https://themilitant.com/2020/01/11/us-hands-off-iran-iraq-get-out-of-the-mideast/
SWP STATEMENT
US hands off Iran, Iraq! Get out of the Mideast!
‘For immediate withdrawal of US troops from Mideast’
article
Vol. 84/No. 2
January 20, 2020
MILITANT/DAN FEIN Jan. 4 Chicago protest, one of over 70 in U.S.
demanding Washington get out of Middle East. figure
Jan. 4 Chicago protest, one of over 70 in U.S. demanding Washington get
out of Middle East.
MILITANT/DAN FEIN Jan. 4 Chicago protest, one of over 70 in U.S.
demanding Washington get out of Middle East. figure end
Click to download statement
The following corrected statement was issued Jan. 10 by Naomi Craine,
Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Illinois.
The Socialist Workers Party condemns Washington’s military action
killing Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani; Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a
leader of the pro-Tehran
Kataeb Hezbollah militia; and other militiamen near the Baghdad airport
Jan. 2.
We call for the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of U.S.
troops, bases, weaponry and armaments from Iraq, Syria and the region.
Resolving
the crisis facing working people across the Middle East is the business
of workers and farmers there. Join or call protests against Washington’s
action!
Soleimani was no friend of working people in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria — or
Iran. He was a central leader of Tehran’s efforts to extend the Iranian
capitalist
rulers’ military sway in the Middle East. The Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps is a central force in efforts to suppress the struggles of
working people
inside Iran.
The U.S. press, like the regime in Tehran, tries to present Soleimani as
a military leader who came to power as a result of the 1979 Iranian
Revolution.
In fact, his rise was part of a counterrevolution, one that pushed back
the gains made by workers, women and oppressed nationalities by the 1979
revolution
that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the shah there. That
upheaval was a deep-going, popular social revolution.
Soleimani rose through the ranks of the Revolutionary Guard as part of
the counterrevolutionary drive by the cleric-led capitalist regime that
consolidated
power by attacking the gains of that revolution. He became the leader of
the reactionary Revolutionary Guards’ international Quds Force.
Soleimani played a key role in marshaling pro-Iran militias to keep the
brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria during the civil war
there,
at a huge cost in working people’s lives. He orchestrated the expansion
of Hezbollah and its attacks on Israel and reactionary anti-worker
policies in
Lebanon in the 1990s.
Tehran’s efforts to expand its counterrevolutionary reach have been the
target of mass protests, in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. Many of Iraq’s
workers and
farmers hated Soleimani for helping to keep Tehran’s boot on the
country. For the last several weeks tens of thousands of Iraqis have
joined protests demanding
an end to both Iranian and U.S. interference in their affairs. More than
450 demonstrators have been killed and thousands injured, many of them
at the
hands of the reactionary Shiite militias that Soleimani traveled to Iraq
to help organize. A popular chant has been — and still is — “Iran out
out, Iraq
remains free.”
The demonstrations are continuing there today, with tens of thousands in
the streets Jan. 10 in Shiite areas like Baghdad, Karbala and Basra.
But none of Tehran’s counterrevolutionary actions excuse the U.S.
imperialist intervention in Iraq and the region. There are over 80,000
U.S. troops on
the ground and a massive arsenal of warplanes, tanks, missiles, drones
and other armaments in the Middle East.
U.S. rulers’ war policy is bipartisan
While many Democratic Party politicians criticized the Trump
administration for the attack, claiming falsely that he was seeking to
start a war, they have
joined in presiding over the U.S. rulers’ wars there for more than 30 years.
Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden said he agreed that
Soleimani “deserved to be brought to justice,” complaining only that
President Trump
needed to give an “explanation” of how his administration plans to
protect “our troops” and “our interests.” But there is no “our.” These
troops are tasked
with executing the goals of U.S. imperialism and their “interests.” Our
class provides the cannon fodder.
Some of the Democratic 2020 hopefuls complain that the killing of
Soleimani, however laudatory, was carried out “without consultation with
Congress.” But
go look at the famous picture of Biden, along with Pentagon officials
and President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
sitting in the
White House War Room, avidly watching the special forces murder of Osama
bin Laden and his family at their compound May 2, 2011.
The simple truth is that both the Democrats and the Republicans are the
parties of imperialist war.
As the Socialist Workers Party said in our 2017 statement, “
For Recognition of a Palestinian State and of Israel,
” the road forward for working people in the Middle East starts with
“the class interests and solidarity of workers and toiling farmers
across the Middle
East — be they Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, Kurdish, Turkish, Persian or
otherwise, and whatever their religious or other beliefs — as well as
working people
in the United States and around the world.
“We are for whatever helps working people organize and act together to
advance our demands and struggles against the capitalist governments and
ruling
classes that exploit and oppress us and their petty bourgeois political
servants and media apologists.
“We are for whatever renews our class solidarity and self-confidence,
advancing us along a revolutionary course toward a united struggle for
workers power.”
The people of Iraq have been fighting to regain their nation’s
sovereignty, to find a way forward to unite working people and take
control of their own
destiny. The best way to demonstrate solidarity with them is for working
people in the U.S. to demand U.S. hands off Iraq, Syria and Iran. Get
out now!
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Sam Harris
“ I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people
became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs. ”
― Sam Harris,
