Providing a haven for retired US generals shows the violent essence of 100 years of the ANC

The Editor

Cape Argus

Re: Response to US General’s letter in Brief Points (Let’s get perspective on US involvement in Iraq) Tuesday Jan 3^rd 2012

We would like to thank retired Brigadier General (US Airforce) Bill Constantine, for his rather arrogant and patronising response to Abdullah Saeed’s letter. You inadvertently expose the violent essence of 18 years of ANC-SACP rule and demonstrate that the ANC-SACP is a total lackey of US imperialism.

You claim that under US ‘guidance’, ‘democracy’ and a ‘freely elected government’ have been ‘accomplished’ in Iraq. How could there have been any ‘freely’ elected regimes while the country was under US military occupation and then (and now) the US controls the military expenditure and all other aspects of the Iraqi budget?

The people of Iraq never invited the US invasion. The pretext of the invasion was the supposed existence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. It turns out that the only ones with weapons of mass destruction was the US military. The US military invaded Iraq, destroyed the infrastructure and then awarded US companies the contracts for ‘reconstruction’. It has been estimated that the US military industrial complex and related monopolies have made $3 trillion from the boon of the spread of US ‘democracy’. Indeed ‘democracy’ is seen as the right of one or other imperialist to exclusive plunder a region of the globe. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis perished while receiving this ‘boon’ of US democracy (see the Lancet report on the some of the deaths caused by the invasion).

You want to show the ‘greatness’ of US imperialism by quoting the sacrifices of 4500 troops and 32000 injured in the Iraqi invasion. Now let’s see, the $3 trillion and the securing of Iraqi oil forever, is but a ‘small’ gain in this exercise. It shows that the Iraqi invasion was not about the rights of Iraqis but about the absolute right of US imperialism to plunder. Why is it that returning US soldiers are ripping off their medals and military stripes and throwing them away (see the you-tube videos on the Democracy Now website)? They report their trauma at being ordered and rewarded for their systematic ‘kills’ of innocent Iraqis. We can only wonder how many innocent Iraqis died as a direct result of the instructions of the Brigadier General himself? Is it not true that US imperialism has destroyed the lives of more than 40 000 families of US rank and file soldiers, all in the name of profit. Is it not true that the Obama regime came into being only on the promise of a withdrawal of the occupation troops from Iraq? Is it not true that the Occupy Wall Street movement and the massive disgruntlement among the US working class and the rank and file soldiers, is really what drives US imperialism to withdraw the invasion army? Despite the opposition by the masses in the USA, US imperialism has shifted its troops to occupy Afghanistan and Pakistan.

At the height of the invasion of Iraq, the late Kader Asmal was head of the committee overseeing Arms sales. He steadfastly refused to terminate arms sales from the SA military to the US regime. Hundreds of thousands of South African mercenaries supported the US invasion of Iraq. The ANC-SACP regime did nothing about this except mumble some few concerns.

The Friends of the Congo website reports video evidence that the US army helped arm and support the invasion by the Rwandan army of the DRC. No doubt this was another generous gesture of US ‘democracy’. The SA military is sent to the DRC to protect the Anglo American mining plunder operations (at a cost of R50 000 per month per soldier from the SA taxes).

Such is the ‘generosity’ of US democracy that over 6 million people have died in the DRC as a result of the imperialist scramble for looting the country and the region. The DRC cannot even have an election based on the ‘democratic norms’ of the West as the plunder by imperialism is absolute.

The US does not even bind itself to the capitalist organ, the International Criminal Court. The ANC-SACP show themselves to be total lackeys of imperialism by giving refuge to war criminals like the Brigadier General in leafy upper-middle class suburbs like Oranjezicht. Side by side with this, our class brothers and sisters from Zimbabwe, DRC, Mozambique, etc are offered privatized prisons like Lindela (run by the ANC elite for profit), face the constant threat of arrest and deportation.

The whole of Southern Africa is a slave camp for Anglo American. Such is the ‘boon’ of US ‘democracy’ for the region. The ANC-SACP are the managers for Anglo American of this systematic violence. This is the meaning of 100 years of the ANC.

What is needed is a new revolutionary party, breaking from the ANC-SACP, independent from the state and capital; a party which is part of a revolutionary International (for us, the refounding of the Fourth International), which sets as its task the Socialist United States of Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, which is inextricably linked to the working class taking power in the imperialist centres and primarily in the USA.

It is an international task to break with and politically defeat the treacherous leaders within the workers movement. The path to Socialism goes not through parliament and ‘democracy’ but through the revolutionary action of the masses under the leadership of and independent organization of the working class, through the working class taking power through its own mass action methods.

[Although we do not share the analyses of the Lancet, Democracy Now, and Friends of the Congo, their articles do provide some data which expose the lie of US ‘democracy’].

The masses have shown in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Malawi, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Bolivia, Chile, Swaziland, Palestine and now Nigeria that they are perfectly capable of rising up against dictators. It is US imperialism and other imperialists that are the main backers of the capitalist dictators against the masses. The world wide fight today is not for ‘democracy’ but rather to overcome it, ie to overthrow the system of imperialist-capitalist plunder of the masses of the world.

The depth of the imperialist crisis is reflected in the steps US imperialism is now taking to bestow its ‘boon’ of ‘democracy’ on the people of Iran.