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Iraqi people, band together Four years on from the start of the Iraq war---the Muslim people in Iraq have at last defeated the brutal aggression and occupation by the militarist empire of America who showed its arrogance and barbarity as 'the sole superpower of the world'. However, despite this great victory in the anti-American struggle, Iraq is witnessing not only an intense last battle to eject the US occupying forces but also internal conflict between Islamic sects (and various tribes), which has escalated into a de-facto civil war. Faced with this situation, we the Japan Revolutionary Communist League (Revolutionary Marxist Faction) appeal to all people in Iraq. Muslim people, fight against your true enemy! Avoid fratricidal war, and band together! Strengthen your bonds based on Islamic inter-nationalism to advance the anti-American, anti-Zionist struggle! In solidarity with you people in Iraq and people all over the Middle East who are fighting for total victory in the struggle against the US aggressor and its occupation, we are resolved to fight against the US imperialist occupation of Iraq and against the strengthening of the new US-Japan military alliance. Break through the crisis leading to civil war! Through the indomitable fight of resistance they have waged against US forces and through the pain caused by several hundred thousand victims, the Iraqi Muslim people have defeated at last the brutality of the Bush Empire. Look at the Bush Empire agonizing on its deathbed! Look at the miserable defeat of its occupying forces with their death toll exceeding 3000! Running away in disorder one after another is the 'Coalition of the Willing', which followed the US though this militarist empire started the war even in disregard of the United Nations. And now Bush's closest ally, Tony Blair, has decided to pull the British out of Iraq, which means the final collapse of what we call the Hakenkreuz alliance between the US, UK and Japan. Because of this utter defeat in the aggressive war in Iraq, the US Republican Party lost the midterm elections last November as the ruling party to the Democratic Party; the Bush administration is now besieged by a massive growing outcry for an early pullout both at home and abroad. If the situation continues, the disgrace of being 'the worst President who discredited the international prestige of the United States' by causing nothing but chaos in Iraq will remain. To avoid the disgrace, the war-addicted Bush has launched another genocidal attack called 'a mopping-up operation' against armed insurgents by sending an additional 22,000 troops to the battlefield. In response to this devilish but desperate gamble by the Bush Empire, the Maliki-led 'national reconciliatory' government of Iraq has also started a military operation against the armed forces (which is in fact against Sunnite fighters) jointly with US troops-even though intending to urge the lame-duck US president to retreat early. This government executed Saddam Hussein last December without hesitation, not only to announce 'the end of tyranny' to the nation and the rest of the world, but also to display its capability for 'stabilization', and therefore 'governing', by oppressing the Sunnite militias by force. However, with the impetus of this Bush-led operation 'to mop up terrorists', together with the Maliki-led execution of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent operation to repress the Sunnite forces, Iraq has plunged into civil war. Abiding by Saddam Hussein's Arab nationalism that ordains Iraq to be 'the vanguard for liberation of the Arabs', Sunnite forces are seething with resentment against not only the US occupiers but also the Shiite-led Maliki government, and further rank-and-file Shiite Muslims. Some radical groups among the Sunnites committed indiscriminate terrors including the bombing of a second-hand goods market in Baghdad (in January 22nd), the guerrilla attack with a lorry loaded with explosives at a market in a Shiite district of Baghdad (on February 3rd), and the suicidal attack on Shiite believers during their pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala (on March 6th in Hilla). They have even resorted to using chlorine bombs, and are attempting an escalation in weapons. The instigator of sectarian strife, and true enemy, is American imperialism! Notwithstanding this, Muslim people! Sunnite guerrilla fighters! We must ask you: Who is the true enemy of the Iraqi people? Though he was forced to decide 'a staged pullout' as a defeated leader, to cover up this defeat George W. Bush is now bent on a desperate attempt to eradicate the Muslim resistance under the pretext of preventing civil war. Isn't it imperative to end this 'Bush's war'? Muslim people, remember: 'The weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam Hussein', which the Bush administration stressed as the noble cause (in fact a pretext) for launching the Iraq war, was all a complete lie. Moreover, when this lie was revealed and the failure of the military occupation became apparent, in the attempt to justify the continued presence of the US occupying forces, this administration resorted to bloody conspiracies using CIA and DIA units to stir up, or even produce, conflicts among religious sects and tribes. One evil trick of the Bush Empire was to noisily claim abroad that a leading member of the 'international terrorist organization' of al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (who had in fact already died), was starting to target not only US and Iraqi troops but also Shiite Muslims for his 'terror' and to create the appearance of 'terror at the hands of the Zarqawi-led Iraqi al-Qaeda' to a number of cruel assaults against Shiite Muslims plotted by US secret forces. We the JRCL immediately revealed this wicked trick by Bush. Particularly, in the face of the bloody massacres of Shiite Muslims amid their Ashura rituals on March 2nd in 2004, we resolutely denounced this conspiracy engineered by the Bush administration by issuing an urgent statement to the world. Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and the Sunnite Iraqi Association of Muslim Scholars as well, released statements to the effect that this attack was plotted by dubious figures in order to ignite sectarian conflict. Thus, this plot by the Bush Empire was completely foiled. Muslim people, never ever forget: In the final phase of the Gulf War in 1991, US imperialism under senior Bush's presidency instigated Shiite Muslims to an armed uprising against the Saddam regime and yet when they rose up, betrayed them by lending no support. And even before the Gulf War, the Reagan administration provided Saddam Hussein with massive weapons, urging him to go to war against Iran according to a plan to overthrow this Islamic religious state, and continued providing massive military support to the Saddam regime while allowing him to repress and kill Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by using these weapons. It is surely the imperialist state of America that provoked sectarian strife within the Iraqi people and continued to fan the flames. The Iraqi people are now at a decisive point for defeating the Anglo-American aggressors, for finally kicking the occupying forces out of the country. We believe that now is the time for all Iraqi people to avoid the descent into fratricidal war, to carry out a cohesive struggle against the true enemy of US occupying forces, and to advance towards forming 'a government of national reconciliation' in the true sense. Muslim people, remember: In April and November in 2004 when US forces besieged Fallujah and launched an all-out attack on the city by using atrocious weapons including white-phosphorous bombs, depleted uranium munitions and cluster bombs---according to the US military's methods of urban warfare as part of the RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs)---Iraqi Sunnites and Shiites fought together against the US attack under the slogan 'Save Fallujah!' Whether it be Sunnite militias or the Shiite Mahdi Army led by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, armed groups of Iraqi people for carrying out guerrilla battle have never used force for internal strife between Islamic sects, nor have they adopted terrorist tactics to achieve goals by fair means or foul. They are supposed to have adopted the tactics of armed struggle, or the guerrilla form of struggle, according to their purpose (strategy) of winning the liberation of Iraq (or its true independence) from the US military occupation, and selectively targeting the carriers of the occupation such as the occupying forces of the US military and its 'Coalition of the Willing', ministers in the puppet governments (such as that led by Iyad Allawi) and their violent apparatuses (Iraqi national army and police recruited hurryingly). It is thanks to this struggle that victory became possible against 'the sole superpower of the world', the militarist empire of America. Both Shiite and Sunnite forces should think this over anew. On the basis of Islamic inter-nationalism, strengthen the anti-American struggle! Courageous anti-American, anti-occupation resistance by Iraqi people is firmly tied to the struggles by Hezbollah, who defeated the Olmert-led Zionist government instigated by the Bush Empire to aggression against Lebanon, and to the struggles by Hamas aiming to liberate Palestine. On-going struggles by people in the Arab world and the Middle East for their anti-American, anti-Zionist cause are of world-historical significance, intended to break the brutality of US imperialism which has attempted to dominate the world as 'the sole superpower' extremely arrogantly because of the self-destruction of Stalinism centring around the USSR. In its aggressive war against Iraq, the militarist empire of America aimed to overthrow the regime it regarded as 'hostile' by launching a pre-emptive attack under false pretexts, and also aimed to monopolize the oil resources of the region. The Iraq war as such has the nature of being a military form of neo-colonialism. --This unjust war by the Bush Empire must be said to have gone bankrupt miserably in the burning flames of Islamic revolt against its arrogant attempt to impose today's technological civilization of the Yankee imperialist type and the Western-grown bourgeois culture (or the Christian culture). And because the Bush Empire rushed into a brutal war even in disregard of the United Nations, the Empire had to be isolated internationally. Taking advantage of US imperialism being mired in Iraq, Hu Jintao's China and Putin's Russia have strengthened their ties, trying to form a worldwide net against US imperialism. Thus, 'the age of new confrontation between the US and China-Russia' has come. Meanwhile, the rising price of oil due to the Iraq war, together with the growing cost of the war (exceeding that for the Vietnam war in the 1960s), is crippling the US economy, leading to a crisis and collapse of the dollar-ruled system. Thus, as we pronounced at the September 11 Jihadist martyrdom attack in 2001, 'the beginning of the end of Yankeedom' is becoming a reality. Anti-American, anti-Zionist struggles by the Muslim people in the Middle East and all over the Islamic world are significant as they accuse the crimes of the century committed by imperialist America, which is crazed with arrogance as 'the sole superpower' after the historic end of the confrontation between imperialism and Stalinism, and the crimes with its allies in the 'Coalition of the Willing'. Their struggles as such also highlight the weakness of the proletarian class struggle in advanced capitalist countries, which was not able to stop Bush's war. This weakness is due to the unpardonable degeneration of the official leadership in opposition movements, including social democratic parties and the descendants of Stalinist parties who converted to social democracy after their own bankruptcy, all of whom have surrendered to the power holders and the ruling class in their countries and do not hesitate to join in the chorus condemning the Muslim people's anti-American struggles as 'terror'. For this reason, based on proletarian internationalism, we have appreciated the significance of the anti-American struggle by the Muslim people which challenges the brutalities of imperialism and we have expressed our solidarity with their struggle. At the same time, we have been striving to create antiwar struggles in Japan, to expand them worldwide, and also to build and strengthen the ranks organized on the basis of proletarian internationalism. We appeal to the Iraqi Muslim people who have defeated the imperialist brutalities and barbarities of 'the sole superpower'! Acutely aware of the historic significance of your struggle, develop the anti-American, anti-Zionist struggle based on Islamic inter-nationalism in the forefront of all people in the Middle East! In solidarity with the anti-American, anti-imperialist struggle by Muslim people in the Middle East, we the JRCL will resolutely advance our struggles against the continued occupation of Iraq by US imperialism and against the war policies of Japanese imperialist rulers who support the occupation as a shameful 'US dependent nation' and are strengthening the new US-Japan military alliance as an offensive and defensive alliance against China and Russia. In this struggle, we also denounce the Chinese and Russian governments which are contriving to boost their states into a 'superpower' behind slogans which stress the need to break the US domination as 'the sole superpower' and are therefore becoming increasingly greedy for the oil resources of the region and building up their nuclear military power. This struggle is the only way for a radical overturn of the 21st-century world which is suffering from war and repressive rule arising from 'the new confrontation between the US and China-Russia'. Again, we call on Iraqi Muslim people! Avoid civil war immediately! Tighten the bonds of Muslim forces to strengthen the struggle against the true enemy, American imperialism, for the true liberation of the Iraqi people! (March 12th, 2007) |