From: "Aulis Kallio" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [luokkataistelu] Fw:LRCI-FT statement on imperialist war
Subject: [ISKRA] LRCI-FT statement on imperialist war
Stop Bush and Blair's Bloody War
Defend Afghanistan
Defeat Imperialism
Joint statement of the League for a Revolutionary Communist
International and the Fracc�on Trotskysta
On 7 October he USA and Britain, supported by their allies in the
European Union and with the complicity of Putin's government in Russia
have launched a barbaric assault on Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad.. This
attack is imperialist revenge for the World Trade Centre and Pentagon
attacks, which exposed the vunerability of the most powerful military
nation in the world. These imperialist have started an attack on the
Afghan people creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and bombarding
one of the poorest countries in the world into submission. Their
objectives in this war up to this point are to destroy the supposed bass
of the Al Qaida organisation, to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden and
overthrow the Taliban regime.
We, the undersigned revolutionary organisations, unequivocally condemn
the US and UK imperialist attacks. We declare that the USA is the
greatest terrorist threat to the world. We call for:
� the immediate and unconditional cessation of the attacks
� the defence of Afghanistan against imperialist attack
� the defeat of the US/UK/Coalition forces
� solidarity with the Afghan people resisting imperialist aggression
� defence of the victims of racist and anti-Islamic bigotry in the West
� an end to US and EU repressive laws and attacks on civil liberties and
democratic freedoms.
4. Without giving an iota of support to the arch-reactionary Taliban
government in Afghanistan or the movement of Osama bin Laden, we call
for and support the united action of all Afghan forces - including
Islamist forces - to repel the imperialist assault.
5. We commit ourselves to help to build the biggest possible global
united front against imperialist aggression, uniting trade unions,
anti-capitalist campaigners, youth, poor peasants, Socialists,
Communists, anarchists, women's initiatives and oppressed people all
over the world in common action to stop the war.
1- 7. The first and overriding aim of US foreign policy in the aftermath
of the September 11 attacks has been to assemble a Grand Coalition of
states which will grant them the unrestricted right to pursue their
objectives by any means, including military action against any forces,
anywhere in the world, within any state.
2- Nevertheless, although all the US allies have declared their support
for the "war against terrorism" Bush has not been given a "blank cheque"
nor have they unconditionally accepted the military and political
objectives of the USA. Signing up tot he US campaign is limited by the
search by each state to defend its own national interests. Russia has
said that it will actively collaborate in the aggression but it has in
return demanded a heavy price, starting with the explicit recognition of
its "rights" in Chechnya. In the EU the UK has offered its support
without reservations but France and Germany, with their own interests,
demand certain limits to the intervention, fearful that the conflict
will lead to greater destabilisation. The Arab and Islamic governments
are squeezed between supporting the US and the pressure of the masses
who want to reject all US intervention. In Latin America the alignment
of the region's governments with Bush has been at the cost of important
internal discussions on how this support should be given and takes place
in the midst of opposition by the population to the imperialist
aggression.
Hot on the heels of the 11 September terrorist attacks, stock markets
dived around the world. Billions of dollars were wiped off share prices.
Airline bosses rushed to bring forward plans for mass sackings; the
value of insurance companies, tourist and hotel industries and other
financial and service organisations fell sharply. This was not solely
caused by the New York and Washington events - they merely provided an
impetus for a long-developing crisis. The US and European economies are
entering a recession - one which is already raging in the semi-colonial
countries of south-east Asia, Africa and Latin America.
This enormous heightening of military, political and economic tensions
in the world proves decisively that the neo-liberal offensive led by the
USA has not ushered in an epoch of peace, prosperity and an end to
conflict between nation states. On the contrary, US imperialist
domination has brought in its wake a dramatic increase in global
instability, inequality, class conflict and war.
The USA is using the shocked reaction of millions to the terrorist
attacks to achieve:
� legal rights to take such military action in "self-defence" under the
UN Charter and under the mutual defence provisions of Article Five of
NATO's founding treaty
� the re-definition of NATO as an anti-terrorist alliance (which
European powers blocked last year but now cannot resist)
� closer co-ordination of world intelligence and security agencies
� stricter controls on refugees
� stricter controls on travel between states
� further reductions of civil liberties and democratic freedoms in the
capitalist democracies
� the right to undertake unrestricted surveillance of private
individuals
� the right to examine bank accounts and financial information
� the right to declare its enemies as terrorists, including
anti-capitalist protestors.
The USA and its slavish allies in the EU are conscious that their
imperialist actions run the risk of uniting Islamic, Middle Eastern,
Central Asian and semi-colonial regimes against themselves.
