Resist The U.S. Invasion of Iraq! By Steve Argue

[steve argue <steveorchid@xxxxxxxxx>]

Resist The U.S. Invasion of Iraq!
Statement Of Peace and Freedom Party Congressional
Candidate Steve Argue.

   Wednesday, March 19th 2003 is a day that will live
in infamy.  Despite millions of people marching
against war around the world the Bush regime of the
United States has begun its invasion of Iraq.  Today
the Iraqi people are being subjected to massive aerial
bombardment and will soon face the bullets of 300,000
hostile troops.  In the face of mass opposition to war
around the world Bush made clear from the outset that
his intention was war no matter what the truth be, no
matter what the people of the world said.

   The whole world has watched in horror.  With a
straight face Bush?s excuses for bloodshed have
fluctuated as his claims against Iraq have been proven
lies.

   Today, in the 21st century, there are those who are
still old enough to have grown up in Nazi Germany
under the hypnosis of Nazi propaganda newsreels.  Some
of those people still believe that Poland had to be
invaded by Germany because it posed a threat to German
national security.  Likewise there are those in
America brainwashed by CNN and other corporate sources
of lies that actually believe that Iraq had something
to do with September 11th and that Iraq poses a threat
to the United States.

   What is the reality of this ?threat? that Iraq
poses to the United States?  On one side in this
conflict is the starved and disarmed nation of Iraq
that has no choice but to try to defend itself, on the
other side Bush has assembled the most advanced
weapons of modern warfare with 100 warships, 1,000
fighter jets, 1,800 tanks and ground artillery, and
300,000 troops.  In addition Bush has not ruled out
the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict.

   Let there be no mistake, the opening of this war
will be a one sided bloodbath with massive Iraqi
civilian casualties.  In the traditions of Adolf
Hitler?s policy of Schrecklicheit the Bush
administration is planning to drop 3,000 ?smart? bombs
in 48 hours to produce ?shock and awe? at the US
military offensive and shatter Iraq ?physically,
emotionally and psychologically?.  In addition the
U.S. plans on using the new M.O.A.B. (Massive
Ordinance Air Burst) bomb, a bomb that despite not
being radioactive has a blast the size of a small
nuclear weapon.  Also slated for use are actual
nuclear ?bunker buster? bombs and ?tank buster? A-10
ammunition made from highly radioactive nuclear waste.

   We are told that the Bush administration's "shock
and awe" invasion will be high tech and will have
little "collateral damage" (a U.S. government
euphemism for mass murder of innocent civilians).  Yet
the United Nations, planning to provide humanitarian
relief, recently produced a document that tells a far
different story. According to the UN, the expected
outcomes of a U.S. campaign of bombing and invasion
include: 500,000 civilian casualties; 2,000,000 people
homeless; 10,000,000 people without enough to eat;
18,000,000 without access to clean water; and more
than 1,000,000 children under the age of 5, at risk of
death from malnutrition.

   In the last major US attack on Iraq we watched the
same staged ?smart? bomb (literally the same one)
perform its amazing acrobatics on CNN while actual
bombs were killing around 35,000 Iraqi civilians and
destroying the country?s infrastructure.  This
destruction included destroying the ability to provide
clean disease free water.  Large numbers of children
have died as a result of the dirty drinking water.

   In addition the US successfully used its ?tank
buster? A-10 ammunition in its destruction of the
retreating Iraqi military.  As part of this operation
the U.S. killed over 100,000 retreating soldiers,
burying many of them alive.  One thing the
?victorious? U.S. soldiers were never told, however,
was that the ?tank buster? ammunition that had been
used scattered radiation across the battlefields that
they occupied.  A few years later the British Guardian
sent reporters into these battlefields where they
found radiation 30 times higher than normal background
radiation, and 50 times higher on tanks destroyed by
the A-10 ?tank buster? ammunition.  US soldiers were
never warned of this known danger and climbed around
on these tanks without protective suits as they
celebrated the US?s easy victory.  These soldiers
later died or became very ill from the resulting
radiation poisoning.  The illness they suffered then
became known as the supposedly mysterious ?Persian
Gulf War Syndrome.?

