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Iraq after Afghanistan. In the meantime, the Sharon-Peres team of butchers can go ahead with their destruction of what remains of the Palestinian National Authority and prepare their Jenin-style attack against Gaza...

This new attack against the Middle East is mainly because of its oil fields, the savage exploitation of which has become indispensable as Western economies find themselves having to face collapses in stock market prices and virtually zero growth. But it is also because imperialism – led by the United States – has found that it has to confront the resistance of the working Arab-Islamic masses who (from the time of the Iranian revolution to the first intifada, and from the time of the first challenge of the Iraqi people to the resistance against Israel in Southern Lebanon and the second intifada) have no intention of giving up their struggle despite the effects of what they have already had to suffer! As the UN embargo against Iraq, the false "peace" of Oslo and other "peaceful" means have not managed to bow this indomitable resistnce, imperialism is turning to direct warfare with the aim of redesigning the political map of the region, fragmenting states, creating puppet regimes or protectorates, and establishing permanent bases for its armed troops that can also be used for future attacks against China.

In the eyes of the Western media, the terror being exercised against the peoples rebelling against against the unjust order imposed by the imperialist West is a "war against terrorism"; the overthrowing of regimes unwilling to stand to attention before the powers of the Earth is a "battle for democracy"; and the imposition of the interests of profit by financial or military means is a "fight for civilisation".

But the aggression against Iraq and the enduring war of which it is a part are also aimed against a target inside the West, where the workers have recently begun an albeit timid mobilisation to defend themselves and their previously hard-won conquests against the attacks being set under way by "their" governments and "their" capitalists in the name of the freedom of profit. The aggression against the working masses of the Middle East (and the entire Third World) is also intended to stifle and regiment this slow reawakening of the exploited in the West. Under the guise of the "war against terrorism", Western governments are introducing internal measures aimed at repressing civil and political "rights", and anti-Arab and anti-immigrant campaigns (such as the Bossi-Fini law) designed to create diffidence and divisions between "our" and immigrant proletarians.

Here in Italy, we communists of the OCI say to the workers we encounter that, in the light of this scenario, they cannot defend themselves by asking to be "kept out of the war" because the war will come in any case, with or without our brave "Italian boys"; because the government of Berlusconi has already decided to help the United Staes by replacing a contingent of Americans in Afghanistan with its own troops; because, even in the absence of new military operations, there is already an ongoing war against the people of Iraq -the embargo that, however incredible it may seem, has already caused more deaths than depleted uranium; because the anti-Islamic propaganda war is already bombarding Arabic and Islamic immigrants, with a special virulence in this vile Italy whose seas swallow up hundreds of "clandestinians" thanks to our governments, our mafias and our police forces… In short, it is not possible to keep out of the war for the simple reason that it has already started and involves all of the West, not just the United States. The only real choice remaining is which side to take: that of the imperialist aggressor or that of the Iraqi people.

We are fighting for a change from a widespread but bland and discontinuous opposition to the war that is still infested by nationalist poisons to an opposition that is strong, permanent and self-consistent. To this end, it is absolutely essential that workers and the more advanced young people in the "anti-global" movement move sharply forward. It is necessary to multiply the places of public debate in which the war question can be brought to the centre of attention and explored in detail. It is necessary to intensify anti-war propaganda among the masses of the old and new proletariat, and among the young. It is necessary to demonstrate that the workers and the oppressed have nothing to gain from the miserable "privileges" that Italian and Western imperialism promises them in exchange for their enrolment against their Middle Eastern class brothers. It is necessary to include opposition to the aggression against Iraq among the objectives of the General Strike planned for 18 October against the suspension of Article 18 and Berlusconian policies. It is necessary to combat the illusion that Europe can be an antidote to the policies esposed by Bush and Blair: some European states are now recalcitrant in the face of the acceleration wanted by the Pentagon and Wall Street only because this would penalise their own specific interests in robbing the Middle East. Isn’t it true that Europe has supported the embargo against Iraq? What is it disposed to offer the Palestinians other than a new and worse Oslo in exchange for the discontinuation of the intifada? We must organise ourselves and join the forces that in other Western countries (above all in the United States) are already demonstrating against the war without conceding anything to an inter-classist anti-Americanism that cannot and does not want to make a distinction between the great yankee imperialist potentates and the mass of American proletarians. And, above all, it is necessary to project ourselves fraternally in favour of the exploited in Iraq and our own Arab-Islamic immigrants in order to support them -without any ifs or buts- in their resistance (which is also ours) against imperialist aggression.

If only one recognisable sector of the proletarian movement were prepared to make this step forward, this would great encourage the anti-imperialist struggle of the Iraqi and Arab-Islamic peoples. And these peoples (especially their proletarian components) are also being called upon by the dramatic developments taking place today to go beyond their general pro-Iraqi or pro-Palestinian sentiments. To translate their hatred of the USA and Europe into concrete action capable of striking the innumerable and enormous centres of Western interests (and institutions) existing throughout their countries. To demand that the Arab world makes renewed use of its weapon of oil against expropriators and aggressors. To take up arms not only against the imperialist aggressor and the state of Israel, but also against their own reactionary and police states, which colloborate with the aggressors in so many ways and have been tolerated for too long. To take the war against imperialism into their own hands and in all respects (also in Iraq), and use it to express their own distinct class interests as members of the exploited. To give material body to the unity of the army of the exploited Arab and Islamic peoples, which would be a more powerful weapon than the entire American-Sionist atomic arsenal. To dare to project themselves towards the workers in the West by means of an appeal for a common struggle against common exploiters, and to do so also in relation to the working class members of the American troops (reminding them of the price they have already paid as a result of the first depleted uranim war against the Iraqi people) and the first nuclei of Israelis who refuse to make war against the Palestinians. These are all tasks that the most advanced and enlightened part of the Arab-Islamic masses can in no way delegate to any old or new rais, Islamic or otherwise, but can only be undertaken jointly by renewing international and internationalist solidarity between the metropolitan proletariat and the proletariat of Islam and the entire Third World.

The military strength of imperialism will certainly be overwhelming unless the Arab and Islamic masses catch fire and we make the "internal front" here more restless and combative than it has been up to now. But if these things occur, and we finally manage to establish a bridge between the two poles of the world’s proletariat, the war against Iraq will not be the "desert stroll" expected by the Pentagon, but a boomerang for the great imperialist powers. It is this that we internationalist communists are fighting for and for which we call upon you to fight!

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