For these self-interested reasons, and because of the USA's broader
global objectives, US propaganda has so far played down anti-Islamic
demagogy inside his country and at the same time has increased its
efforts to placate his allies in the Middle East. With the help of
Britain, Bush has managed to enlist the support of the Pakistan military
dictatorship and its diplomatic efforts have succeeded in getting the
support of other regional Arab and Islamic government even if this
support has been conditioned. Part of this attempt to subdue the unrest
in the Middle east has been a change of Bush's policy towards the
Palestine-Israel conflict. For the first time he has said that he
favours an unconditional return to peace talks and indicated US support
for a Palestinian state- in reality a fiction of a state such as the
reactionary one contained with the Oslo Accords - with the aim of
putting an end to the intifada of the Palestinian masses. But this
change of policy put the US into an immediate contradiction with its
regional ally Israel, such as expressed in the conflict between Bush and
the right-wing Prime Minster Sharon.
Despite their diplomatic objectives, the imperialists' war drive has the
direct effect of whipping up Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. In the
USA an ignorant racist killer murdered a Sikh who he thought was a
Muslim. We have many reasons to fear that more such outrages will
follow. The working class movement and anti-war movement must champion
the struggle against racism and for defence of Arabs and Muslim people.
We will promote a mass campaign against racism and for organised
self-defence of Arab and Muslim communities.
16. Despite imperialist diplomacy, there is a serious possibility that
the USA is destabilising one of its key gendarmes in the region -
Pakistan. Military dictator Musharraf is acutely aware that there is
huge support for the Taliban regime in northern towns like Peshawar
bordering Afghanistan - especially those with a large Pashtun population
(the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan). Radical Islamists have called
for a jihad against Musharraf if the US uses Pakistani support to launch
its attacks. A general strike has been called by Islamic clerics against
the government. The prospect of a civil war bringing about the world's
first nuclear-equipped Islamist regime must be causing deep anxiety to
the USA.
17. To support Musharraf, the USA and Britain have moved to end the
sanctions imposed against his regime for testing atomic weapons. They
are using the central role of Pakistan's security and intelligence
forces in the creation of the Taliban to put pressure on the Afghan
government to yield.
18. The imperialists are making other compromises in order to win new
adherents to the US-led alliance. Of greatest significance has been a
new reactionary rapprochement between the USA and Russia. Putin has
declared support for Bush's war on terrorism and has granted permission
for Russian airbases to be used in any assault, with the barely
concealed precondition of Western backing for a new chauvinist offensive
against Chechnya. German Chancellor Schroeder has issued a call for
greater 'understanding' of Russia's 'problem with Islamic terrorists'.
In Latin America Bush's global campaign has already made itself felt.
The governments have agreed to push through greater "security" measures.
The "anti-terrorist crusade" is used in Colombia to justify and greater
imperialist intervention and an offensive against the FARC. In Argentina
the De la R�a government uses the crusade to justify a bigger role for
the armed forces in the tasks of "internal security". Similar measures
are being taken by other governments in the region, to counteract the
growing anti-imperialist sentiments of the masses.
The talk coming out of the White House and the Pentagon is of a long,
difficult campaign that may have no clear beginning and no clear end.
But this will not be World War Three as some in the media suggest- but
nor need it be a short, sharp war like the 1991 Gulf War, but a conflict
much more intricate and difficult to resolve immediately, containing at
this moment in time an important lack of clarity and confusion about the
imperialists' war aims.
At this moment in time the USA-led coalition's most likely military aim
will be to take out bin Laden's mainly Arab military bases and training
camps, encourage the opposition Northern Alliance forces in the North
and probably to drive the Taliban from power, replacing them with the
former King or a coalition including the faction-ridden and warring
forces deposed by the Taliban in 1995. This plan, however, will not be
easy to execute given the difficulties in reaching an agreement between
the Afghan opposition to the Taliban regime and in Pakistan's opposition
to the Northern Alliance and the old monarchy. Whatever the nature and
extent of the political and military intervention of the USA in the
following days or weeks, its interventions in Afghanistan could detonate
an enormous expansion with regional implications. The military offensive
undertaken by the USA
gives rise to complex scenario and will lead to unforseeable effects.
21. The heightening that this will mean of the misery already being
suffered by the Afghan people can barely be imagined. Afghanistan has
suffered over 20 years of war. It is experiencing the worst drought for
a decade. Its women already live under the daily torment of the most
extreme Islamist regime in the world. There are 2.5 million Afghan
refugees in Pakistan, another 1m in Iran and 300,000 in Tajikistan; its
infrastructure is almost non-existent. A further round of imperialist
bombing, raids and incursions will cause another mass exodus - NGOs
estimate around another 1 million people.
