On Falluja, from Seattle

No more Fallujas!
Organize against imperialism!

Once again the 300,000 people of Falluja have seen the kind of war-machine-style “freedom” the U.S. government is fighting to force on all Iraqis. First the American occupation authorities and their puppet Iraqi government gave themselves the right to order the residents out of their homes and out of their city. Never mind that thousands of poor people had no where else to go. And never mind that thousands of others might want to stay to staff the hospitals and clinics, look out for the children, keep the public utilities in operation, and simply live in their homes in defiance of this arrogant dictate from the new lords and masters of the Iraqi people. 100,000 or more people stayed. Then the city was cut off from the rest of the world, and the cowardly high-tech campaign of death and destruction from the air stepped up. “Precision” air strikes were made on the hospital, railway station, clinics, residential buildings, and automobiles. Finally, under the protection of jets, helicopters, artillery, and tanks the marines “heroically” entered the ravaged city.

Falluja has long been a center of resistance to the U.S.-British imperial occupation. Not only did several resistance groups openly operate there, but thousands of ordinary Iraqis took up arms in its defense against the U.S. attacks in April. The U.S. forces were forced to retreat, and they plotted revenge. But the current assault doesn’t just have the aim of killing resistance fighters and controlling the city. It’s being conducted to “teach a lesson” to not only the people of Falluja, but to all Iraqis: mass slaughter and utter devastation will be wreaked upon any and all who do not meekly bow before imperialist rule. Even the dogs are being shot. This is Nazi-style “collective punishment”, a horrendous war-crime to add to the Abu Ghraib torture chambers and a thousand others. (In this regard, the Oct. 28 edition of the mainstream Lancet medical journal says that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed through September as a result of the U.S. war and occupation.) Meanwhile, martial law has been declared in the rest of the country, and more cities and regions are slated for attack in preparation for the U.S.-orchestrated elections farce in January.

Despite all this Falluja will live again. During the last few days the most sophisticated killing machine in the history of the world has turned the city to rubble, and mainly overcome lightly armed fighters in a frontal assault. But the costs are going to be much higher than the 22 American soldiers so far reported dead, higher than the 100s wounded, higher than the downed helicopters and destroyed armored vehicles. For one thing, the brutal rape of Falluja is only going to fuel the already widespread resistance inside the U.S. military. For another, the people of Falluja will bury their dead and rebuild...but seethe with anger at what has been done to them for years to come. The imperialists and their local puppets will never be secure among them. Not only this, all of Iraq (and all of progressive humanity) is enraged at what has been done to the people of Falluja. Attacks on the imperialist troops and their local allies are mounting all over the country, so much so that a Stryker Brigade battalion has been pulled out of Falluja and rushed to Mosul. Resistance forces have seized weapons, ammunition and body armor from police stations in that city in preparation for future battles. Thus conditions have been created for the U.S. “victory” in Falluja to ultimately turn into a disaster.

Working class anti-war activists in this country can play a big role in helping make this so. To fulfill this role we obviously need to expose to the masses the crimes of “our” government against the Iraqi people, and denounce these crimes. Moreover, in our class and in the anti-war movement we must insistently (but patiently) fight to drive home two points: (1) imperialism is the issue, (2) mobilizing the workers is the key to developing a truly powerful anti-war movement. And all this requires more organization.

Imperialism is the issue!

Today the bodies of hundreds of former people who never wished ill upon anyone lie in the streets of far away Falluja, Iraq. There’s a history behind this atrocity. The overthrow of the Shah of Iran was a big setback for U.S. Middle East and Gulf policy. With their regional strongman and ally gone the bi-partisan objective of all U.S. governments since Carter focused on efforts to more directly dominate the region, particularly by establishing a permanent military presence there. Behind this has been capitalist class’s drive to dominate and profit from Middle Eastern oil resources, and, through this, to have a more dominant economic and political position in the world. Thus a train of barbarous acts: cynical support for both sides in the Iran-Iraq war in order to weaken both regimes; Bush I’s launching Gulf War I because the U.S. ruling class saw that their former friend Saddam Hussein was becoming a rival in the region; a decade of U.N. sanctions against Iraq (mainly under Clinton) that effectively murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents; Bush II’s invasion and occupation of Iraq; Falluja….

Yet there’s much more to imperialism than the drive to monopolize the earth’s oil resources. Earlier this year Bush sent the Marines to brutally intervene in Haiti, for example, and besides Iraq, U.S. troops are also in Afghanistan, Colombia, the Philippines and many other countries. More, we must stress again that the wars and bloody occupations of the Bush government are not an aberration from an otherwise “peaceful” U.S. foreign policy. Kennedy-Johnson brought us the slaughter of millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, invasion of the Dominican Republic, and secret murderous thuggery in Latin America and elsewhere. Every previous and subsequent administration of the past century supported militarist and fascist allies, and had its dirty “little” wars, or sometimes very big wars.

This consistency between administrations, whether they’re led by Republicans or Democrats, rests on the fact that all of them fight for the interests of monopoly capital first and foremost. Yet the laws of the capitalist system of production are such that capital must expand, and profits be maximized. This drives the capitalist classes of the nation-states of the world (which are all capitalist today) into dog-eat-dog rivalry over markets, sources of raw materials (like oil), and low-wage labor. It drives them to attempt to crush national-democratic struggles of oppressed nations or peoples. It drives their constant war on the wages, working conditions and living standards of the workers at home, and of the workers in “their” sphere of the world economy. Hence, not only are monopoly capitalism and imperialism indivisible: but militarization and imperialist wars are necessary components of the system.

