the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 10, 2006
“Immigration reform”–under this watchword, right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed through a bill that would turn immigrants without legal papers into felons, and make anyone who helps them, including members of their own family, a felon.
It’s nothing but an attempt by outright reactionary forces to divert the anger of native-born workers from the bosses who are making all of our lives more and more insecure.
Equally disgusting are the hypocrites who played on the hopes of immigrants for “legalization” in order to push through a bill that aids essentially only the bosses.
For example, Ted Kennedy and John McCain proposed a bill giving a kind of semi-legal status to immigrants, hedged in by all sorts of limitations and requirements. In reality, what it did was legally authorize the bosses to hire immigrants, without giving full legal status to the immigrants they hired.
As though that weren’t bad enough, the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote a “compromise” between the Kennedy-McCain bill and the House bill, making the conditions faced by immigrants still worse. Two days later, the Senate Republican leadership came up with a “compromise” of the “compromise.” This “compromise”–with still worse conditions–was said to have the support of 70 of the Senate’s 100 members. But it stalled, supposedly because right-wing Republicans and some Democrats refused to go along with it. There is talk now about a third “compromise” when Congress gets back from its spring recess.
None of these bills really give legal status to immigrants who have been living and working here, many for years.
But without full legalization, an immigrant worker who attempts to fight against low wages and rotten conditions faces expulsion from the country. A bill that “legalizes” you only so long as you are working is a bill that gives your boss a very big weapon against you.
When one part of the working class is forced to work for lower wages and worse conditions because they aren’t quite “legal,” every part of the working class is more vulnerable to attack.
There’s a reason the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports this kind of semi-legalization–it provides labor forced to work for lower wages. That’s why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce went so far as to support and encourage the recent demonstrations of immigrants–just as did the Spanish language radio and TV stations that are owned by some of the biggest U.S. media chains.
By pointing to the open attack in the House bill, the politicians hope to get the support of immigrants for the less obvious attack in the Senate bill.
In effect, the bosses are trying to use the anger of the immigrants to support a bill in Congress that will be an attack on the immigrants themselves.
There is no answer for workers–immigrant or native born–in any of these bills in front of Congress. The only answer is to fight for full legal rights for every worker. When every worker has the same rights, every worker can fight against the real enemy, the bosses who lower all of our wages, worsen all of our working conditions.
The immigrants who flooded out into the streets of some of the biggest cities in the country to protest their illegal status could force the bosses to back off–but not by throwing their support to any of the bills making their way through Congress.
The Chamber of Commerce is not the friend of immigrant workers. No more than the politicians who play on anti-immigrant sentiments are friends of native-born workers.
The bosses and their politicians are the only “foreigners” in this country, the only “aliens”–the ones who should be tossed out.
The workers have plenty of forces when we depend on each other, all of us, native-born and immigrant.
Apr 10, 2006
The bill under consideration in Congress, which turns immigrants into felons, is not the first repressive measure aimed at the Mexican population of this country. In the 1930s, the U.S. government expelled as many as two million people of Mexican ancestry to Mexico, according to California State Senator Joe Dunn. Dunn says 60% of them were U.S. citizens, including many who were born here. Many who were deported could not even speak Spanish.
Those deported were expelled by legal and extra-legal means, whether by immigration agents or vigilante groups similar to the Klan or today’s Minutemen operating along the U.S. border. Some people were loaded onto trains, cars or buses by armed guards. Others left “voluntarily” because of harassment and intimidation. In a 1931 memo, the Los Angeles district director of immigration wrote, “thousands upon thousands of Mexican aliens have been literally scared out of Southern California.”
Campaigns were carried out to deny Mexicans jobs or public aid. A slogan was sent out across Los Angeles by the Chamber of Commerce, “Employ no Mexican while a white man is unemployed.”
Of course, at the time, none of the corporations was hiring anybody. If the Chamber of Commerce chimed in, it was to justify the lack of jobs, and it did so in this disgusting racist way.
