NEW YORK CITY, October 29 — Nearly 30 students, professors and members of a Harlem church protested a talk by war criminal David Petraeus in Manhattan this evening. He was having a “conversation” with conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks, hosted by the Macaulay Honors College of City University New York, which hired the former commander of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and later CIA Director to teach a seminar course.
Last year hundreds of CUNY students and faculty demonstrated against his presence on a regular basis, to the point where he now is surrounded by dozens of NYC cops every time he appears publicly.
We chanted “Petraeus Out of CUNY” and “1, 2, 3, 4, We Won’t Fight Your Imperialist War; 5, 6, 7, 8, Petraeus Out, We Won’t Wait.” The last chant was particularly significant since many of the people in the audience were older, well-dressed business people who would never think of sending their children or grandchildren to the Middle East or Central Asia to risk their lives.
The people from Wall Street who admire Petraeus have big stakes in U.S. wars of occupation: (1) control over trillions of dollars worth of resources (oil and gas in the Middle East, a fortune of precious minerals in Afghanistan); (2) billions in profits from companies that produce the helicopters, jet fighters, tanks, cruise missiles, drones and other weapons; (3) markets for U.S. goods; and (4) profitable investment opportunities for U.S. companies.
So, who does the ruling class think will do the fighting for them? Who will come back in coffins, or with shattered bodies and minds? It will be working-class youth who will die and suffer, as well as inflicting widespread death and pain on those being occupied and attacked. That’s why Petraeus is at CUNY, to convince its working-class students to join ROTC, to serve in the military and to politically support the U.S. empire and its crimes. But the people who were demonstrating outside — a diverse group from many countries — aren’t buying what Petraeus is selling and have committed themselves to fighting imperialism.
Students spoke eloquently of last year’s many struggles at CUNY. A person from a church in Harlem described how NYC cops raided a housing project in Harlem, arresting many young people, which he called an “imperialist attack at home” and called for supporting the arrested youth at their court hearings.
Another speaker pointed out that Petraeus is a war criminal whose death count keeps rising. From 2003-2005, Petraeus was in charge of creating, arming, training and funding Iraqi paramilitary units to crush the Sunni insurgency. These units were formed out of Shia militias, who kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of Sunnis. That sparked a brutal sectarian war between Sunnis and Shias in 2006, that took the lives of tens of thousands. The victory of the Shias consolidated the rule of Nouri al-Maliki, who in ensuing years did everything possible to antagonize the Sunnis, resulting in the rise of the fundamentalist Islamic state, which now controls much of Sunni-majority Iraq.
Petraeus is currently teaching at Macualy Honors College and is expected to teach again in Spring 2015. The seminar is titled The Coming American Decades, a course that examines how the U.S. and its North American allies can continue to maintain world domination when capitalism is in crisis. The course meets Monday afternoons at 555 West 57th Street. Surely this war criminal deserves another greeting from our students and faculty.
Many students are starting to understand that the problems we face — war, racism, sexism, poverty, unemployment, low wages, global warming — are due to capitalism, and that we need to make a revolution. We distributed CHALLENGE at the rally and are committed to building a revolutionary party to rid ourselves of people like Petraeus and his corporate masters.