Member-only story
15 years ago, in October 2007, about 70 activists were arrested on Capitol Hill as part of a “No War, No Warming” action during the time of the Iraq war. I was one of those arrested, and on Democracy Now the next day here’s how I explained it:
“Most people understand that the Iraq war is all about oil. It’s a war for oil, has nothing to do with terrorism. We get the oil. We burn the oil. We heat up the earth. We aggravate and make worse conditions of life for people all over the world, as global warming has its impacts: droughts, floods, sea-level rise. That’s going to lead to more and more climate refugees, going to increase conflict, lead to more war. It’s a vicious cycle. We have to end these wars, get off of our war addiction and our fossil fuel addiction, be about justice, be about peace, be about clean energy. The peace movement, the climate movement, the justice movements, we need to be coming together, and we need to be stepping up our tactics, stepping up our actions, and letting our government know we are not going to accept what they are doing, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats.”
Neither Republicans nor Democrats started the current war between Ukraine and Russia. Putin did, but as of now it looks likely that those in power will make a bad situation worse by ramping up the US military budget and production of oil and gas to try to replace Russia’s exports to Europe. Biden’s proposed military budget for 2023, $813 billion, is $70 billion higher than what he wanted for 2022.
