Vol. 80/No. 11      March 21, 2016

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

March 22, 1991

Next to the Iraqi people the Palestinians have suffered the most from the U.S.-led imperialist war in the Middle East. Working people around the world should stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and protest the blatant violations of their basic rights as well as the continuing denial of their right to self-determination.

Caught in the pincers of the imperialist war and Saddam Hussein’s demagogic and false rhetoric claiming to support their struggle, the Palestinians are paying a great price.

Since the first hours of the Iraqi invasion, the 400,000 Palestinians living and working in Kuwait suffered the dislocation and hardship that all workers in the region confronted as the imperialist war drive began. Now at the end of the war, they are being victimized by the Kuwaiti military forces.

March 21, 1966

Malcolm X often said that Negroes won the “right” to die for Uncle Sam in World War II. But Uncle Sam has been even more generous in the Vietnam war. The government admits that 18.3 percent of the Americans killed in Vietnam since 1961 were Black soldiers, and a giant 22.1 percent of army enlisted men killed were Black.

In contrast, there are now about 14.8 percent Afro-Americans in Vietnam, and about 11 percent in the U.S. population as a whole.

There is only one explanation for these figures, and that is the rank racism in the U.S. armed forces which results in Negroes being sent into the worst and dirtiest fighting — to do the most dying.

The U.S. army has always been a bastion of racism. It wasn’t until the Korean war that official segregation was ended in the army.

March 22, 1941

[Franklin] Roosevelt’s speech to the White House Correspondents Association last Saturday night clearly indicated the role which he has assumed as the leader of the Roosevelt-Churchill Axis in the struggle against the Hitler-Mussolini-Mikado Axis.

He graciously complimented Churchill, leader of British imperialism, but the tone and the manner were those of one who felt himself to be a superior complimenting a subordinate associate.

From now on Roosevelt, as the representative of American imperialist interests, takes charge of the struggle against Hitler Germany.

With the lend-lease law now behind him, there was no longer any note of diplomacy. Bluntly Roosevelt named Germany, Italy and Japan. It was the speech of the head of a nation at war.  
 
 
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