PRESIDENT Trump in his televised statement on Thursday night insisted that launching a 59-strong cruise missile attack on Syria was ‘in the national security interest of the United States’, meaning the US ruling class.
The act of war followed on from the deadlock in the UN Security Council where the US was unable to get its resolution carried, and where its representative Nikki Haley pledged that the US was prepared to take action outside the Security Council and go to war, as it had done in the case of the attack on Iraq in 2003, which led to the rise of ISIS.
This the US did on Friday, early morning, when it fired 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield. Before the action, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson boasted that ‘steps are underway’ to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from office, and that the Pentagon was presenting a range of possible military options.
However, the British and French Foreign Ministers, also on Thursday, spoke up to oppose any US military intervention and were brushed aside, before falling quickly into line, once the deed was done.
Boris Johnson said on Thursday that the top priority should be peace talks and passing a United Nations resolution to investigate Tuesday’s attack. ‘It is very important to try first to get out a UN resolution,’ Johnson said. This is precisely what the US decided not to do. It did not want any independent investigation of the site of the alleged chemical bombing.
The reason is that the Syrian government is being framed up by the USA. It would be obviously stupid for the Syrian leadership, whose country handed over all of its chemical warfare stocks in 2014 to be destroyed, to use chemical weapons when it was winning the war hands down with Russian and Iranian support, and had no need at all to use such banned weapons, which would be an act of acute self-harm as far as the interests of Syria were concerned.
The US has decided to repeat the crimes of 2003 when it went to war with Iraq, outside of the UN and peddled notorious lies to do so. In fact, it is insulting the intelligence of the workers of the world by even attempting it. The UK was opposed to the action on Thursday, but by Friday morning it was not only on board but leading the cheering for the action, as befits its pigmy status.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Friday that the UK government ‘fully supports’ the US missile strike against the Syrian air base, and that the PM had been ‘informed throughout’ but the UK was not asked to take part.
He described the strike as ‘limited’ and ‘wholly appropriate’, despite the Syrian government reporting that nine people had been killed in the cruise missile attack, including four children. So now the UK is chained to the US war chariot and will no doubt participate in the next stage of Trump’s war against Syria, that Trump considers is more important than the struggle against ISIS, claiming that Assad is ISIS’ inspiration.
There are now a number of other states lining up for the forthcoming action. Israel is cheering its hero Trump, while the Turkish President Erdogan said yesterday, ‘If it truly is a matter of actions, then Turkey is ready … We will not back down.’ Erdogan wants to see Syria partitioned! The same goes no doubt goes for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, the paymasters of ISIS and other Islamist movements.
The workers movement in the US and UK knows that the 2003 attack on Iraq prepared the way for ISIS and a living hell for millions of workers in the Middle East. They know that regime change in Libya produced even more of the same horrors. Now the imperialists want to step up the same policy in Syria, just when the Syrian people are at the point of victory.
Workers in the US and the UK must spell it out that ‘our enemy is at home’ and mobilise to support the Syrian people by bringing down US and UK capitalism. The only way to defeat imperialism is to overthrow the major imperialist powers, the US and UK, with socialist revolutions, before they ignite a new world war.
2017 is the centenary year of the Russian revolution. It must be the year for smashing capitalism and imperialism through the victory of the world socialist revolution!