Some people from Mexican backgrounds entered the military after being threatened with deportation. Others were given trips to Mexico and told they could return whenever they wanted, only to find that cards they were given marked them as “county charities.”
Anyone who believes that the paltry gains offered in the current immigration proposals can’t be taken away should look at this history. The bosses use immigration in whatever fashion they want. When they want cheap labor, they open the floodgates. When they have used up that labor, they are ready to throw people away.
It’s the bosses who should be deported!
Apr 10, 2006
A 46-year-old Detroit woman, Sherrill Turner, died on February 20, after a 911 operator took her son’s call as a prank.
Her son Robert, five years old at the time, called twice reporting that his mother had passed out. The second time, the 911 operator told him to stop playing on the phone, then dispatched police to the house instead of an EMS unit.
The woman was already dead by the time police arrived, three hours after the first call was made.
In fact, something similar to this happens over and over and over again–because the budget for basic city services has been cut to the bone.
911 operators are in drastically short supply because of these cuts, and they are under incredible stress that is certain to lead to bad decisions like this one. Because of severe shortages of firefighters and EMS units, callers often have to wait over an hour for someone to show up–even when a call is taken seriously.
Detroit has no money for emergency services–and yet, it shells out hundreds of millions of dollars so that two stadiums, three casino-hotels, Compuware and General Motors corporate headquarters, riverfront development and luxury lofts can be built!
Homes burn and people die because the politicians set such priorities. And it’s not just in Detroit. Residents of cities across the country have come to conclude that “911 is a joke.”
In the death of Sherrill Turner, the city government–and the corporations that raid its coffers–all have blood on their hands.
Apr 10, 2006
Tyrone Williams, a 49-year-old Detroit man, was killed last month by carbon monoxide poisoning from an electricity generator. But Williams’ death was no simple accident caused by the sloppy use of a generator.
DTE Energy, the local utility company, had a hand in his death. First they raised their rates on gas and electricity–so much so that the family’s January bill was $300 higher than any they had ever received.
Then they shut off the power to Williams’ home, and failed to restore the power even after his wife had paid the $667 DTE demanded, plus a little extra. Williams’ wife made repeated calls over the next two days to get the company to send someone out. Each time DTE told her someone would be out the next day, until Friday, when they told her she would have to wait until Monday. By the time DTE restored the power, Tyrone Williams was dead.
The electric company tries to present his death as a bureaucratic “snafu.” They blame a customer service representative, who works for a sub-contractor that handles DTE’s customer service calls, for not properly scheduling the service restoration. But who chose to outsource customer service work to a “third-party” provider without the proper training, other than DTE?
The company Williams’ wife Carmen worked for also assisted in his death. She was suddenly laid off at the height of the winter heating season, when utility bills are at their worst. The main reason Tyrone Williams was using the generator was because the family had food in the freezer and could not afford to let the food go to waste. Williams had in fact moved the family out of the house and only went back to check that everything was okay when he was overcome by fumes.
The State of Michigan played a role in Williams’ death. Carmen Williams had to wait to pay the energy bill until her unemployment check, delayed for weeks, finally arrived through the mail. With the state cutting back on staffing at the unemployment offices, the least little problem can delay a check for weeks, if not months!
DTE Energy, the State of Michigan, and Carmen Williams’ employer are all accomplices in Tyrone Williams’ death. Behind them lurks a capitalist system that repeatedly produces similar tragedies.
Apr 10, 2006
In Washington, D.C., Pepco, the electricity supplier, will start charging 12% higher rates this summer. For Pepco’s Maryland customers in the D.C. suburbs, rates are to go up more than 38% for each residence.
Pepco will get 234 million dollars more this year, just for that Maryland rate increase. Of course, the company blames it on the cost of electricity from its supplier.
But Pepco just raised its chief executive’s pay to a million and a half dollars, for salary and bonus. In Richmond, the chief officer of Dominion Virginia Power got 2.3 million dollars for 2005. And the chief executive of Constellation, the parent company of Baltimore Gas and Electric, will get five million dollars next year if the sale of Constellation is completed.
