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
Mar 9, 2009
February, 651,000 people lost their jobs. In the last 12 months, over five million people were cut off the job rolls. The February rate of unemployment, 8.1%, was the highest since 1983. That’s what the official statistics say.
But official statistics paint a very inaccurate picture of the real world in which we work. To put it bluntly, officialdom lies.
During Bill Clinton’s administration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics “revised” the way it counted the unemployed–and with the flick of some bureaucrat’s pen, a large chunk of the unemployed “disappeared” off the face of the earth, or at least out of government reports!
Today, the government’s job report hides more than half of all those who are unemployed–especially most of those hardest hit by the shrinking job market, the long-term unemployed. And this “official” figure of 8.1% ignores all those workers who once were working full time, want to work full time, but had their hours cut back–to as little as two a week, for example.
For officials, ensconced in some plushy government office, what does it matter if you lost 38 hours of work–what does it matter if you can’t pay your mortgage and feed your family with a two-hour paycheck? In their statistics, you are still “employed.”
A few economists have tried to undo all the doctoring done to “official” statistics. They show that unemployment and underemployment actually stands, not at 8.1% of the work force today, but at 19.1%.
That feels like the world we inhabit: almost one out of every five people cannot find enough work. This is worse than it’s been going back to long before 1983–going all the way back to 1941, the tail end of the last Great Depression.
The capitalists, in their drive for greater profit, have been on a productivity binge, wringing every last bit of value out of our labor, year after year, by hook or by crook, getting more work out of fewer people.
Productivity shot up, the number of workers employed went down.
The simple fact is that we have been working ourselves out of a job, and we have been doing it even as the recession develops. The Wall Street Journal, the bosses’ mouthpiece, calls the large increase in productivity over the last eight years “stunning.”
“Stunning” it may be–but when productivity’s benefits are not shared out to the workers whose labor produced it, the consequence can only be ... catastrophic.
Jobs are cut. The consequence of job cuts is ... more job cuts.
With fewer people working, fewer buy; fewer goods and services are needed, fewer produced, more people thrown out of work, reducing still further the need for goods and services, throwing more people out of work...
The vicious circle is turning. Where does it stop?
The capitalists themselves won’t stop it. They will scrape for the very last little bit of profit out of the very last factory, the very last office–even if that means they lock down their whole economy. Not only does their greed make them incapable of answering society’s needs; in their chase for profit, they become capable of destroying their own system.
We have to impose our priorities on the capitalists.
The first priority is a job for everyone, a decent paying job. If we produce more, then cut our hours. There’s no reason, with this big increase in productivity, that every last one of us couldn’t be working–working many fewer hours, for much more pay. And that would put more people back to work.
Why not? That’s what productivity can do, when workers insist on taking its benefits for their account.
But we have to set the priorities. We produce all those goods and services. It’s only right their benefits be used for our account, and for the account of society as a whole.
Mar 9, 2009
President Obama has called his health care plan “a historic commitment to reform that will lead to lower costs and quality, affordable health care for every American.”
If Obama wants to reform health care, there is an obvious solution: Make health care government-funded and centrally organized. Cut out the companies sucking profits from our health: the insurance companies, the drug companies and medical equipment companies. Set the prices they will be paid. This would allow everyone to be covered, and for much less money than what the U.S. spends on medical care today.
There are obvious examples: centrally organized health care exists in countries around the world. These systems cover their entire populations, and they run far more efficiently–and, yes, more cheaply–than in the U.S. They aren’t perfect, it’s certainly true–because they still exist within profit systems, dealing with companies pushing to make profit. But all of them, no matter how serious their problems, provide better health care for their populations–across the board, by any measure.
This isn’t what the Obama administration proposed. Instead, he called for a “summit meeting”–with representatives from the drug industry, insurance industry, and hospitals, the same groups that created this bloated train wreck of a system in the first place! The same people who have a vested interest in keeping things fundamentally the same, with money continuing to flow into their pockets.
THESE are the ones who will form Obama’s health care policy. THEY are the ones it will help!
