Notes Of An Old Soldier-Greeting On May Day From The Boston Rally- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan –Ten Years Is Enough!

Remarks made at the Boston May Day Rally on May 1, 2012:

Sisters and Brothers, Hermanas y Hermanos, greetings on this glorious May Day, a day of international solidarity with the working people and oppressed of the world. Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with and defense of the just struggles of all people for political, social and economic justice in this wicked old world. And as witness our defenses of the encampments at Dewey Square in October and December of last year, and on a myriad other occasions, these are not just flowery words used on holiday occasions.

May Day is a very appropriate day to address the lessons of war and peace, lessons, as our organization’s name indicates, that have been dearly learned by war-hardened veterans on many of the battle fields of the 20th and 21st century. I want to tell you a secret, a secret though that I want you to spread far and wide. I do not give a damn about the Obama Adminstration’s timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. I say, no I cry out to high heaven- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops and Mercenaries from Afghanistan. Ten years is enough!

And since this May Day is a day for actions I call on our sister and brother rank and file soldiers in Afghanistan, abandoned by the Obama administration to international expediency, to tell, no order, their commanders from that lowly platoon leader out in the boondocks to Commander-In Chief Obama to rev up the jeeps now, rev up the truck tranports now, rev up the transport planes now. All Troops Out Now! And when they get back here heal them! Enough of war! Thank you.