posted by editor – 21 May, 2002
Unite and resist the imperialist offensive against the oppressed peoples of the world!
Statement of the General Secretariat, International League of Peoples' Struggle
George W. Bush is making the trip to Germany, Russia and France to further drum up support for his crusade of terror and to underscore America's unchallenged dominance in the world. The International League of Peoples' Struggle calls on the people of Europe to expose and oppose the war-mongering of G.W. Bush the head an imperialist power that has committed some of the worst crimes in the history of mankind.
The US has a long history of carrying out terrorism against the people of the world. It has the infamous record of killing 1.4 million Filipinos from 1899 to 1916 in the conquest and pacification of the Philippines. It also has the unique notoriety of using the atom bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in killing more than 240,000 Japanese. Four and a half million Koreans were killed in the US war of aggression in Korea. Six to seven million people were killed in the US war of aggression against Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Instigated by the US imperialism, reactionary puppet regime massacred more than one million Indonesians in 1965.
Through puppet dictatorial regimes, the US has sponsored all kinds of acts of terrorism against the people. It installed and propped up such terrorist regimes as those of Chiang Kaishek in Taiwan, Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, Suharto in Indonesia, Marcos in the Philippines, Videla in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, Fujimori in Peru, Mobutu in the Congo and so on and so forth.
For the past 55 years, the US has operated a terrorist training camp in Fort Benning, Georgia. Once called the quot;School of the Americasquot; (SOA) it has now been renamed as the quot;Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperationquot; (WHISC) because of the notoriety acquired by the SOA. The SOA trained many of Latin America's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists such as El Salvador's Roberto D'Aubuisson, Argentina's dictators Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, Panama's Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos, Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado and Ecuador's Guillermo Rodriguez to name a few.
In the last 12 years, the US has launched three large-scale wars of aggression against Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan leaving a trail of death and devastation. In the process, it collected the spoils of war in the form of sources of oil and military contracts.
The US is the No. 1 aggressor and terrorist state in the world. It is using the September 11 attacks to misrepresent itself as the champion of antiterrorism in order to carry out terrorism against the people of the world. No matter how shocking occasionally is the handiwork of small private terrorist groups, all of them pale in comparison with the super-terrorism of the US.
The Bush administration supports the ultra-reactionary Sharon government that has ordered thousands of troops with tanks and air support to carry out the massacre of Palestinian civilians and the massive destruction of civilian homes and facilities in several West Bank towns and villages. The assurance of unstinting US support has emboldened the fascist Sharon to ignore the UN Security Council Resolution 1402 calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and to continue with his campaign of terror and destruction against the Palestinian people.
In Colombia, a massive dose of military aid from the Bush administration has encouraged the reactionary Pastrana government to abandon peace talks with the FARC and wage an all-out war against the revolutionary forces and people.
In the Philippines, a total of 1000 US combat troops have been deployed on the pretext that these troops would train the Filipino military forces against a small bandit group, the Abu Sayyaf which is itself a creation of the CIA with the collaboration of some Filipino military officers in the early 1990s against the Moro National Liberation Front.
The real objective of US military deployment in the Philippines is to eventually participate actively in combat against the New People's Army and the armies of the Bangsamoro and re-establish US military bases in the Philippines.
Arrogantly setting aside established international laws and legal norms, the US is encouraging and undertaking arbitrary arrests, indefinite detention incommunicado and without charges, military courts against civilians, and the assassination of anti-imperialist leaders or their kidnapping for trial under US-controlled courts. Bush has given the go-signal to the CIA to assassinate anti-imperialist leaders abroad.
Under the guise of antiterrorism, the Bush administration has enacted the fascistic Patriot Act that attacks the democratic rights of Americans, especially people of color in the US. Bush is promoting this anti-people law as a model for other countries in enacting antidemocratic legislation and other draconian measures. The states in the European Union are following the beat of the US and are now putting in place various measures that threaten the basic freedoms and civil liberties of the people. Already scores of innocent people have been arrested in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and France under these so-called anti-terrorist measures.
The International League of Peoples' Struggle, an alliance of over 230 anti-imperialist and democratic organizations all over the world calls on the people of Europe and the world to unite and oppose George W. Bush's wars of aggression and terror. We call on the people of Europe to oppose their own government's support for George W. Bush's wars and their version of draconian measures that attack the basic freedoms of the people.