https://themilitant.com/2019/01/05/us-troops-out-of-middle-east-afghanistan-now/
US troops out of Middle East, Afghanistan now!
Vol. 83/No. 2
January 14, 2019
The following statement was issued Jan. 2 by Alyson Kennedy, Socialist
Workers Party candidate for Dallas mayor.
The Socialist Workers Party demands the immediate and unconditional
withdrawal of U.S. troops, bombers and warships from the Middle East and
Afghanistan!
The Donald Trump administration’s proposed drawdown of U.S. troops from
Syria and reduction of U.S. forces in Afghanistan are only a small
fraction of the vast weaponry and troop deployments the U.S. rulers keep
in the Middle East and elsewhere worldwide. They’re ready to unleash
this whenever it seems necessary to protect their interests against
capitalist rivals and above all against working people.
The unrelenting and deadly toll on the working class of the wars waged
by Washington and its capitalist rivals in Syria and Afghanistan
highlights the pressing need for workers here to act in solidarity with
fellow toilers.
The U.S. rulers’ wars abroad are an extension of their attacks on
workers here at home. They seek to defend their profits and their rule
on the backs of working people worldwide.
As cutthroat competition among rival capitalist powers pushes the rulers
into sharper conflicts, they step up their efforts to drive down
workers’ wages, inflict life-threatening speedup on the job and push to
extend the working day.
The wars they wage are not our wars. Their foreign policy serves their
class interests, not ours. They demand we provide the cannon fodder in
their wars for markets, resources and political influence around the world.
The rulers’ callous disregard for the lives of working people is
reflected in their neglect of returning veterans. Tens of thousands come
home with long-term injuries, forced to wait years, and sometimes a
lifetime, for their disability claims to be heard. Opioid addiction and
the suicide rate among veterans have soared.
The Socialist Workers Party has an unbroken record of intransigent
opposition to Washington’s imperialist wars. From Vietnam to Korea, the
first and second imperialist world wars, U.S. deployments against
Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Bosnia and elsewhere, none of these
were in the interests of working people — there or here.
The U.S. rulers’ armed forces have been fighting in Afghanistan and the
Middle East for decades. Millions of toilers have been killed, maimed or
driven from their homes.
The SWP explains that Washington’s intervention and the war moves of its
capitalist rivals in the Middle East hinders the interests of working
people there. Across the region workers and their allies need the
political space and time to build a working-class leadership to
challenge for political power after decades of betrayals by Stalinist
parties and the exhaustion of bourgeois nationalist forces.
In the course of struggles in years ahead workers can gain “enough
political combat under a proletarian leadership to develop confidence in
their own and their class’s ability to organize and manage the economy
and ‘guide the ship of state,’” SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes
explains in Capitalism’s Long Hot Winter Has Begun, published in New
International no. 12.
That is the way forward taken by workers and farmers in Cuba where,
under the leadership of Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement, they
organized the people to overthrow the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship
in 1959 and took political power into their own hands. That is an
example for us to emulate here.
Related Articles
Join Socialist Workers Party 2019 campaign!
The Socialist Workers Party has announced plans to run candidates for
more than a dozen municipal and state offices across the country in
2019, including in Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey,
New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. They will…
Trump plan to draw down troops in Syria, Afghanistan stirs debate
President Donald Trump announced plans Dec. 19 to withdraw U.S. troops
from Syria and cut by nearly half Washington’s forces in Afghanistan.
The decision galvanized some in his administration, and pro-war liberal
Democrats and Republicans alike, into calling for the…
The Kurds’ decadeslong fight to gain a homeland
The Donald Trump administration’s announced intention to draw down U.S.
troops from Syria has been portrayed by many media outlets as an
unexpected betrayal of Kurdish forces who have been the key troops in
the fight to liberate areas of…
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Join Socialist Workers Party 2019 campaign!
•US troops out of Middle East, Afghanistan now!
•Judge affirms Chicago cops used torture in frame-up case
•SWP members gear up to take Militant, books door to door
•Los Angeles teachers, supporters rally before Jan. 10 strike deadline
•Trump plan to draw down troops in Syria, Afghanistan stirs debate
•Reader points in right direction
Feature Articles •Nan Bailey: ‘True to her revolutionary convictions
every day of her life’
Also In This Issue •‘Yellow vest’ actions continue to press needs of
French toilers
•‘Militant’ fight against prison censors draws attention
•The Kurds’ decadeslong fight to gain a homeland
•Messages: ‘Nan listened. She was interested’
•‘Selfless, disciplined, loving to a fault’
© Copyright 2019 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
York, NY 10018 - themilitant@xxxxxx
--
________________________________________________
Jules Verne
“ Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add
nothing to them. ”
― Jules Verne
