NO WAR AGAINST IRAN

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Midnight Oil – US Forces
Mike Prysner - No War on Iran! Troops Out of Iraq!

You’re listening to Back in the USSR on CFRU 93.3 FM.  I am Siegfried, and while I want to welcome you to our first show of 2020 and once again wish you a happy new year, a certain individual by the name of Donald J. Trump has made it rather difficult for me to do so.  2020 began with an act of war.  On January 3^rd, under personal instructions from the U.S. President, an American reaper drone launched a missile strike on Baghdad Airport that assassinated Major General Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second in command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces.  This blatant act of aggression by the US Empire followed the slaughter, earlier in the week, of at least 25 members of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces in a series of American airstrikes across Iraq.  In response to those airstrikes, the carnage they left behind, and the naked violation of Iraqi sovereignty that they represented, Iraqi protestors stormed the fortified US Embassy in Baghdad, a widely hated symbol of imperial domination ever since the US-led invasion in 2003 led to the utter devastation of what was once among the wealthiest nations in the Middle East.  That prompted Trump to send hundreds of American marines into Iraq and, it seems, to take the unprecedented and criminal step of assassinating Qasem Soleimani, a military leader of a sovereign state, who was in fact on an official mission of diplomacy to the Iraqi President when he was killed.  So, the U.S. just slaughtered an Iranian diplomat as well as a general, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who, given that the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (which were originally created to fight ISIS) are an official part of the Iraqi Armed Forces, was himself a high-ranking member of the Iraqi Army.  This is serious.  Not to mention that it breaks just about every international law in the book.

After the fact, the U.S. government tried to justify this act of war by claiming that Soleimani was planning attacks on US soldiers, an unsubstantiated accusation that was faithfully repeated throughout the American media and even by the majority of Trump’s political opponents, from Nancy Pelosi to Elizabeth Warren, none of whom had a problem with the assassination itself, only with its timing and the fact that they were not consulted first before it happened (the Canadian Government’s position is essentially the same).  Bernie Sanders was one of the few people to really condemn the assassination and to take a firm anti-war stance.  Meanwhile the US corporate media has tried to equate Qasem Soleimani with Osama Bin-Laden, with Vice-President Mike Pence even making the absurd claim that the Iranian general was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks.  The truth is something else.  Qasem Soleimani, along with the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolution Guard, did provide training and weapons to Iraqi resistance fighters fighting against the American occupation forces after the 2003 invasion.  He did support people who were exercising their legitimate rights under international law to resist the invasion of their country by a foreign power.  He did the same thing in Lebanon in 2006 when Iran provided support to the resistance movement Hezbollah which was fighting against the Israeli invasion of the country.  And more recently, Soleimani did more than any other one person probably, in coordinating the battle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.  In all three of these cases, he stood up against the foreign policy agenda of America and its regional allies, and that’s ultimately why he was targeted and killed.  More than one million people attended his funeral in Tehran today.

We really do stand on the brink of war right now, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends.  Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb upwards of 52 major Iranian cultural heritage sites if there is any Iranian retaliation against US troops.  Thousands of additional US troops are being dispatched to bases in the Middle East.  And Trump is now threatening the government of Iraq with sanctions so “strong that those imposed on Iran would pale in comparison”, after the Iraqi parliament overwhelmingly passed a motion to expel the more than 5000 US troops present in the country.  So much for the US respecting Iraqi democracy.  For its part, Iran has finally backed out of the 2015 nuclear agreement, in which it agreed to freeze enriched uranium production in exchange for sanction relief.  It’s important to mention that this agreement, signed under the Obama Administration, was basically a dead letter after Trump pulled the US out of it in 2017 and ratcheted up sanctions to truly devastating levels on the people of Iran, in particular crippling their ability to have access to many life-saving medicines.  Unilateral sanctions, such as the ones that the US has imposed on Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and North Korea, constitute an act of war under international law and are illegal under international law. 

Just as disturbing, Iranian-Americans are being targeted by the US Government in the wake of the assassination, with at least 60 Iranians and Iranian-Americans of all ages being detained at length and interrogated for hours at the Peace Arch border crossing in Blaine, Washington this past Sunday.  The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported, citing an anonymous source from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), that “the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a national order to CBP to 'report' and detain anyone with Iranian heritage entering the country who is deemed potentially suspicious or 'adversarial,' regardless of citizenship status.” Iranian-Canadians were among those targeted.

