The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.32           September 16, 1996 
 
 
U.S. Hands Off Iraq Now!
Socialist Workers candidates condemn assault, call for protests  

The following statement was released September 3 by the Socialist Workers candidates for U.S. president and vice president, James Harris and Laura Garza. Harris gave a press conference on the issue in St. Paul, Minnesota, that day.

The brutal bombing of Iraq ordered by the U.S. administration of William Clinton today, with complete backing from Robert Dole and a bipartisan congress, should be met with condemnation by working people and fighting youth around the world. Our campaign urges protest actions, picket lines, and informational meetings be held in every city possible against Washington's murderous actions.

Distributing books and newspapers that tell the truth about the history of U.S. aggression in the Mideast, including the 1990-91 U.S.-led war against the Iraqi people, is especially important now. Discussions on Washington's war drive and how to respond are needed among working people on the job, unionists resisting employer assaults, fighters defending immigrant rights, and all who are protesting the bipartisan assault against working people.

Clinton sent U.S. ships and B-52 bombers against Iraq, firing 44 cruise missiles into the country, and has authorized further bombings in the days ahead. As before, their claims of pinpoint accuracy against military targets are false to the core. Clinton, the most dangerous war president in many years, cynically justifies bombing Iraq as part of defending the Kurdish people. But it is Washington and their imperialist allies that have long insured the division of the Kurdish people, setting back their struggle for national self- determination.

This cynical exploitation of Baghdad's repression of the Kurds is not new. At the end of the Gulf War, U.S. and Western European imperialist rulers organized to drive back into Iraq hundreds of thousands of Kurds who had fled into neighboring Iran and Turkey from Saddam Hussein's attacks. They turned emergency relief for them over to the United Nations with a piddling budget. Not one of these imperialist governments ever offered to open their borders to these or other refugees from Baghdad's attacks and provide them with jobs and housing.

The U.S. government's moves to extend the "no-fly" zone to the outskirts of Baghdad today, and prohibit planned oil shipments, flagrantly violate Iraq's sovereignty. These measures are calculated to set up a provocation for further U.S. military action. The U.S. rulers continue to pursue their goal of establishing a protectorate in Iraq, a government subservient to Washington and capable of advancing its interests, first and foremost, to expand their domination of oil reserves in the region. And, above all, Clinton launched the bombing to boost his reelection effort.

In the space of two weeks Clinton has demonstratively shown how he will continue to lead the bipartisan assault on working people at home and abroad. Prior to the Democratic Party convention, he signed legislation backed by both Democrats and Republicans that ended aspects of the social gains won in struggle by working people and codified in the Social Security Act, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Supplemental Security Income. His speech to the convention outlined the posture of world cop that foretold today's bombing. Clinton also singled out revolutionary Cuba as a target in his acceptance speech, a warning that needs to be taken seriously by all who oppose Washington's unceasing "cold war" against Cuba.

The Clinton administration has continually sent U.S. forces against workers and farmers abroad. Within the past year alone, Clinton's war moves include Yugoslavia, Liberia, the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Straits, Haiti, and Cuba. As tensions rise in Russia, the Mideast, and other parts of the world, the danger that the Clinton administration will again respond with military force becomes greater.

Washington's assaults on Iraq include the devastating slaughter in 1990-91, a war that ended with the gunning down of tens of thousands of fleeing Iraqis on the road to Basra. It includes the economic embargo that has condemned hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to malnutrition, disease, and death. It includes several rounds of bombings of the country under the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Each assault by Washington is a blow against working people and farmers in Iraq and the entire Mideast. They are part and parcel of Washington's threats and economic war against Iran and Libya. The bombing is also a warning to working people-such as those in Palestine and Jordan-who organize to protest against increasingly harsh conditions of capitalist austerity today and fight for self-determination.

The Mideast is a crucial region for the economic, military, and political interests of the billionaire U.S. ruling families who run the United States. It is a region in increasing turmoil because of the devastating impact of the deepening world economic crisis on the oppressed and exploited working people in the semi-colonial world. Washington will more and more resort to direct use of its massive military arsenal in an attempt to keep "order" and a semblance of imperial stability.

Working people around the world need to organize solidarity with the struggle of toilers in the Mideast, and oppose U.S. military aggression in the region by demanding an immediate end to the bombing and the brutal embargo. Our campaign demands the complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from the Mideast and the Persian Gulf; and the ending of all economic sanctions against Iraq, Iran, and Libya.  
 
 
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