Mar 9, 2009
A new 300-bed hospital just opened in a Detroit suburb, with all private rooms, and state of the art medical technology. An ad for this satellite facility of the Henry Ford Hospital system explained that private rooms are important because they cut the risk of hospital infections in half. Nurses will have the ability to give medication without being disturbed, so as to cut down on the risk of giving the wrong medicine or dosages.
Great. Henry Ford should set up all its hospitals this way. But no, it’s only this one–opened up far out of Detroit in a wealthy suburb, out of reach, geographically and financially, for the vast majority of the population in the area.
The U.S. medical system features one kind of care for the wealthy, a lesser care for those with medical insurance, and rotten care for the 87 million of us without insurance at some point in any year!
Mar 9, 2009
Obama appointed Nancy-Ann DeParle to head the new White House Office of Health Reform.
DeParle has been a Washington insider for many years. As head of the Health Care Financing Administration, she implemented changes in 1997 that allowed private insurance companies to drain additional billions of dollars from the Medicare program.
Since then, she has worked at JP Morgan Partners and the private equity firm CCMP Capital, advising both on investments in health care companies. She also served on the boards of directors of medical companies Boston Scientific, Cerner, DaVita and Medco Health Solutions (one of the biggest prescription drug providers).
DeParle has a record of running healthcare for the profit of private insurance companies, drug companies, for-profit hospitals, etc.
So what kind of “reform” do you think she will she lead?
Mar 9, 2009
Nearly seven% of all households in the Baltimore-Washington area are behind at least $200 to $300 in paying their utility bills. And this doesn’t include the lowest-income households that receive energy assistance, that is, reductions on their utility bills. The utility companies legally can terminate service on April 1.
Turn off the heat and electricity? These are basic necessities of life. In winter people can freeze to death and in summer they can die of heat-related illnesses.
Yet the politicians allow utility companies to make these decisions–just like they let them double their rates in the last couple of years.
Utility companies get away with murder because profits come before human need in this society.
Mar 9, 2009
The former execs of Countrywide Financial, which was once the largest mortgage broker in the country, have started a new company, called PennyMac. They buy up defaulted mortgages from the U.S. government for about one third what the government is owed, and then get to keep a part of everything they collect.
The execs of PennyMac are the very people who pushed thousands of people into mortgages they couldn’t afford, with misleading or even fraudulent terms. There was even a name for such loans in the mortgage business–“liar” loans.
Countrywide and execs like Stanford Kurland, its ex-president, now head of PennyMac, made multi-millions in selling home loans to banks, which bundled them together to resell to investors. In so doing, they helped create the biggest real estate bubble, followed by the largest foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression.
Now they are making more millions on these same mortgages all over again. One of the PennyMac execs described their profits this way: “It’ s off-the-charts good!”
Handing over these mortgages to former Countrywide execs is “sort of like the arsonist who sets fire to the house and then buys up the charred remains and resells it,” as Margot Saunders, a lawyer for the National Consumer Law Center put it.
Mar 9, 2009
Two Pennsylvania judges have pleaded guilty to taking 2.6 million dollars in payoffs for trials over which they presided. The deals for which they got paid off sent 2,000 children to juvenile detention facilities in Luzerne and Butler counties.
The owner of the privately run detention facilities, Pittsburgh businessman Greg Zappala, paid–and kept his facilities full and profitable!
He hasn’t been charged yet. His brother is the District Attorney for Allegheny County. His father is a former State Supreme Court justice!
Justice!
Mar 9, 2009
Los Angeles city politicians say the two city employee pension funds are short almost one billion dollars. So now they try to blame cuts in services they have started, and lay-offs they are threatening, on the “high cost” of retiree pensions the funds can’t meet.
But if the funds are short, it’s because of what the politicians have done with them! Under the guise of “investments,” city politicians have been handing hundreds of millions of dollars from the pension funds to businesses. For example, the L.A. pension funds, the majority of whose board members are appointed by the mayor, put 50 million dollars into a real estate fund headed by Henry Cisneros, a former U.S. cabinet member under Bill Clinton.
