Actualité - All U.S. Troops Home Now! Not A Single Penny For War!

As the ruling circles attempt to block the drive of the people against war and for rights, emphasizing reliance on the Democrats, the people are instead stepping up their resistance. Many are directly targeting the Democrats and their refusal to take immediate action to end the war. Congress, with its Democratic majority in January, can pass legislation ending the war. It can also stop funding it, as all funding must go through Congress. The Democrats have said since Election Day that they will continue to fund the war.

Many are also demanding that Bush be charged with war crimes and impeached. This includes those organizations that have supported the Democratic Party in the past, such as Democrats.com. They, like many other organizations, including those supporting soldiers refusing to serve, veterans and military families opposing the war, civil rights and immigrant organizations, those organizing for impeachment and the entire anti-war movement, are taking action and insisting that the government submit to their decision. The demand of the people is that their will be implemented now, which means All Troops Home Now! Not A Single Penny for War!

Standing directly against the people, the Democratic Party leadership has also repeatedly said that impeachment is off the table. It has emphasized that it wants to “find a solution” to the war in Iraq, not end it. But the Democrats, and the ruling class as a whole face a dilemma. For the Democrats, and the elections themselves to have any credibility, the Democrats must now deliver on their claim to oppose the war. But U.S. imperialism cannot accept defeat. It requires its world empire, but cannot achieve it. That much the Iraqi resistance has made clear. So too has the resistance of Americans and all the peoples worldwide. How then to deliver and escape defeat?

The Democrats may be able to manage to withdraw some troops from Iraq, but what is far more likely is what Senator Biden, a main leader, calls a “redeployment plan to prevent insurgent control of strategic areas,” with “no fixed timetable.” Biden will become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, which is where Congressional legislation on Iraq, if there is any, would likely need to start. He, like Senator Hillary Clinton, is also making clear that the U.S., which has fomented civil war in Iraq, is now blaming the Iraqis the U.S. put in power. Biden says, “We must unambiguously say to the Iraqis, ‘Here is your last, best chance to escape a disastrous civil war with our help, and it is up to you now.’” He is calling to divide Iraq into three parts, with oil revenues controlled by a central (U.S.-controlled) government.

Clearly, the common aim of the imperialists as a class, and thus both their representatives, the Democrats and Republicans, is “preventing insurgent control” in Iraq. They are not working out a plan for withdrawal, they are not in any way respecting sovereignty and the right of the Iraqis to decide their future. Indeed, they are pushing to split and divide the country, much as was done in Yugoslavia.

The Democrats and President George W. Bush alike are also calling on everyone to wait for the plan being put together by the Iraq Study Group, headed by James A. Baker III, secretary of state under Bush’s father. This plan is expected sometime in December and is supposed to be one Bush and Democrats can agree on. For this reason, it will no doubt be a plan the people oppose.

The people do not want to reach agreement with war crimes and crimes against humanity and the criminals who unleash them. We want the criminals charged and impeached and we want the same for anyone who paves the way for them to do so, as Congress has been doing.

Repeatedly the people are making clear that they stand against aggressive war, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Palestine and elsewhere. As one group put it, “The Republicans ought to realize that we have had enough war, lies and corruption. The Democrats should know that we can, as a people, come together for change and that they must support justice in this world by condemning Israeli atrocities or we will not vote for them either.”

The ruling circles are facing defeat inside the country and outside, which will make them even more desperate and dangerous. It is the Democrats who most likely will complete the fascist arrangements being put in place, not block them.

It is the peoples, together, stepping up their organized resistance and refusing to be pushed out of the equation that provides the bulwark against war and fascism. No one can or will wait for the Democrats. On the contrary, the peoples’ consciousness is that there can be no reliance on the Democrats. Ending the Iraq war and winning change depends on our own united efforts. Together it can be done!

(Voice of Revolution)