Western Massachusetts

Drop sanctions, not bombs

Klinton launches air strikes against Iraq Dec 16 1998

Klinton and his murdering entourage of U$ military advisors admitted that they have little support from the people of the Middle East.(1) Any action by the U$ is not about democracy, but is explicitly about controlling the people, against their will, in order to keep U$ economic interests intact.

It is little wonder that the Iraqi people oppose the U$. So far more than 800,000 civilian Iraqi people have died for want of food, medicine, and water treatment facilities. More than half of the dead have been little children born after the Gulf War.(2) Every ten minutes an Iraqi child dies from malnutrition, preventable disease or other effects of the sanctions. Dennis Halliday, the ex-UN humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, admitted that the sanctions have killed, destroyed and brought ruin to 23.5 million people. "The [U$] is destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral".(3) This recent air strike is only a continuation of the decade long war against the Iraqi people that will only mean increased death and destruction in the name of expanding U.$. imperialist power.

The language of sanctions, inspections and the need to secure U.$. interests in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait against the supposed threat of an Iraqi attack are all based on the imperialist assumption of Amerika's right to police Iraq. It doesn't matter what Iraq has or hasn't done in Kuwait, and it doesn't matter what Iraq has or hasn't complied to in the name of subordinating itself to imperialist demands. U.$. involvement in Iraq is imperialist because it is rooted in the need of big business to eventually control people and resources all over the globe.

It is important to interrogate the U.$. for the same crimes of which it is accusing Iraq. Amerikan policy towards bio-chemical weapons has been inconsistent and hypocritical ever since the U$ first refused to participate in the banning of chemical weapons in 1907. Exposing how the U$ will flip-flop its foreign policy according to economic interest, the U$ opposed U.N. action against Iraq in 1984 when Iraq was shown to have used mustard and nerve gases against Iranian troops.(4)

Current warnings of the threat of biological weapons from Iraq continue to tell only the imperialist side of the story. In the Persian Gulf War, Amerika used such weapons as napalm and fuel-air explosives against both military and civilian targets, in violation of the Geneva Convention. A fuel-air explosive releases a "shockwave" whose "concussive force would surely rupture internal organs or eardrums of Iraqi soldiers pinned down in their bunkers. This is not even to mention incineration and asphyxiation, as the fire storm of the bomb sucks all of the oxygen out of the area."(5)

Even after the war was over, Amerikan armed forces used both biological and chemical weapons on the "Highway of Death," a road from Kuwait to Iraq along which retreating Iraqi troops and Palestinian, Jordanian, and other war refugees traveled at the end of the 1991 war.(6) And within U$ borders police and prison guards continue to use pepper spray -- the main ingredient of which was outlawed for use as a weapon by the United Nations Biological Weapons Convention in 1972 -- against demonstrations and crowds, arrestees and prisoners.(7)

RAIL calls on all anti-imperialist activists, and on those currently focused on the human rights of Iraqi civilians, to join us in our efforts to stop this war. It is not enough to oppose sanctions and respect the decisions of the United Nations. We must recognize that no imperialist intervention in Iraq, or anywhere else, can be justified.

Footnotes:
1. NPR - "All Things Considered" December 16, 1998
2. http://www.web.net/~gccwat/iraq/
3. The Independent 14 October 1998
4. "The pot calling the kettle black: A history of bio-chemical weapons," http://www.Al- Bushra.org/temp/grossman.htm.
5. Ramsey Clark and others, War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq. Maissoneuve Press (Washington, D.C.: 1992), p. 86.
6. Ibid, p. 18.
7. Michigan Daily 24 November, 1997 and MIM Notes 149 1 November, 1997.

Oppose U$ imperialist attacks on Iraq!

Rally Thursday Dec 17 Noon Student Union Steps UMass

Teach-In Monday Dec 21 7pm

Return to WMass RAIL page