Today marks one and one-half years since the terror attacks on New York and Washington.
And 18 months later the U.S. is poised to launch a retaliatory attack on the population of a country that – contrary to what the Bush Administration wants us to believe – has no known connection to those attacks.
What has happened to our country?
Our government claims the UN will become irrelevant by doing what it was established to do – ensuring the rule of international law over the rule of force. That same government also claims that the only way for the UN to continue to have any relevance is for it to rubber stamp the immoral and illegal actions of the world’s only superpower – a country that is responsible for fully half of the world’s military spending and that has flouted, ignored, and blackmailed the UN time and time again.
Our government claims that we here in America face an imminent threat from a nation that has lost 1,500,000 lives since October 1999 due to sanctions, and that has had almost 75% of its territory controlled by the U.S. and its proxies for more than 11 years through the no-fly zones.
Our government is about to launch a war that will kill at least tens of thousands – and more likely hundreds of thousands – of innocent civilians in order to “liberate and disarm” Iraq.
If we are to honor the memory of those thousands who died on September 11 – and the 86 million who have died in wars across the globe since the UN was established at the end of World War II – we must do all we can to stop this headlong rush to war and the wholesale slaughter it will entail.
With that in mind, I am sending you the letter below. This is from John Titus, who lost his daughter Alicia on September 11. I hope it touches you as deeply as it did me, a year and a half afterwards.
In Peace,
Brian Corr (the coffeehood)