ILPS Commission One calls for global actions against
US bombing of Syria
www.ilps.info
04/09/2017
The Commission One of the International League of People’s Struggle
condemns the Trump regime’s April 6 sneak attack on the Syrian Arab
Republic. We call on all our chapters and member organizations in 43
countries to stand with the people of Syria against this deadly
escalation of what has been a six-year proxy war by the US and its
client states Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies,Turkey, Jordan
and Israel against their country. We demand the immediate withdrawal
of all US troops. planes, ships, weapons, contractors, mercenaries and
spies from the soil, waters and air of Syria and from the all of West
Asia and North Africa.
On the morning of Thursday, April 7, US missile warships launched 59
Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian air base, killing at least nine
people, including six children. Twenty-three of the missiles landed in
nearby villages. This escalation comes on the heels of the Trump
regime’s dispatch of more US troops to Syria. It raises the prospect
of direct confrontation between the United States and Russia, which
has been assisting the elected Syrian government against
US-Saudi-funded terrorist armies. The so-called Islamic State (Daesh)
followed up the US air attack with an offensive against Syrian troops
in the area.
The Trump regime claims it attacked Syria in “retaliation” for the
gassing death of 69 civilians, including children, in the
terrorist-occupied town of Khan Sheikoun. The gassing, which the US
claims was done by the Syrian Air Force, allegedly horrified President
Trump. The US air attack was praised by the vilest criminals and
murderers on the face of the earth. This includes US Senators and
congressmen who have voted for countless war crimes around the world
in return for payoffs from the oil industry and the
military-industrial complex. It includes Israel’s bloody-handed Prime
Minister Netanyahu, the imperialist leaders of Britain and France, and
the reactionary monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.
So-called US government outrage over the deaths of civilians due to
chemical weapons is hypocritical. Let us remember that the US is
supplying the Saudi government with white phosphorous and other horror
weapons it is raining down on the children of Yemen. US ships are
helping the Saudi kingdom, the US war industry’s top paying customer,
blockade and starve the people of Yemen. The US supplies the weapons
of mass destruction the racist Israeli state has used to slaughter the
children, women and men of Gaza again and again. It arms the Israeli
soldiers who shoot down Palestinians young and old on an almost daily
basis. Let us remember that on March 25 a US air strike killed nearly
300 civilians in the Iraqi city of Mosul. The US military and CIA has
armed, trained and funded terrorist groups that have carried out
horrendous atrocities in Syria, including rapes, beheadings and
torture on a mass scale.
Humanitarian motives do not and have never had anything to do with the
actions of the US imperialist war machines.
We must also view with deep skepticism the claim that the Syrian
military carried out the chemical attack in Khan Sheikoun. That claim,
without any independent investigation, has been endlessly parroted by
the US corporate media. The US state apparatus has a long history of
lies and fabricated or manufactured “incidents” to justify wars for
corporate profit. We remember the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident
used to justify US mass murder in Vietnam and the Bush regime’s lies
about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Even during the most desperate hours of the war, when it was
overwhelmed on many fronts and running low on munitions, the Syrian
army refrained from using chemical weapons. Allegations that it did
so, such as by the Obama administration in 2013, have been
discredited. The Syrian military disposed of its chemical weapons,
under UN supervision at that time. But there is considerable evidence,
including a 2104 report by journalist Seymour Hersh, that US-backed
terrorist groups in Syria have been supplied with sarin gas captured
in Libya. Those groups include Al Nusra and ISIS.
Russia has said that the recent civilian deaths resulted from the
explosion of a terrorist chemical weapon depot that was hit by an
airstrike by the Syrian Army.
The US attack on Syria belies the myth that the Trump regime
represents some mythical isolationist wing of “national capital” that
is opposed to wars abroad. In fact, the Trump regime represents the
direct rule of oil and military interests. The Trump campaign was
funded from the start by fracking multibillionaires who grew immensely
rich off the Iraq war. Oil interests were being hurt by the Obama
regime’s strategy of using low oil prices to hurt Russia, Iran,
Venezuela and Ecuador economically. These were the forces behind the
Trump’s phony populist campaign They are the most war-hungry sector of
capital.
The US has been at war in Southwest Asia and North Africa for over a
quarter century. By bombing and sanctions, proxy war and direct
invasion the US war machine has killed millions in Iraq, Libya,
Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. This war has been not
only a bonanza but a necessity for the US corporate ruing class. The
biggest beneficiaries are US oil corporations, the military-industrial
complex and the banks that finance them. Syria is not a major oil
producer, but it is the planned route of a pipeline to bring Iranian
and Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean, giving Iran access to Western
markets. The US doesn’t own that oil.
The US attacked Iraq in the wake of the collapse of global oil prices
that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. The Bush regime’s
destruction of Iraq’s national oil industry created an asset-price
bubble that gave US oil monopolies like ExxonMobil their most
profitable years ever.
Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is former CEO of Exxon. The war
against Iraq made the US fracking industry possible. It made the US
the world’s No. 1 energy producer. The collapse of that bubble has put
over a trillion dollars in investment at risk. The defense sequester
voted on by Congress two years ago has put the profits of US arms
corporations in general. Trump regime’s desperation for a broader
confrontation with Syria, Iran and Russia must be seen in that
context. War and oil stocks shot up after the US attack.
The danger of wider war its very real. The US ruling class remembers
the world wars of the 20th century as the best thing that ever
happened. The massive destruction of World War II put Wall Street
banks at the center of the global capitalist economy. The ever-growing
US military-state apparatus has been trying to maintain that position
by force and violence ever since.
It is urgent that the people of the world unite to stop the US-NATO
imperialist war machine and allies agents!
Stop the imperialist war against Syria! Stop the imperialist war
against the people of the world.