NEWS
Galloway impels Iraqi withdrawal
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by Michael Gendall
Monday, September 19, 2005
George Galloway, member of the British Parliament and outspoken critic of the current war in Iraq, pushed for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. and British troops at the Memorial Union Theatre Sept. 18.
Film actress Jane Fonda, also an outspoken critic of the Iraqi war, was slated to appear with Galloway but cancelled due to a "medical emergency."
"There are very, very few people left in either Britain or the United States who any longer believe that it was the right thing to do to send hundreds of thousands of soldiers into an Arab Muslim country and occupy it as a means of making the world a safer place," Galloway said in a press conference prior to his speech. "So our argument is we must withdraw from the occupation of Iraq."
Galloway said he recognizes the fact that withdrawing from Iraq will not end the "chaos and bloodshed," but as long as troops remain, there will always be chaos and bloodshed.
"We have to withdraw because we are not the solution, we are the central problem," Galloway said.
The University of Wisconsin College Republicans and College Democrats both said they disagreed with Galloway's stance to immediately withdraw from Iraq.
"Some of the stuff he calls for is extreme," UW College Democrats Chair Brian Shactman said. "The organization takes a 'Russ Feingold' stand — there has to be some sort of planned withdrawal."
UW College Republicans Chair Jordan Smith said immediate withdrawal "would be detrimental to the Iraq area," and questioned Galloway's credibility following his expulsion from Britain's Labour Party.
"He was kicked out of his own political party for his comments about the Iraq war," Smith said. "[That] just shows how out of touch he is with the people in Britain and in America."
Reaction from the Memorial Union Theatre crowd seemed to indicate the opposite however, as the audience greeted Galloway with a standing ovation.
"I saw someone wearing a T-shirt outside saying 'we love our troops,'" Galloway told the capacity audience. "Well we love them too. We love them so much, we don't want them either killing or being killed anymore … it's because we don't hate our armed forces that we say it's time to bring them home."
Galloway also addressed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in America and the July 7, 2005 in London, and compared them to actions by U.S. and British soldiers overseas.
"The atrocities carried out on [Sept. 11, 2001] and the one carried out in London on the 7th of July of this year were criminal acts of mass murder," he said. "It is a crime; it is a sin, in any language, in any religion, to punish innocent people for the crimes of guilty people, [but] we believe that the killing of innocent people in Baghdad or Fallujah or Afghanistan is equally reprehensible."
Galloway stressed he has no interest in negotiating with Osama bin Laden, but said the West needs to accommodate the Muslim people who haven't subscribed to bin Laden's anti-American rhetoric, but may soon turn because of their anger with Western policy.
"I hate bin Laden," Galloway said at the press conference. "If bin Laden was here I'd kill him myself."
According to Galloway, Americans need to come to a better understanding of the root of conflict between the West and the Muslim World, that being the omnipresent conflict between Israel and Palestine for the past half century.
"The heart of the crisis between the East and the West, the Muslim World and the non-Muslim World, is the fifty years of injustice against the Palestinian people," he said.
There is not a single Muslim anywhere, Galloway said, that does not think about Palestine daily.
Sherry Wolf of the International Socialist Review, one of the sponsors of the event and introducers for Galloway, read a letter from Fonda apologizing for her absence.
"I just recently had hip surgery and my doctors have told me I cannot travel for awhile," Wolf quoted from Fonda's letter. "I do intend to speak out about Iraq. Those of us who were opposed to the Vietnam War were right and those who oppose the Iraq War are right."
