India’s Modi picketed in NY

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(continued from page 12: “Iraq & Syria: U.S. imperialism prepares for next Middle East war”)

Ghraib in Iraq or in Guantanamo?

The Qatar monarchy, which has no army of its own and yet is a major military power in the region, relies on a U.S.-established massive military base—the larg­ est in the region—staffed with a U.S.-funded merce­ nary army of the Blackwater-associated death-squad variety. It was Qatar’s mercenary army (U.S. directed) that “liberated” Tripoli during the U.S.-led “humani­ tarian” war against Libya. And yet, Qatar also funds ISIS and other U.S.-designated “terrorist” groups.

That war too, according to a recent Obama state­ ment, was a “mistake.” Said the apologetic president, we helped to remove the Gadhafi government, “but we didn’t have a plan for the day after.” Today, both Qa­ tar and Saudi Arabia are bombing Libya but aim their fire at their own designated “terrorist” enemies, while the U.S.-backed Egyptian military coup government is calling on the U.S. to join them in bombing Libyan “ter­ rorists” on the “other side”!

We should recall that the U.S. and NATO pulverized Libya for almost a year with saturation bombing—de­ stroying, in the name of a “humanitarian war,” that nation’s infrastructure and murdering tens of thou­ sands. This was done in the name of aiding the “reb­ els,” who were touted as democrats. The U.S., as we repeatedly documented in this newspaper, created a “Libyan Transitional National Council” led by U.S., French, and other NATO-appointed millionaires/bil­ lionaires and other pro-imperialist forces that soon afterwards disintegrated into warring factions, each aiming to control Libya’s significant oil reserves and facilities. When the dust clears, there is little doubt that, as in Iraq, U.S. corporations will emerge with the lion’s share of the oil booty.

ISIS, an offshoot of the U.S.-created al-Qaida go­ ing back to the 1979 war in Afghanistan, was virtu­ ally ignored in Syria when its weapons were pointed at Assad’s forces. Repeated U.S. “diplomatic efforts” to create a unified opposition against Assad, includ­ ing virtually all anti-Assad groups, met with repeated failure as the preferred U.S. political choices proved to be little more than pro-U.S. Syrian elites living in ex­ ile and attending endless U.S.-sponsored conferences to establish a Syrian government in exile overseen by former Secretary Hillary Clinton and now John Kerry. Indeed, President Obama now derisively refers to these Syrian “rebels” as nothing more than a bunch of “doctors, lawyers, and pharmacists.”

All previous and failed U.S. efforts were aimed at es­ tablishing which groupings, jihadists included, would rule over which parts of Syria, after Assad’s removal, to exploit its resources and people. All understood that regardless of what kind of new “government” might be established, the real “government” behind the scenes would subordinate that nation’s sovereign­ ty to the interests of U.S. imperialism. We might point out that the U.S., through the CIA in Turkey and other covert and now overt agencies, has been arming Syr­ ian “rebels” from close to day one. Even the al-Qaidaassociated Nusra Front, deemed terrorist by the U.S. government, was an informal U.S. ally in past efforts to impose “regime change” in Syria. Today, U.S. bombs are aimed at the Nusra Front forces as well!

In the early stages of the U.S. war against the Iraqi people, both Sunni and Shiite forces often joined to oppose U.S. intervention, as in the infamous Battle (slaughter) of Fallujah in 2004 perpetrated by Black­ water death squads and U.S. troops. In one of the bloodiest battles since the Vietnam era, the largely Sunni city was virtually leveled, with 60 percent of its building obliterated and half its population forced to flee. The beleaguered Sunnis at that time were aided by the Madhi Army led by the dissident Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr.

Yet, the U.S. government, soon afterwards, had no problem in enlisting and heavily financing the Sunniled Awakening Group to fight alongside U.S. forces. These were the same Sunni groups that previously had backed the Saddam Hussein regime that was ousted by the U.S. intervention! Today, most of the Awakening Group is allied with ISIS or otherwise dis­ inclined to join the latest version of the U.S. “coalition” that is preparing for yet another long war in Iraq.

President Obama now bemoans the fact that the previous U.S.-installed Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri alMaliki, alienated virtually the entire Iraqi population, persecuting and victimizing the Sunni minority as well as the Shiite majority through government cor­ ruption, fraud, massive theft, intimidation and mur­ der—none of which U.S. officials objected to as long as his power was secure and he protected and advanced U.S. interests. These included the covert granting of the lion’s share of Iraq’s vast oil reserves and their ex­ ploitation by U.S. corporations. and Obama, belatedly saw his government majority coalition crumble under U.S. pres­ sure. The associated diplomatic intrigues aside, he was forced to resign and take the blame for implementing U.S. policy. Today, few believe that Obama’s proposed re-divi­ sion of the vast resources that Maliki kept for himself and his U.S. corporate allies will suffice to stabilize the present catastrophic breakdown. Indeed, senior U.S. officials, scrambling to patch together yet another government coalition that includes sections of the previously persecuted and excluded Sunni elite, who will presumably lay down their arms for a share of the booty, are un­ likely to stem the tide of mass outrage at both the policies of Maliki and any other government that eventually emerges.

