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CounterPunch
February
19, 2003
People Are Coming
Together for Peace in S. Carolina
It's
Time to Give Disarmament a Chance
by TOM TURNIPSEED
Columbia,
South Carolina. Everyday people
want peace, not only in "Old Europe" and around the
world where millions of peace-loving people turned out over the
weekend in protests to stop the United States' invasion of Iraq,
but even in this bastion of the United States' defense establishment.
In South Carolina a flourishing peace
movement is organizing and getting more media coverage as peace
vigils become larger each week. Although most of the media trumpet
the martial call of President Bush with eager editorializing
for war, some stories about troop deployments depict the families
of military personnel questioning why they have to go. Along
with a myriad of heart wrenching stories in our media of departing
young warriors hugging and kissing their wives, husbands and
children goodbye beneath headlines proclaiming "In Service
of Their Country", stories of peace protests are growing
in number and the diversity of activists is evident.
South Carolina is the military laden
province of Saint Strom Thurmond, who never heard of a U.S. military
action he didn't like, since the Confederacy lost the Civil War.
Our state is the home of Fort Jackson Army Training Center, Parris
Island Marine Training Center, Shaw Air Force Base, the Charleston
Air Force Base, the Beaufort Marine Air Base and the Savannah
River Site, a giant nuclear weapons complex. But, even where
George W. Bush triumphed in a crucial contest for the presidential
nomination in 2000 and Republicans now control the Governor's
office and both houses of the legislature, some unlikely folks
have become outspoken advocates for peace and disarmament..
Folks like Robert Marek of Aiken, South
Carolina, a former United Nations' weapons inspector with the
International Atomic Energy Agency. The day before Chief Inspector
Hans Blix briefed the U.N. Security Council Marek stepped up
and told The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C. that his friends
who are currently weapons inspectors in Iraq had e-mailed him
saying they need more time than "President Bush is willing
to give" to do the job they are supposed to do. "I
think it would be unfortunate if they didn't give them the time
they need to do the job", said Marek, who spent three years
as a nuclear inspector in the Far East and now is a law student
at the University of South Carolina.
Marek also said, "All the people
that I know over there...are all very competent. When it is done
properly, they will find out what they are supposed to."
"I'd hate to see all that ruined
for political reasons." Marek said. He said inspectors
in Iraq are getting reasonable cooperation from Saddam's regime
according to recent e-mailed reports he has been getting from
his inspector friends in Iraq.
Marek came within a month of going to
Iraq in late 1998 to monitor its dozen nuclear labs and research
reactors, but a missile attack by the U.S. and Britain resulted
in the withdrawal of weapons inspectors, according to Marek.
He spent the next three years inspecting nuclear facilities in
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. His job was to monitor whether
those nations were diverting their nuclear technology into weaponry.
Weapons inspections require painstaking procedures to identify,
analyze, map and trace suspected materials and that is why Blix
and his team need more time, Marek said.
Over lunch Marek told me about coming
to South Carolina to work as a nuclear engineer at the Department
of Energy's nuclear weapons complex at Aiken making nuclear weapons.
Robert Marek said he looked into his young son's eyes one day
and contemplated his future with the escalating danger of the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He then decided
to work as a weapons inspector at the U.N. in the cause of peace
and disarmament
On World Peace Day last Saturday, the
Carolina Peace Resource Center(CPRC) was a co-sponsor of a Teach-In
for Peace at the University of South Carolina(USC) and a March
and Rally at the South Carolina State House. Leading the singing
of peace songs like "Down By The Riverside", and "Blowin'
In The Wind" with a wonderful country-folk voice was Travis
Nagy, a Young Republican leader at USC. Travis said he attended
the peace rally in Washington, D.C. on January 18 and was impressed
by the diversity and sincerity of the participants.
At the South Carolina State House rally
on Saturday was a former artillery officer named Steve Lefemine.
Steve is an anti-abortion advocate who held a sign that said
"Just Say No! To Abortion & Emperor Bush's New World
Order IRAQ WAR!".
The world-wide weapons industry relies
on the politics of hate, fear and war to sell their evil products
throughout the world. The global proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction demands global disarmament before it is too
late..
It is time for peace and disarmament!
Let the inspectors do their work in Iraq, and also in North Korea,
Israel, Iran and other dangerously armed nations like the United
States, the nation with more weapons of mass destruction than
the next fifteen nations combined.
Tom Turnipseed
is an attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia,
South Carolina. www.turnipseed.net
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
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