traveled to North Korea in April 1992 to attend Kim Sung Il’s 80th birthday celebration, the group entered into discussions with other hardline Communist groups, including an anti-Semitic Stalin-worshipping sect called the Russian Communist Workers Party (RCWP) (Rossiskaia Kommunisticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia, or RKRP), which emerged from the anti-Gorbachev, "anti-revisionist" Movement of Communist Initiative in November 1991.

This contact between the WWP and RCWP continued to intensify after the parties left North Korea. "On September 3rd, 1992, WW ran an article by Viktor Tyulkin, the group's Secretary of its Central Committee. They remained in contact, and on Marcy's 85th birthday Tyulkin sent him a "message of solidarity" from the RCWP that was reprinted in the October 17th, 1996 WW. Tyulkin's comrade Victor Anpilov from the Executive Committee of Working Russia also enclosed his own "message of solidarity." This is the same Victor Anipilov who co-founded the RCWP and recently attacked Boris Yeltsin’s presidency as a "Jewish conspiracy."

Although collaboration and "solidarity" between communist organizations is not in itself shocking, much of the RCWP’s platform, which tends to mirror Anipilov’s Yeltsin comments, is. According to the leftist International Solidarity with Workers in Russia (Sword-SITR-MCPP) group, the RCWP could be best described as "an extremely racist and homophobic party whose members worship Stalin, campaign against black people in general and rap music in particular, issue material calling for homosexuals to be jailed, and published a party document in 1997 that blamed Russia's economic crisis on "American imperialism and international Zionism." The group also attacked current Russian President Vladimir Putin for being so close to "the Jews that he ignores true Russian 'patriots'."

Despite the RCWP’s unabashed anti-Semitic proclamations, the WWP continues to allow RCWP members to present their political views in the pages of Workers World. By declaring "solidarity" with the RCWP, it can only be presumed the WWP sympathizes with the organizations’ public statements regarding Jews. Rather than condemn their comrades’ assertions that Jews will be the downfall of Russia, the WWP has chosen to remain silent.

Further illustrating their sympathy towards anti-Semites, ANSWER’s organizers, many of whom are documented members of the WWP, have frequently refused to let devoted political leftists and peace advocates speak at rallies if they hold a pro-Israel position. The most celebrated of these incidents occurred when Rabbi Michael Lerner was barred from speaking at a recent IAC anti-war rally in San Francisco. Yet, at its January march in Washington, ANSWER "handed a microphone to Abdul Malim Musa, a Muslim cleric who on October 31, 2001 appeared at a news conference at the National Press Club with other Muslim activists and members of the New Black Panther Party, ‘where speakers asserted that Israel had launched the 9/11 attacks and that thousands of Jews had been warned that day not to go to work at the World Trade Center.’ At that press conference, Musa blasted the 'Zionists in Hollywood, the Zionists in New York, and the Zionists in D.C.’ who ‘all collaborate’ to put down blacks and Muslims."

ANSWER’s connection to anti-Semites extends even to Ramsey Clark, the head of IAC and a leader of the new anti-war coalition. As an attorney, Clark has taken it upon himself to represent several clients primarily characterized by their intense hatred of Jews. In 1989, Clark represented Lyndon Larouche, who by the late 1970’s embraced far-right anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Despite Larouche’s documented history of anti-Semitism, Clark expressed ‘amazement’ at the personal ‘vilification’ directed at Larouche throughout the trial. Clark also represented PLO leaders in a suit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the elderly vacationer who was shot and thrown overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise-ship by renegade Palestinian terrorists in 1986. Another Clark client was Karl Linnas, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard in Estonia (where he had overseen the murder of some 12,000 resistance fighters and Jews), who was being deported from the US to the USSR to face war crimes charges. Clark again lost the case but again went to bat for his client in the public arena, questioning the need to prosecute Nazis "forty years after some god-awful crime they're alleged to have committed."

It is not troubling that Clark defended these anti-Semitic thugs; our nation guarantees every man and woman the right to an attorney. However, there is clearly something highly questionable about a man, especially one with Clark’s profile, who makes an effort to publicly defend Nazis and anti-Semites after their trial has been concluded. However, in light of IAC’s connection with the WWP, an organization that in the past had been vehemently opposed to the state of Israel and, most importantly, supported the RCWP, Clark’s comments immediately assume a far more nefarious context.

