African Americans Say No to War; Rep. Maxine Waters Condemns Perle’s, Cheney’s War-Profiteering, Bush’s Cuts on Education, Vets, Healthcare

By Pat McDonnell Twair
Photos by Cornelius Cardew and KPFK

Although they make up one-third of troops serving in the U.S. military services, a recent Gallup poll showed that two thirds of African Americans oppose the war in Iraq. But the black community has not played a prominent role in the anti-war movement, until now.

This reticence was broken on the West Coast March 29 when more than 700 African Americans vociferously decried the then-10-day-old U.S. invasion of Iraq. Noisy, enthusiastic, dedicated protesters gathered at Liemert Park situated in a South Central Los Angeles neighborhood challenged by hospital closures, gentrification and gang violence.

Rep. Maxine Waters warned her constituents that the Bush Administration is marginalizing blacks by telling them to keep their discussions limited to their neighborhoods.

“They call us unpatriotic if we speak against the war. Well, we’ve been up against harder opposition than the war hawks in the White House: George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Carl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Condoleeza Rice, and Colin Powell,” stated the feisty congresswoman.

Waters is one of only 11 members of the House who did not vote for the congressional resolution on the war with Iraq. “Let’s get it straight,” she explained, “when people say I didn’t vote for war, I didn’t vote for it because it could have been avoided. Hans Blix wanted to continue inspections. Kofi Annan wanted to continue inspections. So did France, Germany, China.”“Bush threatened any nation who was opposed to war. Finally (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il said ‘let me show you where weapons of mass destruction really are.’”

Turning to African Americans serving in the military, Waters said they aren’t the ones who planned the war, “they were just looking for employment to support their families.”

The Democrat said George W. Bush targeted Saddam Hussein because of his failure to capture Usama Bin Ladin. “Now Bush intends to spend all our money on this war while giving nothing to our raggedy, dilapidated schools, healthcare, and veterans. We fought the U.S.’s wars and then had to come back and ride in the back of the bus.”

Waters was on a roll as she brought up her efforts on the House floor to stop government officials from profiting from post-war reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

“I tried to introduce a little amendment to the financial services committee because Dick Cheney was sitting in the right position to channel the contracts for his old firm, Halliburton,” she said. In fact, Halliburton received a reconstruction contract without submitting a bid.

The amendment Waters proposed would have put a four-year hold on awarding military contracts to corporations with political connections that helped draft the Iraqi war policy or employed high-level administration officials.

Her amendment was shot down by the Republicans. So Waters went back with a weaker amendment in which she stipulated that a person who has worked for a potential contract recipient in the past four years should recuse himself from negotiations.

The GOP vetoed this amendment as well.

Richard Perle, who had to step down March 27 from his advisory post to the Pentagon because of mounting evidence of conflict of interest, is both a consultant and contractor, Waters charged.

“There are a lot of people who stand to benefit from this war.”

Waters condemned Bush’s budget proposals which will cut $15 billion from veterans’ programs at the very time he is sending young combatants to war.

“You would think the U.S. media are employed by Rumsfeld,” she concluded. “We need truth from these ‘embedded’ journalists who say that when a missile hits Iraqi civilians the Iraqis did it to themselves. U.S. polls claim that 73 percent of Americans are in favor of this war. I believe that is a lie.”

A recurring theme voiced by a series of stirring speakers was disdain for Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice.

A coordinator of the event, sponsored by the International Black Coalition for Peace and Justice, was scholar Maualana Karenga, the creator of Kwanza, the African American holiday celebrated from Dec. 16 to Jan. 1.

When Muslim Wakeup asked the California State University at Long Beach professor why more black organizations have not participated in anti-war protests over the past months, he replied: “We won’t come into the peace movement as junior brothers and sisters. We want to be in the decision-making agenda and make our own cultural vision of the society we want to live in.”

As he addressed the growing audience, Dr. Karenga stated: “White is not right, it’s just another color.”

“Look at Bush claiming to achieve peace by war by imposing a military dictatorship over Iraq. Having failed domestically, he’s staging a diversionary victory over people of color in another land. What could be more savage than dropping 20,000-pound bombs on defenseless people?”

The academic warned that the war on Iraq is designed to strengthen Washington’s ally, Israel, and enforce Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people. He praised African and Latin American nations for resisting U.S. bribes to join its “coalition” against Iraq.

“There is no need to attack people who have done nothing to us, May we win. Because if we lose, we are lost. Imperialist aggression is decaying but it won’t go out without a whimper.”

Former Congressman Mervyn Dymally, who now has a seat in the California Assembly, stated: “I come here not to praise Caesar, but to bury Bush.”

Recalling an April 4, 1967 statement by Martin Luther King, Jr. who declared that the greatest purveyor of violence in the world is the U.S. and that the war in Vietnam had to be stopped, Dymally said: “Well, here we go again.”

The Rev. Leonard Jackson summed it up when he took the podium and shouted: “How the hell can you justify $74.7 billion for 30 days of war when we are crying out for healthcare, education and social services? After Saddam, it will be someone else."