Hundreds Protest in Washington Against US Strike on Syria

WASHINGTON- Hundreds of Americans, including many with Syrian and Middle Eastern roots, have marched from the White House to Capitol Hill to protest US President Barack Obama’s push for a military strike on Syria.

 “We are here to say ‘no war’ because war is destruction, war is more blood and we are tired of war,” Amal Esmail, who moved to the United States seven years ago from Syria and recently became a US citizen, told RIA Novosti just before she addressed the protesters outside the White House.

Esmail and around 500 other protesters, some of whom had traveled to Washington from other parts of the East Coast, set off for the US Capitol just hours after Obama used his weekly address to the American people .

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday at the end of the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg that he remains opposed to military intervention in the crisis without the support of the UN Security Council, and he repeated his belief that the apparent chemical weapons attacks in Syria were planned provocations.

The large Syrian flag that Salam Sunna carried as she marched through Washington fluttered gently in the almost windless air on the hot, late summer’s day.

Sunna, who is from Jordan expressed skepticism at the US government’s justification for launching an attack on Syria.

 “I think it’s all fabricated,” said Sunna, whose first name means “peace.”

 “As the march neared the Capitol, 8-year-old Eden Foley stopped for a drink of water. Foley was on her third march to protest proposed military action against Syria, but she had never walked two miles (3.2 kilometers) before, she told RIA Novosti.

Several smaller protests have been staged in cities around the United States and on Capitol Hill since Obama announced last week that the United States would take military action against Syria.

But Saturday’s march in Washington and a dozen other US cities – from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Youngstown, Ohio – brought out larger numbers of demonstrators than previous protests. In Washington, the protesters chanted slogans against endless war and carried yellow signs urging Congress to vote against military strikes on Syria when it reconvenes next week.

Obama acknowledged in his weekly address that Americans are “weary after a decade of war, even as the war in Iraq has ended, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down,” and he repeated a pledge that there would be no US boots on the ground in Syria.

M.D