22. The undersigned organisations, as revolutionaries and
anti-imperialists, call for the defeat of the imperialist forces. We
support all resistance that weakens the enemy in the war. We call on all
the working class organisations and anti-war activists to organise
direct action, strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations for as long as the
military action continues. We call on soldiers to organise resistance in
the armed forces, to demand democratic rights, to oppose the attacks on
Afghanistan and to rebel against the imperialists and their
mass-murdering Generals. We call on workers in the munitions factories
to boycott and sabotage imperialist war production. We demand that the
parliamentary representatives of social-democratic, Labour, Socialist
and Communist parties break with the Blairs, Jospins and Schroeders and
vote against all political, military and financial support for the US
War.
23. A victory of imperialism will lead to the imposition of slavish
subordinated regimes on all countries in the region. It will demoralise
the Palestinian people and encourage the racist Israeli state. It will
be a blow to the growing anti-capitalist movement and encourage the
pro-imperialist forces. On the other hand, a defeat for the imperialist
forces would weaken its rule in the Middle East, encourage the workers
and anti-capitalist movement and all people oppressed by imperialism
around the globe to fight back against imperialism and the rule of
capitalism throughout the world. A defeat for imperialism will not only
help the workers and and the oppressed masses of the world in their
struggle to free themselves from exploitation, but will also encourage,
for example, the Afghan masses, engulfed in misery, threatened with
famine and repressed by the monstrously reactionary Taliban regime.
In the face of a bloody attack by the US and its supporters, tens of
thousands in the imperialist countries are starting to take to build a
new antiwar movement, something which began to take expression in the
USA in the Washington demonstration on 29 September and in the early
demonstrations on the university campuses. This is the key to
undermining the war drive and stopping imperialism seizing the
initiative. The streets of the cities of the USA, South America, Europe,
the Middle East, Asia, Australasia and Africa must resonate to the cry:
No to imperialist War!
The development of the anti-war movement in the imperialist countries is
progressive, and is already trying to build actions that could obstruct
the imperialist military machine, to make attacks more difficult, and
help to break up the reactionary unity that the imperialist governments
need in order to get support for its actions, and also to demoralise the
soldiers of their own countries. The best example of this was the
anti-Vietnam war movement, that together with the tenacious resistance
of the Vietnamese masses, made the US military intervention
unsustainable and provoked the first military defeat of US imperialism
at the hands of an oppressed people. In the anti-war coalitions in the
coalition countries many of the activists have pacifist illusions. We
oppose all attempts to equate the imperialist war with just military
defence carried out by an oppressed people. We are not for this reason
neutral faced with this new imperialist aggression: we are for the
defeat of the United States and its allies. There can be no peace in the
world while there is imperialist domination. In particular in the
semi-colonial countries pacifism drummed up by the leaders of the
reformist parties and the bourgeoisie plays a reactionary role, as is
also the case with the church which condemns "the violence of both
sides", hypocritically putting the oppressor and the oppressed on the
same plane. In the semi-colonies this means not to offer up any kind of
resistance to imperialist aggression.
26. The imperialist powers are the main enemy. But revolutionary
communists must reject vulgar anti-Americanism -which confuses ordinary
US working class people with the US ruling class and its imperialist
policy. This anti-Americanism is reactionary because it confuses the
justified hatred of US imperialism with chauvinism against all
US-Americans. It often serves the interests of ruling classes which are,
or aspire to become, competing imperialist powers. Anti-Americanism must
be fought - it is of utmost importance to break the US working class
from its rulers and to win them to the struggle against imperialism and
global capitalism. This is no impossible task - we will never forget
that it was the US-working class and youth that in its great protest in
Seattle in 1999 launched what has come to be called a new and growing
global "anti-capitalist movement".
We reject the reactionary demonising of all Muslim believers. At the
same time we say clearly that political Islamist fundamentalism is a
reactionary movement through and through. It represses women, workers
and democratic rights. They are multi-class movements which seek to
impose reactionary theocratic state and launch "holy wars", using the
justified hatred of the impoverished masses of the region towards
imperialist domination and its policeman in the Middle East, Israel. To
carry out its strategy these movement frequently use and ally themselves
with different bourgeoisie in the region, including even the same
imperialist powers, as was the case with the Mujahadin during the USSR's
occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. There can be no liberation of
the Arab and Islamic masses under these leaderships.
28. The working class and peasant masses in Afghanistan, central Asia
and the Middle East need to organise independently, to build their own
mass organisations and militias to struggle against imperialism and
prepare for its own struggle for power and the Islamist fundamentalists.
