U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have again bombed Bagdad. They justified their 70 hours of terror by claiming that Iraq alone had used weapons of mass destruction and will use them in the future.
What blatant lies! The U.S. dropped weapons of mass destruction on inhabited cites in 1945, when they used nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands of people. Britain is also guilty of nuclear mass destruction: its A-bomb program in the 1950s killed and injured people of the Pitjanjatjara nation of central Australia, and permanently irradiated vast tracts of their country.
Logic and the truth have nothing to do with the recent bloodbath in the Middle East. Clinton is engaged in a cowardly and cynical attempt to direct domestic attention away from the impeachment process. Iraqi citizens, who have limited food and few medical supplies, were killed and maimed – all to save Clinton’s slippery political hide!
This was a despicable and self-serving act of war which must be opposed by all who believe in the right of nations to self-determination. The U.S. has no right to decide by force who shall lead Iraq nor what the country’s policies should be. Only the Iraqi people have the right to make those decisions.
The U.S. armed Saddam Hussein, then used him to try and overthrow the Iranian Revolution. When he killed an entire generation in the Iran-Iran conflict, abused his own people, gassed Kurdish villagers and murdered Leftists and dissidents, the U.S. stood by. Only when he challenged U.S. hegemony and oil interests in the Gulf did Saddam Hussein become a problem for the U.S. ruling class.
As working people, we stand in solidarity with the Iraqi men, women and children who have suffered so long because of U.S. imperialism. End the Sanctions! Imperialism out of the Middle East – let the Iraqi people deal with Hussein!
