Peace

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/peace-by-cindy-sheehan/

by Cindy Sheehan
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
featured writer
http://www.cindyforcongress.org/

December 7, 2008

"Peace is not an absence of war: it’s an absence of preparing for war or an absence of using violence or threats of violence to solve problems." — Cindy Sheehan

Today is the 67th anniversary of the “day that will live in infamy.” Likely, if you were alive 67 years ago, you were a very young person. I know a few people who can still remember when the Japanese attacked a US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, but I remember the stories that my parents told me about that day.

My mom was sitting at the kitchen table eating biscuits when she heard the news on the radio: she was 10 years old. My dad lived in Oklahoma, but my mom lived in Hawthorne, California so her family was terrified that California would be struck soon. I can imagine that in years to come, my children will be telling their children about what they were doing when they heard that the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked on 9-11-01.

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If the USA had a national Peace Movement, Obama would not be our President-Elect right now. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) would have been the nominee for the Democrats and Ron Paul (R-Tx) would have been nominated from the GOP and Cynthia McKinney (G) and Ralph Nader (I) would have had seats at debates. What we have here in the US is an “anti-war” movement that is selective in its opposition to war. It seems that for many of the national organizations, Democratic Wars are okay, while Republican Wars are bad. That’s why we need a movement with integrity and vision that doesn’t exist to shill for the Democrats, but exists to be the clarion call that ALL violence is wrong and solving problems using violence or the threat of violence is a crime against humanity and always criminally prosecutable—whether George Bush or Barack Obama is the one making these threats or promising escalation of violence. The use of violence is inherently wrong in an individual and millions of times worse coming from a state.

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The Peace Movement demanded from Bush and will demand from Obama a complete and immediate withdrawal of US Forces and independent contractors from Iraq and Afghanistan and a declared end to the USA’s War of Terror.

We demand that ALL torture prisons, in Guantanamo Cuba and around the world be closed and that the humans incarcerated in those prisons be released, or tried with full protection of commonly held law (that used to exist in the US) and that the Military Commission’s Act be repealed.

We demand that the US take a more balanced approach to Israel’s occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people and work with the international community to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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continued at http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/peace-by-cindy-sheehan/