Protesting a War with Iran

      By Reginald Johnson 

   NEW HAVEN  ---  Scores of protesters gathered here Sunday to condemn the US airstrike in Iraq which killed a top Iranian military official, an act which they said could touch off a catastrophic Middle East war.

   “Unless the people rise up and stop it, this war will engulf the whole region and quickly turn into a global conflict,” said a speaker from the anti-war group A.N.S.W.E.R, which sponsored the rally.

  “For all who believe in peace and for all those who want to avert another catastrophic war, now is the time to take action,” she said.

   The rally in New Haven was one of more than 70 protests around the country which took place over the weekend, following the assassination airstrike which killed Qaessem Soleimani after he arrived at Baghdad, Iraq airport. Soleimani was the head of Iran’s elite Quds military force and considered the second most powerful person in Iran.

   President Trump said that he ordered the airstrike after receiving intelligence which indicated that Soleimani was planning a number of deadly attacks on American forces in the Middle East. The American administration also blamed Soleimani for orchestrating the killing of hundreds of Americans in the past.

  But speakers at the rally questioned the intelligence and said that Trump and other officials are lying just the way Bush administration officials lied 16 years ago about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction (which were never found) to provide a pretext for the invasion of Iraq. That invasion began a long and bloody war which led to the deaths of 5,000 Americans and upwards of 1 million Iraqis.

  “If he (Soleimani) was the kind of person they are claiming, he would’ve been taken out years ago,” said one speaker from A.N.S.W.E.R, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

   That speaker also said that the Iraq War cost hundreds of billions of dollars --- money diverted from funding social services and human needs back home.

   Another speaker who identified himself as an indigenous person, reminded people that the land where they were standing on was once land held by the Quinnipiac Indian tribe.  But the land was later taken away by European colonial governments.

  “Just like the Quinnipiac people, the people of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, don’t have a say in how they are treated by this illegal, imperialist and immoral government.  This is what’s been happening for the last 527 years,” he said, referring to the landing of explorer Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean in 1492.  Columbus’s arrival began a wave of European immigration to North and South  America and in the process the systematic decimation of native peoples on the continents.

   The speaker went on, “There has not been a period in the history of this government when it hasn’t been attacking some country around the world. Whether it is in South America, Central America, the Middle East,  Asia, the Philippines,  Puerto Rico, Cuba... this government is criminal and what happened the other day was an act of war and a war crime.”

   He then led the crowd in a chant: “Trump says more war. We say no war!  Trump says more war. We say no war!”