The colonized world is a world divided in two. The dividing line, the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations. In the colonies, the official, legitimate agent, the spokesperson for the colonizer and the regime of oppression, is the police officer or the soldier. In capitalist societies, education, whether secular or religious, the teaching of moral reflexes handed down from father to son, the exemplary integrity of workers decorated after fifty years of loyal and faithful service, the fostering of love for harmony and wisdom, those aesthetic forms of respect for the status quo, instill in the exploited a mood of submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task of the agents of law and order. In capitalist countries a multitude of sermonizers, counselors, and "confusion-mongers" intervene between the exploited and the authorities. In colonial regions, however, the proximity and frequent, direct intervention by the police and the military ensure the colonized are kept under close scrutiny, and contained by rifle butts and napalm. We have seen how the government's agent uses the language of pure violence. The agent does not alleviate oppression or mask domination. He displays and demonstrates them with the clear conscience of the law enforcer, and brings violence into the homes and minds of the colonized subjects."

--Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth p 3-4

Why are we physically protesting the usage of the Port of Olympia to transfer armored Stryker vehicles fresh from Iraq to Fort Lewis? As the pro-war agitators so articulately query, are we simply delaying the inevitable maintenance and return to action of these war machines and the soldiers that operate them? Indeed, are we just preventing the distribution of valuable tools and manpower to a military action that is badly in need of both?

Yes. We are doing both of those things, but the entirety of the reason behind our resistance is far deeper than the answers to such shallow, leading questions as our antagonists pose to us.

First, why, if we claim to support our troops, are we attempting to halt the maintenance and deployment of further vehicles and troops to Iraq? The fallacious answer that our opponents have extrapolated from our actions is that we are abandoning our troops and actively working to undercut their effectiveness and safety by denying them personnel and technology. If we were to buy into their vision of the continued US occupation of Iraq, then yes, we are denying the flow of military resources that is necessary for that kind of prolonged presence to be feasible. However, we do not buy into that vision. We are demanding the swift, if not immediate, withdrawal of our military from Iraq. By stopping the deployment of the Stryker brigade through our port, we are actively creating a future that supports our military by not sending them or their resources to a war zone that has already claimed the lives of over 3,500 US soldiers. By allowing the transference of these military personnel and vehicles, we would be supporting an increasingly costly and increasingly deadly protracted occupation of an overseas country. To put it bluntly, the only thing that our uber-patriotic counterparts "support", with their calls to "Let our troops do their job"(which is apparently to die) and "Our troops are winning"(by dying) and "The Surge is working"(by sending more troops to die), is the continued existence of a vast deathtrap for our military.

What about the issue of Private Military Contractors, or PMCs? Blackwater USA, the current PMC du jour, is but one of several PMCs that have anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 privately contracted operatives working directly for the United States government in Iraq. While the disparity in those estimations is deeply disturbing(the possibility of 80,000 more mercenaries being paid with our tax dollars to engage in overseas military action that our own military cannot ethically partake in should be vastly unnerving), what is more disturbing is what we do know: Blackwater USA is responsible for at least 1,000 mercenaries that are contracted for high-risk operations in Iraq. According to a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day, per operative. That is six times the cost of a US soldier, but I guess the extra money is worth it to have a mercenary corp that is immune to military codes of conduct. The good news is that Iraqi government is poised to throw Blackwater out of Iraq after their September 16 massacre of 17 Iraqis, 8 of whom were civilians. Although the ejection of Blackwater from Iraq may seem an empty victory, given that other prominent PMCs like DynCorp are already gearing to fill its void, the attention brought to bear on the negative actions of PMCs is giving momentum to a bill that will make all PMCs subject to prosecution under US law for action in a "declared war or contingency operation". May I also add that the original wording did not include "contingency operation," which is what the "war" in Iraq actually is. That is why PMCs were not prosecutable under US law before this revision; because the military action in Iraq was never a war as declared by Congress. So, why are we spending our tax money to send military men, women, and vehicles to prolong a military action that has escalated into an illegally declared war when what little nation-building they can do is consistently being undercut by amoral mercenaries with a price-tag that is six times that of our actual troops? Again, we can support our troops by removing them from a toxic situation that is costing us all money, credibility, Constitutional rights, and family members.

