The Socialist Equality Party, World Socialist Web Site, and International Students for Social Equality last month held three regional conferences on “The Fight for Socialism Today.” The conferences were held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on April 9-10; in Los Angeles, California, on April 16; and in New York City on April 30.
Each of these conferences discussed and adopted a series of resolutions on the basic political questions facing the working class in the US and internationally. This is the third resolution adopted at the conferences, “For the international unity of the working class.” See also, “The attack on the working class and the fight for socialism” and “For the international unity of the working class!”
Resolution 3: No to imperialist war in Libya! Withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan!
This conference condemns the US-led war against Libya and categorically rejects the claims that this imperialist intervention is being waged for “humanitarian” purposes, to “save lives,” or to promote democracy.
The real reason for this war was explained bluntly by Donald Trump, who declared that the only reason for intervening in Libya is the country’s 40-billion-barrel oil reserves. “If we don’t keep the oil, I’m not interested,” said the presumptive presidential candidate. He was only expressing in most naked form the sentiments of the American ruling class as a whole.
The war against Libya is a war of aggression. The clock of history appears to be winding in reverse. While the 20th Century was characterized by mass struggles to throw off colonial slavery, now the US and the former colonial powers, France and Britain, are using military might in an attempt to re-subjugate Africa and the Middle East and lay hold of their resources.
The US is waging this war not only because it wants to seize direct control of Libyan oil, but also because it wants to deny these resources to others, particularly Russia and China. With American imperialism increasingly drawn into fierce competition with China for domination of markets and sources of energy and raw materials, the Libyan intervention poses the danger of a new world war.
At the same time, a military presence in Libya, which is bordered by Egypt to the east and Tunisia to the west, would help the major powers to intimidate revolutionary movements throughout the Arab world.
While Libya marks the first war directly initiated by Obama, his administration has continued the occupation of Iraq begun under Bush and sharply intensified the war in Afghanistan, spreading it across the border into Pakistan, where thousands have been killed and maimed in drone missile attacks. Obama has sent Special Forces into and conducted missile attacks against both Yemen and Somalia, and continues to make unending threats against Iran.
This global eruption of American militarism is aimed not at combating terrorism or promoting democracy, but, as in Libya, seizing energy resources and establishing US hegemony in geo-strategically vital areas of the world.
This conference condemns the wholesale death and destruction carried out by US and NATO forces against civilians in all these countries. It calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US and other foreign troops from the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, the closure of all US military bases, and the disbursement of billions of dollars in reparations to the populations of the affected countries.
A peaceful and humane global society is impossible without the dismantling of the US military and CIA, by far the main perpetrators of terror in the world today.
While popular hostility to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya, is widespread and growing, the official “anti-war” movement has abandoned any serious opposition to these brutal conflicts and swung over to support Obama.
Opposition to imperialist war can develop now only as a working class movement, linked to an international socialist political program. There is no way to halt the American ruling elite’s insane drive for world domination without ending capitalist rule.