So, in light of all this, I understand why so many friends of mine are currently lying awake at night dreading the possibility of World War 3 breaking out by sunrise.  I feel that.  I understand the fear.  But I also understand that we need to be in the streets, pushing back, fighting back, and striking fear in the hearts of those politicians, whether north or south of the border, who are directly or indirectly pushing us into a new war that would cost countless thousands of lives and have a devastating impact on the region and the world.  Already there have been protest marches in more than 90 cities across America involving thousands of people.  Codepink, the Answer Coalition, and other progressive groups have mobilized hundreds of people over the weekend in Washington D.C.  On Saturday, there was an anti-war rally in front of the American consulate in Toronto and there are plans for more.  These rallies are not enough.  Nowhere near enough people have showed up to these demonstrations, there’s so much more that needs to be done, and quickly, but the speed with which people responded in the wake of this egregious act of war by Trump is impressive in and of itself.  People realize that this is an emergency and urgent action must be taken to stop the push to war with Iran.  The Empire has to be stopped.  I’m old enough to remember 2003 and the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.  An event which played a massive role in my own radicalization politically.  And I remember learning about the carnage of that imperialist war, the destruction of that country, of America’s blatant attempts to colonize it and seize its resources, and how the neo-conservative politicians in Washington driving that war wanted so badly to expand it into Iran, into Syria and into a whole list of other countries that were on their hit-list.  And their agenda remains the same today.  We have to stop this imperial war machine before it murders more nations in the name of profit and greed.  Some of you might have noticed the share prices of Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, and the other giant arms manufacturers and how they went through the roof right after Trump launched that fatal airstrike.  We know who benefitted from the Iraq War and we know who will benefit from an even bigger and much more bloody war with Iran, a country with 80 million citizens.  We have to stop this, brothers and sisters.

And one more thing.  Some people might criticize me for lamenting the death of someone like Qasem Sulaimani, a religious conservative who would likely be very uncomfortable being in the same room as an openly bi-sexual unapologetic communist like myself.  I think I’ve already explained myself pretty well on this one.  I oppose empire and I oppose imperialist war.  And imperialist war, whether it’s against Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria or now Iran does NOTHING to improve the lives of marginalized people.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Whether its women, religious minorities, racialized people, or LGBTQ people, American military intervention exposes them to greater violence, greater suffering, and greater marginalization.  Just look at what NATO-backed rebel groups did to black people in Libya after NATO started bombing the country and the government was toppled.  Look at what Western-armed and trained militant groups did to Christians and Shia Muslims in Syria…to say nothing of what they did to people accused of being homosexuals.  Look at what US-backed warlords did to women in Afghanistan after the Taliban were overthrown, the violence and oppression only got worse.  The Empire is never your friend as an oppressed person.  EVER.  And war sure as hell isn’t going to improve things for marginalized people in Iran, or in the United States for that matter.

Opposing empire is a noble thing.  Iran’s efforts to oppose the US invasion of Iraq were and are praiseworthy.  Standing in solidarity with a people resisting occupation is praiseworthy, just as Iran’s support for Palestinian resistance is praiseworthy.  The American Empire was stopped in Iraq.  Domestic opposition to the war did grow.  And the warhawks in Washington were unable to fulfill their dreams of imposing hegemony over the entire Middle East.  Internationalist resistance, resistance across borders with diverse people joining together against a common foe, is an effective thing.

Now I said last week in my show honoring the 61st anniversary of the Cuban Revolution that I’d follow up this week by talking about the legacy of that revolution and how it impacted the world.  Obviously, time is much more limited, but I can get into one notable example of how the Cuban Revolution impacted Africa and specifically how Cuba played a major role in the defeat of Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.  In 1987, the army of Apartheid South Africa invaded the country of Angola to overthrow the socialist anti-colonial government there.  Cuba, which had supported anti-colonial struggles around the world and had supported Angola’s government since its independence from Portugal in the 1970s, sent troops to assist the Angolans in repelling the invasion.   

The decisive battle came at a place called Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, and the forces of Apartheid South Africa were destroyed by an allied army of Cubans, Angolans and Namibians.  The result was liberation for Angola, independence for Namibia (which had formerly been colonized by South Africa), and the steady collapse of Apartheid in South Africa itself.  The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale is still honored as an epic victory for internationalism and anti-colonial struggle in the face of racist imperialism and it set an example that I hope more and more people are able to recall in the present day – for we, like the Cubans and Angolans, will need to join hands across borders if we hope to defeat the monster that we are up against now.  Solidarity, comrades and friends.  As Thomas Sankara used to say, "when the people stand up, imperialism trembles".

NO WAR AGAINST IRAN

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