Taken one example at a time, each of the facts presented concerning the activities of ANSWER’s steering committee would not be sufficient to indict the organization as a whole. However, even a brief study of some of ANSWER’s steering committee members reveals a pattern of support for governments, extremist organizations and radical individuals whose goals contradict ANSWER’s stated purpose of stopping war and ending racism. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has shown little inclination to investigate the organizations supporting ANSWER, and thus the vast majority of ANSWER’s supporters have no understanding of the group’s true origins. As conflict with Iraq, due to Hussein’s continued lack of compliance with UN Resolution 1441, becomes inevitable, it is likely ANSWER will double its efforts to infiltrate mainstream America’s political consciousness. Therefore, our citizenry must remain vigilant against these front organizations efforts to wrap their poisonous agenda in the banner of peace and brotherhood. After all, the greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing man he never existed.

 

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Anti-War Protestors Are Warmongers for Our Enemies
CNSNews.com | February 11, 2003 | Alex Epstein

President's Day weekend is a time when Americans should celebrate the heroism of Washington and Lincoln, the men who led our country through its two most important wars.

But hundreds of thousands of Americans will instead devote February 15 and 16 to spitting on the accomplishments of these great men -- by rallying for policies that would enable our enemies to obliterate the freedom that Washington and Lincoln fought to secure. They are the members of the self-proclaimed "anti-war" movement.

Of course, the throngs who will participate in the upcoming "anti-war" protests in New York, San Francisco, and many other cities to voice their opposition to an invasion of Iraq -- and to any other U.S. military action in the War on Terrorism -- claim a benevolent purpose. "You can bomb the world to pieces," they chant, "but you can't bomb it into
peace."

But if dropping bombs won't work, what should the United States do to obtain a peaceful relationship with the numerous hostile regimes, including Iraq, that seek to harm us with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction? The "peace advocates" offer no answer. The most one can coax out of them are vague platitudes (we should "make common cause with the people of the world," says the prominent "anti-war" group Not In Our Name) and agonized soul-searching ("Why do they hate us?").

The absence of a peacenik peace plan is no accident. Pacifism is inherently a negative doctrine--it merely says that military action is always bad. As one San Francisco protestor put the point: "I don't think it's right for our government to kill people." In practice, this leaves the government only two means of dealing with our enemies: to ignore their acts of aggression, or to appease them by capitulating to the aggressors' demands.

We do not need to predict or deduce the consequences of pacifism with regard to terrorism and the nations that sponsor it, because we experienced those consequences on September 11. Pacifism practically dictated the American response to terrorism for more than 23 years, from our government's response to the first major act of Islamic terrorism
against this country: when Iranian mobs held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days at the American embassy in Tehran.

In response to that and later terrorist atrocities, American Presidents sought to avoid military action at all costs--by treating terrorists as isolated criminals and thereby ignoring the role of the governments that support them, or by offering diplomatic handouts to terrorist states in hopes that they would want to be our friends. With each pacifist response it became clearer that the most powerful nation on Earth was a paper tiger -- and our enemies made the most of it.

After years of American politicians acting like peaceniks, Islamic terrorism had proliferated from a few gangs of thugs to a worldwide scourge -- making possible the attacks of September 11.

It is an obvious evasion of history and logic for the advocates of pacifism to label themselves "anti-war," since the policies they advocate necessarily invite escalating acts of war against anyone who practices them. Military inaction sends the message to an aggressor--and to other, potential aggressors -- that it will benefit by attacking the United States.

To whatever extent "anti-war" protesters influence policy, they are not helping to prevent war; they are acting to make war more frequent and deadly, by making our enemies more aggressive, more plentiful, and more powerful.

The only way to deal with militant enemies is to show them unequivocally that aggression against the United States will lead to their destruction. The only means of imparting this lesson is overwhelming military force -- enough to defeat and incapacitate the enemy. Had we annihilated the Iranian regime 23 years ago, we could have thwarted Islamic terrorism at the beginning, with far less cost than will be required to defeat terrorism today.

