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The Michigan Socialist | News |
World News
‘The people of Iraq are not the enemy’
The following is excerpted from a
statement by Ben Burgis, Chairperson of the Military Outreach
Commission of the Socialist Party of Michigan. The full text is
available on
the SPMI's MOC page.
IN THE LAST few days, the long-term trend of armed
resistance by individuals and small groups of Iraqis against their
foreign conquerors has exploded into an outright, mass-based popular
uprising....
A full transfer of power to a provisional
government formed by the rebels and empowered to organize direct
elections to a constitutional convention could be secured within
days, and there is no logistical reason why the full, orderly
withdrawal of American and “coalition” soldiers from Iraq (protected
by the surrender agreement) would have to take longer than the three
weeks it took them to drive to Baghdad (through heavy fighting) in
the first place....
The movement’s message to those troops stationed
in Iraq should be terribly simple: Unlike Bush and his accomplices,
we truly support you; we believe that your blood is worth more than
Iraq’s oil. Lay down your arms!
Camp out in your bases and refuse to go on patrol.
Refuse to fire on crowds of Iraqis who want what we in America
ourselves gained by force of arms in the 18th century — independence
from foreign rule. The people of Iraq are not your enemy.
The people who sent you off to die for the sake of
oil profits, regional control and ‘reconstruction contracts’ are the
enemy, in Iraq no less than in shop floor struggles for better wages
and working conditions back home.
Being a soldier does not make you less a citizen
entitled to equal protection under the law.
According to the U.S. Constitution and foreign
treaties signed by the United States government, thereby becoming
supreme law according to that Constitution, you have no legal
obligation to follow immoral, illegal orders to fight in Bush’s
dirty war of counterinsurgency.
Your efforts in Iraq and ours in the United
States, combined with the ongoing uprising of the Iraqis to
emancipate themselves, can result in an American withdrawal, so that
the Iraqi people can have national independence and free elections.
When that happens, you can come home and help us
settle accounts with the unelected administration that sent you to
Iraq in the first place and is openly planning to steal the next
election through the privatization of vote-counting into the hands
of GOP-friendly corporations — with an “opposition” party that acts
as a knowing accomplice to that administration’s crimes — with the
unelected media barons who monopolize our public airwaves to spread
that administration’s lies and with the unelected aristocracy of
corporate executives and stockholders on whose behalf the war is
being fought.
You need to come home and join us in fighting for
the same things for this country that the Iraqis want for Iraq, in a
movement for civil rights and free elections in the United States of
America. |
