(Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire have
turned Justice Mute)

A Position Statement
by the Communist Internationalist League (Trotskyists) in Greece
on the Imperialist Media Campaign against the Iraqi Leadership
Translated by Abu Nicola al Yunani

In this war American imperialism undeniably has supremacy in weaponry. Its technical superiority over Iraq is overwhelming. But it also has its Achilles' heel: the human factor.

The Iraqi people are defending their homeland, their homes, their families. Against those who are bombing and destroying their country for the last thirteen years, who have killed with radiation and the embargo some 1.8 million Iraqis, and continue to kill more. Just for those reasons, Iraqis are not going to waver. They will continue to mount a granite-strong resistance to the invaders.

The same is not true of Americans and their allies. No people - much less the nation medley called the American people - will accept to sacrifice their material possessions and the lives of their children, without having been persuaded they are defending vital interests, universal ideals of justice and freedom.

The U.S.A. does not possess - nor is it going to find - even one soldier willing to risk his life, thousands of kilometers away from his country, for a cause that does not concern him.

Powerful apparatuses of propaganda, falsehood, and deception, are continuing their rabid attacks against the "dictator", the "butcher" Saddam, with the exact same motives that a few years ago lay behind their attacks on the "dictator" and "slaughterer" Milosevic.

They are still trying to fool the American and world public opinion that their attack against Iraq is a "freedom operation"! For the sake of this "freedom", tomorrow they may resort to even greater crimes in order to escape the dead end to which their paranoid adventurism has brought them. It would perhaps be redundant to explain that this propaganda is being waged within the framework of the psychological warfare which the U.S. secret services have undertaken. A warfare of extreme importance for the U.S.A., which at the same time is generally necessary in modern strategy. Often more important that the armed conflict itself.

Hundreds of TV channels, radio stations and newspapers, thousands of well-paid pen pushers all over the world, irrespective of the guise each one is wearing, regardless of whether they proclaim themselves advocates or enemies of imperialism, apologists of the war or friends of peace and the Iraqi people, are, voluntarily or involuntarily, participating, and supporting the psychological war of American imperialism.

It is those "friends" in particular, those shedding crocodiles' tears for the Iraqi people, who are its most dangerous enemies. Those ostensibly "objective" and "impartial" figures (especially when appearing under a "leftist" guise), are the ones best suited for finding an audience for american propaganda, this propaganda that gives a moral support to the imperialist attack; the crime; the enslavement.

A heap of lies and fallacies are being hurled at the Iraqi regime in this psychological war. They are based on ignorance, superstitions and self-interested motivations. Even if there were a grain of distorted truth in some of the accusations, the sincere friends of the Iraqi people should ignore it in this concrete moment when the barbaric imperialist attack is underway and the people of Iraq have rallied together to repulse the savage onslaught of the world's superpower.

Is the Iraqi regime dictatorial? A left that respects its traditions has the duty to explain that there are dictatorships and "dictatorships"; just as there are democracies and "democracies". That we cannot put everything in the same bag. (It should be noted that the Greek people - just like the Iraqis - can instinctively discern things similar on the surface, which are different in their essence).

The real dilemma is not "dictatorship or democracy", but dictatorship against whom, and democracy for whom. The dictatorship in Iraq is being applied against the agents of western oil interests who cannot accept that their expropriation and the nationalization of the oil wealth is final. It is being applied against those who have been harmed by the nationalization of the banks. Against those who oppose the unity of the Arab nation, in a united federal state. Against those who do not want oil to be a lever for industrial development. Against those who oppose political and economic support to the Palestinian intifada. Against those who do not want Iraq to challenge the Zionist state, to inspire the Arab people, to be the troublemaker inside OPEC, to undermine the dictatorship of the dollar by converting the sum total of the country's foreign currency reserves to euros.

They say that the world will be better if this war ends with the overthrow of Saddam. There are "leftists" who say this - but this is first and foremost the line of the imperialists themselves, those who are propping up dozens of military dictatorships whose violence is being applied against the people, and in favour of the interests of multinationals.

They want democracy in Iraq. For whom? For the agents of the imperialist west? In order for Iraq to become a "democratic" protectorate?

No! Such a "democracy" would be a defeat for the Iraqi people; for the entire Arab world; for humanity.

Saddam, today's national leader of the Arabs, whom the imperialists and their hirelings insist on calling a "dictator" and a "butcher", has armed the Iraqi people. Not only with Kalashnikovs, but also with mortars and anti-tank rockets. This says a lot about the nature of the regime. Let the "beloved", "democratically elected" leaders of European countries dare to arm their people (or even just their own supporters), and we'll see what will become of their highly-praised "democracy".

Real democracy presupposes incontestable national sovereignty, economic development, prosperity and peace. All the things that imperialism denies the Arab nation with its military interventions and occupations, the plunder of its natural resources, the planting of the Zionist gendarme, and the propping up of "friendly" puppet regimes. Those are the culprits for the absence of democracy, not Saddam.

They are telling us that the Shia in the south are being oppressed by Baghdad. The Shia weapons have given their own reply.

In the north of Iraq, there are Kurdish people fighting in the same trenches as the rest of the Iraqi people. The feudal cliques of Barzani and Talabani that opposed Baghdad in the past cannot be said to represent the interests of the Kurdish people. The role of those cliques becomes obvious by the fact that until the first U.S. attack against Iraq, they ran their "resistance movement" out of offices in Istanbul!

Saddam's other great "crime" is the persecution of some so-called "communists". Not of the real ones, who have today closed ranks with the Iraqi leadership against the U.S. invasion, but of those whose remnants are even today appearing on TV in order to attack it. Who, along with Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld and straw, demand the disarmament of Iraq and assure us - contrary to what even Blix and el Baradei have been forced to admit - that Iraq still has banned weapons of mass destruction. Of course nobody ever explains why they were persecuted - that they were the base of brigadier Abd el Karim Qassem's regime, whose government did not dare touch the banks, or implement an agrarian reform. More importantly, it didn't dare expropriate and nationalize the foreign oil companies robbing the country's rich deposits. And of course, they have always opposed - and continue to oppose - Arab unity, which is the absolute precondition not only for a socialist transformation, but even for true independence from imperialism.

The Iraqi C.P. served as an instrument in games intended to protect western interests in the Arab world. We do not accept the idea that such despicable people should be considered inviolate just because they usurped the title of "communist". At least Saddam, without pretending to be a communist, is defending at this moment the property of the Iraqi people.

His regime is a big step forward for the Arab people, progressive both from the standpoint of battling imperialism and in terms of social development. Whatever further domestic improvements real Communists might seek within the progressive Iraq of Saddam Hussein, it is the absolute obligation of any genuine Communist to mount an unconditional defense of the regime against imperialism.

Those who really honour the militant traditions of the left are nowadays opposing imperialist propaganda. They are unmasking its lies and fallacies. They are removing the "liberating" guise of imperialism, and uncovering its predatory face.