And if we fail to use our military against state sponsors of terrorism today, imagine the challenge we will face five years from now when Iraq and Iran possess nuclear weapons and are ready to disseminate them to their terrorist minions. Yet such a world is the goal of the "anti-war" movement.

The suicidal stance of peaceniks is no innocent error or mere overflow of youthful idealism. It is the product of a fundamentally immoral commitment: the commitment to ignore reality -- from the historical evidence of the consequences of pacifism to the very existence of the violent threats that confront us today -- in favor of the wish that laying
down our arms will achieve peace somehow.

Those of us who are committed to facing the facts should condemn these peaceniks for what they really are: warmongers for our enemies.

( Alex Epstein is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institue in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.)

 

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Marxist Groups in the Anti-War Movement

Marxist Groups in the Anti-War Movement
CNSNews.com | February 25, 2003 | Paul M. Weyrich

Some people on the far-Left have criticized my statements calling for an investigation of the neo-Communist background of some of the anti-war movement's organizers.

However, they have not taken the time to investigate International A.N.S.W.E.R.'s ties to the avowedly Marxist Workers World Party or Not in Our Name's ties to long-time Maoist Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party.

Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff said my proposal asking Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, or Congress, to investigate the anti-war movement's ties to neo-Communist groups like the Worker's World Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party was un-American in an interview with the leftist website TomPaine.com.

Is it un-American to question where these groups, which routinely organize often-violent demonstrations against the World Bank, political conventions, or the looming war on Iraq, get their money?

I find it amazing that these groups are able to organize regular protests that bring together tens or hundreds of thousands of protesters on a rather regular basis, while we on the right can only organize one large demonstration against abortion each year.

It takes a lot of money and resources to pull off these protests. During the Cold War, we know that the Soviet Union gave millions of dollars to support the Communist Party USA, but where are these groups getting their funding?

Some groups on the far-Left, at least in the past, have supported the overthrow of our Constitution, but this is not to say that all of them have or continue to do. A lot of Americans, including myself continue to have reservations about the war, but we need to know which groups or individuals involved in the anti-war movement present a clear and present danger to our constitutional system.

Had the good folks at TomPaine.com or Mr. Hentoff taken the time to research the ties between the Worker's World Party and International A.N.S.W.E.R., they would have found the links are plain as day. The Worker's World Party website features prominent links to the International A.N.S.W.E.R. website and the International Action Center which established A.N.S.W.E.R. in late 2001.

Considering that TomPaine.com is financed by the Florence Fund, whose tax returns for the year 2000 show that it has financially supported socialist-leaning groups such as the Alliance for Democracy which participates in the Independent Progressive Policy Network along with the Communist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America, it is not surprising that they sought to tar me with a McCarthyist label.

Unlike the Left, which routinely and baselessly calls conservatives such as myself fascists or Nazis in an effort to stifle debate, the same baselessness cannot be said for A.N.S.W.E.R. and its cohorts who are avowed Marxists, at least behind the scenes.

The fact is International A.N.S.W.E.R. was established in part by Worker's World Party member, frequent Worker's World Party newspaper columnist and co-director of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark's International Action Center, Brian Becker, according to a November 2001 entry in the IAC's web archive.

This is the same Brian Becker who once wrote in a November 1997 Workers World Party news service article, "...it is crucial that revolutionaries fight tooth and nail for their values, their principles and the revolutionary conceptions put forward by Marxism and Leninism," in reference to a speech given by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to a global communist gathering on the island.

Mr. Becker provides the key link between the IAC, A.N.S.W.E.R. and the WWP, so there cannot be any doubt that the anti-war movement's key organizing group is a neo-Communist front.

The urgency needed in further investigating A.N.S.W.E.R.'s ties to the Worker's World Party takes on added concern because the WWP has posted a manifesto on its website entitled: "Bolsheviks and War: Lessons for the Anti-War Movement."

Communist ties to the anti-war movement do not end with the WWP. As I said before Not in Our Name, another anti-war front is an operation of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party.

If you visit the Revolutionary Communist Party's website, an organization that has supported the Maoist Shining Path guerillas in Peru, Not in Our Name is featured in a prominent place on its website. In fact, the party's news publication features numerous stories chronicling the anti-war group's activities.

