Imperialism and the endless war: Military attack on Libya

Raju Das

The military assault on Libya which has just started is another bloody, western imperialist war of aggression against a poor country, a former colony.

Apparently western governments want to protect Libya’s civilians. It is as if other governments are not killing civilians in the region. How hypocritical.

The war is more about the control over oil and stopping the rebellion of workers and younger people in the region from being more radical and anti-systemic.

The war is about a regime change: to create a new regime that will be more deferential to oil companies and western imperialist states than the current one.

Also: what better way to divert attention from western governments’ attack on the political and economic rights of their own people, thousands of whom languish in jails, than to start another war?

The governments launching the assault on Libya have been saying that they do not have money for education and health care, etc., but how are they finding the money to support a war now. Liars.

It is being said that the international community has launched the war. What international community? Security Council members, China, Russia, Germany, Brazil and India, all abstained on the vote on the UN resolution on the war engineered by America and its European followers (the second-tier imperialists of the world). The decision to attack Libya does not represent the opinion of millions of citizens of the world.

Peoples of the imperialized countries must understand that this war, like the wars before in the recent past, just signifies the fact that imperialists can destroy any country they like in their own political and economic interests.

Real national liberation from imperialist forces including the imperialist companies and institutions is the new national question and is a most important aspect of the democratic revolution that the working class in alliance with the peasants and other democratic forces, in every peripheral country and in the world as a whole, must address as a part of its fight for a world beyond capitalism.

As long as there is imperialism, this endless war syndrome will not go away. It has to be made to go away through massive anti-imperialist and anti-war democratic mobilization led by the working class.

Prof Raju Das teaches at York University. He has worked immensely on the political economy of Rural India and South Asia.