Statement by the United National Antiwar Coalition, November 19, 2015*
www.unacpeace.org
The tragic terrorist murders of 189 innocent Parisians and the wounding of 359 others on the evening of November 13 are inseparable outcomes of the never-ending imperialist wars in the Middle East.
Just as the U.S. responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks with wars and immediate enactment of heightened surveillance and repressive measures to curb dissent, the French government is doing the same, ready to exploit the horrific murders and grief to increase fear and anger towards Muslims and refugees, rather than looking at the root causes of these acts.
Millions of innocents, men, women and children, have been brutally murdered over the past 15 years by the U.S. war machine – the most powerful military force on earth – ceaselessly deployed in the interests of the corporate elite who prioritize the oil wars and the super profits of the government’s military-industrial-financial complex over the interests of the world’s people.
Almost two million have been slaughtered in Iraq alone since the U.S. sanctions and the mass destruction of that nation conducted under the universally discredited pretext of eliminating the Saddam Hussein government’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” Libya was similarly laid to waste by NATO relentlessly terror bombing that nation for one year, reducing Libya to yet another “failed state.” After fourteen years of war, the longest in U.S. history, U.S. troops and U.S.-funded privatized death squad armies operate with impunity in Afghanistan today, while in Egypt the U.S.-backed military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi rounded up and murdered 12,000 Muslims – supporters of the democratically-elected government of Mohamed Morsi. Yemen, already the poorest country in the region, is being bombed incessantly and facing widespread starvation and lack of basic needs of survival.
While the Western governments and their Gulf allies claim to be united in fighting ISIS, in fact, much of the attacks are on Syrian government forces, other real foes of ISIS, like the Kurds, and of course, civilians, not wanting to strengthen the hand of President Bashar al-Assad by weakening his enemies. Indeed, central to French and U.S. policies in Syria is the removal of the Assad government and not any weakening of ISIS or other terrorist forces. It is more than ironic that the French government, like the U.S., takes care to avoid bombing those terrorists whose aim is to remove Assad.
It is no secret that the chief U.S. allies in the region, the Saudi Arabian and other gulf state monarchies, provide ISIS with critical military and financial support, with the full knowledge and complicity of the U.S. Today, ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria, including the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, occupy 5/6 of Syria. Indeed, following U.S. multi-billion dollar failed efforts to create CIA-controlled armed forces to similarly depose the Assad government, U.S. policy today has shifted to providing military and financial aid to the very organizations it has deemed to be terrorist in the past.
To add to their war crimes, the U.S. and Saudis prefer systematically bombing medical facilities and weddings, while abetting the growth and danger of ISIS and their ilk.
Such care is not taken with regard to the already in progress French campaigns to limit the civil and democratic rights of French Muslim communities, today subjected to massive surveillance, discrimination, arrest and persecution. The French constitution and other laws are in the process of being re-written to eliminate hard won protections of civil liberties.
While the French government has decreed that the United Nations November 30 – December 12 world climate conference in Paris will take place on schedule, with some 40,000 heads of state, elected officials and corporate representatives present, as well as approved representatives of “civil society,” the long planned Paris protests where one million were expected to attend, have been banned. With no security justification, climate protests that challenge government and corporate policies that threaten life on earth itself are today banned!
The United National Antiwar Coalition stands opposed to all U.S. and allied imperialist intervention in Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. In truth, the horrors that we witness across this battered and blighted region today are the direct result of U.S. wars, interventions and sanctions. Had this not been the case, had the people of the Middle East been able to exercise their right to self-determination, free from all imperialist intervention in all its manifestations, they would have long ago been fully capable of resolving their internal conflicts.
The tragic colonial history of this region, long ago carved up between the post WWI and WWII great power allies has been the imposition of one after another dictator while the people’s history has been one after another struggle to free themselves from foreign domination.
UNAC demands:
No to racist discrimination and Islamophobia!
Civil and democratic rights for all!
No to all imperialist wars and interventions!
U.S. and all imperialist troops Out Now!
Self-determination for the nations of the Middle East!
Provide shelter and aid to the millions of refugees displaced by war and economic ruin!
* Fire This Time fully supports and endorses this UNAC statement -FTT Editorial
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