Stop the U.S./British Bombing of Iraq!
Today, U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair have three times bombed the people of Baghdad. They went on
television to justify their act, claiming that while many world
powers have weapons of mass destruction, only Iraq has used them and
will use them in the future.
What blatant lies! The U.S. and only the U.S. ever dropped weapons of
mass destruction on inhabited cities when, in 1945, they dropped
nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands
of people. Britain is also guilty of nuclear mass destruction: its A-
bomb testing program in the 1950s killed and injured people of the
Pitjanjatjara nation of central Australia, and permanently irradiated
vast tracts of their country.
Logic and the truth have nothing to do with the latest bloodbath in
the Middle East. Clinton is engaged in a cowardly and cynical attempt
to direct domestic attention away from the impeachment process. He's
also trying to drag both sides of the U.S. Congress into a bipartisan
alliance in support of his adventure, no doubt hoping that this will
convince Republican waverers to oppose impeachment in the face of
this manufactured crisis. And so the Iraqi people are dragged through
another holocaust that will further destroy the country�s weakened
infrastructure. Countless people, with limited food and few medical
supplies, will be killed and maimed - all to save Clinton's slippery
political hide!
As usual, the increasingly irrelevant British government has raced to
support its U.S. protector. Britain has for years followed a policy
of total appeasement of Washington, in the knowledge that only U.S.
backing gives it any clout at all on the world stage. Unsurprisingly,
that other great U.S appeaser, the Australian government, has fallen
over itself in supporting the imperialist aggression.
This despicable and self-serving act of war must be protested by all
who believe in the right of nations to self determination. The U.S.
and its junior partners have no right to decide by force who shall
lead Iraq nor what the country�s policies should be. Only the Iraqi
people have the right to make those decisions.
The U.S. armed Saddam Hussein, then used him to try and overthrow the
Iranian Revolution. When he killed an entire generation of young men
in the Iran-Iraq conflict, abused his own people, gassed Kurdish
villagers and murdered Leftists and dissidents, the U.S. stood by.
Only when he challenged U.S. hegemony and oil interests in the Gulf
States did Saddam Hussein become a problem for the U.S. ruling class.
This war is their doing - more blood for oil!
As working people, we stand in solidarity with the Iraqi men, women
and children who have suffered so long because of U.S. imperialism,
and of the complicity of Australian governments, both Coalition and
ALP.
Stop the bombing! End the Sanctions! Imperialism out of the Middle
East - let the Iraqi people deal with Hussein!
Issued by: Freedom Socialist Party, PO Box 266 West Brunswick 3055
Phone/Fax 03-9386-5065. E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List
http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/
