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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 30 August 15, 2016
(front page, Socialist Workers Party campaign statement)
Oppose US imperialist war drive!
The following statement was released Aug. 3 by Alyson Kennedy, Socialist
Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, and Osborne Hart, SWP
candidate for vice president.
The drums of war beat loudly at the conventions of the two parties of
capitalist rule—the Democrats and Republicans. With belligerent speeches
and chants of “USA,” they gave a glimpse of the future they offer: more
devastating wars abroad to shore up the interests of U.S. imperialism.
Just in the last week, the Obama administration has sent additional
“counterterrorism” troops into Afghanistan and launched a new bombing
campaign in Libya.
The Socialist Workers Party calls for immediate withdrawal of U.S.
military forces from the Mideast and North Africa. This is in the
interest of the international working class.
Look at the bloody record of the last quarter-century of Washington’s
wars and military operations—under Republican and Democratic
administrations alike—from the first Gulf War in 1991, to Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan, Iraq again, Yemen, Libya, Syria and more. The human toll
includes tens of thousands of combatants and hundreds of thousands of
civilians killed, and millions displaced.
The toll includes Washington’s cannon fodder—working people in
uniform—killed, maimed and treated with callous disregard for their
medical needs when they return.
The U.S. rulers have shown they will use any means to maintain power.
Washington dropped atomic bombs on Japan 71 years ago this month. The
Socialist Workers Party called this an act of “deliberate and
cold-blooded extermination.” Successive administrations have come within
a hair’s breadth of unleashing nuclear weapons against China, Iran,
Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Iraq.
The Obama administration has launched a $1 trillion program to modernize
its deadly nuclear arsenal—a clear signal the rulers are prepared to use
these weapons—and is provocatively placing anti-missile systems closer
to the borders of Russia and China.
Democrat Clinton claims her Republican rival Trump “is not a man we can
trust with nuclear weapons.” In fact, working people can trust none of
the capitalist parties or politicians. The very workings of their
imperialist system—which is in a historic crisis that they are incapable
of resolving—fuels trade rivalry and political instability. This will
spark more wars. As long as nuclear weapons exist these wars increase
the danger they will be used. And any use of nukes poses the risk of
nuclear annihilation.
The Socialist Workers Party calls for Washington to immediately and
unilaterally dismantle all its nuclear weapons.
The only way to end the rulers’ profit-driven drive to war and the
threat of nuclear devastation is to end the dictatorship of capital and
replace it with a workers and farmers government.
The working class needs no nuclear weapons, as Cuban communist leader
Fidel Castro explained in 2005. Revolutionary Cuba has “never considered
producing nuclear weapons because we don’t need them,” he said. “We
possess a weapon as powerful as nuclear ones … the invincible power of
moral weapons.”
This is the course the Socialist Workers Party is fighting for—a world
without war and exploitation, a world organized by workers and farmers
based on human solidarity, not the dog-eat-dog values of capitalism.
Join us!
Related articles:
‘2016 US election campaign: Three parties and two classes’
Socialist Workers Party event opens new stage of campaigning
‘I’m glad you’re here campaigning for SWP’
Campaign with the Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Workers Party campaign launches $30,000 fund!
Lessons of US bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki
Call for unilateral US disarmament remains key for working class today
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