In Support of End the Wars at Home and Abroad

As Socialists we stand for international solidarity with workers and oppressed people in other countries and against the wars waged by our own imperialist ruling class. Although the anti-war movement has ebbed since the start of the Iraq War in 2003, there is widespread anti-war sentiment among the American people, with many people ready to take action, when war appears imminent, as witnessed in the antiwar demonstrations following the assassination of Iranian leader Soleimani.

It is our responsibility to stand and act in solidarity with liberation struggles like the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli apartheid state and the Filipino struggle against the Duterte regime.

It is our responsibility to oppose the war crimes of our government whether domestically or overseas. 

The US is a global hegemon that exploits and oppresses working people worldwide. The vast US empire is maintained by a network of over 800 military bases overseas with US troops deployed to over 100 countries in every corner of the earth.  With its strategic defeats in Iraq and Vietnam the US has retrenched its means of domination.

By eliminating the draft and moving to a “volunteer” military, the US now favors “hybrid warfare” to full-scale invasions with large numbers of American troops, hoping to make war and empire more palatable to the American people. Hybrid warfare consists of the use of so-called “special forces”, reliance on bombing and drone warfare, and widespread use of sanctions, a form of economic warfare, against the people of the targeted countries. Hybrid warfare is aimed at regime change in Iran, Venezuela, Korea and Cuba most notably. In addition the US increasingly relies on client autocratic and settler states like Israel and Saudi Arabia to fight its wars in Palestine, Yemen and elsewhere.

The US is increasingly targeting great power rivals China and Russia, countries that challenge its hegemony, and is well along the path of a “new cold war” with those countries. US military spending dwarfs that of all others.  The US military is the world’s largest polluter. The US is modernizing its nuclear weapons, has abrogated nuclear arms treaties, including the nuclear agreement with Iran, and pulled out of the Paris climate change accord. The twin existential threats of climate change and nuclear war loom ever greater and more imminent.

In response to the Black-led uprising following the murder of George Floyd, we’ve seen National Guard and regular military deployed against protestors, the frequent use of chemical weapons and other “non-lethal” weaponry, as well as other military equipment and tactics. Federal secret police have been deployed in Portland and other cities, assaulting protestors and disappearing people far removed from the protest scene. These war crimes against the American people on American soil, are a small taste of what is regularly visited on the people of the world, primarily people of color, at the hands of the white supremacist US empire.

The multinational working class has a unique and essential role to play in the struggle against war and imperialism because:

1. US Imperialism is a global system and the workers and oppressed people worldwide are the natural allies of workers in this country in bringing that system down. 
2. Workers are positioned to stop the war machine, whether that be the factories that produce weapons of mass destruction or the shipping of weapons to US forces or reactionary client regimes like Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Philippines.
3. The sons and daughters of the working class fill the ranks of the military, and fight,and die in imperialist wars, which cannot be waged without their compliance.  While there is no draft today, there is an economic draft and young workers join the ranks of the “volunteer” army in search of skills and job opportunities that are otherwise unavailable to them. This is an achilles heel to the war effort. GI resistance played a key role in the defeat of the US in Vietnam, and Veterans groups are in the forefront of the struggle against war and militarism and in support of GI resisters today.
4. This obscene military budget constitutes the bulk of discretionary spending, while the country is in the throes of a pandemic that has killed over 180,000 in this country and further impoverished millions of workers and people in oppressed communities.  The US spends over $700 billion on the military while basic human needs like housing, healthcare and education are neglected. This must be stopped.