THE LEFT needs to connect austerity measures by governments with the “cost of empire”, prominent American anti-war activist and left campaigner Cindy Sheehan said in Dublin last night.
Ms Sheehan was speaking ahead of a public meeting with Socialist MEP Joe Higgins about the “world wide collapse of capitalism” and how it relates to war.
She rose to prominence as anti-war activist in 2004 following the death of her son Casey who was serving in Iraq.
“Movements need to tie in the cost of empire to the austerity measures going on around the world” she said.
Despite an unemployment crisis, people losing their homes and education being cut, the United States spent a trillion dollars a year on the military, she said
Commenting the continued use of Shannon Airport by the US military she urged activists to “stay with it, despite the fact that nothing has changed”.
“Nothing had changed much around any of these issues even though there was a new administration who claimed to want to reduce troops,” she said.
Comments in the new memoir by former US president George W Bush that water boarding is not torture showed he need to be prosecuted, she said.
He started the wars and we feel what he did were war crimes and crimes against humanity, she said.
“To admit he committed these things in writing shows he and his administration need to be prosecuted” she said.
“Not for me out of any sense of revenge but for the future. We have to hold these people accountable so these things happen, they are still happening,” she said.
