IN March 2003, the US-UK axis led by warmongers Bush and Blair – after claiming that there was irrefutable evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that would enable Saddam to attack and destroy the British base in Cyprus and even attack western Europe – launched their invasion of Iraq.
The reason for the war, Iraqi possession of wmds, is now accepted everywhere to have been a propaganda lie, when there was powerful evidence that there was no basis for the claim at all.
Its consequences were the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the complete destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, the turning of millions of Iraqis into refugees, and mass murder and torture on an epic scale from Abu Ghraib to the dungeons and jails of British-held Basra.
But all this was worth it, as Blair still insists, since the advanced Iraqi state – which had the potential to provide leadership to the entire Middle East against imperialism – and its Arab nationalist, pro-Palestinian regime were destroyed, and Iraq itself reduced to rubble.
As a direct result of this invasion, hundreds of people are still being killed in Iraq every month in sectarian violence.
The imperialist plot against Iraq is, however, not over.
Its next stage is the partition of the oil-rich country with a Turkish-sponsored Kurdish state in the oilfields of northern Iraq, with its vast oil wealth. This new state is to include part of Syria.
The current orgy of sectarian violence in Iraq is to prepare this break-up, thus redrawing the map of the Middle East, eliminating the Iraqi and Syrian states, weakening Iran, and creating the conditions where Israel can crush Hezbollah and supervise the construction of a Palestinian bantustan out of a couple of refugee camps.
What has infuriated the imperialists is that the Syrian people have proven to be a much tougher nut to crack than had been thought.
Assad’s crime is that he has led the Syrian resistance to the imperialist-backed and supported rebellion and has inflicted defeats on the pro-imperialist forces. The latter’s bombing and blasting of Syrian cities and their creation of over a million Syrian refugees has not intimidated the Syrian people into surrendering their state, and allowing Israel a free hand to deal with the Palestinian and Lebanese people.
It is this heroic and determined resistance of the Syrian people, and the victories that they have won against the US-UK-Saudi-Qatari-Turkish-backed Islamist and Al-Qaeda forces, that have forced Obama and Cameron to resurrect the lying and discredited propaganda wmd line that was used to pave the way to war with Iraq.
This propaganda line has been discredited and is hated and loathed by the masses of the world as being responsible for millions of deaths and refugees and hideous US-UK war crimes.
The imperialist bandits and oil thieves were able to get away with it and destroy Iraq. They simply ignored the millions who marched to stop the war and the majority of the people who opposed the war. They simply confirmed that their democratic process is a fraud.
This time round it must be different. The imperialists must not be allowed to repeat the horrors of Iraq in Syria, the Lebanon and Iran. The oil thieves must be stopped.
This is especially so since the Cameron government not only wants to destroy the Syrian people, it has declared war against the workers at home, to destroy the NHS and the Welfare State to restore the conditions of the 19th century.
Workers in the trade unions must go into action. Our enemy is at home, not in Syria or anywhere else.
Since the 2003 invasion could not be stopped by mass demonstrations, Cameron must be told that any attack on Syria will be met by a general strike that will bring down his regime and bring in a workers government and socialism.
This government will join hands with the Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian people and all the oppressed nations and working people of the world to smash imperialism.