It’s no different in other cities. In Detroit, pension funds “invested” heavily in real estate, mortgages, small businesses and so-called “alternative investments,” losing 30% of their value in 18 months. Details of two of these investments were revealed by the local press. One was in a hazardous waste plant that has been closed down for environmental violations. The other was in a telecommunications company that never repaid its debt, but later got a big contract from Detroit Public Schools.
The pattern is repeated over and over for many large city and state pension funds across the U.S. The Detroit Free Press recently listed 13 of them that have lost 20% or more of their value within the 18 months ending last December.
If there is not enough money in the pension funds, it’s because politicians and bosses have been looting the funds for years. And they–not retirees, active workers or city residents–are the ones who should pay for it!
Mar 9, 2009
The nation’s largest corporations put millions of dollars into offshore tax havens. Eighty-three of the country’s 100 largest corporations–including Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, GM, GMAC and Cerberus–keep part of their money where U.S. tax laws don’t apply.
There’s only one problem for these slickers–they have to pay taxes on the money when they bring it home.
The Senate is trying to solve this problem for them–by setting up another tax “holiday” for U.S. corporations, letting them bring money back without paying any taxes.
Don’t let them tell us these companies have no money–and the Senate even knows where they are hiding it!
Mar 9, 2009
United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) is due to pay a fine of 780 million dollars. It also gave the U.S. court overseeing a lawsuit the names of 250 clients who avoided paying U.S. taxes by keeping their money in a Swiss bank. The judge also demanded that UBS turn over the names on another 52,000 account holders, supposed to be worth 15 billion dollars.
This conflict between UBS and the IRS has lasted for months. In fact, last October UBS had already turned over the names of 4,000 U.S. clients that the IRS said were avoiding taxes.
The number of secret accounts and the billions of dollars at stake illustrate how much money is hidden in Switzerland thanks to its system of numbered accounts. But Switzerland–profiting from the fortunes its bank account owners want hidden–is hardly an isolated case in the international financial system.
The whole world financial system is protected by secrecy–and it’s completely legal.
Even when nation states sometimes poke into some matter of fiscal fraud, they protect the banks and their big clients from the curiosity of the population.
The only way to end bank secrecy–and not just to collect taxes–is to impose in Switzerland and everywhere the right of bank employees and other workers to make public any bank operations they know about. That’s the only way there can be true control over the use of money. If bank secrecy is not ended, the holders of capital will continue to harm the working population.
Mar 9, 2009
Everyone knows the pay of top corporate executives is outrageous. But just look at how outrageous: The CEO’s of the top 500 companies in the U.S. averaged 10½ million dollars each in 2007. Even worse, top executives at the 50 leading hedge and private equity funds, averaged 588 million dollars each! That’s about 19,000 times what an average worker made!
We paid twice for this incredible executive ripoff. First, out of our labor. But then, in our taxes, too! In 2007, companies got 20 billion dollars in deductions from their federal taxes for executive compensation–20 billion dollars that the rest of us paid for either in our own taxes, or in cuts in government programs and services.
Mar 9, 2009
The strike in Martinique (an island in the Caribbean with 400,000 people) begun in early February, is continuing; the barricades in the commercial zones are still up. On March 2, more than 3,000 demonstrators and strikers rallied in the courtyard of the House of Unions in Fort-de-France, Martinique.
There were reports on the radio that the strikers’ Collective had reached an agreement on March 1. The president of the Collective declared that an agreement could be signed based on proposals made by the bosses, the towns and the State. But the Collective still wanted to put in writing the 50 euros agreement to be included in negotiations to take place in July or September. The actual wage demand of the Collective is a raise of 250 euros ($312) per month for the lowest paid workers.
The bosses, furious to see people aren’t content with their “generosity,” suspended the session. The politicians agreed with the bosses, going so far as to say that they wouldn’t return to the negotiations, because they had already made a big enough effort.
