Workers’ Party members outside Belfast City Hall this afternoon (Friday) in opposition to US/UK/French bombing of Syria.

Workers Party opposes imperialist attacks against Syria

The Workers Party of Ireland condemns last week’s missile attacks on Syria as an escalation of imperialist aggression in the region under the pretext of an unproven allegation concerning chemical weapons in eastern Ghouta. France and Britain at the behest of the US, and with the connivance of NATO, the EU and their member states, have embarked on a further dangerous intervention which increases instability in the region and brings us closer to the threat of a generalised war.

These attacks, involving a massive use of force, bring further misery and destruction to the people of Syria and constitute an attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria and an attempt to reverse the Syrian government’s gains and impending victory against terrorists funded and supported by imperialism and reactionary states and forces in the region.

Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established. It is not simply an instrument of exploitation and aggrandisement, it is an essential device for preserving the interests of capital and the monopolies in their competition for the control of resources, markets, transport routes and spheres of influence.

The sustained development of military processes, the maintenance of multi-million strong armies and huge arms industries are a permanent feature of life under capitalism. The latest scientific and technological achievements are used on an unprecedented scale for the development and creation of awesome weapons of mass destruction. The expansion of the military industrial complexes, the partnerships between government and huge corporations and the deep penetration of militarism into the state apparatus has led to increased bellicosity on the part of capitalist states and unprecedented profits for private capital through military production and war.

The Workers Party of Ireland expresses its internationalist solidarity to the people of Syria and the other peoples of the region and calls upon workers to strengthen the struggle against imperialist interventions and wars. The people of Syria and elsewhere have the right to live peacefully in a society free from the arms race, threats of intervention, wars, crises, poverty and exploitation.

We reject and condemn this latest criminal attack against Syria. Bombing and war is no solution. The bombing of the Syrian Arab Republic, without a shred of evidence, in violation of the norms and principles of international law, is an attempt by those who refuse to accept imperialism’s defeat in the terrorist war that they promoted and financed in Syria as part of their strategy to control the Middle East.

Robert Fisk, an internationally respected journalist, and perhaps the first Western journalist to reach and report from the site of the alleged chemical weapons attack found no evidence of a mass chemical attack. Instead he met many local eyewitnesses who say the alleged gas attack never happened. The allegation of a gas attack has been made by a Saudi sponsored jihadist group, a group itself accused of notorious acts of brutality and supported by a country, Saudi Arabia, which has inflicted misery and death on countless civilians in Yemen and which is armed by the US, Britain and France. Needless to say there has been no missile attack on Saudi Arabia.

The attacks against Syria have nothing to do with chemical weapons or saving lives. They are a cynical and hypocritical criminal act against the Syrian Arab Republic.  Not content with the destruction of Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq where the people have been driven back into medieval conditions of life, the imperialist warmongers (all with long and bloody records of aggression against other states and peoples) plan the division and destruction of Syria in their own interests.

Despite a cynical and concerted campaign in the mainstream media to demonise Syria, while minimising Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people, ordinary citizens are able to see the blatant aggression and economic sanctions, financial and commercial blockades aimed at countries that wish to assert their sovereignty and follow an independent political direction.

Since the beginning of the war against Syria around 400,000 people have died, more than 5 million people have been displaced from their homes, and another 4 million are refugees outside the borders of their country of origin, living in appalling conditions in camps that do not meet the minimum conditions for survival.

The responsibility for this humanitarian catastrophe falls directly on the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and France and others who have been complicit in these overt and covert attacks on Syria. The history of imperialism demonstrates that intervention, the subjugation of peoples and nations and the exploitation of their resources has profound consequences and exists for no other purpose than the dominance of the monopolies, the preservation of the capitalist system itself.

We cannot remain silent. We call on all progressive people and forces to raise their voices against these actions which endanger the very future of humanity and to condemn this barbarity and aggression.

The Workers Party demands:

• An end to the imperialist bombing of Syria
• Full respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic
• An immediate end to all overt and covert financial and military assistance to jihadis and other armed terrorist groups
• The right of the Syrian people alone to decide the future of Syria free from external interference
• Solidarity with the Syrian people and the exploited and oppressed of the world