I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Armistice Day Observance

Armistice Day is a day to promote peace and to
remember the victims of war, both veterans and civilians.
Bells will be rung at 11:00 AM, as they were
rung around the world at the end of the
Great War, 100 years ago.
 

The event is free, and the public is welcome
More information at vfp161.org
Observance attendees are invited to a free lunch,
socializing and Open Mic at Old Brick, 26 E. Market Street
immediately after the public Observance, ends @2PM
 

Show up for Peace! Fridays, 4:30 to 5:30 pm at the intersection of Iowa Avenue and Clinton Street on the University of Iowa Pentacrest Iowa City

Join with others in a stand for peace. Have the satisfaction of expressing the peace impulse in yourself ... on the Pentacrest. Come for an hour or as long as you wish, and stand for peace. Find us on the Pentacrest on the 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th of October. It's the right time to call for peaceful policies as the 17th anniversary of the U.S. miltary engagement in Afghanistan is arriving, and there is still no end in sight. If not you, then who will speak for peace? Bring your friends, family, coworkers, invite your congressman, or just bring yourself – you are needed.
 

AREA RESIDENTS MARK 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF TRAGIC, MISGUIDED IRAQ WAR

Iowa City, Iowa — Area residents will mark the 15th anniversary of the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq with a vigil from 5:30 to 6:00 pm on Monday, March 19 at the intersection of Clinton Street and Iowa Avenue on the University of Iowa Pentacrest. Scott Roser, a veteran of the Iraq War and other armed services veterans will speak, and the names of some of the 4497 US soldiers (including 51 Iowans) and 160,000-400,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the war will be read. The vigil is sponsored by Veterans for Peace Chapter #161 and PEACE Iowa.

Hundreds of Iowa Citians lined Clinton Street on March 17, 2003 in a last-ditch effort to prevent the Iraq War. At the same time, a Peace Camp in front of the University of Iowa's Jessup Hall drew hundreds of visitors each day as students, staff, and faculty educated passersby about the disastrous consequences of a potential war.

These efforts were in vain, and on March 19, 2003 the United States invaded Iraq on the false pretense of its supposed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and with the promise of a new order of peace and tranquility in the Middle East.

"Instead," said VFP's Ed Flaherty, "the war killed thousands and left more than 400,000 veterans and countless Iraqi civilians suffering from PTSD. The war that was supposed to bring peace instead left a Middle East in even greater turmoil at a cost of over a trillion dollars."

Writing in the Guardian recently, Middle East expert James Zogby, who will speak in Iowa City on April 11, noted "15 years later we and most especially the people of Iraq and the region are living with the consequences of the disaster they brought down on us all: a shattered Iraq, an emboldened Iran, a weaken, war weary, and wary America, and a Middle East in which multiple regional and international powers are engaged in a number of deadly conflicts."
(See commondreams.org/views/2018/02/19/iraq-war-fifteen-years-later.)

Although the United States formally withdrew from Iraq in 2011, US troops are still stationed there. "We hope that people will remember that the tragic results of this misguided war at home and abroad are still our responsibility," said PEACE Iowa President Laura Crossett. "Our government's actions destroyed Iraqi infrastructure and Iraqi life in ways that civilians there still deal with today, just as our veterans at home struggle to find treatment for the mental and physical costs they bear from a war that they never should have been sent to fight."

Organizers note that members of both groups have been holding a weekly peace vigil at the site of Monday's event since the Iraq War began. "We hope," said Flaherty, "to bring about a world in which such a war never need happen again."

Contact: Ed Flaherty, Veterans for Peace 319-621-6766
Laura Crossett, PEACE Iowa 319-389-0449
 

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