As March 20 marks the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq under the false pretext of Baghdad's alleged development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), there are vital lessons to be learned from the Iraq War by all anti-war activists, Richard Becker told the hosts of Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary, Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman.
It's important to mark the anniversary of the Iraq War by calling for peace in the ongoing proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Richard Becker said, adding:
"There needs to be a new anti-war movement, and it needs to see through the hypocrisy, the lies, the cynicism of the propaganda that comes from the mainstream media to justify these wars."
Becker, author of Palestine, Israel and the US Empire, agreed with host Sean Blackmon that the Iraq War was, in effect, the last high period of anti-war organizing in the United States. But now, massive demonstrations are sweeping the US, demanding peace in Ukraine and protesting against further escalation and fueling the conflagration by pumping weapons to the Kiev regime.
"It's the action of the people that will bring about any kind of progressive change that benefits the working people, the population as a whole... Public opinion polls are interesting, but they're not meaningful in terms of bringing about actual change. Actual change comes about when people are organized and they're organized to take action,” Becker, who also serves as the West Coast coordinator for the ANSWER Coalition, noted.
Reflecting on the start of the invasion of Iraq, he underscored that it was obvious that the US was set on course for war from the moment George W. Bush came into office in January of 2001.
"Those who were dedicated to the war there... unveiled a new strategy to win over public opinion, to convince the people of the United States that Iraq had or would soon have nuclear weapons. Iraq was presented by people like Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Richard Cheney as a danger, a new hostile nuclear weapons power," Richard Becker said.
But the truth of the matter was that Iraq was a devastated country, its infrastructure destroyed in the 1991 war, and with sanctions preventing it from rebuilding, he added.
Of course, everyone knows the key role played at the time by Colin Powell, then secretary of state, who gave testimony at the United Nations to claim that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear technology and was gearing up to launch a nuclear war against the United States unless Washington intervened militarily.
Now, 20 years since the beginning of the devastating Iraq War, and as Washington appears to be quite happy with the way the proxy war is progressing in Ukraine, it's important to reinvigorate the anti-war and anti-imperialist movement, according to Richard Becker. It should be built on a principled basis, "anti-imperialist and anti-racist, opposed to all of the forms of bigotry and oppression."
As for the marches and rallies taking place at the White House, in San Francisco, and 15 other cities, they are laying the foundation, Becker stated, adding:
"We hope that this is the beginning of the new antiwar movement that has those characteristics of being anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and for the meeting the needs of the people, not the war machine."