Gulf War Protests

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Aug 28 1990
^AM-Gulf-US-Dissent
^Some Suspect U.S. Would Fight War to Benefit Oil Companies
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
   NEW YORK (AP) _ The deployment of troops to the Persian Gulf has given rise to scattered protests that are focusing more on economics than on the political concerns expressed during the Vietnam era.
   Many of the demonstrators say the soldiers are risking their lives for oil companies and that the financially strapped nation cannot afford the deployment.
   "Hell no, we won't go, we won't die for Texaco," 200 protesters shouted Saturday outside the White House, echoing words used by demonstrators during the Vietnam War but adding a twist: the name of a U.S. oil company.
   Opposition to the Vietnam War in the '60s and '70s and to U.S. military policy in Central America in the '80s focused on whether the United States had the right to interfere in the politics of other nations. Opponents of U.S. gulf policy, a minority according to opinion polls, are centering their arguments on the morality of intervention for economic ends.
   "We have to tell each other that we will not kill and we will not die for Exxon, for Gulf Petroleum," peace activist Becky Minnich said last week during a meeting of 100 dissidents in Minneapolis.
   The argument might get a sympathetic ear.
   An Associated Press poll conducted earlier this month said 86 percent of Americans believed the oil companies took advantage of the Iraqi invasion and unfairly raised gasoline prices. The survey of 1,004 adults had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
   Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, speaking at a news conference in New York last week, called the U.S. military buildup "aggression designed simply to dominate oil."
   Another of the protesters' arguments is that America - $4.16 trillion in debt - cannot afford a massive troop deployment costing billions of dollars.
   "They now run up a military bill to the top of the sky and take it out of federal housing money for Brooklyn," wrote Jimmy Breslin, Pulitzer Prize- winning columnist for New York Newsday.
   Many protesters don't believe protecting Middle East oil from Iraq is worth American lives.
   "I kissed my son goodbye today," college professor Alex Molnar wrote in a letter to Bush published in The New York Times. "He is a 21-year-old Marine. You have ordered him to Saudi Arabia. ... For what? Cheap gas?"
   Images of soldiers boarding transport planes for the Middle East have become a daily staple of television news, but not all are going willingly.
   One serviceman, Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Paterson, said he will not fight a war over oil and has filed for conscientious objector status to prevent his deployment to the gulf.
   The AP poll said 64 percent of Americans supported deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia to help defend it against a possible Iraqi attack, while 22 percent were opposed. But the poll said 52 percent of Americans opposed using ground forces to push Iraq out of Kuwait. Thirty-two percent favored such a move.
   If the United States is drawn into a war to force Iraq out of Kuwait, which is the intent of the economic embargo, the few voices of protest in the U.S. will likely grow.
   Among the scattered voices raised in recent days:
   - In Amherst, Mass., about 15 protesters elicited a few honks in support from passing motorists, but also the shouted comment: "Get out of America."
   - At Westover Air Force Base, Mass., where planes being used to supply troops in the gulf are based, two people were arrested on charges of disturbing the peace Monday during a small demonstration.
   - In San Francisco, 15 protesters at the Federal Building held signs saying "Shed No Blood for Oil" and promised to continue holding pickets there until the troops come home.
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