And they want to say that the rate increase is because suppliers’ prices went up? Don’t tell us that lie!
Apr 10, 2006
In 2003, Bush and the Congress passed his last tax breaks, affecting income on investments. The New York Times studied IRS figures on what these tax cuts meant for the 6,000 richest tax payers, who averaged 26 million dollars in income in 2003. This tax cut alone saved them over a half million dollars each!
But the 70% of the population with incomes under $50,000 averaged $10 from this tax break. It’s not surprising, since the vast majority own no stocks or bonds, and in fact have nothing left over to invest after they pay all their bills.
Apr 10, 2006
A recent survey among low-income adults showed that as many as one million people in Los Angeles County often can’t afford to put food on the table. That’s about one in ten county residents.
The study, conducted by UCLA and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, designated these residents as “food insecure,” meaning that these are people who have to choose between food and other expenses, such as rent or medicine. And about one-fourth of them were described as “food insecure with hunger,” a fancy way of saying they regularly go hungry.
The majority of the hungry are not homeless–three out of four live in a house, apartment or mobile home. And many of them–about one in three–have jobs.
These numbers hold at the level of the country as well. In 2004, 35 million people had to choose between buying food and other necessities. And 12 million regularly went hungry.
Why do so many people go hungry, including people who have jobs?
Obviously there is enormous wealth in this country, wealth created by the labor of working people. But year after year the bosses take a bigger and bigger chunk of this wealth for themselves, by laying workers off and cutting wages and benefits. The federal, state and local governments also help the bosses out through subsidies and tax cuts, while cutting welfare and other social programs–when more workers actually need them.
Times have never been better for the wealthy–exactly because they are able to take food out of the mouths of more and more workers and their children.
Apr 10, 2006
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors announced a 100-million-dollar plan to open five centers across the county which would provide temporary shelter for homeless people. The supervisors say that they want to help the homeless to avoid the criminals and drug dealers that plague downtown L.A.’s skid row, where the services for the homeless are now concentrated.
One of the supervisors called this move “an absolutely historic investment by the county of Los Angeles.” Historic indeed, for no one can remember the supervisors, or, for that matter, any other politicians, taking an interest in the affairs of the homeless before!
So why this sudden change of heart? Why else? Areas surrounding skid row are becoming “gentrified.” Developers are turning old, historic buildings into housing for the well-to-do looking for a change from the sterility of the suburbs. One of the single-room occupancy hotels in skid row, the Frontier, has rehabbed parts of its upper floors for rent as luxury lofts!
With money to be made for the developers–the politicians suddenly discover the “plight of the homeless!”
Apr 10, 2006
Detroit, Michigan teachers held a rally to protest having to give up one day’s pay over their next five paychecks. The short paychecks are part of an 11% pay cut they took this year, at the same time that principals and assistant principals received pay increases of up to 10.6%. A couple of weeks ago 1700 teachers called in sick in protest, shutting down 54 schools.
Of course it’s not the principals’ fault–they’re being stiffed, too! The pay increases were just the prod that made the teachers jump. They’re right to be ticked off!
Apr 10, 2006
The next World Cup will take place in Germany from June 9 to July 9.Thirty-six million soccer fans are expected to attend. There will be plenty of commerce for hotels, restaurants and ... prostitution. Germany and Holland are the two countries in the European Union where prostitution is legal, as is pimping under certain conditions. So long as taxes are paid, everything is legal.
Since pimps are, according to these laws, just like bosses, some of them have listed their job openings for prostitutes with government job services. There have been cases where women who applied for jobs tending bar at night were offered jobs in the sex industry! And if a woman refuses to take a job as a prostitute, will she be kicked off unemployment benefits?
The pimps certainly are worried they won’t have enough prostitutes in Berlin for the World Cup. They want 40,000 more brought in from Central and Eastern Europe. The appalling economic conditions there have forced some women into prostitution. In fact, Eastern Europe provides the greatest number of prostitutes for Germany. Pretending that prostitutes are wage workers like any others, the German and Dutch governments close their eyes to the massive trade in women who are fed to the whore houses.
