Workers world: Earth Day, nukes and dirty wars

April 27, 2010 in Featured

By WORKERSWORLD.ORG
www.nordis.net

The U.S. presides over the Nuclear Security Summit held April 12-13 in Washington. U.S. spokespeople keep repeating that its purpose is to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. But U.S. imperialism is the one that has wielded its nuclear arsenal as a terror threat, both against the Soviet Union in the days it existed and against all sorts of states that had no nuclear weapons. U.S. imperialism is the only power to actually use nuclear weapons — against the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in the last days of World War II. And the Pentagon is still “improving” its nuclear weapons.

Then the U.S. invited Israel to this summit. Israel possesses nuclear weapons yet refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Washington excludes Iran, which has no nuclear weapons and has signed the treaty. Besides trying to get sanctions against Iran, Washington is using the summit to attack the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). As the country under unrelenting attack from the Pentagon for the past 60 years, the DPRK has the strongest right to arm itself with whatever weapons it can.

April 22 is Earth Day. Following the disgraceful, imperialist-led negotiations in Copenhagen last December, it is a breath of fresh air — in all senses of that term — that President Evo Morales of Bolivia has called together another kind of summit for April 20-22 in Cochabamba. Even its name is inspiring: The Global Conference of Peoples on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. An April 11 release says President Morales will call for forming a multilateral Organization of Original Nations and Workers.

There is much to say about protecting the environment from profit-driven industries and climate change. We’ll report on the results of this conference in Bolivia, which will surely raise the questions in a more effective manner than the world’s exploiters did in Denmark.

Meanwhile, those who want to stop terror, especially the most destructive terror — state terror — and those who want to stop the most drastic assault on the environment can turn their attention to stopping two dirty wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is hard to imagine anything more wasteful and destructive of the environment than high-tech Pentagon wars against masses of people, nor anything so destructive of peace and human rights.

Recent media exposures have shown once again the disgusting criminal acts that occur when an oppressor state wages an unjust war of occupation against what were once sovereign countries.

In Iraq, a video leaked by some courageous soldier or Defense Department worker has shown what day-to-day murder was like in Baghdad in 2007. To the troops in the helicopter, any Iraqi was an enemy, any cylinder was a weapon, and slaughter was not only justified — it was orders. In a complete misunderstanding of history, the helicopter soldier on the radio referred to his unit as “Crazy Horse.” The original Crazy Horse was a leader of the resistance, who fought against the U.S. military. Look it up.

In Afghanistan the U.S. troops near Kandahar, where they are supposedly preparing a major offensive to win “hearts and minds,” recently strafed an ordinary bus with machine gun fire. At least five people were killed and 18 wounded. In the following days thousands of Afghans poured into the streets to protest the U.S. occupation.

Those protesting Afghans had the right idea. They should be joined by millions in the United States who also pour into the streets and take the first step to save the environment and stop terror as they demand that all U.S. military forces — official and mercenary — get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.