The Socialist Workers Party sends revolutionary greetings to the Korean people on the occasion of your February 16 national holiday. From within the United States, we stand shoulder to shoulder with you as Washington steps up its arrogant slanders and threats of military strikes against your government and people, as well as against others George W. Bush defames as the "axis of evil"--the governments and people of Iran and Iraq.

We look forward to sending a leadership delegation from the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists to your country in April as part of our movement's response to Washington's bellicose actions and barrage of lies. Such a trip will expand our opportunities to bring the truth to workers, farmers, and youth in the United States about the Korean people's century-long resistance to imperialist domination and the bloody partition of your country. It will help us respond more effectively to the U.S. rulers' efforts to deny the Korean people and government your sovereign right to take the steps you deem necessary to defend your homeland and meet the energy needs essential to economic and social development.

With the events of September 11, the imperialist rulers, with Washington at the head of the pack, immediately pounced on the pretext of combating "terrorism" in order to implement measures they had been preparing for more than a decade. While the consequences of the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., did not give birth to a new world relationship of forces, as often claimed by apologists for the capitalist order, the imperialists' response has accelerated the dominant trends in world politics and exacerbated class contradictions, long developing, at home and abroad.

Within hours the U.S. rulers had decided on their war to impose a new imperial protectorate on Afghanistan. They have strengthened the foothold of U.S. military power and political dominance from India and Pakistan, to the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, and beyond. Washington is turning Guantánamo--its ill-gotten armed outpost on the sovereign soil of Cuba--into a brutal concentration camp. It is pushing to regain military outposts in Southeast Asia by sending troops to the Philippines and pressuring the Vietnamese government to open up its deep-water port at Cam Ranh Bay for the use of the U.S. imperial Navy.

Within the U.S., Washington's bipartisan government has come together to advance plans laid long ago to establish a North American "homeland" military command, military tribunals to ride roughshod over protections guaranteed by the Constitution's Bill of Rights, a national identity card, and other repressive measures. The rulers often take aim first at immigrant workers as they prepare their salvos against wider and wider layers of working people.

America's wealthiest families hoped the destruction rained down on Afghanistan and the technical proficiency of the Pentagon's killing apparatus would make the toilers of the world drop to their knees in fear. But from Iran to Palestine, from Argentina to Korea, working people are refusing to do just that.

In the United States, new generations of working-class militants are gaining class-struggle experience, from airport workers protesting mass firings in California; to illegally terminated packinghouse workers in Illinois, carrying signs in English, Spanish, and Polish on picket lines in front of the plant, demanding pay and benefits denied them; to Haitians in New York rallying against yet another police killing.

The Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists will continue to join with your government and party, workers and farmers in Korea, and others who demand: End the threats against north Korea! Support the Korean people's fight for national reunification! Get all U.S. troops out of Korea now!
 
 
Related articles:
Millions in Iran denounce threats by U.S. imperialism
U.S. hands off Iraq, Iran, Korea
 
 
 
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