NO WAR WITH RUSSIA!

Speech given by Susan Banaszewski on March 19, 2022 at the MN Peace Action Coalition protest marking the 19th anniversary of the war on Iraq

While at this protest we aren’t marching with Ukrainian flags, demanding that the US or NATO “close the sky” over Ukraine, with signs depicting Putin as Hitler. But the people at those events are acting on the same human instincts as us: a desire to do whatever you can to prevent unjust death and suffering. Unfortunately, those in the government, media, and arms industries who sustain their power from forever wars are adept at weaponizing that instinct to their own ends with xenophobia, propaganda, and economic coercion. 

While “close the sky” may sound like some act of God that will bring peace to Ukraine by disappearing all bombs from the sky, what it is really calling for is for the United States to take an offensive military role in this conflict by shooting down Russian planes, or bombing Russian military infrastructure, to which Russia will retaliate, drawing all of NATO into a hot war with 2 nuclear powers.

The US is no stranger to disguising military escalation by calling it a No Fly Zone: In Iraq, our government claimed the no-fly zones would protect the Kurdish people; in reality, it became the longest US bombing campaign since the Vietnam War and killed over one thousand civiliains, even before the invasion in 2003. In Libya, what was sold as an intervention to protect civilians quickly turned into a regime change war in which US & NATO carried out nearly 10,000 airstrikes over 7 months.  Today, the people of Libya still suffer from the consequences of this enormous escalation by the US and NATO.

Now, these same people want us to believe that continuing to pour fuel on the fire of a tragic conflict is what needs to be done to protect Ukrainians from Putin, the newest irrational maniac who wants to destroy the West for our enlightened social values and liberal democracy. In a reprisal of McCarthyism, prominent media figures are calling for anyone who wants to critically evaluate the role of US and NATO in escalating the conflict to be shunned from social media or TV for repeating dangerous Russian propaganda, and even investigated for treason. 

What they fear we’ll make known by daring to consider the Russian perspective or history before February 24th is that the US has been using Ukraine as a proxy to aggress toward Russia for nearly a decade, with no regard to the people living there. Our tax dollars have armed and trained their radical far right, killing thousands of people in Luhansk and Donetsk, even as the UN and human rights groups warned since 2016 that the conflict won’t end until the weapons stop coming in.

The hero Julian Assange, who is currently imprisoned for exposing US war crimes and corruption to the world, said: If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by the truth.

The truth is that US imperialism nor NATO will never be able to solve a problem caused by US imperialism and NATO expansion!

Those in the world who do want peace know this can’t continue. Numerous world leaders outside of the “Western” consensus, from China to Venezuela to South Africa have spoken up about US & NATO’s role in the crisis. A Chinese representative stated, “we will never forget who bombed our embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. We need no lecture on justice from the abuser of international law.”

That truth, of the danger of the US’s rampant military aggression of which NATO is one tool, will only become harder to suppress. The more they try to shut us up, the louder we will yell. The more desperate they get to force people to swallow their propaganda, the more obvious it will become to everyone who watches. And the anti-war movement, the REAL anti-war movement, which doesn’t advocate nuclear war & imperialism, but diplomacy and mutually beneficial relationships between countries, will be here in the streets, ready to welcome them, demanding REAL peace and justice.

NO WAR WITH RUSSIA! DISBAND NATO!