The day before these negotiations, the movement already seemed to be reinforced. Despite shady “goings-on” reported on television and radio, strikers weren’t discouraged. Facing a human sea of supporters, the Collective quickly presented the real situation to the assembled strikers. There was discussion about negotiations concerning the price of basic necessities, including water, housing, public transport, but also on all the points which still need to be dealt with, including the raise of 200 euros, plus a 50 euro supplement to be awarded before the next negotiations in July or September 2009.
All questions were put as proposals to the demonstrators present. There was a unanimous response of “yes” and all these explanations were strongly applauded.
That reinforced the mobilization. By the time they began to move through the streets of Fort-de-France with members of the Collective at the head, there were 10,000 people.
Afterwards, members of the Collective left the march with a new road map in their pockets, to present at the negotiations.
The strike continues with determination. It intends to win the maximum possible in wages, with a social minimum, pensions and the lowering of prices of basic necessities and services.
Mar 9, 2009
On March 2, some workers started to go back to work in a number of businesses, especially little businesses in the Jarry industrial zone near Pointe-à-Pitre. Teachers went back to work in some schools.
The LKP (the struggle coalition) didn’t oppose this. But during the meeting of March 1, Jean-Marie Nomertin, secretary general of the CGTG (General Confederation of Labor-Guadeloupe), called for a vote on the continuation of the movement, 4,000 hands went up in front of the Mutalité Building in Pointe-à-Pitre, the headquarters of the movement. The number of participants and the combativeness at this meeting was impressive.
Many important groups of workers remain on strike: the workers at big retail stores, school support staff, port workers, phone company workers, city workers, public transit workers, Social Security and unemployment compensation workers and sugar mill workers.
The employees of the two Carrefour super stores (similar to Wal-Mart), in Baie-Mahault and Abymes, didn’t go on strike until March 3. These two immense commercial centers became the symbolic target of strike demonstrators, for they belong to the Bernard Hayot’s group, owned by one of the richest békés of the French Caribbean and one of the most influential bosses in the MEDEF.
Strikers from other sectors came for several days to march with other strikers and held daily meetings, facing off against the police. The stores closed their doors. On March 2, thirty women strikers from other sectors of the CGTG blocked delivery trucks. There were some clashes with the police. The workers inside the stores came out and supported the women. The next day, the store workers went on strike.
In Baie-Mahault, on March 3, a thousand strikers held a meeting in front of Carrefour. The employees went out on strike. A delegation went to see the manager, De Reynal, to ask him his intentions concerning the 200 euros. He strongly and scornfully refused. He suffered for it. The next day all the employees went on strike with the support of the LKP. They maintained their picket all day long, getting the afternoon shift to join the strike.
The strikers of other stores came to support them throughout the day. There were light skirmishes with the police who threatened to charge at them.
The Carrefour workers declared they would remain on strike until they obtained the 200 euros, all the more as "the workers of Martinique who went on strike after us got an agreement with the Martinique MEDEF on it."
This strike began without a call for the strike by the union. The rank and file decided in the morning not to go in. When the union delegates arrived, they were faced with an accomplished fact. The inter-union committee of FO, UGTG, CGTG and members of the LKP, followed and then encouraged the workers to maintain their strike "until the end."
The strike of the Carrefour employees helped continue the movement. And even in the case of an official suspension of the general strike, these workers and many others will remain on strike.
Since the last week of February the "walking strike" is on the agenda. Every day a good thousand strikers go up and down the streets and have meetings in front of the MEDEF businesses. At their approach the businesses close. Some workers of these businesses join the strike. Others don’t.
On March 2 these workers, after passing by Carrefour and Jardiland, a store belonging to Barbotteau, another big béké, went up and down the entire Jarry zone and blocked traffic. They dispersed at 3 PM and then went in front of a government office in Pointe-à-Pitre to support the delegation of LKP in negotiations about lowering prices at big stores.
In another part of the island, there have been constant demonstrations to support the LKP delegation in negotiations over the price of water and public transit as well as over the situation of truck owner-operators.
In fact, since January 20, dozens of transit workers have lined up in front of the General Council with truck owner-operators who are practically camping at the front door.
