Column: No business as usual!

Editor's Note: The following is a collective statement sent to various media organizations from those individuals who blocked the traffic circle Thursday afternoon. A similar statement was handed out at the protest.

Durham, North Carolina; At 12:15 p.m. on Thursday, April 10 a group of approximately 40 concerned members of the Duke community blocked university traffic in order to protest the George W. Bush administration's war against and occupation of Iraq. We, along with the enormous majority of the people of the world, demand that the United States government take immediate action to end hostilities and forgo the occupation of Iraq.

• Illegal. It might seem to many that the war on Iraq is over, that the Bush administration can now declare victory, and that we can all return to our daily routine. But, we must realize that this war began long before March 19 and has included 12 years of U.S.-led U.N. sanctions that have wreaked havoc upon the Iraqi civilian population and the effects of which are likely to remain long into the future. On top of the suffering created by these sanctions, the Bush administration has decided to further punish the people of Iraq by waging a war on Iraq in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, promoting instead the policy of unilateral and preemptive strikes. The Bush administration's disregard for both international law and Iraqi human life has extended to the conduct of the war in which it has decided to use depleted uranium and cluster bombs that target innocent civilians and are in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions. It is important to note that under Article VI, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, the United Nations charter and the Geneva Convention, are "the Supreme Law of the Land." Their destruction places the Bush administration not only outside the United Nations system but in direct opposition to the Constitution (for a legal analysis see www.nlg.org).

• Unjust. Despite the claims surrounding the presence of weapons of mass destruction and the "liberation" of the Iraqi people, the huge investment deals that have been distributed among the corporate backers of the Bush administration, as well as the threatening statements that have already been made about future wars with Syria and Iran, lead us to believe that this war has been waged in order to further a 21st-century conquest of the Middle East that would benefit only a tiny avaricious elite within our own society. Yet, the injustice of this war far exceeds the borders of the Middle East. Under the fog of this war, this administration has eroded crucial freedoms concerning reproductive rights, the writ of habeas corpus, affirmative action and environmental protection. In addition, the Bush administration's tax cuts and the consequent reductions in spending on education and social benefits make clear that the human costs of this war reach far beyond the borders of Iraq to include the most vulnerable groups in our own society. In fact, the Bush administration has felt so emboldened by this war and its consequent erosion of democratic debate in our society that it has sent young members of the military to die overseas while simultaneously slashing veteran's benefits by $14 billion dollars. This war and its consequences are no coincidence; they are the result of a carefully planned strategy formulated by prominent members of the Bush administration, and publicly circulated by their organization, the Project for a New American Century (www.newamericancentury.org).

• Against their war, against their peace. Some people might claim that our position is a call for "peace." But, what does "peace" mean today? We will contest "peace" if it simply means a return to the global conditions prior to March 19. We are against "peace" if it means a United States of America with 32 million people living below the poverty line; if it means that 40 million Americans do not have any health insurance; if it means a world where 25 percent of the global prison population is located in the U.S.; if it means a world where five men hold more wealth than 60 percent of the world's population, and where, consequently, thousands of children die on a daily basis from hunger and preventable disease (see United Nations, State of the World Report, 2002). We are here to declare that if this is the "peace" for which the Bush administration wages its war, we don't want it, and he can't have it!