Some Marxist groups, such as the Trotskyist Socialist Worker's Party are using the anti-war movement to exploit the naivet\'e9 and idealism of young Americans to recruit them into their Marxist cabal.

The February 3, 2003 edition of the Socialist Worker's Party newspaper, "The Militant," features articles entitled, "Young Socialists draw protesters interested in revolution" and "Young protesters interested in revolutionary ideas." The last article details the SWP's efforts to recruit young people to its cause during the January 18, 2003 protest in Washington, D.C.

Revolutionary Communist Party, Worker's World Party and Socialist Workers Party are avowedly communist and are integrally involved in organizing the anti-war movement. Therefore, my questioning the involvement of neo-Communist group in the anti-war movement cannot be considered a political witch hunt.

Perhaps if TomPaine.com, which bills itself as showcasing "the ideas, opinions, and analyses too often overlooked by the mainstream media," were true to its mission it would have investigated the anti-war organizer's true identities instead of castigating me for speaking the truth. I don't expect them to take my word for it, but anyone who is adept in using the Internet as a research tool will discover that I'm correct.

While Americans have a constitutional right to oppose the war or ask for a redress of their grievances, we need to be on guard against those groups who wish to exploit anti-war sentiments to undermine our Constitution.

(Paul M. Weyrich is chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.)

 

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If antiwar protesters succeed (by Iraqi citizen)

If antiwar protesters succeed (by Iraqi citizen)
CS Monitor | February 26, 2003 | unsigned opinion

To publish an unsigned opinion piece is an exception to the Monitor's policy. But the views expressed here, if put with a name, could endanger the writer's extended family in Baghdad. The author - known to Monitor staff - was born and raised in Iraq. Now a US citizen with a business that requires extensive world travel, the author is in frequent touch with the Iraqi diaspora but is not connected with organized opposition to Saddam Hussein.

Since Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, started warning that a US invasion of Iraq would "open the gates of hell," the retort that has been flying around Iraqi exiles' websites is, "Good! We'd like to get out!"

It got me wondering: What if you antiwar protesters and politicians succeed in stopping a US-led war to change the regime in Baghdad? What then will you do?

Will you also demonstrate and demand "peaceful" actions to cure the abysmal human rights violations of the Iraqi people under the rule of Saddam Hussein?

Or, will you simply forget about us Iraqis once you discredit George W. Bush?

Will you demand that the United Nations send human rights inspectors to Iraq? Or are you only interested in weapons of "mass destruction" inspections, not of "mass torture" practices?

Will you also insist that such human rights inspectors be given time to discover Hussein's secret prisons and coercion as you do for the weapons inspectors? Or will you simply accept a "clean bill of health" if you can't find the thousands of buried corpses?

Will you pressure your own countries to host millions more Iraqi refugees (estimated now at 4 million) fleeing Hussein's brutality?Or will you prefer they stay in bondage?

Will you vigorously demand an international tribunal to indict Hussein's regime for crimes against humanity? Or will you simply dismiss him as "another" dictator of a "sovereign" country?

Will you question why Hussein builds lavish palaces while his people are suffering? Or will you simply blame it all on UN sanctions and US "hegemony?"

Will you decry the hypocritical oil and arms commerce of France, Germany, Russia, and China with the butcher of Baghdad? Or are you only against US interests in Iraqi oil?

Will you expose ethnic cleansing of native Iraqi non-Arabs (Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Turkomens), non-Sunni-Muslims (Shiite), and non-Muslims (Christians, Mandaens, Yezidis)? Or are these not equivalent to the cleansing of Bosnians and Kosovars?

Will you show concern about the brutal silencing of the "Iraqi street"? Or are you only worried about the orchestrated noises of "Arab and Islamist streets" outside Iraq?

Will you hear the cries of Iraqis executed in acid tanks in Baghdad? the Iraqi women raped in front of their husbands and fathers to extract confessions? Or of children tortured in front of their parents? Or of families billed for the bullets used to execute military "deserters" in front of their own homes?

No. I suspect that most of you will simply retire to your cappucino cafes to brainstorm the next hot topic to protest, and that you will simply forget about us Iraqis, once you succeed in discrediting President Bush.

Please, prove me wrong.