Protest calls for end to U.S. presence

A small group of eight protestors assembled Saturday on the steps of the Software… A small group of eight protestors assembled Saturday on the steps of the Software Engineering Institute on Fifth Avenue to protest the continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq.

The protest, organized by the Duncan and Porter House of Hospitality and Resistance, a Catholic Worker house in Pennsylvania, was also in honor of the approximately 400 Iraqi civilians who died in a February 1991 U.S. bombing of an Ameriyah shelter, located in a suburb of Baghdad.

The Pentagon said U.S. troops were not aware that civilians were hiding in the shelter, according to the Knight Ridder/Tribune wire service.

The SEI develops weaponry similar to that used in the Ameriyah bombing, according to the protestors.

And because SEI is part of Carnegie Mellon University, protestor Vincent Eirene, 51, said Carnegie Mellon University students are trained and taught to develop “new software to kill … the [United States’] enemy.”

“We’re against the way young minds aren’t even able to experiment with peace,” Eirene said, adding that students could be doing research on a cure for AIDS or solving the homeless problem instead.

But most of the protest centered on pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

U.S. occupation has ended both American and Iraqi lives, and it needs to stop, Eirene said.

“What I say is, we allow the people of Iraq to establish their own democracy … [and] their own society the way they want it,” Steven Donahue, 49, said into a megaphone. “When will we quit? It’s time to let the people [of Iraq] decide.”

Donahue was part of a two-person team holding up a 4-by-3-foot sign, which stated, in large capital letters, “Stop the occupation,” under which were the words “Iraq,” “Palestine,” and “Afghanistan.”

One of the main objections to pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq is the idea that Iraq cannot handle a democracy on its own, Eirene said.

Although Eirene agreed that it might not be a smooth transition between governments, he added, “There will be civil strife. But it’ll be their civil strife, their country, and they’ll be fine.”

Tim Vining, the executive director of the Thomas Merton Center, said it was important to reach out to all people, including those who were initially supportive of the war.

Americans have been “hoodwinked” and lied to by the government, Vining said. “Saddam Hussein is gone. There are no weapons of mass destruction.”

The war is not a war about national security, but about allowing multi-national corporations access to Iraqi resources, including oil, he said.

“Every other reason has been proven untrue,” Vining said.

And people can be against the war, but not be labeled “peace activists,” he said. By looking at the costs and benefits of the war, more and more people want U.S. troops to pull out of Iraq, he said.

“The ones who are benefiting are corporations like Haliburton,” Vining said.

“You can’t have a war … out of some strange premonition that something bad is going to happen,” said Bill Rounsley, the only Pitt student to attend the protest, in reference to President Bush’s preemptive attack on Iraq, which was attributed to a stated fear of terrorism.

Although Rounsley, a senior at the School of Social Work, acknowledged that the protest was small, he said it was important “to get the word out that people are against the war.”

People think the anti-war movement has tamed down, but it has not, he said.

Local protests help citizens speak out against not just the U.S. government, but against any “local war machine,” like SEI, Rounsley said.

“Some people just drive by [SEI] and see a big glass building,” he said.

Those driving by SEI Saturday seemed to be generally unconcerned with the protest. But there were shouts of “Beat it” and “Get a job” from two passing cars. A woman also honked her horn, smiled, and gave a thumbs-up in support of the protest.

During the protest, Rounsley and two other men passed out fliers that contained information about an upcoming protest on March 20.

Rounsley said he hoped the March protest, which will begin on Flagstaff Hill and proceed to the William Pitt Union, would be similar to the local protest held last January, which drew about 5,000 people from across the nation.