Mass mobilisations and organisations of the workers and peasants could
help to get rid of the reactionary Mullahs as soon as possible. If the
cycle of vicious reactionary regimes is to be broken, the workers and
peasants will need to take the power themselves and establish a
socialist republic of Afghanistan and a voluntary Socialist Federation
of Central Asia.
29. Throughout the world, imperialism is preparing another bloody spiral
into recession, repression and war. Unless it is stopped, the
twenty-first century will repeat the history of the twentieth, but on a
new, more technologically advanced, more savage and more destructive
level - one which threatens the survival of human civilisation itself.
This spiral of greater exploitation, oppression and imperialist war can
be stopped and defeated. We revolutionaries struggle for the
internationalist unity of the working class, the most powerful social
force that can lead the fight to destroy the basis of the system of
imperialist capitalism, that is to say, the control of the world economy
by a handful of monopolies and imperialist states that bring misery to
entire continents, deepen racism and provoke war and barbarism. Now more
than ever the anti-capitalist movement must transform itself into a
movement against the war and imperialism. Base itself in the working
class because only a workers and socialist revolution can realise its
objectives and end the world capitalist system. To achieve this it is
necessary to push even more the internationalism that this movement has
already started in its struggle for the end of the Third World debt,
against poverty and the profits of the monopolies. The capitalists have
their internationals - the IMF, NATO and WTO. The working class, youth
and oppressed of the world and all those that struggle to end the
barbarism of imperialist domination need to fight for our own
revolutionary workers' International dedicated to the destruction of
capitalism and a new world without private property, nation states,
racism, inequality and bloody military conflict. In order to finish off
imperialist domination and begin the construction of a society without
exploitation, a new world without private property, national states,
racism, inequality, nor bloody military conflicts.
31. The impending war poses the urgent need chance to unite the
struggles of the anti-capitalist movement in the metropolitan countries
with those of the people in the semi-colonies that are already resisting
the imperialist offensive, and with the oppressed masses that are now
today fighting against the imperialist military aggression of the USA
and its allies, against the common enemy: imperialism. We call for all
anti-capitalist mobilisations in the months ahead to take up the fight
against the imperialist war drive. Make the Anti-WTO day of action on
9th November a day of action against global capital and imperialist war!
Make the mass demonstration against the EU-summit on 14th December an
expression of mass anger against the EU's participation in Bush and
Blair's mass murder and aggression!
32. For massive protests outside US embassies/consulates, in busy City
Centre locations, at colleges, and seats of government. Build united
front committees against the imperialist war in every town, every
college, every workplace. These should bring together representatives of
the anticapitalist movement, peace campaigns, trade unions, Communist
and Socialist parties, oppressed minorities, youth and women's groups.
33. We say:
� Defend Afghanistan - Defeat US and imperialist attacks
� Imperialist hands off Afghanistan
� USA is the biggest terrorist
� Open the borders to refugees
� Oppose witch-hunts and racist attacks against Muslims and Arab people.
� Fight all attacks on civil liberties
� Abolish NATO, instrument of global warfare
� No to state surveillance and repression, no databases of activists, no
new anti-immigrant laws, no new police powers
� For trade union action to boycott troops, weapons and supplies heading
for the imperialists armies, navies and air forces
� Reject individual terrorism as a method of struggle against
imperialism
� For massive food and medical aid to Afghanistan without strings or
conditions
� Abolish the Third World debt to Western banks and financial
institutions
� The Afghan people themselves must settle accounts with the Taliban:
not US/UK imperialist armies. No restoration of the monarchy or the
Northern Alliance warlords. For a workers' and peasants' government
based on shoras - democratic councils of delegates
� Down with Musharraf - for a socialist republic of Pakistan and
socialist federations of central Asia and the Indian sub-continent
� Nationalise all companies - airlines, insurance companies - declaring
redundancies after the September 11 attacks under workers' control
without compensation to the capitalist owners
� No to suspension of the class struggle in the imperialist democracies.
Break the pro-war policy of the social-democratic, official 'Communist'
and trade union leaders.
� Victory to the Intifada! For the right of self-determination for the
Palestinian people. Down with the racist state of Israel! For a workers
and socialist Palestine in which Jews and Arabs can live in peace! End
sanctions against Iraq!
� Repudiate and cancel Third World debt! Break with all military pacts
and agreements that tie semi-colonies to imperialism! No to CALA!
� Turn the anti-capitalist movement against imperialism
� For an international revolutionary youth movement
� For a revolutionary international of the working class- world party of
social revolution
� For a workers and socialist revolution to end the domination of
imperialism and construct a world socialist commonwealth without
poverty, inequality, oppression and war.
Agreed 6 October by
League for a Revolutionary Communist International
Fracc�on Trotskysta
http://www.workerspower.com
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