A giant prostitution complex has been constructed next to the main Berlin stadium to accommodate this trade. It is equipped to handle 650 men at a time, while keeping their identities anonymous.
The lawyer defending this mega-bordello of 32,000 square feet declared that “soccer and sex go hand in hand.” None of the international soccer organizations nor the German authorities contradicted his view.
Across the globe, prostitution generates hundreds of billions of dollars in profits. Most of the time the sex trade is supposedly illegal. Countries legalize prostitution, claiming they are forcing out organized crime. But even when it is illegal, prostitution sends enormous rivers of profit into legal channels.
Capitalism, built on profits from slavery and child labor, extracting profits dripping with mud and blood, is perfectly happy to accept the trade in women as a respectable investment–as if it were the same as investing in soap products. And governments, which are perfectly willing to collect taxes from prostitution even when it’s illegal, act like the pimps.
Capitalism, based on the exploitation of almost everyone and on the sale of almost anything, has the same mentality as pimping.
Apr 10, 2006
The following editorial appeared in the April 7 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name in France. It came out after the demonstrations and strikes on April 4 throughout France, with estimates ranging between one million and three million demonstrators. The protests are against the CPE (First Hire Contract) which allows employers to fire workers under age 26 without giving any reason during their first two years on the job.
The day of strikes and demonstrations of April 4 was a bigger success than that of March 28. It was the response to President Chirac, who, on March 31, had announced his decision on television. He signed the law for the CPE (First Hire Contract), and at the same time he asked the bosses not to put it into effect. Chirac refused to withdraw the CPE, although it was the demand of millions of demonstrators, supported by more than three-fourths of the public in opinion polls.
Chirac affirmed that he took account of the “disquiet that is expressed” and said he would ask the government to prepare “two modifications to the law over points that were debated.” The probation period would be reduced from two years to one. Even with this change, the CPE would remain an insecure contract, giving bosses the legal right for a year to shove out the door any youth they hired, how and when they wished.
Chirac also affirmed that, contrary to the current formulation, “the right of the young worker to know the reasons” for termination “will be written into the new law.”
Big deal! So what if a young worker knows why he is discharged–he won’t have any legal means to oppose it, even in the weak way it’s possible to challenge layoffs under a contract of permanent hire.
Even modified, the CPE would remain one more step in the legalization of job insecurity. The CPE and the CNE (for workers in workplaces with less than 20 workers, which also allows discharge for no reason) can’t be fixed up. These laws need to be withdrawn!
More and more workers live with insecurity. They are insecure if they were hired under the numerous forms of temporary contracts that left-wing as well as right-wing governments invented, under the pretext that such contracts would create jobs. There is insecurity for everyone who works, whether they are permanent, supplemental or temporary workers, or are in training programs employed by the government itself. There is insecurity for the increasing number of factory workers hired as temporaries with fewer chances of becoming permanent. How many workers have to survive with temporary jobs that last only a few days or even a few hours? But even permanent workers are more and more insecure because they are threatened with the mass layoffs that big companies are carrying out. In some places the bosses reduce the number employed while keeping output the same; in others they move the work somewhere else, or they lay off simply to raise the price of their shares on the stock market!
The CNE and the CPE are unacceptable because the government uses them to legalize insecurity. The CPE may apply only to young workers under 26 and the CNE to workers in small work places, but they indicate what the bosses intend to spread to everyone.
The current legal restraints on layoffs aren’t very strong, but when insecurity is legalized there won’t be any restraint at all. We can’t accept this.
