APEC and the U.S. military threat

Presented by John Beacham, Pusan, Korea, November 2005.

Beacham is an organizer with the A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) Coalition in Los Angeles.

I would like to thank the Organizers for inviting the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition to this assembly.

This week in Korea, in Pusan we have a meeting that includes U.S. President George Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi and others who have engaged in, for more than a century, the oppression and exploitation of the Korean people and other people throughout Asia.

Underneath the pomp and circumstance of the events and ceremonies planned for heads of states and big corporations at APEC, there is the stark reality that the U.S. and Japanese militaries are forging plans that constitute a clear threat to the people of Asia and the Pacific. At the same time, however, U.S. economic and military domination is meeting determined resistance throughout the world.

George W. Bush in particular draws people into the streets to protest everywhere he goes massive demonstrations take place. Two weeks ago when Bush attended the Summit of Organization of American States in Mar del Plata, Argentina 10,000s of people took to the streets and their main chant was, “Bush you rat get out of Mar del Plata.”

It is not only in Korea and Argentina where Bush is confronted by angry, militant and massive protest. On Sept. 24, 2005 more than 300,000 Americans surrounded the White House in Washington D.C. to demand that the U.S. get out of Iraq. It was an amazing spectacle to see the White House surrounded by a sea of human protestors. The most popular chant was, “Impeach Bush for war crimes.”

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition has organized massive protests time after time during the last few years in Washington D.C., in Los Angeles, in San Francisco and other U.S. cities. We know that is essentially the obligation of the people of the U.S. to challenge and stop the criminal policies and war plans that are hatched in the White House.

But we are also here in Korea as we were in Argentine two weeks ago because we in the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition believe that there must be the creation of an internationalist and global movement that challenges imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism and racism and fights for social justice.

The role of the Bush administration has been particularly onerous and criminal as it relates to the Korean peninsula and the Korean people – both in North Korea and in South Korea.

For 50 years it has been the goal of the U.S. government to maintain the cruel and artificial division of Korea. It was the U.S. pentagon and the CIA working hand and glove with the forces of dictatorship in South Korea who utilized the National Security Law and other methods to violently suppress anyone who gave voice to the heartfelt yearning of the Korean people to overcome division and re-unify their country and to have the Korean people free of all foreign occupying forces.

We in the ANSWER coalition recognize that the historic summit on June 13 through 15 in 2000 between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jung Il set into motion a huge momentum in the direction of re-unification for the Korean people in the North, in the South and those overseas.

We also recognize that it was a top priority of the Bush administration after taking office after it had stolen the 2000 election to derail and subvert the thrust towards re-unification. Bush chose to demonize North Korea and their leadership, falsely characterizing the North Koreans as an axis of evil and prepared to escalate the confrontation between the U.S. and North Korea as soon as the imperialists had successfully occupied and pacified Iraq.

This hyper-aggressive and reactionary imperialist policy pursued by Bush has failed at every level. In the case of Korea, Bush’s strategy only provoked widespread anti-US sentiment inside South Korea by people who were sick and tired of being bullied and coerced.

In the case of Iraq, the Iraqi people, although they have lost more than 100,00 dead in the last two and half years, are determined to resist until U.S. and British occupation forces are compelled to leave. The Iraqi people like the Korean people are sick and tired and refuse to become or return to the position of colonial slaves.

If Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld pursued a fantasy, a fantasy based on arrogance, it is a classic case of the arrogance that comes with power. The U.S. accounts for 50% of all military spending in the world. It has the most advanced fighter planes, missiles and submarines. It possesses more that 10,000 nuclear weapons. The U.S. has 750 military bases in 130 countries. And yet all of this military hardware and technological supremacy when it comes to inflicting death and destruction has not allowed the fantasy of world domination to be realized.

During the last 50 years the majority of the people on the planet have entered onto the path of anti-colonial struggle. They have entered the path for national independence and freedom. Anti-colonial consciousness is deeply engrained in the consciousness of the people of the world and no number of guns and bombs and missiles will force them to submit.

Four years ago Bush’s approval rating with the people of the U.S. was 88%. Today according to recent polls it is down to 38%. Six out of ten people in the U.S. according to the most recent survey believe they were lied to by the Bush Administration. Iraq had no weapons of Mass Destruction. There was no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Iraq posed no grave and imminent danger to the people of the United States.

It is our job, the job of the anti-war movement to deepen the growing opposition to Bush and to help it grow into a genuine anti-imperialist consciousness. It is also our job to connect the deepening struggle for social justice in the U.S. to the struggle for peace.

Poverty in the U.S. is growing. The veil of secrecy that prevents the people of the world from understanding the class dynamic in the U.S. was momentarily ripped away in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The government turned its back as 100,000s of African-American people faced death and extreme crisis.

This veil of secrecy needs to be ripped away entirely. 1.6 million people in New York City, most of them in working families, are forced to receive food handouts in order to survive. 25% of all children in the U.S. are born into poverty. This number increases to one out of every two children in the African-American community. The U.S. is closing down schools and building prisons. More than 2 million people in the U.S. are in prisons - the highest number in the world.

The Bush administration spends 200 million everyday to finance the war and occupation of Iraq - that’s 1.4 billion a week. At the same time the administration is cutting 50 billion in education programs, food stamps and assistance for health care and housing.

What we need in the United States, and what the people in the world need, is for the rapidly expanding peace movement to become an agent for profound social change. While we struggle to reshape the United States we do so in solidarity with the struggling people of Korea and elsewhere who want to exercise genuine self-determination, to become masters of their own destiny.

We are building a movement in the United States to overcome the forces of imperialism, xenophobia and racism, to bring the message of global solidarity, to help the American people themselves become a powerful force along with our sisters and brothers in Korea. We demand that (1) The U.S. government withdraws every single U.S. soldier from the Korean peninsula, (2) The U.S. stop the military threats against North Korea, (3) An end to economic sanctions against North Korea and (4) That the U.S. government sign a peace treaty with North Korea to end the U.S.-Korean war, once and for all.

Finally, we like all the people of the world want to abolish all nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons by themselves constitute a crime against humanity. But to accomplish this goal, as a pre-condition for the realization of a nuclear free world, it is essential for us to demand the elimination of the entire U.S. arsenal.

The nuclear danger in the world today comes from Washington D.C. not Pyongyang. The U.S. has 10,000 nuclear weapons. It is the U.S government alone that has used nuclear weapons and when it did it was through the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. It is the Bush administration alone that has declared the right to use nuclear weapons as first strike weapons in a so-called pre-emptive war - even against non-nuclear powers. As we stand on the soil of Korea, we in the U.S anti-war movement pledge that we will work non-stop to end the U.S. nuclear arms program. We will fight to remove U.S. troops from Iraq and we will stand with you and demand all U.S troops out of Korea.

Down with APEC! Down with Bush! Long live the global anti-imperialist movement!