WAR IS HELL. Galllipoli, 1915. On 25 April, 1915, Australian, British and other imperialist troops landed on a Turkish beach. It was the beginning of a horrendous waste of human life in the Gallipoli campaign, which was itself a minor part of the larger waste of human life during World War I. Both sides in this war were reactionary imperialist alliances, fighting to re-divide the world in the struggle for colonies, resources and markets. It was ended, not by enlightened statesmanship, or by military victory on the field, but by revolutions - first in Russia in 1917 and then in Germany in 1918. The new German government realised that to fight on was to risk a repeat of what had happened in Russia the previous year.
Afghanistan, 2012
United States, Australian and other imperialist troops are fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. The President, a long-time US stooge, retained office in the 2009 election by means of massive fraud. His authority, though, scarcely runs further than the capital. Outside Kabul, the country is ruled by warlords (nominally allies of the President) or by the Taliban. Both are brutal religious zealots, the former somewhat more brutal and the latter somewhat more zealous. The population hate the occupation - they have never submitted to a strong central government and aren't about to start now. Everyone knows it is only a matter of time till the imperialists leave, so further military operations are pointless cruelty.
War Today
A century ago, war was largely fought between armies, on rural battlefields. In World War I, 95% of casualties were military personnel. The rest of society in the belligerant countries was mobilised to boost the war effort. Today, however, Clauswitz's principle of total war has been taken much further. War is now waged directly on the society and the economy of the enemy in order to subjugate or destroy it. A country's military forces are now mere obstacles to that destruction. The "pacification" program in Vietnam, the destruction of the Iraqi economy from the air, the night raids on Afghan villages and the drone strikes in Pakistan are all examples of how the US realises that it makes war, not on the military forces of the enemy, but on the enemy society itself. Nuclear weapons, of course, are the ultimate example of war on society.
Tomorrow
There are two possible futures. In one of them, the conflicts between the imperialist countries, and between them and China, will grow until some miscalculation leads to a nuclear war which could destroy humanity. The other possibility, the only means of avoiding that fate, is a workers' revolution to abolish capitalism and eliminate the causes of war. We can do it and we start by building the labour movement and taking a stand against militarism today. Instead of idolising the Anzacs, we should mourn them, and instead of glorifying the military, we should oppose its very existence.
NOT A PERSON, NOT A PENNY FOR IMPERIALIST WAR
Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group
Comments
Re: ANZAC Day Statement from Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group
The fact remains that the sophisticated weapons now in the Imperialist Camps Control has the capacity to destroy the living planet six times over. It is call security.
People ought to realize the depth to which they are being lied to. Pentagon jargon can give a clue in this regard. For instance the DU--depleated uranium, is in fact alive uranium, and does poison radiate the enemy as well as the soldiers that use it, and goes on poisoning the environment for thousands and millions of year of killing the web-of-life. It on exploding shatters into nano-particles and spreads as it settles to the ground. Just one particle of this deadly radation poison in you lungs will give an equivalent x-ray each hour for the rest of your life and probably genetically deform you (cancer) heredity genes forever. Producing deformed children, like the millions of childred in Vietnam, and the thousands of American soldiers in America, deformed by the chemical poisoning of the whole Indo-Chinese regions in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. There is no way of avoiding the spread of this WMD--weapon of mass destruction short of not using it at all.
That is only one consquence and it was portended on the Kellogg-Briand treaty, written in 1928 between France and the U.S.A. and its jist is that aggressive war has become so virulent, unjust and destructive because of the modern weapons that it must be ended as any nations foreign policy.
Further down the line the liberation side took up by the anti-fascist fighters wrote into world law the liberation covenants which say that the goals of liberation are set at ending aggressive war as any nations foreign policy, and that freedom and democracy will arrive by working for a living not destroying the planet with pollution for money.
That is the climate change fact going on today as the Imperialist Camp holds pollution in place, in that the bourgeois politicians have betrayed the concepts of freedom and democracy and made aggressive war as any empires right to impose its will on any other country, and destroy as much of the planets ecological organic and inorganic web-of-life as possible, and thence to give the public treasury over to the military to hold in place glory for polltion wars, while making austerity for the social programs that the majority working classes need to improve working and living conditions.
That is the fascist states are arriving by the ignorant media betrayal of mass slaughter as glory.
This can be solved by obeying national and international laws and the anti-fascist covenants. Such as the NUREMBERG TRIALS: chaired by the U.S. Judge Jackson who wrote into international law, on behalf of the anti-fascist fighters, that the planning and doing of aggressive war is the supreme international crime on the planet earth, as it actuates all other crimes big, small, high, and low. GENEVA CONVENTIONS of war (1949) which states that 1)targeting and killing of civilians is a war crime, 2) torturing and killing of POW's is a war crime, 3) collective punishment is a war crime, such as since the British Empire conquered Iraq in 1917, until the present times when each and every country such as Libya, Palestine, Jordan, Eygpt, Bahrain, Qatar, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and etc. have been savaged by U.S. and British Imperialist aggression and illegal wars of occupation.
That is the entire Arab people have been Collectively Punished, and that is in law of the globe--a War Crime.
Worst than that the U.S. Imperialist have proclaimed 'permanent war'as its declared policy for 'full spectrum domination globally' for making its empire the leader of the worlds' societies.
A defacto declaration of war against the entire working classes of the world. It is not the peoples that intiate the violence, both previous centuries the aggressive wars were intitiated and declared by the Monopoly Imperialist Colonialist classes which control the Military establishments of the world. THEY DO SO TO REDIVIDE AND RECONQUER THE WORLD FOR EMPIRE.
Can you imagine a worker paying one and half million dollars for one missile when he or she is lucky to have a thousand dollar of savings in the bank.
No we the peoples of the world have been betrayed and as the First Canadian Division points out our freedom arrives as possibility when we arise, and dismantle the war machine, and its destructive manufactury and not by glorification of aggressive war.
This is not knew, as the ancients also projected that program when for instance, Spartacus proclaimed to the only Legionare enslaving soldier left standing, to go to Rome, and tell them we the oppressed and enslaved demand that Rome stop using the whip and killing us violently, we being the working classes.
Or when Jesus said in the Holyland as recorded by the bible Isaiah 2-4, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
Workers of the world, unite!! We are the worlds' majority!! End pollution wars, not endless wars for more and more pollution. You yet have a world to win!!