Down with the imperialist war and all the governments instigating it!
Defend Iraq against the Anglo-American invaders!

Statement of the Movement for the Refoundation of the Fourth International

 

1.    US imperialism, its British acolyte and all their accomplices in the capitalist world have opened the floodgates of barbarism, generated by their decayed social system, by launching, finally, their military campaign against Iraq. This is not solely an unprovoked aggression against the Iraqi people; it is a new wave of crimes against humanity.

       The new insane Nero in the White House, George W. Bush, looking Iraq on flames and reading the war declaration, cynically acknowledged that an unknown number of innocent lives of civilians will be sacrificed as “collateral damages” and, furthermore, that aggression against Iraq and “regime change” in Baghdad are only the initial steps in a protracted indefinite terrorist “war on terror” all over the Middle East and the entire planet. Iran, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, a series of former Soviet Republics (according to a statement by the Putin regime itself), another 60 countries named as a part of the paranoiac “Axis of Evil” are targets in an open ended list for imperialist terrorist aggressions.

        U.S. imperialism’s war aims are not limited to military occupation of the oil-rich Iraq but to re-shape the political map of the entire Middle East and to radically re-structure all the relations between States and classes internationally according to the urgent needs of the escalating and insoluble world capitalist crisis.

       As it is well known, the neo-Hitlerites now in command in Washington, the “neo-conservative” gang of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney already in 1997 had drafted a “Project for the New American Century’ or PNAC, where they had called for “removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power” and a “re-assertion of US supremacy” in this strategic region and all over the world. PNAC was rightly characterized as “a blueprint for U.S. global domination”. The storm of Cruise and Tomahawk missiles on Baghdad from March 20, 2003 onwards is the first act of implementing this nightmarish scenario.

        But the grandiose “Project for a New American Century” will lead rather to an “Anti-Yankee Century”. The warmongers and war criminals have underestimated both the reactions and resistance of the oppressed masses in the region and all over the world as well as the impact of the war on the deepening crisis of their own social system.

       Finance Globalization of the last decades not only was unable to contain the crisis or initiate a new epoch of triumphant Capitalism all over the planet but it led to social catastrophes, international financial crashes, bankruptcies of entire countries such as Argentina and it has degenerated into a series of ever more devastating wars. Imperialism is clearly manifests its nature as the historical stage of capitalist decay and barbarism, an epoch of wars and revolutions.

       The collapse of the Soviet Union did not regenerate a historically decayed capitalist system. A decade after, capital finds again its barrier in capital itself.

 

2.   The re-assertion of U.S imperial policy is a manifestation not of the “invincible” strength of the “single superpower in the world” as the impressionists and the apologists claim. It is a manifestation of the decline of the most powerful hegemonic capitalist force, America itself, in the framework of the historical decline and crisis of world capitalism. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 and the historic victory of the Vietnamese revolution in 1975 had marked the turning point.  From the 1980s onwards U.S. capitalism is transformed from the biggest exporter to the biggest importer of capital, financing its federal and trade deficits with foreign capitals inflows. It cannot regulate its own internal contradictions without world equilibrium, which has collapsed with the eruption and unfolding of the world capitalist crisis. American capitalism, despite its superiority in relation to European and Japanese capitalisms, has accumulated in its foundations all the world contradictions. American capital urgently needs a new form of domination in the post Cold War chaotic world.

        This reshaping of international political and class relations by war means initiate a period of political explosions and social upheavals. U.S foreign policy has been transformed into the most radicalizing factor in world politics by driving millions in the streets in anti-war and anti-imperialist action, by destabilizing capitalist regimes and governments in every Continent, by exacerbating all the economic and political contradictions of world Capitalism.

 

3.   Born from the crisis, the war is deepening the crisis in all its forms. The worldwide trends towards depression and deflation will accelerate. The European Union is particularly vulnerable but the United States economy, the center of the world crisis, will not escape from the moment of truth.

        The war drive had exacerbated all the inter-imperialist antagonisms, dramatically escalated the conflict between Europe and America, split NATO and the European Union, destroyed the United Nations, as we knew it after World War II. A period of political crises and convulsions has begun. Millions of oppressed masses, particularly the youth, participate in a stream of mass demonstrations and anti-wear actions in all the countries both of the center and of the periphery, on a scale never seen since the Vietnam War. Many months before the war millions were in the streets. Since March 20, the tide of a mass anti-war movement continues to grow all over the world, from New York, San Francisco and London to Buenos Aires, Cairo, Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, Madrid, Bilbao, Amman, Paris, Berlin, Mexico City, Sanaa, Sydney and Tokyo. This “Cities Storm” of the peoples has superseded the imperialist “Operation Desert Storm” of the 1991 Gulf War. The masses become an integral all-powerful factor in world politics affecting war operations, undermining all the political preparations of the ruling classes, destabilizing governments and regimes. There won’t be a regime change only in Baghdad. The battle cry of the Argentinean people ¡Que se vayan todos! Everybody has to go! - is on the way to be globalized.

 

4.    The imperialist invaders have to confront not only the heroic people of Iraq in the battlefield but the unprecedented world anti-war movement as well.

       Now more than ever before the world working class, the youth and all the oppressed masses, all the workers’ organizations and popular movements have to escalate a non stop anti-war campaign with mass demonstrations, strike actions and General Strikes, blockades of US and British Embassies and military bases, interrupting all transfer of military personnel and material by railways, harbors, airports etc. Particularly in the countries participating in the US-led war campaign, the demand no one soldier, not one penny for the war, bring the troops home has to be stressed. This reactionary imperialist war has to be stopped and defeated by mass class action and Iraq and its people to be unconditionally defended until victory.

       We call the Kurdish people and its fighters to reject any form of collaboration with the US imperialist and Turkish armed forces, to resist their intervention, to block any attempt to open a Northern Front of imperialist invasion, to defeat any attempt of US and/or Turkish occupation of Kirkurk, Mossul and the region of South Kurdistan. For the right of national self-determination of the Kurdish people! For the unity of the Kurdish and Iraqi Arab people to defeat the imperialist invaders!

        The Kurdish and the Palestinian peoples will pay, together with the peoples of the entire region, an enormous price if this imperialist war campaign wins. Defeat the “transfer” of the Palestinian population planned by the Zionists war dogs of Bush! Down with the Sharon Zionist terror state machine and occupation! For the right of national self-determination of the Palestinian people! Victory to Intifada! For a Secular Socialist Palestine in its entire historical territory and in the framework of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!

       Illusions spread on the role of the United Nations or of the European, particularly French and German imperialism and any form of class collaboration with the capitalist class at home in the name of “peace” has to be rejected. Political independence of the working class is crucial to unite around it all the popular masses against the imperialist war and the social system that generates it. The revolutionary forces have to intervene boldly in the political crises produced by the war to transform them into revolutionary situations and turn the imperialist war into a war of liberation from imperialism’s yoke and capitalist slavery.

       The road to a world with peace and justice is the road of the world socialist revolution!

       We call the vanguard fighters all over the world to join the fight to build a workers’ revolutionary International, the struggle for the Refoundation of the Fourth International to lead this struggle against the imperialist war and all its governments, for workers’ power and world Socialism.

 

              The Movement for the Refoundation of the Fourth International March 23, 2003