NCA STATEMENT ON MARCH 20TH DEMONSTRATION

As the U.S. occupation and dismantling of Iraq enters its seventh bloody year, it is joined by similarly horrific and gruesome occupation of Afghanistan.  The war mentality besieging Washington also conducted, by proxy, wars on Lebanon and Palestine and new war fronts in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan are activated.  The invasion of Iraq, war on Lebanon and Gaza, were designed to achieve a set of objectives, foremost of which is the reshaping of the security environment in Israel’s favor.

Let’s not forget the hysteria and unrestrained campaign against Islam, as a faith, and its adherents, elevating the faith to an adversary and a common enemy. In all, the U.S. successive administrations are transforming the Arab World into a crisis and a long-term battle place. These fronts are a testament to the ideology of empire building, colonialism, militarism and hegemony.

The ideological template of the U.S. mainstream, democrats and republicans alike, has guided the road to the excessive inequality and poverty in the Arab World, in particular. As a result of the Carter-Brzezinski expedition into Afghanistan in 1980’s, more than $55 Billion of Arab petro dollars were shifted to conduct a proxy war fueled by 50,000 young Arab recruits. Currently, the U.S. is spending nearly $200 billion, since 2001, on subjugating Afghanistan alone. The numbers for shifting of resources to conduct war in Iraq are more devastating with far reaching domestic implications.

The end result is a colossal rising rate of poverty and inequality for all peoples, not to mention the methodical destruction of any infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon. A situation is difficult to fathom in a region that is, by all accounts, considered rich in natural resources but its priorities are misplaced. While we stand in solidarity with the occupied people of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Palestinians in Gaza are subjected to an unprecedented siege by the consecutive U.S. Administrations, Israel and the subservient Arab regimes – dubbed “moderates,” to camouflage their active participation against our aggregate people.

Washington has successfully imposed its hegemonistic vision by creating a false linkage between freedom and economic growth, and adopting its version of democracy as being the cure for all human misery. In contrast, however, there is a direct link between launching endless wars and growing poverty, as more dire resources are shifted from the public domain to fund the illusionary goals of empire building. Poverty rates among the Arabs in the ‘90’s were 26-30% in most countries.

As the class divide widens in the Arab World, and more people are forcibly recruited into poverty, those regimes become more dependent on foreign powers, especially the U.S., for their own security and longevity. But those are the inherent ingredients of revolutions, as history’s lessons are revived.

The NCA, a fundamental constituent of the anti-war movement, in alignment with other coalition partners, are drawing attention to the massive shift of resources from development and fighting poverty to fund useless wars and destruction. Irrespective of who’s in the White House, the policies have proven to be identical in maintaining a hegemonistic empire. Our community, in particular, is subjected to harsh profiling and alienation policies; but remains determined to fight the source of injustice.

The campaign to target and isolate our community is conducted with impunity and active collusion, if not collaboration, of subservient Arab regimes. As the U.S. policy is focusing on antagonizing the Arabs and Muslims alike, it is allowing the Zionists to divert world attention from their forcible expropriation of Palestinian lands and dispossession of the Palestinians. With the stalling of the Zionist project and its inability to expand horizontally, as a consequence to the growing resistance, the U.S. looks outwards to opening new war fronts. This must be exposed and brought to a halt through unified and organized action.

We call on our Arab-American community, and their friends, to mobilize on March 20th denouncing wars and shifting dire resources, and to tear down the wall of fear and intimidation.