Western Massachusetts

MIM's March 1998 open letter to anti-war activists

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) salutes the rising tide of anti-war activism in North America, most visible on the college campuses. Students at Ohio state brought national attention in their disruption of a Clinton Administration propaganda event on Feb 19. Surely the Amerikan regime will have to be much more careful as to which part of "town" is allowed into future "town meetings" on the question.

This tide is rising quickly and perhaps its rise will pass that of the Clinton propaganda machine. In order to be successful and sustainable, however, it must resolve some of it's internal contradictions as to leadership. A significant portion of the anti-war leadership is coming from Congressional Republicans who see military strikes as ineffective at forcing change upon the Saddam Hussein regime. Other reactionaries want the CIA to kill Saddam Hussein, as if whoever is 2nd in command in the Ba'ath Party in Iraq would be significantly different that Hussein's leadership. Then there is also the ultra-yahoo element that wants a ground invasion to occupy Baghdad and install a puppet regime more loyal to the United Snakes.

These are not the portions of the "anti-war" movement that MIM addresses here, although the question of how to lead these elements in a way so as to avoid the resumption of a shooting war in Iraq is an important question to be addressed elsewhere.

The movement against the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 split along the line of sanctions. One side wanted to "Give sanctions more time." Some of these people honestly preferred a different brand of imperialist oppression than the military style of the Bush Administration. The rest just took the opportunist line of supporting sanctions (economic war) to avoid a shooting war.

The correct side of the split opposed sanctions as an act of war and called for the United Snakes to keep its hands off Iraq. When the Gulf War ended, sanctions were kept on, and the results of sanctions are now clearly shown to be just as murderous as a shooting war.

Analogous to the movement's split in 1990 and 1991, the issue of on what basis to oppose war in Iraq threatens to prevent effective resistance to the on going Amerikan policy that has killed 1.4 million Iraqis.

Most speakers at rallies and teach-ins attended by MIM start off with a condemnation of Saddam Hussein. This misses the point and in fact plays into the imperialist war machine. If the oppressiveness of a country's leader or government is the reason to oppose it, then it must be Amerika which should be opposed first and for most.

The only country to use nuclear weapons? The U.$. The only country to have been proven to have used biological and chemical weapons in the Gulf War? The U.$. The country that used banned biological defoliants? The U.$. in Vietnam. The country whose police and corrections officers use banned biological weapons? The U.$.

Some people may respond that "Saddam Hussein is still bad, so we have to stop him" regardless of the U.$. motives or purity. Hussein's "badness" never stopped Amerika before, as he was installed by the CIA in 1963 and was a loyal ally until the Gulf War. "Badness" doesn't stop Amerika from supporting oppressive regimes around the world, so to support Amerikan action against Iraq allows the U.$. imperialism to continue the system of using puppet regimes to suppress the people, and then changing the top leaders when they become too much of a liability.

In order to most effectively stop oppression, we must do so on a clearly anti-imperialist basis. We need to cut through all of the confusion propagated by the enemy and those in our own camp in order to deal concrete blows against oppression.

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