http://themilitant.com/2017/8116/811603.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 16 April 24, 2017
(front page)
US uses horror at Assad gas attack to step up Syria war
BY JIM BRADLEY
Washington’s April 6 missile strike against the Bashar al-Assad
dictatorship’s Al Shayrat air force base represents a further escalation
of the U.S. rulers’ military intervention in Syria’s six-year civil war.
It goes along with steadily growing numbers of U.S. ground troops in
both Syria and Iraq and further involvement in combat in Yemen and
Afghanistan.
President Donald Trump claims Washington’s 59 cruise missile attack was
carried out in retaliation for a chemical bomb dropped two days earlier
by the Assad regime against civilians in the opposition-held town of
Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province.
The Assad regime was being driven back by opposition forces until Moscow
moved a fleet of bombers into Syria in September 2015 and joined the
civil war. They were backed by troops from Iran, Hezbollah and other
Tehran-led militias. Since then the Assad regime and its allies have
combined murderous bombing with sieges to starve and batter
opposition-held areas.
They then offer what they call “reconciliation” deals and when the
fighters agree to surrender their territory, they are permitted to go to
Idlib province.
Assad is now using his coalition’s air power — and chemical weapons in
Khan Sheikhoun — to brutalize rebels there. He says he plans to retake
the entire country. And workers and farmers there are paying the price.
Reports of surviving eyewitnesses, evidence from bomb craters in the
village and the results of autopsies on victims, point to use of a
banned nerve agent like sarin and to the responsibility of the Assad
regime.
The chemical weapons attack handed Washington a golden opportunity to
justify its drive to ratchet up its military intervention in Syria.
Justifying the attack in the name of “national security,” Trump, who the
previous week indicated his administration could live with the Assad
government, blamed the regime’s repression of opposition forces for
creating a refugee crisis that is destabilizing the region.
Decades of seemingly endless U.S. military interventions in the area —
Iraq three times, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and more —
is the real source of the destabilization. And it is also the root cause
of the initial spread of Islamic State, which filled the vacuum left by
the inability of U.S. imperialism to end these wars and the failure so
far of working people to carve out a revolutionary leadership capable of
taking power themselves.
Washington’s missile strike is a “significant blow” to U.S.-Russia
relations, said Dmitri Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President
Vladimir Putin. Moscow claims that Assad’s planes had bombed an
opposition-controlled storehouse for chemical weapons, but so far no one
has presented any evidence such a storehouse ever existed.
The day after the attack a Russian warship armed with cruise missiles
was dispatched to the area of the Mediterranean where the two U.S. Navy
destroyers launched the missiles into Syria. Moscow also suspended an
agreement with Washington to coordinate air operations over Syria, set
up to avoid accidental clashes, and said it would strengthen Assad’s air
defense systems.
U.S. “boots on the ground” continue to increase in both Syria and Iraq
where U.S. military intervention is being carried out under cover of the
fight to destroy the reactionary Islamic State.
The monthslong battle by the Iraqi army to retake the city of Mosul from
IS, backed by Washington’s air power and military “advisers” on the
ground, drags on. U.S. troop strength has climbed to over 6,000,
including an initial levy of 300 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne
Division that arrived in Kuwait at the end of March.
In northern Syria 900 U.S. troops in alliance with thousands of fighters
of the Syrian Democratic Forces led by the Kurdish People’s Protection
Units (YPG), are fighting for position to launch an all-out attack on
Raqqa, Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital.
What to do with the Kurds?
Washington’s problems in the region are increasingly compounded by the
struggle of the 30 million oppressed Kurdish people for their national
sovereignty — the geographical spread of the Kurds crosses the borders
of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. And by the efforts of the capitalist
rulers in these countries to prevent the Kurds from succeeding.
The YPG, the most effective fighters against Islamic State, control an
autonomous enclave of 2 million Kurds in Syria on the Turkish border.
Their tactical alliance with Washington doesn’t change the hostility of
the U.S. capitalist rulers to their decadeslong struggle for independence.
The Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invaded
parts of northern Syria in an effort to keep the YPG from connecting the
Kurdish cantons on the border and forming an autonomous region in Syria.
Ankara fears this would strengthen the struggle of Turkey’s 15 million
Kurds for their national rights.
For this reason, Erdogan also opposes the Washington-YPG alliance in the
fight for Raqqa.
For over three decades Ankara has waged a war against its Kurdish
citizens and the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Erdogan considers
the YPG an arm of the “terrorist” PKK.
The regime has called a presidential referendum for April 16 designed to
replace Turkey’s parliamentary system with an executive presidency
giving Erdogan virtually dictatorial powers.
A special target of the regime has been the Peoples’ Democratic Party
(HDP), which has broad support among the Kurdish population.
Last November Selahattin Demirtas, the popular co-leader of the HDP, was
jailed along with 13 other HDP leaders on charges that they are linked
to the PKK. Ankara’s troops occupy parts of the Kurdish region and there
have been thousands of arrests.
“Despite the fierce repression and the blackout of the ‘no’ campaign in
the media, the HDP is campaigning with other social forces for a ‘no’
vote,” Ertugrul Kurkcu, HDP member of parliament and honorary president
told the Militant by phone April 10. “At this point 45 percent are for
‘yes’ and 45 percent are for ‘no.’ And 10 percent are not decided. The
Kurds can tip the vote against Erdogan.”
Related articles:
Socialist Workers Party: Get US out of Syria, Iraq!
Stop Washington’s bombs! All US troops out now!
