The Communist Party of Canada opposes the renewal of imperialism’s war in Iraq, under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State (IS), and calls for Canada’s immediate and complete withdrawal from the US‑led military intervention.
The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect is being fed to the people of Canada in order to justify a new war in Iraq. In this narrative, intervention is promoted as necessary to save the people of Iraq and Syria from IS terrorism.
But this argument obscures the fact that the main and most immediate threat to peace and to the people of the Middle East is from imperialism. It was the United States, together with its allies in NATO and Israel, who spearheaded the invasion of Iraq in 1990, and who carried out the murderous sanctions through the decade of the 1990s, and who again invaded and occupied the country from 2003 on. It is the imperialist states who have waged a terrorist war against the people of Syria, in which 100,000 people have died and millions displaced. It is imperialism that has supported Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the apartheid policies against the Palestinian people, and Israel’s repeated military strikes against Gaza.
The horrors of the Islamic State reflect the legacy of US‑led, imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq, an aggression that imposed sectarianism and national division on that country.
It is no accident that imperialism’s sudden and intense interest in Iraq has developed in the wake of its failure to topple the government of Syria and just as NATO concludes its departure from Afghanistan. A renewed war on Iraq will enable the US and its allies to maintain huge military bases in the region and will provide a pretext for renewed military intervention in Syria.
It is the sole right of the people of a country to determine the path of their political, social and economic development, free from foreign interference. Instead of seeking new pretexts to justify new intervention in Iraq, the US and its allies should withdraw completely from the Middle East.
In Canada, the Harper Conservative government has voiced its support for imperialist military intervention and has already begun deployment of Canadian military personnel and equipment to Iraq. The massive antiwar mobilizations of 2002 and 2003 prevented the Chretien government from officially participating in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. That important victory must not be forgotten now.
The Communist Party denounces the Harper government’s support for a renewed war on Iraq, under any pretext, and calls on all progressive and peace‑supporting people to actively oppose Canadian military deployment.
Statement of the Central Committee, Communist Party of Canada, September 13-14, 2014