U.S. imperialism’s crimes against the Iraqi people are so great that no amount of lying in the corporate media can wipe them out. That doesn’t stop these manufacturers of instant misinformation from trying. They have hypocritically presented a patently fraudulent election, held under an occupying power and administered by a puppet regime, as a sterling example of democracy and courage.
There are still nearly 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq seven years after the illegal aggression, plus an equal number of “contractors” — mercenaries. The U.S. occupation has left more than 1 million dead and created 5 million refugees. It has exacerbated ethnic and religious differences leading to the brink of a partition of the country. Its puppet regime has been pressured to pass laws turning over Iraqi natural wealth to imperialist concerns, thus sowing the seeds of a potential civil war.
But the corporate media, by apparent prior agreement, writes glowingly of Iraqis dipping their fingers in ink as if the election were a proof of Iraqi sovereignty.
All the more reason why anyone who opposed this war at the beginning, and the millions more who want it over with now, should head to the protest in Washington or other regional centers on March 20 to make their voices as strong and dramatic as they can.
Just as in the days of war criminal George W. Bush, a Republican, U.S. wars and occupations continue in Iraq under the Democratic Party administration, even expanding in Afghanistan and stretching into Pakistan. The Pentagon is also intervening in Somalia and Yemen and continually threatening Iran, with or without a first strike by the Israeli military. Not to speak of other interventions threatened in the Caribbean, South America and the Pacific.
In this period, the workers in the United States have been hit with the worst capitalist recession since the 1930s — one in which a short-lived recovery for the stock market has brought no recovery to the job market, despite colossal bailouts to the banks and brokerage houses by the Obama administration. This crisis at home has focused attention here on the desperate economic questions facing the working class and oppressed peoples.
But there is no way to separate the need to fight imperialist war from the need to struggle on basic economic issues. The two struggles must be carried on simultaneously and intertwined.
The March 20 demonstrations, in Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco, called by the Answer Coalition to mark the seventh anniversary of the criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq, raise the slogans: U.S. Out of Afghanistan and Iraq; Free Palestine; Reparations for Haiti; and Money for Health Care, Jobs and Education. Many other anti-imperialist, anti-war, community and progressive organizations have endorsed these actions, including the International Action Center and the Bail Out the People Movement.
Workers World has endorsed them, too, and calls again upon the working-class and progressive people to mobilize participation in them throughout the country.
http://www.workers.org/2010/editorials/march_20_0318/
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