Bush to Be Met with Anti-War Protests Outside UN
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UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 (OneWorld) - When President George W. Bush makes his way for his speech to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, he will likely be greeted with angry slogans by anti-war protesters.
Thousands of protesters are expected to gather outside the UN headquarters in New York to renew calls for an end to the occupation of Iraq that has cost the United States billions of dollars and over 2,500 human lives. Since the occupation started in March 2003, more than 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. military actions and the subsequent suicidal attacks carried out by the forces of resistance. "We want an immediate end to this war," Susan Chenelle of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) told OneWorld. "This is a protest against Bush's freedom agenda because we believe that occupying other countries is not the path to freedom." UFPJ, an umbrella group representing a wide range of peace and justice organizations, has also organized a number of massive demonstrations in the past targeting the Bush administration's foreign policy in the Middle East and its war in Iraq. Mindful that in recent months poll after poll has clearly suggested that public support for the U.S. military presence in Iraq is gradually dissipating, Chenelle claimed that her group had received "widespread support" from across the country. "It's time for all the troops to be brought home and brought home now," she said. Earlier, the group's request for a permit to stage the rally was rejected, but when it threatened to hold the demonstration under any circumstances, the authorities agreed to allow the protesters to march, though only on sidewalks. "We will make this a large and loud call for an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq," said Chenelle. "All the troops must be brought home and brought home now." She said her group, which started organizing rallies months before the war started, was "inspired by the strong number of people" who have expressed their willingness to engage in nonviolent civilian disobedience. In February 2003, the crowds that gathered outside the UN headquarters numbered around half a million people, according to many eyewitnesses, journalists, and organizers. Tuesday's protest precedes a week of action around the country in support of what organizers call "the Declaration of Peace." The nationwide nonviolent disobedience campaign will start Thursday and culminate one week later in Washington, DC. Declaration of Peace signers are calling on Congress to enact "a prompt timetable for withdrawal of troops and closure of bases; a peace process for security, reconstruction, and reconciliation; and a shift of funding for war to meeting human needs." As in the past, though critical of Bush policy on Iraq, Democratic Party officials have made no call for participation in the antiwar demonstrations, which are largely attended by its supporters. Despite increasing criticism of the war, the Bush administration seems to be in no mood to set a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq. In fact, last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a motion backing the president's handling of the war and rejecting a deadline for recalling U.S. troops. With the Senate having already rejected the troop withdrawal plan, the House motion was passed 256-153 on a party line vote. The Republican-dominated House endorsed a resolution last Friday rejecting "an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of troops, arguing that this would be against the national interest. The motion praised the U.S. forces in Iraq and asserted that the war in that Arab nation was an integral part of the global "war on terror." The motion, however, is non-binding and thus has no legal value. Recently, Bush and other Republican leaders have stepped up efforts to assert that their decision to invade Iraq was linked with U.S. efforts to root out terrorists who engineered the plot to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. But many Democrats and others continue to argue that there was no link between the basis for invading Iraq and the 9/11 attacks that led Bush to launch what has been come to be known as the "war on terror." "It's time to face the facts," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said last week. "The war in Iraq has been a mistake. I say, a grotesque mistake." On several occasions, Bush has tried to portray Iraq as a "battlefield" in the "war on terror" and urged Americans to "stay the course." Tuesday's protest outside the UN building is considered significant because the world body's 15-member Security Council refused to endorse the U.S. decision to go to war, which its outgoing secretary general Kofi Annan described as "illegal." |
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