The union federations all recognized that the CPE wasn’t negotiable, that it must be withdrawn, purely and simply. They maintained this stand on April 5. Very well, but then why agree to meet the heads of the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement, the conservative party) in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate? Why agree to negotiate with the representatives of a government with which there is nothing to negotiate? What is more, the unions are meeting them separately, each federation in turn, when it has been precisely the unity of the union front that was a major characteristic of the movement? Why, contrary to what happened the day after the last demonstrations, didn’t they announce what the next step of the struggle would be? Why allow the government to delay withdrawal of the CPE? Despite their apparently radical proposals, the union federations are ready to offer the government a compromise allowing it to save face in exchange for government recognition.
When the union federations do this, they risk demobilizing the workers and students just when their mobilization is the strongest, when the chance of making the government retreat is greater than ever. The demonstrations where workers, high school and university students found themselves side by side contributed to structure the movement. Moving away from this unity will push the student movement to orient itself toward minority actions, with the danger of alienating themselves from the sympathy of a population which they had largely won to their side.
The high school and university movement is going to continue, in any case. The protest of the working class must also continue to be expressed. There is no reason to offer Chirac a pause in a movement that can still win. All those who have been active for weeks against the CPE and the CNE need to make their demand heard: to continue the struggle, without a break, up to the total withdrawal of the CPE and the CNE.
Apr 10, 2006
The following article is translated and excerpted from the April 7 issue of Lutte Ouvrière. It refers to a problem that arose in the demonstrations referred to in the other article.
Since the beginning of the movement to force the government to repeal its youth job scheme, the police and the CRS (the national SWAT team) arrested 1,052 people in Paris, among whom 590 were prosecuted and 226 were convicted. Throughout the country, 2,600 people were questioned by the police. The government justifies these convictions by the violence which marked the demonstration, and especially by the necessity to repress the action of “smashers.”
All the demonstrators know that these smashers are a problem. Plenty of young demonstrators have been attacked by groups of hoodlums, clearly organized for that purpose, who swoop down on a demonstrator to steal a cell phone, possibly beating the protester up, or several of them throwing some protesters to the ground. Under these circumstances, some of the demonstrators welcomed the intervention of the CRS or plain-clothes police and have even complained that the police haven’t intervened more systematically.
Fortunately, up to now this hasn’t stopped the youth from demonstrating. But the demonstrators can’t rely on the police to protect them. If the police intervene, they hardly pay attention to “details,” as we’ve seen. The CRS often beats up whoever is in front of them, as was shown by the case of the postal militant of the SUD Telecommunications union who was trampled by the cops, putting him in a coma.
What’s true for the police is all the more true for the justice system, which allows a defendant to be tried 48 hours after questioning, leading to prison terms for hundreds of youth questioned by the CRS. A 24-year-old man was sentenced to two months on a prison farm because he supposedly insulted the CRS, who said they saw him throw a beer bottle. Another man, arrested after a demonstration protesting a speech by President Chirac, was given a two-month suspended sentence and 80 hours of community service. A CRS cop said he had thrown a beer bottle at them, although it didn’t hit anyone.
Counting on the police to prevent “smashers” from attacking demonstrators, and counting on the justice system to condemn them, runs the risk of seeing demonstrators and smashers wind up in the same cells and on the same court benches.
The only way to avoid this is for the demonstrators to protect their own marches. They have nothing to fear when they number tens of thousands. Thousands can easily defend themselves against those who number only in the hundreds. The demonstrators have to count on their numbers and on their organization. An efficient system of defense guards is capable of protecting a march. They can include mobile groups who intervene rapidly against anyone attacking demonstrators.
Youth in struggle and workers on strike both need to organize to protect themselves from those who would attack them. We can’t let the actions of a few discourage the many, especially when the movement of hundreds of thousands around the country against the youth job scheme has begun to make the government retreat.
Apr 10, 2006
“tomorrow night, after tonights show, i’ve decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome... I plan on killing the bitches as soon as they walk in and proceding to cut their skin off while cumming in my duke issue spandex..”
This e-mail message was sent by one member of the Duke University lacrosse team to fellow team members just an hour after some of them had gang-raped a woman at a team party.
The woman who was brutalized and another woman had been hired to dance at what they were told would be a bachelor party attended by five men. When they arrived, they found instead 40 Duke lacrosse team members there who were already drunk. All the team members present are white. The two women are black.