On March 3 in the evening, a demonstration was held to the sound of the "gro ka" carnival drums in front of the prefecture, where the LKP delegation, the State representatives and the bosses meet to complete the written agreement to end the conflict. The LKP has still not signed the agreement.
Mar 9, 2009
The workers of Guadeloupe have won the majority of the demands that they advanced at the beginning of their movement, notably the increase of 200 euros a month for low wages, as well as the determination of those in Martinique who are, for their part, in the course of making the bosses and government retreat.
The workers of Guadeloupe were successful because they had the courage to launch a general strike and the determination to lead it to the end.
The general strike unleashed on January 20 shook Guadeloupian society. The class offensive by wage workers immediately attracted thousands of poor people, the unemployed, welfare recipients, the disabled, housewives and retirees. It is an immense social movement that aroused the people of Guadeloupe to their very depths.
Faced with this popular tidal wave, the bosses, especially the big ones, have attempted all sorts of maneuvers. They dragged out the negotiations in order to encourage the deterioration of the strike. They took back what they said. They said they were victims, that they couldn’t pay the 200 euros! But the strike held firm, the popular movement stood fast!
Despite supply difficulties, problems of getting around, despite repression on the street barricades, despite three victims, thanks to the stubbornness of the bosses who made the strike harder, the great movement spurred on by the LKP (Collective Against Profiteering) has won.
The problems of lowering the price of necessities, the freezing of rent increases, the reimbursement of unwarranted sums received by SARA, Total oil company’s affiliate with a monopoly over gasoline, the naming of 19 teachers to vacant posts, lowering of the price of gasoline, etc.–these are yet to be resolved.
And there are other demands concerning truck owner-operators, farmers, fishermen, etc.
The fact that it required 44 days of general strike shows the arrogance of the bosses, in particular the biggest, represented by the bosses’ association MEDEF, and the support that it found from the local authorities and the national government. But it also shows that the unlimited general strike can make the wealthy and their political servants retreat.
When the general strike is suspended, a number of workers will remain mobilized to intervene if necessary to support the ongoing negotiations.
That also is the achievement of this movement. The workers showed that in the midst of the population there exists a great force that could weigh on the resolution of all social conflicts.
Today, every worker on the job can call on this mobilization, can appeal to the unions in the LKP to stop injustices, whether on the job or outside work (housing, electricity, water, etc.). The collective force expressed since the beginning of the strike can impose respect for workers’ interests and of their demands on the bosses.
Mar 9, 2009
Auto workers have no choice–so the auto companies and their flunkeys say–auto workers must give up concessions because the auto companies have no money.
What a bunch of bull. Auto workers didn’t create the crisis. Auto workers didn’t drain these companies of money.
The Ford family did, raking in nearly a billion dollars in eleven years–just in dividends.
Cerberus drained Chrysler of money–running highly productive factories into debt, so Cerberus could pay dividends to its investors.
And GMAC took profits GM made in auto to speculate in the financial markets.
The executives used these companies as their own private bank accounts. Ford paid out 196 million dollars to its top five executives from 2001 to 2007, when it said it lost 38 billion dollars. GM said it lost 21 billion from 2005 to 2007–but handed out 108 million to executives.
Auto workers didn’t take this money and squander it. Workers didn’t buy up companies. From 1997 to 2006, Ford spent 30 billion dollars buying up or investing in 22 companies and plants overseas. GM bought up more than 20 mortgage companies.
Don’t tell us GM, Ford & Cerberus have no money. GM keeps “subsidiaries” in eleven tax havens like the Cayman Islands, which lets GM get out of paying its taxes–and lets it hide how much money it has. Ford, too. Cerberus took Chrysler private so it doesn’t have to say what it does with the money.
The auto companies have money–they just want MORE. They want to go on speculating. They want to hand out millions more to their executives, bankers and major stockholders, all of whom live lives of luxury, stolen from the workers’ labor.
Stealing from the workers, these companies drain money out of their own production facilities–destroying them and the country’s economy along with it.
Don’t let these pigs pretend workers are paid too much–we aren’t paid enough. Make the thieves who caused this crisis pay its cost.
