Struggle-La Lucha statement: No to U.S. war on Iran!

Solidarity with Iran at Queer Liberation March in New York June 30. SLL photo: Greg Butterfield

End U.S. sanctions from Iran to Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe and People’s Korea

Stop the war on workers from Iran to the world’s im/migrants and refugees

“I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. … We had entire training courses.” That’s what Trump regime Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told students at Texas A&M University on April 15.

On June 14, Pompeo told reporters that “Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today.” On June 16, he told Fox News, “There’s no doubt. The intelligence community has lots of data, lots of evidence.” He didn’t give any.

Embarrassed by the lies of U.S. officials about the supposedly ever increasing threats coming from Iran, a senior British commander of the Combined Joint Task Force, which the U.S. leads in its military operations in Iraq, felt compelled to state in an interview in the Guardian on May 14 that he had no evidence of any escalation of the war threat from Iran, directly contradicting the U.S.

This – like countless prior war drives promoted by the U.S. government, from both Democratic and Republican presidents – is built on lies, and a repeat of the current period of endless wars, starting against Afghanistan and Iraq.

The cost of war in Iraq alone is staggering and, including all U.S. wars since 2001, the figure tops $6 trillion.  Seven thousand U.S. soldiers have died and 600,000 were injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this pales in comparison to the lives lost by Iraqis, especially children. The best estimates now put the cost of war in Iraq since 2003 to 2.4 million lives lost, with at least 500,000 of them being children. Add to that the worldwide refugee crisis resulting from Bush’s war in Iraq and Obama’s wars in Libya and Syria.

You don’t need an economics degree to understand and see the cost of these wars in terms of poverty, homelessness, and lack of suitable health care, especially for children.

War breeds migrant crisis — and more concentration camps

In June, a physician visiting a detention center on the southern border of the U.S. compared it to a “torture facility.” And the number of children dying in these facilities continues to rise. 

Today’s migrant and refugee crisis is a direct result of U.S. wars, a crisis catapulting as a result of U.S.-led wars and coups from Iraq to Libya, Honduras and Syria. The privatized detention centers — like the privatized jail industry in the U.S. — are making record profits derived from overcrowded and underserved facilities that reflect a history of concentration camps and genocide.

A war with Iran, by all measures, would make things much worse. According to former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, “If you think the war in Iraq was hard, an attack on Iran would, in my opinion, be a catastrophe.” According to a 2013 study by the American Federation of Scientists, a new war on Iran would likely cost up to $2 trillion. That’s just within three months. Just imagine how those dollars translate into blood and misery and more concentration camps.

Already, the U.S. military is the single greatest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. This would increase that manyfold – a real threat to our very existence. 

Both Trump’s administration and the Democrats – who often justify the pretext for war, then support it – are motivated by their corporate sponsors, especially the oil monopolies. They see these wars as opportunities to increase their profits and use them as justifications to encourage further cutbacks to vital social services. 

After the Great Depression and up until 1973, the share of wealth of the 1% vs. the 99% was decreasing. Since then, that trend has reversed, allowing the pay of CEOs to increase up to 271 times greater than that of the average worker. The spending on war is a big business and a great contributor to stealing the wealth created by the workers for the sake of profits soaked in the blood of children.

Iran – a country whose development was hijacked for 26 years by the U.S. installment of the Shah of Iran until the revolution of 1979 — is surrounded by U.S. bases. No such threat to the U.S. exists.  And in regards to terrorism, it is Iran that has been fighting the spawn of U.S. wars, from ISIS to al-Qaida, instead of supporting them as the U.S. and Saudi Arabia do in Syria and Yemen. 

Endless war is how the ruling class in this country deals with a system that does not work – a system facing a global crisis of overproduction caused by the private ownership of the means of production, by bosses who care about nothing but ever increasing profits. But, as the profits increase, especially through war, so does the looming and greater economic crisis around the corner.

The war threat is real, and it’s coming from these shores. Trump states that he can unilaterally declare war on Iran with no congressional approval. We know that Congress serves at the pleasure of it’s corporate sponsors, so any real fightback against war will depend on the determined and loud voices of the people, demanding money for jobs, education, housing and health care – not war.

Here in the U.S., we play a crucial role in standing up to the war profiteers. We need to take action. Taking our opposition to war to the streets is crucial. We should follow the example of the workers who walked off their jobs after Wayfair refused to stop selling furniture to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their concentration camps. Call on your family, friends and coworkers to put a halt to the war industry however they can.

U.S. imperialism— Hands off Iran!


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