“Left” Propagandists for Escalation of Imperialist War
By Bill Van Auken
With the US political establishment roiled by an increasingly
acrimonious debate over how to escalate the US military intervention in
Iraq and Syria, and with one Western European power after another
joining in the assault, the overwhelming sentiment of broad masses of
people both in Europe and America remains decidedly hostile to war.
Despite the frantic efforts of the political establishments in the US,
Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere, along with the campaign of the
media to whip up fear and hatred in response to recent terrorist
attacks, millions of working people are conscious that, once again, they
are being lied to about a military intervention in the Middle East.
Amid the dizzying array of pretexts put forward for this war, from
combating terrorism by bombing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS), to supporting “human rights” by financing and arming similar
Salafist jihadi militias in a war for regime-change, there remains the
well-founded popular suspicion that the real aims have to do with the
drive by US imperialism and its allies to secure hegemony over the
Middle East and its vast oil reserves.
It is under these
conditions that a collection of pseudo-left organizations from Europe,
the US and beyond have joined in issuing a statement that serves as
propaganda for a dramatic widening of the imperialist campaign.