Mar 9, 2009
Top UAW leaders gave up many concessions and brought them to workers at Ford for a vote in early March.
On the days just before and during the votes, International staff people flooded the plants, cornering workers, attacking those who opposed the deal, etc.
Nonetheless, there was a great deal of opposition to and resentment about this deal.
As of Saturday March 7, the vote was still “too close to call” according to the Detroit News. Whatever happens, workers already have signaled how fed up they are. Loud and clear.
And, whatever happens, this is sure: there will be future demands for more concessions. Facing a general economic depression, the bosses will use the threat of unemployment as a battering ram to bust workers down to the wages and standard of living of the last depression.
Workers will need to increase not only their no votes, but also the scale of their mobilization. But those who voted NO this time can be proud–they gave themselves something to build on.
Mar 9, 2009
The following leaflet was distributed and signed by over 150 workers from the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant and other units of UAW Local 600. Another leaflet making many of the same points was distributed and signed by over 20 skilled trades workers. The vote at the Truck Plant was 698 no, 394 yes.
We say “Vote No!”
We refuse to let them insult our intelligence!
They tell us that we should give concessions because Mulally is taking a pay cut. Mulally could work for free and he’s already made more money than we will ever see in a hundred lifetimes.
We refuse to let them take $12,000 or more away from our families!
According to the UAW 2007 Contract Highlights, those two performance bonuses would have added up to $4,960. The 2 Christmas bonuses would be $1,200. The 99 cents in COLA taken back will add up to about $5,000 over 2 ½ years. Additional COLA money will be lost, based on how fast prices go up. SUB will be reduced because of the lost COLA.
We refuse to let them invade our privacy!
They want to force us to get doctor’s exams and treatment programs. How dare these millionaire executives with their personal trainers tell us how to take care of our health. Give us their money and we would be a lot healthier.
We refuse to listen to their lies about concessions saving jobs!
We’ve been told this lie over and over. No more! Taking money out of our pockets will mean that fewer cars and trucks are sold. Concessions mean more layoffs.
We refuse to let them take away our chance to retire!
They want to fund the VEBA with company stock. They want to change the rules, so that retirees could now be forced to pay more for health care, starting on January 1, 2010. This is proof that they know the VEBA will run out of money. What will be left for current workers? Do they think we should have to work until we die?
We refuse all these other concessions!
Laid off workers forced to move anywhere in the country. You can’t turn down any job offer without losing all pay and benefits. The company could change our work schedule as often as they want. SUB weeks reduced. Overtime rules changed to cheat us out of overtime pay, like working 12 hours a day, with no overtime paid.
If we let them take things from us that we’ve had for 40 or 50 years, do you really think they’ll give them back? No, they’ll be back next year to take more concessions.
We refuse to continue this race to the bottom!
It’s time to draw the line!
(signed) Over 150 Local 600 workers and retirees
Mar 9, 2009
After enduring 7½ years of a U.S.-led war, Afghanistan has been pushed down to become the poorest country in Southern Asia and the world’s fifth least-developed country. Overall, according to U.N. agencies, 20 million of the country’s 26 million inhabitants live under the internationally recognized poverty line. And this doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who still live in refugee camps in Pakistan and in Iran.
The most recent official unemployment statistics come from 2005, when 40% of the workforce had no job. Since then, countless factories have been closed down for lack of parts, lack of energy or due to attacks from resistance groups, not to mention U.S. bombing. According to some estimates, the jobless count reaches as much as 80% today in some urban areas.
Even in the most urbanized parts of the country, electricity is seldom available for more than a few hours a day, when it is available at all. In Kabul, the majority of the four million inhabitants, most of whom flocked to the capital in order to escape from the rural combat areas, live in squalid conditions, without drinking water or functioning sewage systems. Makeshift shanties stand in the middle of destroyed buildings caused by Western bombing.
The situation of women is especially dire. With the exception of a small minority of women among the better-off layers, little has changed in the condition of women. Afghan women have been pushed right back under the feudal yoke of Islamic fundamentalism. And the worsening material conditions can only mean worsening conditions for women. Afghanistan has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world.
