The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 73/No. 9      March 9, 2009

 
Imperialist troops out of Pakistan!
(editorial)
 
The latest U.S. missile attacks in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border killed some 60 people and brought the number of such attacks to four since President Barack Obama took office. To shore up its unstable ally in the “war on terror,” Washington has sent some 70 U.S. military advisers to Pakistan. There they have been not so secretly training Pakistani troops since last summer.

The “war on terror” is not the policy of former president George Bush or of Obama, but of U.S. imperialism, regardless of who occupies the White House.

The attacks on Pakistan and the doubling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan are part of the same war. Add in the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo and CIA prisons around the world and the secret “renditions” of alleged “terrorists,” many with no evidence against them, and you see what the rulers mean by the “war on terror”—a warning to any working people who dare to fight back against capitalist exploitation.

The purpose of their war is to defend the U.S. imperialist empire in decline, the world’s final empire. Washington is increasingly unable to stabilize a world in which the lives of hundreds of millions of working people are marked by turmoil, want, and disease produced by capitalism itself.

The missile strikes, the training of special forces, and the secret “renditions”—a code word for U.S.-authorized kidnappings—are aimed at preventing workers and farmers in Pakistan and Afghanistan from organizing an effective fight in their own interests to take on the capitalist and land-owning classes there.

That is why class conscious workers should demand U.S. troops and advisors out of Pakistan and Afghanistan, close all the U.S. bases, release all the prisoners, and close all the secret prisons.

The violations of the rights of prisoners in Guantánamo and other U.S. jails where “terror” suspects are held, along with the secret abductions, are part of the rulers preparing to respond to the resistance that will deepen inside the United States as the consequences of the capitalist economic crisis bear down.

By opposing U.S. intervention in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and around the world, working people will put ourselves in a stronger position to defend our democratic, political, and union rights in the months and years ahead.
 
 
Related articles:
Pakistan: 60 killed in 2 U.S. missile attacks
Islamabad cuts deal with Swat Taliban
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home