It surprises me that we still hear the words "Our troops are fighting for our freedom!" from our patriotic compatriots. I have yet to hear any coherent argument as to why our military is protecting our freedom overseas when we still can't get freedom from racism, poverty, violence against women, gender discrimination...well, the list goes on. What freedoms are the terrorists targeting? Freedom from illegal government wiretapping? Freedom from illegal government seizure of internet records from our providers? Freedom from being detained indefinitely for trumped up charges of terrorism? The list of freedoms that are being taken away from us is growing almost daily, all in the name of fighting to preserve them. No, this war is not being fought in order to wrest our freedom from the stranglehold of tyrannical Iraqis. There are no official government documents that posit "Freedom" as the ultimate reason for military force in Iraq.

So, why are we at war anyway? Putting aside such outlandish ideas as oil, corporate growth, and neo-colonialism, let's look at the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002(notice the lack of the word "war" anywhere in that title). The resolution lists the following factors, among others, as justification for the use of military force:

- Iraq's alleged production of weapons of mass destruction(WMDs)
- Iraq's non-compliance with the conditions of the 1991 cease-fire, including interference with weapons inspectors
- Iraq's "brutal repression" of its civilian population
- Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people"
- Iraq's aid to anti-US terrorist groups
- the resolution underlined the supposed policy of the United States to remove Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from power and promote a democratic replacement (a policy that was so unabashedly focused on the destruction of a sovereign nation's government that its very existence can be considered the first step towards a "war of aggression", "the supreme international crime" according to the Nuremburg Tribunal that prosecuted the Nazi government after WWII)

WMDs. When was the last time you've heard anyone bring up weapons of mass destruction? It's surprising how quickly the phrase WMD fell out of the public arena once it was glaringly obvious that Iraq was bereft of them. That's quite convenient, seeing as the alleged existence, production, and willingness to use WMDs was, as you can see, a major cornerstone in the decision to use military force to invade Iraq. In fact, according to an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defense, in Vanity Fair magazine "for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but, there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two." Mr. Wolfowitz is right. There is an overriding connection between the alleged Iraqi WMDs and the alleged Iraqi support for terrorism: neither of them existed. In fact, according to reports from CIA, the FBI, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the US State Department, the only link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was that Hussein had tried to capture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and had only negative things to say about Osama bin Laden. Intelligence agencies are now saying that the US occupation of Iraq has actually increased terrorist activity in the Middle East. Sounds like we're winning, right? Only if you mean that there are more terrorists for us to wrest our freedom from.

Finally, I have heard words among us that call for us not to be angry with the police, not to forget the greater picture that we are striving for, which is the end of the war. Let me direct you to Fanon's quote at the beginning: "The colonized world is a world divided in two. The dividing line, the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations. In the colonies, the official, legitimate agent, the spokesperson for the colonizer and the regime of oppression, is the police officer or the soldier...We have seen how the government's agent uses the language of pure violence. The agent does not alleviate oppression or mask domination. He displays and demonstrates them with the clear conscience of the law enforcer, and brings violence into the homes and minds of the colonized subjects." The end of the war will necessarily require a change in governmental policy, the unspoken core of which is the oppression and exploitation of a foreign nation. The police are the arbiters and spokespeople of this government, a government which is squandering our money in order to send our friends and family to a foreign country to die for freedom(nothing). We have seen the power the police state brings to bear on us, its angry citizens, in the form of chemical sprays, billy clubs, dragging by the arm or the collar or the hair, and yet we dare to not be angry with them because they are "doing their job"? "The agent does not alleviate oppression or mask domination." The police deserve the brunt of our anger for willfully and violently enforcing the rule of a corrupt, imperialist government. We may hold fast to the tenets of non-violence, but we can still be angry, and we can still be loud.

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

--Mario Savio, the steps of Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley, December 2, 1964