Last July the U.N. and Oxfam launched an emergency 400-million-dollar appeal, warning that five million Afghans were threatened with “high-risk food insecurity.” However, so far, donors have contributed less than half of what is needed.
Washington spends 100 million dollars per day to occupy Afghanistan. Guaranteeing the survival of Afghanistan’s population would cost the U.S. only what it spends in four days of occupying the country. But neither Bush nor Obama has volunteered such funding.
And Obama now proposes to increase the destruction rained on Afghanistan.
Mar 9, 2009
Barack Obama announced his plans for withdrawing troops from Iraq. “Let me say this as plainly as I can,” said Obama. “By 31 August, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”
You would have thought he was making a clean break with the Bush administration’s policies–especially after all the media headlines like the Detroit News saying, “Obama announces Iraq withdrawal plan.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. Obama even admitted there will be 50,000 troops left behind. And those troops will remain in Iraq until December 31, 2011–34 months from now. What Obama forgot to say is that he is following the very same timetable that George Bush laid out in an agreement he signed with the Iraqi government–down to the very day for leaving!
And even that’s not sure. “There will surely be difficult periods and tactical adjustments,” said Obama.
NBC reported “Military commanders ... are already making plans for a significant number of American troops to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline.... And one senior military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 or 20 years.” Apparently, that’s just “tactical.”
Just like Presidents Johnson and Nixon, after they promised to wind down the Vietnam War, Obama says one thing while preparing to do its opposite. And just like Johnson and Nixon, who expanded their war into Cambodia and Laos, Obama is expanding his into Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Obama is fast making Bush’s wars his own.
Mar 9, 2009
March 19 marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S. war on Iraq, with no end in sight. President Barack Obama has said he’ll pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. That’s almost three years from now–and even that’s not certain, considering how he has hedged this promise.
But even if it’s “only” three years from now, the U.S. war will severely worsen the catastrophe already inflicted on Iraq.
The war has killed 1.3 million Iraqis and displaced 4.5 million, or more than one in six people in the country. Last year, only five% of these refugees chose to return to their homes–one proof that Iraqi people find their country anything but safe these days!
Several political factions, and armed militias tied to them, continue to fight for power. For example, the Shiite-led Baghdad government, in alliance with remnants of the Sunni-led Saddam Hussein regime, is engaged in a bloody fight to drive out the Kurdish rulers of Mosul, the largest city in the oil-rich North. And that’s supposed to be in the “calmer” part of the country! In Baghdad, Shiite militias fight against Shiite militias.
The U.S. policy mostly has been to let these different warlords fight it out, backing up certain ones of them. The consequence–attacks on civilians and ethnic cleansing–means total disaster for the population. When U.S. officials say their aim is to establish a stable Iraqi regime, that means setting up a dictatorship that can control the population. In other words, a dictatorship like Saddam Hussein’s is the best the U.S. has to offer the Iraqi people!
American workers continue to pay a huge price for this war, waged by the U.S. ruling class to control Iraq and its resources. Even a Congressional committee admitted that war costs would total 1.6 trillion dollars by early 2009, reaching perhaps 3.5 trillion by the end of 2017. That’s 2017!
And then there is the human cost–or, rather, catastrophe–of war: 4,256 troop deaths acknowledged so far by the military; severe injuries estimated at over 100,000. Mental injuries increase these figures several times, adding up to an enormous human and social cost to be paid by several generations.
An earlier generation of soldiers faced a similar catastrophe in Viet Nam. Many of those soldiers expressed their opposition to the Viet Nam war openly, some in mutiny against their officers. Some soldiers have come forward to publicly oppose the Iraq war. Their opposition needs to be supported by a population that won’t let itself be misled by a new administration’s lies.
Mar 9, 2009
For the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war, demonstrations are planned in many cities across the U.S.
March 14: A protest in Chicago. March 21: protests in Washington D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Miami. Undoubtedly, protests will also take place in dozens of smaller cities.
These demonstrations offer a possibility to show strong opposition to these disastrous wars.