Why Asian Americans Should Oppose the War on Iraq

By Azine Boston
March 21, 2003

A statement presented to an antiwar protest to students at Dartmouth

Asian Americans are mobilizing to oppose the unilateral attack on Iraq. We call upon Asian Americans at Darmouth to join other students in this anti-peoples policy of imperial pre-emptive war.

We must mobilize because the war “shocks and awes” the human services that our communities need. The federal government cuts health, affordable housing, education, English language classes, and youth programs that are needed in the Chinatowns and Koreatowns across the country. They cut them to fund war–mongering; each cruise missile or smart bomb costs between a half-million to one and a half million dollars, and we are directing thousands at Iraq. They fund the bribes being paid to governments to join the “coalition of the submissive.”

War is being used to restrict civil rights. For Asian Americans, civil rights is particularly fragile. More than many others, Asian Americans know from the history of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans and the McCarthyite hunt for “Red Chinese” in the 50’s how our civil rights are tied to global politics. We know how hate crimes against Asian Americans arise from spy planes over China, auto production down turns in Detroit, and losses in the Vietnam War. We see today the harassment of South Asian Americans alongside of Moslem Americans. We must mobilize against the War and the growth of hate against “foreigners” to keep the tenuous civil rights that we have today.

We must also organize because we know that this is only the beginning of a war without any horizon. Countries where our parents or their parents came from – North Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and potentially even China – are either present or future targets of U.S. unilateral war. Just as Iraqi mothers, fathers, and children will die as collateral damage so will Asian mothers, fathers, and children.

As a community that values peace, justice, and equality, Asian Americans need to act as if our values matter, even if our government answers to different values of war, oil, and hegemony.

The Asian American Movement Ezine
3/21/03