From International Action Center, Mar 24, 1999

The U.S. government has again decided to carry out the massive bombing of a sovereign country. Today, thousands of bombs and missiles began crashing down on the people of Yugoslavia. For the last two months, U.S. air force planes and cruise missiles have been carrying out a similar reign of terror against the people of Iraq.

Clinton portrays this bombing as a humanitarian gesture on behalf of the Albanian national minority that resides in Kosovar, a region of Yugoslavia. That is a lie. It is war propaganda designed to justify and conceal the real objective of this war of aggression.

Yugoslavia, like Iraq, is a regional power in a strategic area that the Pentagon and Wall Street corporations seek to dominate. The Yugoslav government is presented as being akin to Adolf Hitler. This is the same rhetoric that is reserved for Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Manuel Noriega earlier in Panama.

The truth is that these governments have in one way or another resisted the designs of the U.S. military and economic establishment to turn their countries into semi-colonies ruled by puppet governments.

The U.S. government says it speaks on behalf of all of the people of this country when it carries out this war. But working people need to consider who the U.S. government really represent. It is the biggest corporations and banks that call the shots. Clinton or George Bush before him are simply the paid politicians who do the bidding of corporate America.

Is it conceivable that the worldwide political agenda of corporate America is motivated by humanitarian concerns? These corporations care about two things only: profits and super profits. IBM, Exxon, Bankers' Trust, and General Motors are willing to lay off thousands of workers in the United States in order to open up new factories and operations in the Third World and in the territories that used to belong to the Soviet Union.

Corporate America doesn't give a damn about the lives of working people, especially people of color, who suffer from racism, discrimination, and police brutality.

If corporate America and the White House want to fight on behalf of national minority peoples, they could declare a war against racism right here at home. Instead, they are tearing up affirmative action agreements and civil rights gains while protecting racist police forces that function as a virtual occupation army inside Black and Latino neighborhoods inside the United States.

We were lied to about the Vietnam War. Millions of young men and women in the U.S. armed forces were sent to kill and be killed. Who dies in these wars? It is working class youth who are asked to be cannon fodder, but the Pentagon wars serve only the interests of the biggest corporations.

We are demonstrating today to demand that the U.S. stop bombing the working people of Yugoslavia and to oppose any U.S./NATO army of occupation in Yugoslavia. We want money for jobs, education, day care, housing, not for wars of aggression.

Hundreds of demonstrators protested in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Portland, Minneapolis, and in other cities within hours after the beginning of the bombing of Yugoslavia by U.S./NATO forces.

Holding signs reading "Stop the Bombing of Yugoslavia," "Bring U.S. Troops and Warplanes Home Now," and chanting "Money for Jobs, Not for War," several hundreds protesters organized by the International Action Center marched in front of Grand Central Station today at 5 pm.

"This bombing is a gross violation of international law and is part of a larger effort by the U.S., German, and other NATO powers to dismember the socialist republic of Yugoslavia," said Sara Flounders, Co-Director of the International Action Center. "As in Iraq, the White House and Pentagon war propaganda machine is demonizing Yugoslav leader Milosevich, portraying him as begin politically akin to Adolf Hitler.

"The truth is that there has been brutality on all sides of the civil war in Yugoslavia. In fact, the biggest ethnic cleansing that took place was directed against 100,000 Serbs living in Croatia in 1995. The war against the Serbs in Croatia took place under the direction of retired U.S. military officers. This exposes the hypocrisy of Clinton's crocodile tears for the Albanian people in Kosovo. The U.S. is using ethnic groups as a pawn in a larger effort to dismember Yugoslavia and place resource-rich, strategic territories under the direct military domination of the U.S.," Flounders said.

The war and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, like the war against Iraq, is part of the post-Soviet world strategy of Washington. By employing military force coupled with economic sanctions and an expanding number of U.S. military bases, the U.S. government seeks to thoroughly dominate strategic areas. It wants to overthrow and eliminate any government that resists U.S. military and economic domination.

People in the United States are demanding that the billions of dollars spent on wars of aggression instead be spent on jobs, housing, education, child care, and housing.