Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR): Imperialism Wants a New War in the World

From Unity & Struggle No. 25, Spring/Summer 2013 Brazil To satisfy its thirst for profit, the powerful war industry in the U.S. and other countries want another war in the world, whether it is against Syria or Iran, or against both countries at the same time. To do this, the gigantic propaganda machine of capitalism spreads lies and hides the fact that the CIA made agreements with Al-Qaeda to organize attacks against Syria. Syria is not a socialist country and, therefore, it is not democratic. The principal law of the country’s economy is profit and those who rule and govern are the class of the rich. The elections are manipulated, those who fight for a revolution and real socialism are persecuted and there are numerous cases of corruption in the country. Those with money, the rich families, manage to resolve their problems, but those without, the vast majority of the population, suffer to even get a job. Despite having socialism in its name and program, the Baath Party (Arab Socialist Renaissance Party) in practice does not defend the scientific socialism of Marx and Lenin, even though in its constitution in 1963 it was a progressive party, it nationalized oil and the land and adopted measures against foreign plunder of the country. But since the 1980s, it has become an instrument in the service of the privileges of a few hundred families and private groups. Consequently, several multinationals have ever more businesses in Syria. For two years the Italian multinational arms company, Finmeccanica, has been among the suppliers of the Syrian government. Finmeccanica is the eighth largest supplier of the Pentagon and also produces in association with the U.S. company Lockheed Martin. As a dependent country, Syria is greatly suffering the consequences of the present capitalist economic crisis. This is aggravated by the fact that since the 1990s the government has adopted a series of neoliberal reforms that allow for the penetration of foreign capital, it has eliminated the welfare programs and reduced public investment by 50%. Large tracts of land in the city have been privatized and given to large enterprises that raised prices of real estate, forcing thousands of families to live on the outskirts of the cities and to form slums. Today, the country has a large number of unemployed youths, inequality is increasing greatly and poverty is growing. This led to the fact that, in March of 2011, amid the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, the youth took to the streets demanding social and political changes in the country. It was under these circumstances that the imperialist countries began to operate, sending mercenaries who had been in Iraq to Syria to organize attacks and recruit those dissatisfied with the regime in order to form an army. Even the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda was used by the CIA and is an active member of the so-called Free Syrian Army. Also, the reactionary Turkish government of Tayyip Erdogan bombed Syria at the service of the imperialist strategy, fulfilling the role of provocateur seeking to accelerate the new imperialist war. But it is not to put an end to capitalism nor to corruption much less to uphold human rights in Syria that the United States, France, Britain and Germany want to bomb Syria and overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad. Incidentally, it is enough to note what occurred when those countries took over Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq after the military interventions of the imperialist countries to see what will happen to Syria in a NATO attack. Indeed, none of these countries has become more democratic or less violent after the wars of which they were victims. On the contrary, today in Libya, in various public buildings the flag of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda waves, the one that is accused of carrying out the attacks on the Twin Towers in the United States, which killed more than 3,000 U.S. citizens and which last September 11 led an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. In Afghanistan, between January 1 and June 30, 2012, 1,145 people died and 1,945 were injured due to attacks. Women and children made up 30% of the victims. If the imperialist powers had any respect for human rights, the United States would not have financed and aided the military coup in Honduras, tried to overthrow the government of Hugo Chavez and would not continue to support and maintain the bloody dictatorships in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The defense that Russia and China made of the Syrian government has nothing to do with respect for the self-determination of the peoples. Let us recall that these two countries were favorable to the criminal wars against Iraq and Afghanistan and that they supported the various economic sanctions against Syria and Iran, depriving millions of people of food and medicine. The old lie repeated Furthermore, to justify a new imperialist war, the United States and other imperialist powers are repeating the same argument (or rather, the same lie) used against Iraq: Saddam has chemical weapons of mass destruction, or against Libya: Gaddafi is massacring the civilian population. Therefore, the main reason raised by the United States and its allies to pressure the UN to approve the attack on Syria and use its deadly war machine made up of military satellites, nuclear weapons, submarines, drones, intercontinental missiles and millions of armed men deployed in over 1,000 military bases in about 50 countries, is that Syria has “powerful chemical weapons that can be used against the population.” Look at what the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said, on September 28, when he was asked by the U.S. media about chemical weapons depots in Syria: “U.S. intelligence reports state that the arsenal is in secure locations, but some of them have been moved. It is not clear when the weapons were transferred, nor whether that movement took place recently.” The story goes on to say that the U.S. believes that Syria has dozens of chemical and biological weapons depots scattered throughout the country. In late August, President Barack Obama declared: “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also with all the other fighters, the red line would be when we start to see a whole bunch of chemical weapons being moved and used. That would change our calculus.” There has never even been an international mission to Syria to investigate whether or not the country has chemical weapons. And now, not only that the country has them, but that they are transferring them from one place to another. But how can one give credit to a government that has already lied so many times? Let us recall some of them: it said it would not drop atomic bombs on Japan and it dropped them; it said it would not use biological weapons against Vietnam and it used them; it said that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that was a lie. It says Iran is producing nuclear weapons, but so far, despite various inspections by the IAEA it was not able to find a single nuclear weapon in the country; however, according to the Pentagon the U.S. has 5,113 nuclear weapons and Israel has several hundred. Moreover, what has mainly appeared about Syria are lies and disinformation. On September 28, U.S. and French news agencies made the following report: “Yesterday was the second consecutive day of bombings in the capital (Damascus). Two organizations of anti-Assad activists announced that several bodies were found in a suburb south of the capital. Apparently, the deaths were caused by forces loyal to the dictatorship.