Minneapolis, MN – Fifty people packed the popular Mayday Books, August 22, for the forum, “Is U.S. Military Intervention Ever Humanitarian?” organized by the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition (MPAC). The event was held because politicians of both parties and the mainstream corporate media are escalating calls to intervene in Syria to “protect human rights.”

Four long-time, well-known and respected activists spoke of the familiar and disastrous U.S. history of using human rights as a pretext for military intervention.

Sami Rasouli lived in Minneapolis for 25 years. After the U.S. invasion in 2005 he moved back to his home in Iraq. He formed the Muslim Peacemakers Team, a group that works for peace and human rights in Iraq. Every year he comes back to Minnesota to report on his work and the reality of life in Iraq under U.S. occupation. Rasouli said that before the war and occupation there was no Sunni-Shia divide between these Muslim groups. The occupying forces manufactured the conflict and then said they had to stay to protect the people. “Now, because of the devastation of the U.S. war and occupation, many Iraqis say they miss Saddam. I think Syrians will say they miss Assad.”

April Knutson has worked in solidarity with the people of Haiti for many years. Knutson began her talk with a quote of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. “Haiti’s exceptional poverty is the result of an exceptional history – one that extracted equally exceptional wealth.” She then outlined Haiti’s history, beginning with the successful slave revolt in 1791 that resulted in their emancipation and independence from France. She also described the horrific price they have paid for daring to rebel: France forced them to pay an indemnity in compensation for the loss of land and slaves that today would amount to over $21.7 billion; imperial powers kidnapped two popular leaders; the U.S. occupied Haiti from 1915-34; the U.S. provided political and military support for the brutal dictatorships of Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier; and non-Haitians extorted wealth by the crushing exploitation of Haiti’s resources and people. Knutson also described another travesty: “At the time of the earthquake in 2010, U.N. occupation forces had been on the island since the kidnapping of Aristide. But their mandate was only to stabilize, not improve, so it was just a repressive force.” Knutson added “And the U.S. forces that took over the airport refused for days to allow planes from around the world carrying relief and emergency workers to land.”

Jess Sundin is a member of the Anti-War Committee. In September 2010 her home was raided, and she was subpoenaed by the FBI to appear before a federal grand jury because of her antiwar and international solidarity work. She spoke about the eleven year U.S. intervention in and occupation of Afghanistan. The stated U.S. aims for involvement, if true, would have made it the shortest war in U.S. history. The real objectives, which include control of pipelines and establishing bases near China, India, Russia and Pakistan, have made it the longest war in U.S. history, with no end in sight. A major pretext for war was to secure women’s human rights. Sundin said, “The reality is that the U.S. installed puppet government in Afghanistan has failed to extend democratic rights to women. In April the Karzai government approved new legislation that limited guardianship of children to father and paternal grandfather, that a wife could not leave her house with the permission of her husband, that women could only inherit moveable property, and that a wife is “bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires.”

Linda Hoover, member of MPAC and Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), laid out the geo-political analysis behind U.S. military interventions and occupations. Countries in the crosshairs of U.S. aggression stand in the way of total U.S. control of resources to maintain economic supremacy. She said, “The U.S. sponsored seizure of Syria is part of its attempt to divide Eurasia and to maintain its status as the sole superpower. The goal of toppling the government in Syria is to balkanize the country by partitioning it into four regions and to get closer to toppling the government in Iran, the stronger regional power opposing U.S. domination. Large portions of the U.S. budget, as well as great amounts of wealth stolen from other places around the world, goes to fund the military so that it can stop other countries from becoming economic competitors.

As a result a large number of working class people here and across the world are suffering. She called on those of us in the most advanced imperialist countries to take our place in the great movements of liberation going on in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

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