On the Sept. 11 Attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon

Our hearts go out to the innocent people who lost their lives and loved ones on September 11, 2001, when four hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. It is shocking to see New York City smoking and forever altered. The thousands of volunteers and blood donors are staggering and proof of the goodness of the people.

At the same time we are sickened and outraged at the calls to "exact revenge." Comparisons to Pearl Harbor remind us of WW2 when the U.S. rounded up Japanese Americans by the thousands and locked them in concentration camp-like "internment" camps. They were stripped of their rights and their property was stolen. Countless acts of cruelty against these people were justified as retaliation for the acts of "their country".

NO U.S. War

The media, military, politicians and pundits are shoving blind patriotism down our throats. They are busily trying to convince people the only way to properly respect these victims, and to unite, is to go to war. As vets we must bear witness to the truth of what imperialist war means.

The U.S. has been murdering, brutalizing, bombing, and terrorizing people around the world for centuries. And with the their globalization efforts they have racketed up the stakes considerably. Most government fingers are pointing at Bin Ladin. Truth-be-told the United States has been at war with the Middle East for decades. The fact that the U.S. has so many enemies who would act against us is telling. We have to ask the question why? Was this gruesome act in retaliation for one of many atrocities the U.S. has committed around the world?

• For the slow and painful murder of one million Iraqi's (mostly children) since the Gulf War from the sanctions the U.S. refuses to lift?
• Was it for the U.S. / NATO bombing of a retreating convoy of Albanian refugees in 1999?
• In 1998 when U.S. cruise missiles destroyed the Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, and launched 75 Tomahawk cruise missiles from warships against Afghanistan and Sudan?
• Was it for 1991 in Iraq for the Highway of Death-The strip of roadway the Iraqi's were using to flee the bombing raids on Baghdad, where U.S. Air Force described the moving vehicles as "like shooting fish in a barrel"? Or the Amariyah bomb shelter where during the Gulf War people gathered for a religious service only to have the exit doors sealed shut by U.S. bombs and some 400 perished?
• Or did it go even further back to the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, for the door to door house burnings in El Chorillo, the leveling of Panama city, or the thousands left in mass graves in the U.S. military's wake?
• Nicaragua where the U.S. was responsible for the deaths of over 30,000?
• Lest we forget 'Nam or the Atomic Bomb...

The only thing NEW about this kind of Terror is that it happened HERE! American lives are not worth more, and the rest of the world's people worth less.

We must stand with the people of the world against all of these criminal, vengeful, hateful acts. We are one human family. We must differentiate between the acts of a government or organization and the acts of a people. While at the same time we must take responsibility for opposing our government when it threatens war.

War at Home

They will be using this attack to take away more of our civil liberties. One government official was quoted; "We may have to tell our grand children we knew of a time in the United States when there were not officers with automatic weapons on every street corner." They tell us that "for our own protection" we must wrap ourselves in chains.

To those GIs who are being called to join any military attack we call on you to resist and will support your right to refuse and honor you as the Real Heroes-the anti-warriors.

As veterans of the U.S. military, ex-members of the largest terrorist group in the world, we can say with unshakable certainty that in order to rid the world of terrorism we are going to first have to rid the world of U.S. imperialism. As long as the U.S. is able to grind the people of the world under its boots, acts of terrorism will continue in opposition.

No U.S. War!

No Attacks on Immigrants or Arab Americans!

No Police State!

Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti Imperialist
VVAW AI / StormWarning!
P.O. Box 21604
Seattle, WA 98111-3604
(206) 374-2215