Veterans For Peace urgently calls on the United States and NATO to
cease all military activity in Syria, halt all U.S. and NATO shipments
of weapons, and abandon all threats to further escalate the violence
under which the people of Syria are suffering. NATO troops and missiles should be withdrawn from Turkey and other
surrounding nations. U.S. ships should exit the Mediterranean.
Veterans For Peace is an organization of veterans who draw upon their
military experiences in working for the abolition of war. We have not
entered into this work without consideration of many situations similar
to the current one in Syria. Peace negotiations, while very difficult, will be easier now, and
will do more good now, than after greater violence. Those negotiations
must come, and delaying them will cost many men, women, and children
their lives. No good can come from U.S. military intervention in Syria. The people
of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the former
Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and dozens of other nations in Latin America and around the world have not been made better off by U.S. military intervention.
While experts have great doubt that the Syrian government will use chemical weapons, while accounts of past use are dishonest, and while claims that such use is imminent are unsubstantiated and highly suspicious,
the most likely way to provoke such use is the threat of an escalated
foreign intervention. Required now by practicality, morality, and the
law is de-escalation. The possession or use of one kind of weapon cannot justify the use of
another. Were the Syrian government to use chemical weapons against
Syrians, the United States would not be justified in using other kinds
of weapons against Syrians. The United States possesses chemical and
biological weapons, as well as nuclear weapons, and possesses and uses
cluster bombs, white phosphorus, depleted uranium weapons, mines, and
weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles -- none of which justifies military
attacks on the U.S. government.
The United States' own military actions kill far more civilians than
combatants. The United States facilitates and tolerates governments'
abuses of their own people in nations around the world and around
Western Asia, notably in Bahrain -- not to mention in Syria, to which
the United States has in recent years sent victims to have them
tortured. The world does not believe U.S. motivations for intervention
in Syria are humanitarian.
The motivation has been too openly advertised as the overthrow of a
government too friendly with the government of Iran and insufficiently
subservient to NATO. Syria has been on a Pentagon list for regime change since at least 2001.
The threat of war, like the use of war, is a violation of the U.N.
Charter, to which both the United States and Syria are parties. War
without Congressional declaration is a violation of the U.S.
Constitution.
Another U.S. war will not only breed hostility. It will directly arm and supply those already hostile to the U.S. government.How many times must we watch the same mistakes repeated?
The options are not limited to doing nothing or escalating warfare. Nonviolent resistance to tyranny has proven
far more likely to succeed, and the successes far longer lasting.
Nations and individuals outside of Syria should do what they can to
facilitate the nonviolent pursuit of justice. But Syria's struggles
should be controlled by the Syrian people without military intervention.
The first step is a cease-fire and de-escalation. The U.S. military and
NATO can assist only by departing.
Veterans For Peace is a national organization, founded in 1985 with
approximately 5,000 members in 150 chapters located in every U.S. state
and several countries. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational
organization recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) by the
United Nations, and is the only national veterans' organization calling
for the abolishment of war.
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