   The top military brass denied knowledge and claimed
ignorance of what had happened to the soldiers.  The
US corporate media speculated on the syndrome being
the impact of Saddam?s biological or chemical warfare
agents.  Yet the U.S. military actually new full well
what they had exposed the US troops to, as well as
knowing the symptoms of radiation poisoning.  History
had been repeated.  Just as Vietnam veterans were
knowingly poisoned by the U.S. military with Agent
Orange and abused as hypochondriacs as they became
very ill or died, so too were Gulf War Veterans
knowingly poisoned with the residue of radioactive
ammunition.  As some would say of Saddam Hussein the
same can be said of the U.S. government: ?they killed
their own people?.

   The radiation unleashed by the US in 1991 has since
been killing large numbers of Iraqis as well.  This
includes childhood leukemia wards that have been full
of dying children.  Not only are these children dying,
they can not get needed medicine as a result of the
UN/US imposed economic blockade imposed on Iraq.

   For months Bush claimed that the war would be waged
to end Saddam Hussein?s production of weapons of mass
destruction (whether they were found or not) and that
?Saddam? would have to prove a negative and show that
Iraq did not have these weapons.  Today we are told
that war is being waged to liberate the Iraqi people
from the regime of Saddam Hussein.  Little mention is
made in the corporate media of how two oilmen, Bush
and Cheney, will be able to gain financially from the
privatization of 84 billion dollars worth of Iraqi
oil.
   In attempting to comply with the dictates of the
Bush regime and UN arms inspector Hans Blix Iraq
recently even destroyed its Al Samoud missiles,
missiles that only have a range of 100 miles and are
not prohibited under any UN resolution.  By pushing
for the destruction of these missiles UN inspector
Hans Blix cynically participated in the disarmament of
a week nation that was on the verge of being
mercilessly attacked.

   The United States is the country in the world that
has the most weapons of mass destruction, and has used
them.  The idea that Iraq and North Korea do not have
the right to defend themselves from the same United
States that has waged war on both peoples is a good
indication of the aggressive arrogance of U.S.
imperialism.  We should not forget that Korea lost 3
million people as a result of the war the U.S. waged
on them in the 1950s and we should also recognize that
North Korea?s development of nuclear weapons is an
important deterrent to the war plans of U.S.
imperialism on the Korean peninsula.  If Iraq had
ignored UN resolutions and developed its own nuclear
weapons program the current war may have been averted.

   Especially bitter for the Arab peoples must be the
fact that Israel has the largest arsenal of nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons in the Arab region.
Yet the US continues to arm the Israeli war machine
with about ten billion dollars in ?aid? even as
Palestinians are being purposely starved, shot,
imprisoned, and their homes destroyed for no crime
other than being born an ethnicity that the racist
Zionist government wants cleansed from the face of the
earth, or at least cleansed from racist Israel.  As
Sharon?s cabinet minister Benny Alon recently stated
of the Palestinians, ?Make their lives so bitter that
they will transfer themselves (out of Israel)
voluntarily?.

   Not only has Iraq been deprived of the means to
defend themselves, the people are also being starved
and deprived of needed medicine.  The US, through the
UN, has been starving the people of Iraq through an
economic blockade for the past twelve years.  This
economic blockade has murdered a million and a half
people, most of them being children.

   For ?liberated? Iraq Bush plans to install a
military government headed by a US general and talks
of an US occupation lasting 25 years.  The ability of
the US to rule in a country that has been starved and
bombed by the United States for the past twelve years
has caused some in the mainstream corporate media of
the US to raise the specter of Stalingrad like
resistance by the five million people of Baghdad.
This is in reference to the long and heroic resistance
Hitler faced from the population of Stalingrad when
the Third Reich tried to occupy that city in its war
of conquest against the Soviet Union.

   Today film footage of hundreds of thousands in the
streets of Baghdad with automatic weapons and pistols
in their hands should strike fear into the hearts of
mothers, fathers and loved ones of those deployed to
the Persian Gulf.  The anti-war movement, with our
differing positions on the right of Iraq to exist
under its own rule and on its right to defend itself,
agree that the way to stand on the side of US soldiers
is to call for the troops to be brought home safely
today.

   Most of the world stands in opposition to the
bloodbath the US government has begun to unleash.  In
Rome 3 million people marched against the pro-war
policies of the right-wing Italian government of Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi on February 15th.  These
kinds of numbers moving into the streets have been
useful in bringing on a number of strikes against the
war carried out by the Italian working class.  Not
only have the Italian workers started to hit their
pro-war capitalist class directly in the pocket books
by striking, the workers have also directly blockaded
military goods headed for the Persian Gulf.

   In addition many of the unions in western Australia
have pledged a general strike at the outbreak of war.
Australia has only about 3,000 troops participating in
the war, but the Australian working class still sees
this force as a disgrace to be resisted, and rightly
so.