A few minutes after the women started to dance, the men started to make racist remarks and physically threaten them. Fearing for their safety, the women began to leave. Before they could escape, one was attacked.
The woman is a 27-year-old mother of two children, a student at North Carolina Central University in Durham. She is former military, from a working class family in the area.
Duke is considered to be an “elite” university of the old-line Southern aristocracy. It costs about $43,000 a year to attend, more than the annual income of most black families in Durham.
At first, police and Duke University officials tried to sweep it under the rug as though it were nothing more than a party that got a little out of hand. But hundreds of students and others from Durham protested, forcing an investigation.
Was this just a few athletes who got out of control, as the news media imply, or a coach who didn’t control his team, as the Duke president says?
No, it’s the reflection of a society in which the hatred of women runs very deep; a society which equates rape with sex and which condones all sorts of violence against women.
If anyone doubts it, look at the sadistic filth a “well-respected” athlete at this “high-class” school bragged about in his e-mail. He equates killing some women with sexual pleasure. And then look at the sports betting website where anyone can place a bet on how many Duke lacrosse players will be shown on their DNA test results to have raped this woman.
The ravaging of women is just another sporting event for these goons.
Apr 10, 2006
“I’m not going to rule it out,” said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales when asked in a congressional hearing whether the president can authorize wiretapping without a court order.
Responded one Congressman: “... if the administration believes it can tap purely domestic phone calls between Americans without court approval, there is no limit to executive power.”
He’s right. But the unlimited executive power didn’t just start with Bush, and is not just about listening to phone calls. The government has not hesitated to throw thousands in jail, beat and torture them, even kill them, when popular mobilizations threatened the wealth of the capitalist class. Sacco and Vanzetti, two 1920s victims of the government’s attempt to crush the workers’ movement in this country, could have testified to this–if the government hadn’t framed them up and executed them (the verdict against them was officially repudiated–but not until 1977). Julius and Ethel Rosenberg could have testified to the government’s lawlessness–except they were framed up and executed for supposedly handing over the secret of the atomic bomb to the Russians in the 1950s, a “secret” “any Russian physicist would have known.” George Jackson, Malcolm X and dozens of other leaders of the black movement in the 1960s and early 1970s could have testified to the bloody repression of the government, except they were also murdered by government agents.
The Bush administration is no different from all the administrations that preceded it–except that it says openly that it wants no limits on its powers.
Apr 10, 2006
General Motors has agreed to sell 51% of GMAC to a financial group fronted by a company named Cerberus, for a total of 14 billion dollars over three years. They say they"re doing this to increase the investment ratings of both companies, and to raise money for GM.
That’s ridiculous! GMAC has assets of more than 300 billion dollars–FAR more than this selling price. If GMAC just sold off its loans it would have more than 186 billion dollars! And–according to GM’s figures, GMAC is the only profitable part of the company, making around 2.5 billion dollars last year, compared to a more than 10 billion dollar loss for GM as a whole. And yet they sold it for 14 billion dollars?!??!!
The whole deal is nonsense. GM makes its profit from making and selling cars. They may use GMAC as a place to park their profit, hiding it from the workers so they don’t have to pay profit sharing. But in any case, according to their own figures, they"d be much worse off after taking the only profitable part of the company and selling it for a song.
So whatever is going on, it’s not what they say it is; that just doesn’t make sense.
What IS going on? GM has the books–and GM’s not telling. From the outside, we can only guess.
Maybe GM does plan on filing for bankruptcy, and by selling GMAC beforehand, they"re shielding it and its assets from their creditors.
Maybe they"re simply taking another step in crying poor, hoping to scare their workers into accepting huge wage and benefit cuts.
Maybe Citigroup, which owns GM’s major bank, and which is behind Cerberus in this deal, wants its money out of manufacturing to focus completely on short-term financial speculation. Maybe they"re using this deal to effectively split GM off from GMAC–and not the other way around.