From one vantagepoint, U.S. policy in the Middle East has been a disaster. The original U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, 2003– 2011, was “justified” by “proof-positive” evidence presented by then head of the U.S. military, Colin Powell, and virtually all other government “national security experts,” as well as President George W. Bush, that the Saddam Hussein government possessed “weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)” None were ever found, yet the war contin­ ued. Absent the WMD false flag, the Bush administration enunciated a more accurate explanation for the U.S. slaughter, “regime change,” more politely referred to as the establishment of a pro-U.S. government for the Iraqi people. The Obama administra­ tion continues this policy with abandon in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and everywhere on earth where working people struggle, although in confused and distorted ways, to rid them­ selves of the modern day Crusaders.

In truth, every disaster and horror in the Middle East today flows from U.S. imperial­ ist policies aimed at domination, conquest, and exploitation. The twisted term “U.S. na­ tional security” is used around the world to justify every atrocity committed, including the spying on every e-mail and phone call of every American.

“Civilized” America executes by electrocu­ tion more citizens than any nation on earth. It is one of the few nations on earth that retains the barbaric death penalty. It incar­ cerates the largest number and percentage of its population than any nation on earth and routinely tortures through solidarity confinement and other means tens of thou­ sand of its citizens, mostly the poor and op­ pressed nationalities.

In our view, the U.S. government has no standing to impose its standards of “civi­ lization” anywhere on earth. It has never brought peace and prosperity to any nation, anywhere at any time in history. This is not the objective of the imperial beast that rep­ resents the elite one percent (actually 0.1 percent or less) of the U.S. population. All U.S. wars, without exception are conducted to advance the interest of this ruling-class elite, fully capable of military and political alliances with the world’s most reactionary and bar­ baric forces to achieve its predatory ends. U.S. Out Now! End the Bombing!

The solution to the mayhem in the Middle East be­ gins with the total removal of all U.S. troops, merce­ naries, death squads, drone armies, and associated tools of war. The responsibility for this belongs to the American working masses, who have no interest in the murder and destruction of poor people anywhere.

We demand “U.S. Out Now!” from every nation of the Middle East and around the world in which the U.S. has a presence. We have zero confidence in U.S. impe­ rialism or any forces they support or have supported to bring about freedom for the poor people of the world.We stand opposed to U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” to remove the Assad government, just as we opposed the U.S. “humanitarian war” against the Gad­ hafi government and the U.S. war against the Hussein government in Iraq. All of these wars were aimed at the oppression and exploitation of these nations, not their liberation. Indeed, all of these deposed dictators had been previous allies of the U.S. when they served U.S. objectives.

Tragically, in Syria today, we know of no “rebel” force that has not been aligned with the U.S. war machine or its allies. There are no “rebels” with any progres­ sive credentials, whether they are of the ISIS variety or those backed directly or indirectly by U.S. imperial­ Socialist Action Outside Madison Square Garden on Sept. 28, about 1000 protested the presence in New York of the rightwing Hindu bigot, Indian Prime Minister Nerendra Modi. Inside the Garden, some 18,000 attended a speech by the prime minister. India is seen as an economic and military player in Washington’s plans to outflank China. Modi is an extreme neoliberal and “free-trade” ideologue.

For several years, Modi was denied a U.S. visa because of his open chauvinism against Indian minorities, including targeting Sikhs and Muslims. In 2002, when Modi was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, 1000-2000 Muslims were slaughtered there by Hindu extremists linked to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. In 1984, like-minded reactionaries had massacred several thousand Sikhs. Human Rights Watch says those responsible for the 1984 massacre were never prosecuted.

Before Modi headed off to Washington for discussions with Obama, he met with New York’s “progressive” mayor, Bill de Blasio. Modi’s welcome by officials in the United States has outraged Human Rights advocates. The Sept. 28 rally was mostly made up of Indian immigrants, with a large contingent of Sikhs. Joe Lombardo addressed the crowd for the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). — MARTY GOODMAN ism—such as the so-called Free Syrian Army. We are for the defeat of them all. Self-determination of the Syrian masses can only emerge when all foreign im­ perialist forces are withdrawn.

The only way that working people in the Middle East can end the ongoing cycle of war, repression and poverty, and drive the imperialist invaders from their lands, is for them to construct their own independent mass workers’ parties—armed with socialist pro­ grams that welcome peoples of all nationalities and religious groups. Councils of democratically-elected workers’ representatives can be built to organize the defense of communities and workplaces from the death squads and armies promoted and financed by imperialist forces and from reactionary fundamental­ ist sects that seek to impose their views by violence and terror.

The right to self-determination of historically op­ pressed nationalities like the Kurds must be recog­ nized and supported, including the right to form their own nation, if they so choose. Ultimately, the borders that the imperialists erected following their post-WW I conquests and colonization a century ago, must fall—replaced by a united socialist confederation of the Middle East.

The central responsibility of antiwar activists in the United States remains to mobilize the American peo­ ple in massive, united protests to demand “U.S. Out Now!” n SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 2014 11

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SOCIALIST ACTION bombs away! Yazen Homsy / Reuters