   Likewise the ruling class of the UK, America?s
largest junior imperial partner in the war, is facing
the wrath of a working class that has stopped train
shipments of arms and has also marched in the millions
(1.5 to 2 million in London on February 15th alone).
In addition top trade union leaders have warned the UK
government of general strikes and general unrest from
the working class at the outbreak of the major UK/US
assault in the war.

   In St. John Canada the ILA (dock worker?s union)
have issued an edict calling for stopping the shipment
of military cargo destined for the Iraqi war.  This
stands as an example for dockworkers in the US, the
rest of Canada, and around the world.  If we, as
workers, stop the arms shipments, production of
armaments, etc., we can shut down their war machine.
Likewise resistance from the soldiers, as occurred in
the U.S. Vietnam War (1955-1975), could stop the war
on Iraq if the war becomes prolonged and a U.S.
imperialist victory is impeded by prolonged resistance
by the Iraqi population and the world working class.

   While resistance to the war has taken place around
the world, in part it has come from different quarters
representing differing class interests.  There is the
resistance of the masses of the working class and
other progressive minded people in the streets in the
millions around the world.  There are countries like
Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and China that oppose the
U.S. war partly because they know that the crazy
American government may target them next.  And there
is a third group.  They are the heads of state and
other politicians who realize the interests of their
own capitalist class are being put in jeopardy by this
war.  Some have realized this through their fear of
working class resistance, others are opposing the US
to defend their country?s own capitalist investments
in Iraq.

   In Europe we can clearly see the breakdown of the
alliances that have been in place since the end of
World War Two.  The ruling capitalist classes of
France, Russia, and Germany are standing up to the
United States trying to assert their own economic
interests in Iraq, which include payment for
substantial investments they?ve made in the
development of Iraqi oil fields.  Meanwhile the United
States and its junior imperial partner, the UK, see
dollar signs in taking direct control of Iraq?s
estimated 84 billion dollars worth of oil for
themselves.  Germany with its strong industrial base
and Russia with its stockpile of weaponry and weapons
industry left over from the days of the Soviet Union
could easily become a powerful alliance to assert
their own imperial interests against the hegemony of
US imperialism.  As such competing interests face off
on Iraq as a result of Bush?s aggressive policies, one
can see in this conflict the seeds of powerful hostile
capitalist interests that may lead to World War Three.

   The working class, revolutionary, anti-imperialist,
and anti-war forces of the world rarely have real
interests in common with any of the bourgeoisies of
the powerful capitalist countries of the world.  The
opposition posed by the French, Russian, and German
governments is one of those rare examples.  Yet their
motivations are about protecting the wealth of their
own capitalist classes.  As such their motivations are
the same as those of Bush.

  Lest anyone be awe struck by the ?social democratic?
humanitarianism of the capitalist leaders of these
countries it would pay to look at some of their own
imperialist credentials.

   The French capitalist class has been an aggressive
imperialist force themselves in Africa, despite
loosing direct colonial control.  In the early 1990s
France actively backed the chauvinist Hutu regime of
Rwanda that murdered over 800,000 Tutsis in 1994.  In
addition France has an occupation army in the Ivory
Coast where the competing capitalist interests of the
region are fighting for control of the areas rich
diamond mines.

   The capitalist counter-revolution in East Germany
formed a united capitalist Germany that has intervened
to participate in the break up of Yugoslavia.  One of
the ways they did this was by backing the fascistic
government of Tudjman that was created by breaking the
Republic of Croatia away from the Yugoslavian
federation (the U.S. backed Tudjman as well).  As
Germany?s ally, Tudjman, then raised the Ustashi flag
of Nazi occupation as the official flag of Croatia
once again and preceded to drive 500,000 Serbs and
other working class families from their homes by
destroying over 1,000 villages.  Continued German and
US intervention in Yugoslavia, along with the
fratricidal wars they helped unleash, led to the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and caused
millions to be driven from their homes.  Yet, to the
benefit of German and U.S. imperialism, as a result of
the death and destruction they unleashed, much of the
Yugoslavian economy has either been privatized or
destroyed.  Thus they succeeded in destroying
competition and created new ways for capitalist
investors to profiteer where they could not in the
past.

