By Hussain Zahid As America carries on with its murderous mission on Iraq, taking a mounting toll of innocent Iraqi lives, murmurings of protest are beginning to be heard within America itself.
These dissenting voices get little or no coverage at all on western TV channels, at least not the ones that are available in India.
Although we in India know little about them, a small, yet significant, number of anti-war activists in America are at work seeking to rouse public opinion against their own government and its imperialist terror campaigns around the world.
One such group of active anti-war protestors in the US is the Stop the War Brigade (STWB).
I had not heard of them till two weeks ago, when, at the World Social Forum in Mumbai I picked up a leaflet published by the organisation.
The leaflet was signed by a group of people who ought to know best the inner story of America's many terror campaigns across the world that have cost the lives of literally millions of people, almost all of them non-white and the vast majority unarmed civilians.
The signatories to the petition include 'war veterans' from numerous American imperialist campaigns, including the Gulf War, and the genocidal Vietnam invasion, a former employee of the Israeli intelligence, an ex-British ex-soldier and scores more.
The petition addresses itself to members of the armed forces (presumably of America and of countries supporting America in its invasion and occupation of Iraq).
It categorically asserts, 'We are facing a serious choice: Perpetual War or Resistance'.
As the STWB sees it, a grand alliance of imperialist powers headed by America are using the rhetoric of 'war on terror' to continue their supposed 'right' to 'make war on anybody, anywhere in the world, at any time, and by any means'.
In this grand imperialist war, international laws and conventions are and the sanctity of the borders of victim countries are simply ignored.
Imperialist wars are, it says, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people today, threatening to bring numerous more countries under attack in order to loot and plunder them and to forcibly put down all resistance.
In its critique of imperialism's latest war, the so-called 'war on terror', the petition insists that Osama bin Laden and other similar 'terrorists' are actually American creations and reminds us that America and its allies generously 'provided the materials that fuelled the war machines of both Saddam Hussein and the Taliban' as long as they worked to promote American interests and suppress their own peoples.
It was only when they stopped following America's orders that they began being branded as a 'danger to world civilization'.
At the same time as the imperialist powers are pursuing a global war abroad, the petition notes, they are introducing various repressive laws in their own countries to stifle any dissent.
'Perpetual war abroad means mass repression at home', the petition explains, stressing the high domestic costs of imperialism's latest global offensive.
One of the domestic casualties of imperialist aggression are the so-called 'war veterans', whom the authors of the petition, for the most part 'war veterans' themselves, describe as 'used pawns'.
They are said to be simply 'discarded and left alone to face the psychological or physical after effects of war', which include 'sickness and slow death', prospects of birth defects in children as a result of handling toxic substances to fight imperialism's wars.
Thus, the petition appeals to members of the armed forces of imperialist countries, "We know all to well what 'defending our country' really means: killing and dying for the interests of those who rule over us".
The petition ends with an appeal to men and women in the armies of imperialist countries to defy their masters and say NO to taking part in imperialism's global campaign of terror, for war means death and destruction for all.
'It is time to unite with the oppressed of the world, not with the oppressors who force us to cut each others throats!', it boldly asserts in conclusion.
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