We can’t know what’s in the minds of these vultures... but whatever they"re doing, they"re up to no good!
Apr 10, 2006
“If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action,” George Bush said back in 2003. White House spokesman Scott McClellan pledged, “If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.”
A few days ago, the leaker was discovered. And it was none other than Bush himself!
Now, about taking that “appropriate” action....
Apr 10, 2006
Last week, John Kerry made the news by calling for a complete withdrawal from Iraq by the end of the year.
John Kerry? The 2004 presidential candidate who presented himself as a better “commander-in-chief” than George Bush? The same Kerry who proposed to increase, not decrease, the number of troops in Iraq?
Yes, it’s the same Kerry, and other Democrats, such as Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, have joined him. Not to mention the 80 Republicans who say that they want a debate in the House on getting the troops out of Iraq.
Are these politicians, who have already voted to spend more than 300 billion dollars for the war, going to refuse Bush more money when he comes asking again?
No, of course not! All this posturing means is that these politicians follow the polls and know how the U.S. population feels about the war in this election year.
As for pulling out of Iraq, that will happen only if the troops themselves, joined by their relatives, friends and other working people back home, make it impossible for the government to carry out the occupation.
Apr 10, 2006
During her brief visit to Iraq last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blamed Iraqi politicians for still not having formed a government almost four months after the parliamentary elections. “We have forces on the ground and have sacrificed here,” she said, so the U.S. has “a right to expect that this process [of forming a government] will keep moving forward.”
As if the U.S. occupation and the policies of the Bush administration had nothing to do with the current crisis in Iraq!
In fact, the inability of Iraqi politicians to form a new government can hardly be the main concern of Iraqi people these days, when their country is submerged in a full-fledged civil war. And, speaking of “sacrifice,” the thousands who are dying in this war are Iraqi civilians, victims of torture and execution whose bodies are discovered by the dozens every day!
Rice’s arrogant and hypocritical words reflect the attitude of the Bush administration. In a speech last month, Bush himself tried to put the blame for the disastrous situation on the shoulders of the Iraqi people: “They looked into the abyss as to whether or not they want a civil war or not, and chose not to.”
As if the Iraqi people, who are the victims of this bloodbath, made some kind of conscious decision to have a civil war!
Of course, what Bush aims at with such statements is for American people to think that any civil war in Iraq is the result of long-standing religious divisions. But nothing could be further than the truth.
Until the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq was one of the most secular countries in the Middle East. Especially in the cities, people belonging to the two main religious groups, Shiites and Sunnis, lived together with little obvious conflict or animosity. This didn’t change even during the last part of Saddam Hussein’s regime, when he used some degree of religious rhetoric.
But the U.S. invasion changed this situation. Northern Iraq, where the population is made mostly of ethnic Kurds, had already been under the control of Kurdish militias, funded by the U.S. In the rest of the country, where the population is mainly Arab, Saddam’s fall created a political vacuum. This vacuum was filled by Shiite religious leaders and remnants of Saddam’s state apparatus, which was mainly Sunni. The U.S. encouraged these leaders to form militias and relied on their help to fight the rising insurgency. For example, Shiite and Kurdish militias were part of the attack on Falluja, a Sunni city besieged by the U.S. in November 2004.
Once the U.S. began to use the militias against the population in this fashion, it opened the door for more violence–especially since the elections in December. Now that power is up for grabs, the militias have become more aggressive. When Shiite militias attack Sunni civilians, the Sunni militias use it as an excuse to attack Shiite civilians, and vice versa. And militias on both sides use the threat of more attacks to reinforce their popular bases. That is, they try to get more people from “their” religious group to turn to them for protection. The fact that there are three different Shiite militias competing, and sometimes fighting, against each other makes the situation even worse for the population.
No, this violence in Iraq is not the result of existing ethnic and religious differences, as Bush & Co. want us to believe. The Iraqi people never wanted this bloodbath, nor did they start it. The Bush administration itself is directly responsible for the catastrophe that has befallen Iraq.