May-June 2003 No. 16 $2 E2 $ • u ••u .•.u · ·· ·· ~--~- -.. """"'="'> • "> " Internationalist U.S. lm12erialism Get the Hell Out! Defeat Colonial Occupation of Iraq! Imperialist Barbarism on the Road to WWlll The Great Chemical War Hoax........ _........... ~ . 37 Philippine RGK Calls to Defend Iraq, Defeat Imperialism .. 28 . " . b ' Racist Police Murder in Harlem ......... 55 Revolutionaries and the Test of War..... 58 2 The Internationalist May-June 2003 In this issue... Lenin on Imperialist War Defeat Colonial Occupation of Iraq! As U.S. rulers drive for a new war against U.S. Get the Hell Out! ......................... 3 Iraq, how to fight imperialist war, and where it comes from, are crucial issues Bush's Triumph of the Will 2 ................. 8 for young people, class-conscious work­ ers and activists. Essential reading is Mass Murderers Bush and Blair V.I. Lenin's pamphlet Socialism and Bomb Baghdad ................................... 11 War. A clear and powerful explanation of the revolutionary Marxist position, it stresses the need for workers and the The Clash of Slogans: oppressed to fight for the defeat of Revolutionary vs. Reformist ............. 13 "their own" imperialist bourgeoisie and the defense of semi-colonial Bush's Blitzkrieg Runs Into countries targeted for aggression. Iraqi Resistance ................................. 16 The struggle against imperialist war can only go forward as a struggle for French-German Axis No Force international socialist revolution! for Peace ............................................ 19 US$1.50 Order from/make checks payable to: Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Rotterdam Harbor Protest: Don't Move Church Street Station, New York, New York 10008, U.S.A. Weapons, Strike Against War! ........ 21 February 1941 : Dutch Workers Struck Visit the League for the Fourth International/ Against Deportation of the Jews ....... 23 Internationalist Group on the Internet http://www.internationalist.org Oakland Cops Shoot At Longshore Workers and Antiwar Protesters ..... 26 Now available on our site: • Founding Statement of the Internationalist Group Philippines RGK: Defeat U.S. • Declaration of the League tor Imperialism, Defend Iraq! ................ 29 the Fourth International • Articles from The Internationalist Philippines RGK: Break with the • Articles from Vanguarda Operaria Popular Front of the Fake Left! ....... 32 • Articles from El lnternacionalista • Articles and documents in German, French and Russian How Western Imperialists • The fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal Carved Up the Near East .................. 36 • Marxist readings The Great Chemical War Hoax .......... 37 U.S./British Massacre at Dresden ....... 44 Alberta Spruill: Victim of NYPD Killer Elite .......................................... 55 Revolutionaries and the Test of War . 58 Internationalist A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism Poisonous 'Provocateur'-Baiting from for the Reforging of the Fourth International the Spartacist League ...................... 62 Publication of the Internationalist Group, section of the League for the Fourth International For Revolutionary Internationalist Defense of Cuba! ............................... 72 EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Mark Lazarus, Abram Negrete, Marjorie Salzburg, Socorro Valero. Front page photo: Angry Iraqi protesters The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by demand U.S. get out, Falluja, April 30. Mundial Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Teleph_one: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: Subscription blank graphic based on a [email protected] Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. poster by V.A. Rodchenko, Books (1925). No.16 May-June 2003 May-June 2003 The Internationalist 3 Defeat Colonial Occupation of Iraq MAY 31-"America broke Iraq; now America z owns Iraq," declared New York Times colum­ CD ~ nist Thomas Friedman on the day U.S. troops ~ entered Baghdad. He was expressing the su­ ~ ::i preme arrogance of the imperialist rulers of 3 CD the United States who fancy themselves mas­ (/) ters of the world. They laid waste ~o the Iraqi capital, setting the center of the city ablaze to show off their firepower. They permitted and even encouraged the looters who have gut­ ted virtually every functioning enterprise and service. Hospitals were stripped of their medi­ cines, anesthetics and equipment while U.S. soldiers stood guard outside. The National Museum was ravaged, with invaluable rem­ nants of the world's oldest civilizations go­ ing back 10,000 years stolen or destroyed. The National Library was burned to the Enraged survivor of the U.S. bombing of Baghdad market, March 26. ground, destroying countless priceless manu­ scripts. You would have to go back centuries, to the Mongol Curzon did in the 1920s by putting "King" Feisal atop an in­ sacking of Baghdad in 1258, said an English archeologist, to find vented throne (see page 36). The Bush regime clearly saw a vandalism on this scale. The administrator of the ministry of kindred spirit in Chalabi, a swindler who is despised through­ religious affaiTs differed: "When Baghdad fell to the Mongols in out the Near East for emptying the coffers of Jordan's Petra 1258, these books survived," he said, referring to Korans over a Bank and then escaping in the trunk of a car as bankruptcy thousand years old. "And now they didn't survive." Liberation? loomed. Putting him in as the U.S.' satrap in Iraq is like naming No, this was the deliberate destruction of a nation. Baghdad Enron's Kenneth Lay, not01ious for shamelessly enriching him­ aflame and in ruins is the gory image of imperialist barbarism. self while milking the company dry. (But then, Enron was a big Only the Ministry of Oil survived intact, and Saddam Bush backer.) Instead, Shiite clerics quickly moved to take Hussein's moat-surrounded Republican Palace which was con­ over the teeming slum area of Baghdad (formerly known as verted into the HQ of the short-lived Sheriff of Baghdad, General Saddam City, now re-baptized al-Sadr City for a fundamentalist Jay Garner. When his boss, War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ayatollah executed by Hussein). In southern Iraq, a U.S.-backed . visited the opulent chandeliered quarters of the U.S. command in imam, his pockets stuffed with dollars, was assassinated by Iraq, Garner collared reporters to complain about negative stories Iranian-backed rivals. In the north, militias of the Kurdish Demo­ about the chaos and widespread opposition to the occupiers. cratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, historic rival "We ought to look in a mirror and get proud, and stick out our clans whose leaders have long been on the U.S. payroll, have chests and suck in our bellies and say, 'Damn, we're Ameri­ moved into the cities of Mosul, Kirkuk and Erbil and are expel­ cans!"' Garner declared (New York Times, 1 May). This ostenta­ ling tens of thousands of Arab residents in a wave of "ethnic tious triumphalism could only further inflame the Iraqi popula­ cleansing" rivaling Hussein's forced population transfers. tion, while the Pentagon's "Office of Reconstruction and Hu­ Rather than pulling troops out of Iraq, as the Pentagon manitarian Assistance" he headed still couldn't get power, water operations chiefs had planned, the invasion force is being or any other vital service functioning. So the White House de­ kept in place and they are sending in more units in an attempt cided to replace Gamer with the State Department's ''counterterrorism'' to keep the situation from spiraling out of their control. The man, L. Paul Bremer III. The new American proconsul will work new U.S. masters are keeping their eyes on the prize, control of together with the head of the U.S. military administration of Iraq's oil reserves. For years, official Washington has publicly Baghdad, General Buford C. Blount III, and they report in tum to professed non-interest in Iraqi oil: "We have no interest in George Bush II. As with the British before them, colonial rule and Iraq's oil," intoned U.S. vice president Dick Cheney as Ameri­ aristocratic pretension go hand in hand. can troops approached Baghdad. Yet while youthful antiwar Meanwhile, Rumsfeld and the war hawks in Washington protesters in Washington and New York intoned, "Hell no, we have been unable to install their quisling Ahmad Chalabi to won't go, we won't die for Texaco," U.S. commanders in the give an Arab fa<;ade to their colonial rule, as Britain's Lord field had no compunctions: the first military supply depots set 4 The Internationalist May-June 2003 up inside Iraq were named Forward Operating Base Exxon and ers of Iraqi blood. Next up on the U.S. hit list may be North Forward Operating Base Shell. Meanwhile, politically well-con­ Korea, as Pentagon planners ready their contingency plans. nected U.S. oilfield companies Halliburton and Bechtel, armed As the Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth Inter­ with multi-billion-dollar contracts, have taken control of key national warned in a statement last October, "Pentagon's 'First oil fields, to the exclusion of their French and Russian competi­ Strike' Strategy: Careening Toward World War III" (The Inter­ tors, while British companies are begging in Washington for nationalist No. 14, September-October 2002). The duty of revo­ subcontracts. The U.S. may barely control Iraq's cities, but it is lutionists and all class-conscious workers, we have insisted, is determined to ensure that to the victor go the spoils. to fight to defeat U.S. imperialism and defend Iraq. Following As Bush and Blair strut the world stage imitating Spanish the program of VJ. Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks in World conquistadors or Roman emperors, and looking instead more War I, we called "For Class War Against the Imperialist War!" like characters out of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, (The Internationalist No. 15, January-February 2003). In con­ their conquest is far from secure. After bloody fighting in the trast to liberals and reformists in the West who looked to the south, where Iraqi paramilitary units managed to pin down United Nations or the French and German imperialists, while advanced units of the U.S.