Saturday, June 21, 2003To the Iraqi Communist Party:
Dear Comrades,
The American and British occupational forces have been in your country for too long. Prior to and during the invasion we stood in unwavering opposition to the Bush Administration’s plans for the oppressed peoples of Iraq. We oppose the on-going occupation of Iraq and we struggle for its end.
Following the fall of the Ba’ath regime, we watched with excitement as the Iraqi Communist Party, the oldest party in Iraq, turned an office of the security police into its Baghdad office, published the first issues of “Tareeq Al-Sha’ab” and celebrated May Day in Fardus Square in the face of American soldiers and tanks.
To the many Iraqi victims of both Ba’ath and American brutality, we give our deepest regrets. The United States supported the Ba’ath regime until it no longer suited its interests and it has been the Iraqi people who have suffered. They have suffered through a decade of United Nations sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands, mostly children and the elderly, a decade of an illegal American-British-imposed no fly zone and invasion and occupation that has killed thousands more.
Invasion has not liberated the people of Iraq, but changed their rulers from a brutal and repressive domestic regime to a right-wing plutocratic foreign regime. Liberation and democracy can only come by the people themselves and we reject the arrogance of the United State government in “installing” democracy anywhere, especially in Iraq. The United States government has aligned itself with the Iraqi National Congress and ethnic and religion-based groups in creating such a “democracy,” while negating to include the revolutionary elements such as the Iraqi Communist Party. Only the people can decide their future, not the world’s sole superpower.
We stand in solidarity with the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Communist Party against the illegal occupation by American and British forces. We demand the immediate withdraw of all occupational forces and the formation of an independent, secular, democratic, federal and unified Iraq.
We further call for a revolutionary democratic socialist transformation of Iraq through mass workers’, farmers’ and peoples’ upsurge aimed at organizing a new society and new social institutions based on the people’s power.
In solidarity,
Socialist Party of Michigan
Affiliate of the Socialist Party USA