   The newly formed Russian capitalist class is also
asserting its imperial interests and ambitions by
carrying out a brutal war in Chechnya against the
country?s popular aspirations for self-determination.
As the Russian capitalist class sends its working
class youth to die in Chechnya they have stripped the
working class of most of the rights to work and
healthcare gained in the 1917 revolution.  As a result
life expectancy has dropped by 10 years in the past
ten years while a new class of a very few ultra-rich
capitalists have emerged, mainly from the
privatization of oil exploitation.

   The resistance by Russian, French, and German
imperial capitalists to this war is not based on more
enlightened ruling classes but merely coming from
different competing capitalist class interests.

   While it may feel good to see the US getting
resistance for its war drive from any quarter, no
matter how reactionary, socialists look towards
building an independent working class, student, and
soldier resistance that does not in any way look
towards the representatives of the wealthy in power
for political leadership.  Instead, around the world,
we are part of building mass demonstrations of
millions of people in the streets.  These
demonstrations are built with the understanding that
they help educate ever-larger circles, invigorate
participants with the knowledge of our numbers, and
build towards real forms of resistance to the war and
other capitalist injustices.  One of our ultimate
goals is an end to all imperialist wars through
socialist revolution.

   Throughout the world resistance to war, and
perceived future resistance to war and the unrest it
will create, have also produced other allies we cannot
trust in the higher ruling circles.

   In Egypt hundreds of protesters tried to state
their opposition to the impending war on February
15th.  They were met by violent repression from the
Egyptian police (the Egyptian government is one of the
top recipients of U.S. military aid in the world).
Yet after crushing this attempt by the people to
protest against the war on their own, the Egyptian
government felt pressure from below to call its own
demonstration against the war.  In response to the
official call half a million to a million people came
out to protest the war in Cairo on February 27th.  Yet
to expect anything but fake and symbolic acts of
solidarity with the people of Iraq from the Egyptian
government would be a mistake.

   Likewise in the United States sections of the
ruling class have, for various reasons, felt obliged
to oppose the war.  Politically this ruling class
opposition is represented locally in the Santa Cruz
area primarily Sam Farr, a Democrat in the U.S. House
of Representatives.  Sam Farr has stated, and voted,
his opposition to the current war on Iraq.  Yet Farr
supports the starvation blockade against Iraq, voted
for this years 440 billion dollar war budget, voted in
favor of war against Yugoslavia, and has voted in
favor of supplying billions of dollars to the U.S.
backed death squad government of Colombia.   There
should be no surprise here, just look at how the
wealthy and the corporate media are the ones who put
Farr and the likes of him in power.  Sam Farr?s
opposition to war in Iraq lies in his fear of
alienating his anti-war constituency as well as his
fear of the working class unrest that will be
unleashed around the world as a result of the war.
The reasons he gives for opposing war are actual
reasons that are for promoting a more efficient and
more respected U.S. imperial policy around the world.
Farr and the Democratic Party want to defend the
interests of imperialism where as myself and the Peace
and Freedom Party stand for ending all imperialist
wars across the globe.

   Like the ?dove? Democrats of the United States the
government of Turkey has been under the direct
pressure of the masses of people.  Unlike the
Democrats, however, they took real action against the
war.  In a major victory for the anti-imperialist
movement the Turkish parliament voted not to allow
their country to be used as a staging ground for a
second front in the invasion of Iraq.

   Yet official Turkish opposition to being a U.S.
base in the war does not mean Turkey is not heavily
involved.  Seeing the writing on the wall and jumping
to grab what they can the lesser capitalist regimes
both of neighboring Turkey and Iran have already sent
troops into Iraq.  With little hope of maintaining
control over the Iraqi oil they seize after U.S. and
British forces move in, the main goal of these troops
is to control minority national aspirations that could
spill over causing more unrest in their own countries.
  Turkey already has 1,200 troops occupying part of
Kurdish Iraq with plans to send in thousands of more
troops.  Iran also has troops in Iraq occupying areas
of the Kurdish north and areas of the Shi?ite south.

   Knowing of Turkey?s murderous treatment of the
Kurdish nation living inside Turkey, tens of thousands
of Iraqi Kurds have demonstrated against this Turkish
incursion into their territory and have vowed to
resist the Turkish occupation.  It is interesting
enough that the Turkish government?s genocidal
policies towards the Kurdish people are rarely
reported in the United States while Saddam Hussein
gets constant bad press for carrying out the same
types of policies of genocide over ten years ago.
This, of course, is a rather consistent sort of double
standard we find in the American corporate media,
friends of the United States who carry out genocide
with U.S. supplied weaponry and training (as Turkey
is) are rarely described as ?killing their own
people?.