The only logical conclusion is that to end the wars and occupations of the U.S. and other imperial powers we must prepare the overthrow of the imperialist system itself. Today this means targeting imperialism as the cause of the atrocities we’re seeing in Iraq.

But the political groupings presently leading the anti-war movement won’t do this. Instead they look for solutions from within the system, particularly from the Democratic Party liberals. In fact they’re in the political orbit of the Democrats. Thus, when they speak of imperialism (if they speak of it) they define it as just being the policy of Bush and the right. More, for the past three years they’ve repeatedly paraded and applauded liberal Democratic Party politicians at their rallies while these people worked to turn the anti-war movement into a movement for “wiser” (i.e., multilateral) imperialist wars, and into a pro “war on terror” movement. The liberals also worked hard to turn the anti-war movement into an electoral movement for Kerry: “Reporting for duty” [to the imperialist ruling class] Kerry! More troops Kerry! “I’m not talking about leaving [Iraq]. I’m talking about winning” Kerry!

Kerry was defeated, but the illusions fostered by the liberals in the movement run deep. Hence we’ve already seen “Kucinich in 2008” signs at local demonstrations. But Kucinich’s stand of “U.S. out, U.N. in” was premised on continued imperial big power domination over the Iraqi people and their oil resources using different tactics. When these ideas were rejected by the ruling class and his party, however, Kucinich refused to wage a fight on them at the DNC and actively campaigned for Kerry. Meanwhile Kerry strove to outshine Bush as a militarist. Thus Kucinich has proven that the most liberal of the liberal politicians are hardcore defenders of imperialism. Nevertheless, their influence remains. To build the movement against imperialism we must politically fight against them every step of the way. This is a class fight.

Mobilizing the working class is key!

Imperialism is the class policy of the monopoly capitalist class. But the working class in even the richest and most powerful countries has no interest in it---particularly the national-minority and immigrant workers, and working-class youth. It’s the sons and daughters of this class who are being sent half-way round the world to kill and suffer and die in the interests of the imperialist expansion, domination and profits of the mega-capitalists It’s this class---the majority class--that the capitalist government squeezes with budget cuts and taxes to pay for its militarism, while looting the national treasury for bail-outs, juicy contracts, and tax relief for the big capitalists. So it’s this class above all others that anti-imperialists must turn to and rally to come out in its own interests. This necessitates developing sharp class appeals in building the anti-war movement, and fighting for the whole movement to take them up. And we can't place our hopes in the AFL-CIO leaders to do this. They're pro-imperialists who generally act as mouth-pieces for the Democratic Party. We must organize from below, and depite their active opposition.

The more the question of imperialism is forced in the movement, and the more it actively appeals to the working class and bases itself on its interests, the more it will be able to support both the resisting soldiers in the U.S. military and the Iraqi resistance. Progress of both these resistances again poses class issues that we must take a stand on. The majority of U.S. troops only joined the military to get college credits, job skills, and other benefits which they couldn’t afford as civilians. Now they’re being used as cannon fodder, and they’re rightfully angry. They’re refusing orders to go to Iraq, refusing orders in the field while there (the mutiny of the “Rock Hill 19” being the latest development), and refusing heavy pressures to reenlist. Meanwhile Iraqi veterans are forming anti-war groups and joining in anti-war actions. In these conditions Bush and the liberals shout “Support our Troops!” in order to gain support for their war while some opponents (like on Friday’s Portland Indymedia) say “spit on the troops”! But the latter is a blind, non-class, liberal- turned-inside-out position that leads to nowhere good. We do have our troops in Iraq: the resisters and mutineers! These are ordinary soldiers, the "proletariat" of the military. We want to support, encourage and link up with them by building the movement against imperialism here at home.

In the Iraqi resistance struggle class issues are also being sharply posed. Overall, many sons and daughters or the workers and poor are sacrificing everything for democratic and anti-imperialist ideals. But the dominant leaders are often theocrats bitterly opposed to these ideals. They want to ride to power on the backs of the youths they call upon to pour their blood into the sand. Their agenda is for women to be covered up and turned into ignorant and despised household slaves, and for men to be obedient wage-slaves who dutifully pray to God at the appointed hours. More, like the rulers of Iran, they decry U.S. imperialism while themselves working to be regional imperialists. Real anti-imperialism means opposing these people, their ideas, and their organizations in order to build a resistance with different aims. We can help the democratic secular forces in Iraq do this by building an anti-war movement in this country that can really inspire the masses of Iraq people---the very same workers and poor people that the theocrats now so often influence.

Demonstrations are invaluable tools for bringing forth new activists to help build this movement. They’re also invaluable forums for waging struggle over the path forward. We therefore call upon all to build for and attend the January 20 counter-inaugural demonstration 5 pm at the Federal Building. More, we call upon you to help give this demonstration an anti-imperialist pole by mobilizing people around the ideas of this leaflet.

Support the class struggle of the Iraqi workers and poor!
Build the movement against imperialism!

Seattle Communist Study Group, November 13, 2004
Read Communist Voice, www.communistvoice.org