The Top Five Lies about This War (by John Lacny)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>The following is the text of a leaflet I developed for
>use in tabling by the anti-war committee of my student
>group. If you size it so that the bulk of the text is
>about 12-point, it will fit on a leaflet, front-and-back.
>This leaflet is designed for informational purposes; it
>is not run-of-the-mill low-level agitation but a serious
>effort to debunk several major misconceptions about the
>war in a relatively succinct format. It's also intended
>to be interesting and engaging to read. When tabling,
>it's best to be up-front about what you're doing, raise
>your voice a bit, but be friendly, shout short but
>provocative things like "Surprise! The government is
>lying to you! Read about it here!" or simply "The top
>five lies the government is telling you about the war!"
>Naturally, you'll get some smartass and jingoistic
>comments, but you can get folks' attention by appealing
>to their natural skepticism.
>
>If you use this on a leaflet of your own, you don't
>necessarily need to credit Students in Solidarity of the
>University of Pittsburgh. Rather, if you use it, we'd
>like to HEAR FROM YOU (at the e-mail address listed at
>the bottom of the text of the leaflet), hear what you
>think about it, and hear what responses you get from
>people.
>
>John Lacny
>
>********** THE TOP FIVE LIES ABOUT THIS WAR
>
>How many people do you know who claim to be skeptical,
>who pride themselves on their distrust for authority, who
>like to pretend that they're wise to the ways of the
>world -- and then, every time there's a war, they swallow
>the lies of the government with all the gullibility of a
>three-year-old child in the lap of a department store
>Santa Claus? Don't fall into that trap yourself! Learn to
>identify and refute official misinformation when you see
>it. Let's count down some of the common misconceptions
>about this war:
>
>Lie #5: "We're not at war with the Afghan people -- look,
>we're bringing them food!"
>
>Reality: Afghanistan is in the midst of a severe drought
>which threatens literally millions of people with
>starvation. Even before the threat of US bombing, the
>World Food Program (WFP) said that nearly 6 million
>people were in need of immediate food assistance. When
>the threat of war caused massive movements of refugees
>and internally displaced people, the WFP raised that
>number to 7.5 million. UN agencies were keeping huge
>numbers of people alive, but the war danger -- as well as
>the US demand that Pakistan seal its border with
>Afghanistan -- caused the WFP to suspend deliveries of
>wheat flour to the country. We have no idea how many
>people have already died as a result. Meanwhile, the US
>dropped 37,000 individually-wrapped packages of food from
>the sky. You do the math. That's enough to feed about
>37,000 people for one day, in a country where seven and a
>half million are in danger of starvation. Additionally,
>the spokesman for an international charity active in
>Afghanistan told the London Independent that "Random food
>drops are the worst possible way of delivering food aid.
>They cause more problems than they solve." Not the least
>of which is the fact that Afghanistan has the highest
>number of unexploded land mines in the world. There are
>already 10 or 15 mine incidents every day, and with
>people scrambling into mine-ridden areas to pick up
>random packages of food dropped from US planes, that
>number is only going to go up.
>
>Lie #4: "Oil? Who said anything about oil?"
>
>Reality: The Caspian Sea region has potentially the
>world's largest oil reserves, likely making Central Asia
>the next Middle East. The problem is piping it out.
>Afghanistan occupies a strategic position between the
>Caspian and the markets of the Indian subcontinent and
>east Asia. It's prime territory for building pipelines,
>which is why the oil company Unocal -- as well as the US
>government -- welcomed the Taliban's rise to power in
>1996 as a promising source of "stability." That turned
>out to be a pipe dream (so to speak), but people like our
>Commander-in-Chief and the oil men around him have never
>given up on the tremendous profit possibilities that
>Central Asia offers. And if you don't think such
>considerations are crossing their minds at this time of
>crisis, may we suggest a refresher course in The Facts of
>Life?
>
>Lie #3: "The US is trying to liberate the people of
>Afghanistan from Taliban tyranny."
>
>Reality: The US, Russia, and Iran have been aiding a
>rough coalition of armed groups called the Northern
>Alliance. The Northern Alliance's fighters are drawn
>mainly from ethnic minority groups in Afghanistan who
>have been persecuted by the Taliban. But their record is
>also a bloody one. Groups like the Revolutionary
>Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which
>have been fighting against fundamentalism and for
>democracy in Afghanistan for years, have publicly stated
>that the fundamentalist gangsters of the Northern
>Alliance are not an acceptable alternative to the
>fundamentalist gangsters of the Taliban. No wonder: Human
>Rights Watch implicates the Northern Alliance in
>"indiscriminate aerial bombardment and shelling, direct
>attacks on civilians, summary executions, rape,
>persecution on the basis of religion or ethnicity, the
>recruitment and use of children as soldiers, and the use
>of antipersonnel landmines." By now everyone knows that
>Osama bin Laden was among the mujihadin recruited by the
>CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Meet the next
>generation.
>
>Lie #2: "America is coming together."
>
>Reality: Tens of thousands of people have been laid off
>in the airline industry alone. The government quickly
>responded to the airline industry crisis with a multi-
>billion-dollar bailout package for the companies in order
>to keep afloat the profits of shareholders and the
>salaries of CEOs, but when it came to aiding the
>thousands of workers laid off, Congressman Dick Armey
>said that that would be contrary to "the American
>spirit." Maybe it is. Maybe it's the "American spirit" to
>make common working people pay for a crisis and to bear
>the burdens of an expensive war. But it certainly doesn't
>have anything to do with "togetherness."
>
>And the biggest lie of them all . . .
>
>Lie #1: "It's possible to win a 'war against terrorism.'"
>
>Reality: Terrorism is a tactic, not a political or social
>force in and of itself. Anyone can use it, and the idea
>that you can wage a "war" against it is as dishonest as
>the idea behind the "War on Drugs." The use of food as a
>political weapon, indiscriminate aerial bombardment, and
>the arming of gangsterish groups of religious fanatics
>all count as "terrorism" by any reasonable definition of
>the word, and the United States has long employed all of
>them -- and more. This war is really about sordid
>material interests and power (see especially Lies numbers
>2 and 4, above), and in defense of these interests the US
>is prepared to shift the label "terrorist" as it sees
>fit, to apply to all manner of dissident political
>movements and not just marginal bands of fanatics like
>bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Conversely, it's willing to call
>its own terrorists "freedom fighters" (see Lie number 3
>above). Maybe some of them will get transformed into
>"terrorists" again in a few years. It's a sick game and a
>charade, and the government is manipulating the very real
>grief and anger of the people of the United States after
>the September 11 atrocities to get us all to fall for it
>again. Don't believe them for a second.
>
>Produced by the Anti-War Committee of Students in
>Solidarity at the University of Pittsburgh
>
>leftists+ at pitt.edu
>
>Labor Donated
-- 
Yoshie

* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: 
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
* Anti-War Organizing in Columbus Covered by the Media: 
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/media.html>