     Many of the Kurds know that their national
interest to self-determination, without the genocidal
repression they currently face throughout their
homeland, will never be established by the
?liberating? forces of Turkey, Iran, or US
imperialism.  British imperialism divided Kurdistan, a
country with its own unique language and culture, into
a minority inside the nations of Iraq, Turkey, Syria,
and Iran.  Today the Kurds are the largest nation
without a homeland in the world.  Yet while the U.S.
government supplies the military hardware to kill
Turkish Kurds they cry crocodile tears for Iraqi
Kurds.  Imperialism, with its motto of divide and
conquer, never has and never will solve the Kurdish
question.  A free and united Kurdistan will only be
born through a sweeping socialist revolution that
overthrows the capitalist regimes of Turkey, Iran,
Iraq, and Syria while challenging the dictates of the
United States.

   Just as U.S. imperialism will never solve the
Kurdish question, nor will it ever solve the question
of women?s liberation in the Middle East.  Unlike all
of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab
World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else
in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the
former Soviet Union.  Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are
women.  Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in
the streets.  They are allowed to drive.  Iraqi women
can even freely criticize men.  In addition Iraqi
women have the right to work and control their own
funds.  This is in stark contrast to the treatment of
women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights
what-so-ever.

   The Taliban, who the U.S. put in power, are rightly
seen as the anti-women clerical fascists they really
are.   Among the lies about ?liberated? Afghanistan,
however, has been the idea that women?s rights have
greatly benefited.  According to a UN report issued
for International Woman?s Day March 8th 2003, "The
fact that women in many parts of the country continue
to face gross violations of their rights, is a matter
of concern? Women are the primary victims of
insecurity...Taliban-like restrictions continue to be
applied to women in some parts of the country by local
leaders."

   These local leaders were, and most of them still
are, supported militarily by the U.S. government.  The
entire history of these Mujahideen warlords has been
one of combating women?s rights.  In fact it was
opposition to women?s rights that was one of the
Mujahideen?s main issues of opposition to the
left-progressive PDPA government that came to power in
Afghanistan in 1978.  As the PDPA began carrying
literacy campaigns for little girls and the poor the
CIA, in opposition, began funding the Mujahideen
religious fanatics that were killing women for
teaching little girls how to read and write and
throwing acid into the faces of women liberated from
the veil.  As the US poured billions of dollars into
the Osama Bin Laden/Mujahideen holy war against
literacy and women?s rights and the CIA recruited
100,000 Islamic religious fanatics from around the
world to fight their war the Soviet Union moved troops
into Afghanistan under the invitation of the PDPA to
help them combat the anti-woman fanatics.

   The CIA?s men in Afghanistan are in fact the same
forces that are now accused of blowing up innocent
civilians in the World Trade Center.  The Mujahideen
and their Taliban offspring are in fact the vile
creations of U.S. imperialism and have the same
disregard for innocent human life and women?s rights
as their imperialist creators.

   About 3,000 Afghani civilians have died in the
ongoing US war in Afghanistan, and many more will die
in Iraq.

   As the US government prepares for war on Iraq many
Americans don?t know that US soldiers continue to be
engaged in combat with various factions in Afghanistan
and US troops are taking many casualties while Afghan
civilians are taking many more.  Even the US puppet
government of Hamid Karzai, a ?government? that only
rules the city of Kabul, has felt obliged to ask the
US military to stop killing civilians.  In February
Presidential spokesman Fazal Akbar told the BBC Pashro
news service that "The Afghan President stressed the
need that the military operations must be targeted and
that the operations should not affect civilians."
This was said in a meeting with U.S. General Daniel K.
McNeil.  The meeting took place after at least 17
civilians died in raids by US-led coalition forces in
the Baghran district of the southern Helmand Province.


   In Afghanistan we can see the results of
thirty-four years of U.S. military intervention,
results that include the total destruction of human
rights.  The U.S. ruling class hates governments like
Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of
their oil resources partly to benefit the people with
social programs.  Likewise they love governments like
that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people
of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the
hands of the international oil monopolies and their
corrupt local servants.  Today in the United States we
face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health
care.  The billions of dollars the U.S. is squandering
on killing Iraqis and stealing their resources should
be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the
United States.

   Register to vote with the Peace and Freedom Party!
Resist the war in the streets, workplaces, schools,
and in the barracks!  Organize to end imperial
bloodshed through socialist revolution!

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