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Butler, Pennsylvania USA Anti-War Rally

February 15, 2003

 

We braved 20 degree F (-6.7C) weather for two hours to give speeches and play music to advance the causes of peace and show the world that we do not support the Bush Regime's latest war. Here are some photos. We ran short on time and I (Joe Jenkins) did not give my full speech, so I have included it below.

Leo Glenn's speech

Dr. Steven Doherty's speech

 

Butler Courthouse Square, site of rally (below)

 

Leo Glenn (below) speaking at the rally. [his speech].

 

Dr. Theodore Kneupper (below) speaking at the rally (in blue coat)

 

No Person in Their Right Mind Wants War

Joseph Jenkins, steward, Universal Community of Friends, Grove City, PA USA

 

War is terrorism. We cannot end terrorism by engaging in it. The killing of innocent people by anyone, anywhere, is an unacceptable violation of human rights and must be condemned. Remedies for international disputes must be pursued through the rule of law, not by mob violence, militarism, or war. These are all basic tenets of civilized societies, yet they are scorned and ignored by our own government under the Bush regime.

This is what Americans want? Endless war? Certainly conservative businessmen, who make a huge amount of money selling war materiel, and some people in the military, want more war, but the average thinking American does not. We don’t want more blood spilled in foreign countries in our name, we don’t need any more enemies, and there are better things to spend our tax dollars on than bombing other countries.

Who speaks for the innocent victims of war, those who’ve been used as pawns in war games since World War II, when two cities crowded with innocent civilians were annihilated with American nuclear bombs? The Vietnam war involved the deaths of 2 million Vietnamese, mostly civilians. The Korean war killed 3 million Asians, mostly civilians. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have been tortured, brutalized and killed in Central America under the U.S. backed and trained guerrilla armies and death squads during the Reagan/Bush administrations. The first Gulf War is estimated to have killed between 100,000 and 200,000 Iraqis, many of them civilians. The United Nations estimates that more than a million Iraqis, almost all civilians, have died as a direct result of U.S. imposed sanctions against Iraq between 1991 and 1997 alone. The use of war to pursue justice for a crime against civilians, such as the Trade Center bombings, is an immoral and senseless crime itself.

Perhaps we should try to empathize with the people of Baghdad, where the United States didn’t drop two bombs on two buildings. In 1991, under George Bush senior, the U.S. bombed Baghdad relentlessly for six weeks because Iraq committed the same crime that Bush himself had committed when he illegally invaded Panama, and which Reagan had committed when he illegally invaded Grenada. The U.S. can scoff at international law, but no one else can. So Bush rained more bombs on Iraq than were dropped in all of World War II. The Bush administration bombed Iraq’s military installations. It also blew up their factories, their bridges, their roads, their power plants, their fallout shelters crowded with innocent women and children, even their schools, day and night, hour after hour, for a month and a half. While the Iraqis were dying, many Americans sat in chairs waving flags and watching the bombings on TV like watching a football game. The estimated million Iraqis, half of them children, who died of malnutrition and disease as a direct result of the subsequent sanctions against Iraq, are still dying there today.

I have to wonder how the citizens of New York City would have fared if their entire infrastructure had been bombed on 9-11— their electricity gone, their drinking water gone, their communications gone, bridges gone, roads destroyed, many more thousands dead; polluted water, no food, no medicines or medical supplies — and then have to try to heal and rebuild without assistance, under the crippling weight of economic sanctions. But I don’t have to wonder long — under such circumstances, the citizens of New York would have died like flies as well. Relative to the U.S. population, the million Iraqi Gulf War and sanctions deaths would be equivalent to 12 million American deaths — the populations of New York City, Newark, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and San Francisco combined. No wonder we are hated.

I'll never forget the image of the fallout shelter in Baghdad I saw on TV — the one bombed by U.S. warplanes in the last war. I saw weeping men carrying out the charred bodies of hundreds of dead wives and children. Our government simply dismissed the killings as the fault of Saddam Hussein. No wonder they hate us.

To be responsible for starting a needless war is unquestionably the greatest failure of any politician at any time in history, past or present. Has 9-11 taught Americans anything about the horror and inhumanity of bombings? Do we now understood the pain and suffering of losing a loved one, of needless death, of maimings, destruction of property, institutional murder? If so, we will no longer terrorize innocent people anywhere, certainly not with bombs. If we haven’t learned anything, we will bomb and terrorize more innocent people, continuing the vicious cycle of hatred, death, and vengeance, that threatens the whole of humanity.

We cannot sit silently as our flag is stolen by political extremists and our country is held hostage under the guise of “war.” Certainly we must stop terrorism, by anyone, and demand an end to all bombings and murders no matter who is committing them. To ignore the terrorism inflicted upon other countries by our own government and to scoff at the deaths of the millions of victims of that terrorism is simply unacceptable. Those of us who respect human rights for all people everywhere must speak out. The insults thrown back at us by the so-called “patriots” will disappear like cockroaches under a spotlight when they are met with intelligence, truth, courage, and compassion.