On the Gulf Crisis

By the RedWorker Communist Organisation

For two weeks now a massive bombardment, far more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has been rained down upon Iraq by the imperialist alliance headed by the U.S.A. This barbarous, unprecedented aggression has probably killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children, and brought about destruction and disaster. Some people say it may constitute one of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed.

We are in solidarity with and on the side of the masses of Iraqi people, as are also the Arab masses, with the Palestinians in the forefront. We will struggle, and we call on everyone to struggle, ever harder and stronger against this imperialist aggression.

We do not approve of the occupation of Kuwait by the Saddam Hussein regime. But this is simply a pretext for the imperialist alliance, and for the U.S. in the first place. They have arrogantly and hypocritically raised the banner of "international law". How can they talk about international law, when they themselves invaded Vietnam, Grenada and Panama, and whipped up aggression against Nicaragua and every country that has sought to liberate itself from imperialist domination? The U.S. and their allies are using the fig leaf of carrying out UN resolutions, as if the UN were not merely a tool in the hands of the imperialist powers, in which the people count for nothing, as if UN resolutions were not merely pieces of paper to be torn up and discarded when it comes to the rights of the Palestinians and other peoples oppressed by imperialism.

The only thing the U.S. and European governments are out for is absolute, gangster control of the oil they consider theirs and the protection of their economy at the price of the hunger of the proletarians and peoples who produce that oil. This is what their war is all about, this is what they are seeking to strengthen and extend with their presence in the Middle East and their aid and support for regimes that are certainly no better than that of Saddam Hussein, such as those of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait. This is a war to assert a "new world order" for which the proletarians and the peoples are to pay the costs.

But this war is tending to prove it will be more than a quick little stroll, that it is aimed above all at the aspirations for national and social liberation of the Arab proletarians and masses, and therefore it will lead to an intensification and spreading of the anti-imperialist struggle throughout the Middle East, alongside the Palestinian intifada.

Italian imperialism, through the decisions of the Andreotti government, has chosen to play a front-line role in this war. Twisting the Constitution and putting their warships and troops under American command, the Italian government is now an accomplice and a participant in the massacre of the Iraqi people. Italian forces, using Tornado bombers, are echoing the criminal deeds of Italian fascism, using phosphorous bombs against the population of Iraq, according to Bishop Molfetta Bello.

The parliamentary political parties and their newspapers and television channels, whether these be the parties of the government or the opposition, are all united in solidarity with "our boys" at the front. But this is a big litmus test permitting one to distinguish between those who defend Italian imperialism's interests and those who fight against those interests.

The government is militarising the country, gagging the press and television and turning them into tools of the open consensus around the war, censuring dissenting voices and criminalising the most consistent opposition. They are trying to suffocate the broad mobilisation developing in this country against the war and against Italian participation in it. They are relying on the repression being marshalled by the police, Carabinieri and the Army, but above all, at this moment they are counting on the servile support of the trade union apparatus, to avoid a general strike. Marini, Benvenuto, Del Turco, Trentin and their stooges in every city and workplace at this moment represent the MAIN ENEMY of the development of a real movement against the war.

Who is to pay the cost of this filthy war, publicly put at 80 billion lira a month? Certainly not Andreotti, Craxi, De Michelis, La Malfa, certainly not the financiers and industrialists, the journalists and generals, but once again the labouring people and the masses who are to make yet further sacrifices. They seek to incite the masses against Saddam Hussein to hide their own real, personal responsibility for the war, for the high cost of living, for unemployment, for the restriction of democratic rights, for cutbacks in social services in our country.

Therefore we call for, and will fight for, the proletariat, the youth, the masses of people, not to let themselves be fooled, to desert, and to oppose this filthy war on every level. We must organise in every city, every school, factory, workplace, in committees, collectives, united rank and file groups and mass organisations, to overturn the imperialist government that has dragged the country into war, that is unleashing reaction and attacking living standards and working conditions.

This can and must be the highest contribution we can make to our Iraqi brothers and sisters being massacred by bombs, and to the liberation of the Palestinian people and all the Arab masses.

Redworker Communist Organisation
January 1991