Trump garners bipartisan backing for escalation of war in Syria, Iraq
Kurds’ national struggle looms over Mideast wars
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
http://themilitant.com/2017/8116/811603.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 16 April 24, 2017
(front page)
US uses horror at Assad gas attack to step up Syria war
BY JIM BRADLEY
Washington’s April 6 missile strike against the Bashar al-Assad
dictatorship’s Al Shayrat air force base represents a further escalation
of the U.S. rulers’ military intervention in Syria’s six-year civil war.
It goes along with steadily growing numbers of U.S. ground troops in
both Syria and Iraq and further involvement in combat in Yemen and
Afghanistan.
President Donald Trump claims Washington’s 59 cruise missile attack was
carried out in retaliation for a chemical bomb dropped two days earlier
by the Assad regime against civilians in the opposition-held town of
Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province.
The Assad regime was being driven back by opposition forces until Moscow
moved a fleet of bombers into Syria in September 2015 and joined the
civil war. They were backed by troops from Iran, Hezbollah and other
Tehran-led militias. Since then the Assad regime and its allies have
combined murderous bombing with sieges to starve and batter
opposition-held areas.
They then offer what they call “reconciliation” deals and when the
fighters agree to surrender their territory, they are permitted to go to
Idlib province.
Assad is now using his coalition’s air power — and chemical weapons in
Khan Sheikhoun — to brutalize rebels there. He says he plans to retake
the entire country. And workers and farmers there are paying the price.
Reports of surviving eyewitnesses, evidence from bomb craters in the
village and the results of autopsies on victims, point to use of a
banned nerve agent like sarin and to the responsibility of the Assad
regime.
The chemical weapons attack handed Washington a golden opportunity to
justify its drive to ratchet up its military intervention in Syria.
Justifying the attack in the name of “national security,” Trump, who the
previous week indicated his administration could live with the Assad
government, blamed the regime’s repression of opposition forces for
creating a refugee crisis that is destabilizing the region.
Decades of seemingly endless U.S. military interventions in the area —
Iraq three times, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and more —
is the real source of the destabilization. And it is also the root cause
of the initial spread of Islamic State, which filled the vacuum left by
the inability of U.S. imperialism to end these wars and the failure so
far of working people to carve out a revolutionary leadership capable of
taking power themselves.
Washington’s missile strike is a “significant blow” to U.S.-Russia
relations, said Dmitri Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President
Vladimir Putin. Moscow claims that Assad’s planes had bombed an
opposition-controlled storehouse for chemical weapons, but so far no one
has presented any evidence such a storehouse ever existed.
The day after the attack a Russian warship armed with cruise missiles
was dispatched to the area of the Mediterranean where the two U.S. Navy
destroyers launched the missiles into Syria. Moscow also suspended an
agreement with Washington to coordinate air operations over Syria, set
up to avoid accidental clashes, and said it would strengthen Assad’s air
defense systems.
U.S. “boots on the ground” continue to increase in both Syria and Iraq
where U.S. military intervention is being carried out under cover of the
fight to destroy the reactionary Islamic State.
The monthslong battle by the Iraqi army to retake the city of Mosul from
IS, backed by Washington’s air power and military “advisers” on the
ground, drags on. U.S. troop strength has climbed to over 6,000,
including an initial levy of 300 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne
Division that arrived in Kuwait at the end of March.
In northern Syria 900 U.S. troops in alliance with thousands of fighters
of the Syrian Democratic Forces led by the Kurdish People’s Protection
Units (YPG), are fighting for position to launch an all-out attack on
Raqqa, Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital.
What to do with the Kurds?
Washington’s problems in the region are increasingly compounded by the
struggle of the 30 million oppressed Kurdish people for their national
sovereignty — the geographical spread of the Kurds crosses the borders
of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. And by the efforts of the capitalist
rulers in these countries to prevent the Kurds from succeeding.
The YPG, the most effective fighters against Islamic State, control an
autonomous enclave of 2 million Kurds in Syria on the Turkish border.
Their tactical alliance with Washington doesn’t change the hostility of
the U.S. capitalist rulers to their decadeslong struggle for independence.
The Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invaded
parts of northern Syria in an effort to keep the YPG from connecting the
Kurdish cantons on the border and forming an autonomous region in Syria.
Ankara fears this would strengthen the struggle of Turkey’s 15 million
Kurds for their national rights.
For this reason, Erdogan also opposes the Washington-YPG alliance in the
fight for Raqqa.
For over three decades Ankara has waged a war against its Kurdish
citizens and the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Erdogan considers
the YPG an arm of the “terrorist” PKK.
The regime has called a presidential referendum for April 16 designed to
replace Turkey’s parliamentary system with an executive presidency
giving Erdogan virtually dictatorial powers.
A special target of the regime has been the Peoples’ Democratic Party
(HDP), which has broad support among the Kurdish population.
Last November Selahattin Demirtas, the popular co-leader of the HDP, was
jailed along with 13 other HDP leaders on charges that they are linked
to the PKK. Ankara’s troops occupy parts of the Kurdish region and there
have been thousands of arrests.
“Despite the fierce repression and the blackout of the ‘no’ campaign in
the media, the HDP is campaigning with other social forces for a ‘no’
vote,” Ertugrul Kurkcu, HDP member of parliament and honorary president
told the Militant by phone April 10. “At this point 45 percent are for
‘yes’ and 45 percent are for ‘no.’ And 10 percent are not decided. The
Kurds can tip the vote against Erdogan.”
Related articles:
Socialist Workers Party: Get US out of Syria, Iraq!
Stop Washington’s bombs! All US troops out now!
Trump garners bipartisan backing for escalation of war in Syria, Iraq
Kurds’ national struggle looms over Mideast wars
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home