Anti-War Demonstrations Must Challenge the National Security Warfare State

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, holding microphone at Detroit MLK Day March on Washington Blvd. downtown, January 15, 2007. (Photo: Robert Akrawi).
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.

Anti-War Demonstrations Are Continuing in the National Security Warfare State

Pan-African News Wire Editorial
March 17, 2007

On this fourth anniversary weekend of demonstrations commemorating the dreaded and continuing American occupation of the middle-eastern nation of Iraq, the Pan-African News Wire supports all efforts aimed at bringing about the immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from the country.

From the beginning of the efforts aimed at occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-war and peace forces in the United States and the world have opposed the Bush administration's designs on seizing the oil and other natural resources of these nations. It has always been quite obvious that the initial reasons given for the invasions in October of 2001 of Afghanistan and the intervention commemorated this weekend of the March of 2003 disaster, were nothing but blatant falsehoods and that the real basis for the wars were the imperialist designs of the US and the United Kingdom.

In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the American government was provided with a rationale for the intensification of repression and the superexploitation of people both in the United States and around the world. There are today many "secret prisons" and torture chambers where the American military, intelligence operatives and private security contractors engage in the most brutal and vicious forms of human degradation and villification.

The capitalist state in America is in a terminal crisis. It sees no other solution than permanent war in the pursuit of ever greater rates of profits. In the United States over 45 million people are without basic health insurance. Millions of others have been thrown out of work and business and over two million are in prisons and jails. Police agencies across the country have been given unlimited powers to harrass, beat, torture and kill civilians all in the name of fighting crime and terrorism.

In the Gulf region, hundreds of thousands remain homeless and scattered, while the Bush administration completely ignores the plight of the people of the region because many of them are African-American and poor. Yet the US Congress is debating whether to send another 100 billion dollars to continue the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that they cannot win. This 100 billion dollar continuation of the imperialist occupations represent funds over and above the regular 500 to 700 billion dollar defense budget for the country. A defense budget that exceeds the military spending of all other nations in the world combined.

The anti-war and anti-racist movements provide a glimpse of hope for the development of a genuine people's movement to create a real democratic existence in the United States. Consequently, the Pan-African News Wire supports all of the demonstrations that are taking place across North America and the world against American foreign policy.

It is only the people organized based on their own interests that will provide the impetus for the liberation of humanity from the current stage of world imperialism led by the United States ruling class. Only when the people of America fully realize the implications of what their government is doing in their name, will there be the potential for fundamental social change in the present era.

When the peoples of the world see a serious movement for social justice inside the United States, they will be compelled to change their outlook and attitudes towards America which has earned the political wrath of the masses around the planet.