IN THE name of justice, a new massacre is being carried out. In the name of liberty, they are murdering once again. In the name of democracy, a whole country is being smashed by bombs. After so many others, it is now the turn of Iraq. Who will be next?
The goal of the assault which is now being carried out by the army of the United States, its imperialist allies, including social-democratic governments, and its Arab and other supporters (fundamentalist monarchies or dictatorships) in the Persian Gulf goes far beyond the so-called "liberation of Kuwait" and the alleged defence of "international law". The actions of this coalition of oppressors of peoples, as always, are quite opposite to the "values" they claim to be upholding.
In reality, for the imperialist powers, it is a question of decisively establishing a "new world order", where every attack on their vital interests will be punished by the same treatment as is being received by Iraq today. This "new order" is more than ever subject to the political-military hegemony of the United States, whose terrorising arrogance now knows no bounds. The policy of collusion with imperialism followed by the Soviet leadership, far from opening up a new era of peace, has greatly encouraged the governments of London, Washington and Paris to carry out their most criminal plans.
Unprecedented air attack on Iraq
The aggression against Iraq is the biggest air attack in history. It is the first major electronic war, with Iraq being used as a vast testing ground for the latest murderous gadgets from the imperialist military array.
The immediate aim of this attack is no longer in doubt: it is the total destruction of Iraq's military-industrial potential. American imperialism wants to remove from the scene a regional power liable to challenge its oil interests and capable of counterbalancing the power of the Zionist state, the USA's main ally in the region. In order to achieve this, the Pentagon is prepared to consider anything, including the use of nuclear weapons.
Nothing can justify this barbaric attack on the people of Iraq. Neither the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait nor the nature of the Baghdad regime can justify the US and its allies setting themselves up as police and arbiters of the world. We know all too well to what degree these "dispensers of justice" respect the rights of peoples. Only yesterday, they supported the Iraqi dictatorship in its war against Iran and closed their eyes to the massacre of the Kurdish people. It is these "liberators" who have equipped and financed the Israeli army of occupation in Palestine, and who are even now multiplying this support, as the Zionist government is openly planning to expel a large proportion of the Palestinian people once more from their own land.
Faced with this offensive, whose real motives are eminently reactionary, anti-imperialist movements cannot be neutral. They are on the side of the people of Iraq, subjected to bombing by the coalition forces. They are for an immediate and unilateral end to the aggression, for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of imperialist forces from the Gulf region, for the right of the Arab peoples to freely decide their own fate without interference from the big powers. In particular, they must defend the Kurdish and Palestinian peoples' rights to self-determination against all their oppressors.
Popular support for Iraq in Middle East
To be anti-imperialist today means being unconditionally for the defeat of imperialism, alongside the peoples of the Arab region and the Middle East, who have massively expressed their solidarity with the people of Iraq.
It means being against the governments of the coalition and against those who take refuge in a embarrassed neutrality and join the blockade of Iraq, rather than supporting its people who are under threat of death.
We will step up our effort to strengthen the world movement against the aggression, creating the broadest possible unity so as to impose a halt to the bombing and the withdrawal of the imperialist troops. We refuse to pay the costs of this criminal war, undertaken in the interests of the oil and financial magnates.
We denounce those who do not hesitate to waste billions in order to crush Iraq, while they refuse to cancel the debt which weighs down the Third World and reduce the provision of basic social needs everywhere.
Together with the workers of the world, we shall unite to block the imperialist war machine.
We will support the youth, the soldiers, the reservists who, in the countries of the aggressive coalition, refuse to take part in this massacre.
Against the oppressors' "new world order", we stand for a new world solidarity of all struggles against oppression!