Peace Activists Turn Backs on Gen. Petraeus at GA Tech

Peace Activists Turn Backs on Gen. Petraeus at GA Tech By Gloria Tatum | Atland Progressive News

ATLANTA -- On January 19, 2010, thirteen Atlanta activists from Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition (GPJC), and Atlanta Grandmothers for Peace stood in silence and turned their backs on US General David Petraeus before being removed from the 1,100-person Ferst Theater on the Georgia Tech campus.

The activists wore t-shirts with messages like War is Not the Answer, Money for Jobs Not War, No to Endless War and Occupation, Veterans for Peace, and End the War - Yes We Can!

The activists included Randy Aronov, Bernice Bass; Doris Benit; Mike Burke; Pamela Chubbuck; David Epstein; Reid Jenkins; Ann Mauney; Betsy Miklethun; Dot Shaw; George Sossenko; and the present writer--Gloria Tatum.

Mauney, of GPJC, contradicted Petraeus's public relations message that the US is winning in the occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan.

"There is no military solution to the Afghanistan conflict, and... Gen. Petraeus, as a chief strategist for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations, carries responsibilities for bankrupt US war policies," Mauney said during the protest.

"General Petraeus, the man from CENTCOM at MacDill AFB in St. Petersburg, definitely had the glint of a fifth star in his eyes and he reinforced that by telling a giant whopper about how the invasion of Afghanistan was launched after 9/11 because that's where the terrorists were from," Burke, a veteran of the US Invasion of Vietnam, wrote in an email obtained by Atlanta Progressive News. Read more.