The following statement was issued by David Rosenfeld, currently the Socialist Workers Party candidate for City Council in Minneapolis, June 21.
The Socialist Workers Party demands: U.S. hands off Iran! U.S. troops out of the Middle East! End the economic sanctions against the Iranian people now!
These calls take on added urgency following Washington’s moves June 17 to send 1,000 more troops to the Mideast — on top of forces already deployed there rivaling the entire military of most nations on earth. The U.S. capitalist rulers are also imposing punishing new economic sanctions on Iran in the wake of the June 20 shootdown of an unmanned U.S. drone by Tehran.
The U.S. government seeks to use its unmatched military and economic might to impose its will on rivals worldwide. The goal of the U.S. capitalist rulers is to defend and advance their economic and political sway.
Every action the U.S. rulers take abroad — and at home! — is aimed at maximizing their profits by extending and intensifying the exploitation of workers and farmers.
The White House and top Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress say “we” are threatened by Iran. But there is no “we.” The class interests of working people and the wealthy ruling families are the polar opposite. Their profits come from our labor, and from the labor of our fellow working people worldwide. When the U.S. rulers act to protect their top-dog status anywhere — in the Middle East, Central Asia, Vietnam, you name it — working people here are the cannon fodder they send to fight, to die, or to come home maimed with our futures shattered for a lifetime.
They call on us to sacrifice to defend their profits. That’s been true in every one of U.S. imperialism’s modern wars.
It is the U.S. rulers and their twin political parties who have invaded Iraq twice. It is they who have sent hundreds of thousands of U.S. GIs to Afghanistan in Washington’s longest war, with no end in sight. It is they who threaten workers and farmers across the Mideast with massive military power.
The crushing economic sanctions they impose — against Tehran, and against Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea — devastate the living conditions of working people first and foremost.
Socialist Workers Party branches in the Bay Area and Seattle in recent weeks have helped organize street actions against Washington’s moves against Iran. Working people and youth here and the world over should stand ready to organize public protests against further U.S. government escalations.