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 40 bodies, including women and children, were dumped in the suburb of Thiyabiyeh. The leader of the organization, Rami Abdul-Rahman, stated he had no details about the deaths. Other groups opposed to Assad, the Local Coordination Committees, estimated that a total of 107 bodies had been found, that many of the bodies showed signs of execution and some of the victims were beheaded. The numbers indicate one of the worst massacres of civilians since the start of the uprising. (O Globo, September 28, 2012). Note that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had no details about the 40 deaths. The other said there were 107 deaths. Was it they did not learn how to count or that they did not have time to fix the numbers? And who are the real murderers? Crimes against the Syrian people, murders and executions are not uncommonly practiced by the so-called rebel forces of Syria. Look at what the Brazilian Ambassador Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, head of an independent international panel investigating the situation in Syria, said unexpectedly: “there are reasonable grounds to establish that anti-government forces of that country are perpetrating assassinations, extrajudicial executions and torture”. Paulo Pinheiro also denounced the fact that the use of children under the age of 18 years by armed opposition groups is increasing, that these forces do not identify their members with real uniforms or insignia to distinguish them from civilians. Crimes committed by these elements, such as kidnappings, torture and ill-treatment of captured government soldiers, were also rejected by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. Concluding, Pinheiro criticized the government for carrying out indiscriminate attacks, such as air strikes and artillery shelling of residential areas. He also opposed the application of sanctions against Syria, because they constitute a denial of the fundamental rights of the people of that country, where according to the UN there are 2.5 million people who need humanitarian assistance. The specialist reiterated the need for a political solution in Syria, stressing that “there is no possibility of a military solution” (Correio do Brasil, September 22, 2012). This is the truth. Why imperialism wants war? Nevertheless, the big bourgeois media want to convince people of the need for another imperialist war; they spread more and more lies, reminding us of Hitler’s propaganda minister, the Nazi Joseph Goebbels, who stated: “a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.” Actually, what is behind the war that is developing in Syria, which has killed 25,000 Syrians, are the interests of the imperialist powers in controlling a country that produces oil and natural gas – Syria produces 380,000 barrels of oil per day and has reserves of 2.5 billion barrels and 240 billion cubic meters of natural gas; it is located in a strategic region of the Middle East and borders on Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel. Moreover, Syria is forced by circumstances, since part of its territory, the Golan Heights, has been occupied by Israel since 1967; it is a country that has supported the fight for a Palestinian State and has almost 500,000 Palestinian refugees on its territory. Thus, the replacement of the current Syrian government by a government subservient to the domination of the U.S., France and England in the region, besides ensuring the monopolies in these countries control over the oil and gas, would also weakens Iran and the struggle of the Palestinian people and would facilitate the political control of the Middle East. In short, this is a war to secure the interests of the multinationals such as Exxon (U.S.), General Dynamics (U.S.), Raytheon (U.S.), BAE Systems, EADS (Europe), Finmeccanica (Italy), L-3 Communications (U.S.) and United Technologies (U.S.). In fact, there are various proofs of the presence of CIA paramilitaries in Syria; the government has denounced to the UN the presence of 60,000 mercenaries acting in the country paid by the imperialist powers. The so-called Free Syria Army receives a lot of money and weapons from Britain, France and the U.S. According to the BBC, the British news agency, the British government gave more than $7 million in “medical supplies and communications equipment” to Syrian armed groups. France, which held Syria as a colony until 1949, defended, through its Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius that “Syrian liberated areas under rebel control will receive financial, administrative and medical assistance.” The French Foreign Minister promised aid of 5 million Euros (12.8 million reales) to the opponents. On September29, the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, announced more than $30 million in assistance for food, water and medical services and more than $15 million in “communication equipment” to the unarmed political opposition. Now, despite the fact that the UN adopted sanctions against Syria – the Syrian government is recognized by that organization and by hundreds of countries – this intervention violates all international laws and shows that imperialism long ago threw the principle of peaceful coexistence among countries and respect for the self-determination of nations into the garbage bin. These, therefore, are the reasons why one more imperialist war is on the way. This situation places before all free men and women who do not want or accept a world dictatorship of capital and the enslavement of mankind by a handful of imperialist countries governed by a half dozen banks and monopolies, the question of what to do to stop these genocides and prevent new wars from being unleashed by capitalist powers. Such powers, immersed in a serious economic crisis, see their salvation in increasing the exploitation of the workers, seizing the wealth of the people and dominating the world. In the words of Che Guevara: “Capitalist imperialism has been defeated in many partial battles. But it is a significant force in the world and one cannot expect its final defeat without the effort and sacrifice of all.”1 Luis Falcao, PCR CC 1 Che Guevara, Speech at the Economic Seminar of Afro-Asian Solidarity, 1965