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USFI Statement on the War

Stop The Imperialist Aggression In Afghanistan!

8th October 2001

The horrible mass murder resulting from the suicide attacks of September 11 can in no way justify the abominable bombardment of one of the poorest and most exhausted countries of the world by the richest country and its allies. Continuing on a path which has become increasingly unrestrained over the past ten years, the USA has set itself up as planetary dispenser of justice, simultaneously judge and litigant.

Acting on "proof of guilt" which has been shown only to their closest allies, the USA, with the participation and the support of the latter, unleashed a large-scale aggression against Afghanistan on October 7, which will undoubtedly exacerbate the enormous bloodshed that this country has known since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Once again, the USA, which contributed to the Taliban's seizure of power in Kabul, opposes these fundamentalists by allying itself with others, those of the Northern Alliance. This shows that they have no concern for democratic principles and the interests of women, which, through pure hypocrisy, they purport to cherish only when their own strategic interests are threatened. A fine democratic coalition, between George Bush and his NATO allies, the Saudi kingdom and the Russian slaughterers of the Chechnyan people!

Unlike the Gulf War of 1991, the current offensive seeks the overthrow of the Taliban regime, beyond the liquidation of the Bin Laden network. In Iraq, the USA chose to maintain the regime of Saddam Hussein, for fear of "destabilizing" the region. In Afghanistan, the principal objective is the installation in Kabul of a docile regime in a country whose importance as a passageway for oil and key point of access to Central Asia is well known. Against this new aggression ­ the third large-scale imperialist war in ten years! ­ it is more urgent than ever to mobilize massively, in order to rein in the increasingly aggressive behaviour of the most powerful states. At the same time, it is necessary to oppose the attacks on democratic rights and social entitlements that will accompany the offensive underway.

This imperialist behaviour can only strengthen the tendencies to blind terrorism whose victims will be the civilian populations of the aggressor countries. "Terrorism" can only be ended through the removal of its ultimate cause: the injustice that reigns in the world and for which the US government bears the main responsibility.

 Bureau of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International

 

 



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