Anti-war events being held across US

Peace activists have organized four days of anti-war events across the United States to protest Washington’s military intervention in other countries.

The organizers have planned rallies, cultural programs and teach-ins to draw attention to US military interventions across the globe.

The events, which are dubbed as Spring Rising, are being held to mark the 12th anniversary of US invasion of Iraq. They will be staged from March 18 to March 21 in Washington, DC and several other cities of the country.

Cindy Sheehan (pictured below at an anti-war rally), whose son, US Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed in the Iraq War, said, “Spring Rising is intended as an antiwar intervention into the world capital of war-making.”

“The US has spread its military across the globe and is engaged in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and, via drone strikes, in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The US government is provoking Russia in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, pushing for another coup in Venezuela and expanding its military presence in Asia and Africa,” she added.

“The current problem is NOT that the US finally withdrew military forces from Iraq in 2012, but its illegitimate invasions in 1991 and 2003,” said Debra Sweet, director of World Can't Wait.

“The US occupation was conducted in a lawless way, destroying their education, legal, medical, water, sewage, security and electrical systems, setting the stage for the rise of ISIS [ISIL],” she said.

The US and its allies invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the pretext that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

In October 2004, however, a CIA report revealed that Saddam did not possess any weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion.

The activists say the US occupation of Iraq was conducted in a lawless way, and set the stage for the rise of the ISIL terrorist group.

They say the US military cannot stop the ISIL violence, and nothing good can come from US-led coalition airstrikes against the Takfiri terrorists.

Since late September, the US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

US warplanes have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq since early August. Some Western states have also participated in some of the strikes in Iraq.

The US-led coalition has done little to stop the ISIL's advances in parts of Syria and in western Iraq.

Some analysts have criticized the aerial military campaign in Syria, saying the strikes are meant to destroy the Arab country's infrastructure.

Alan Sabrosky, a US Marine Corps veteran, has said that the United States’ airstrikes in Syria often target militants with “no military value” and actually aim at the country’s infrastructure.

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