IRSP North America Statement on the 9-11 Attacks Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - IRSP The North American Coordinator of the Irish Republican Socialist Party's International Department issued a lengthy statement in response to the attacks against American targets in New York and Washington, DC. The IRSP is re-issuing the message in full, despite its length, because we believe that it is important that the IRSP convey clearly its profound sympathy with the innocent working women and men who died in these attacks and the friends, family and loved ones of the victims, who must endure such a cruel loss. At the same time, the IRSP's International Department and its support organisation in North America, are equally concerned that they express their sympathy and solidarity with the many, many nations and peoples around the world who have endured violence and oppression at the hands of US imperialism, but not shared in the great outpouring of sympathy now being extended to the American people. The IRSP believes that working class people possess the integrity and creativity to create means for all nations to be given the security, comfort and respect that we all seek for ourselves and those dear to us. We believe the selfish exploitation of others and callous disregard of humanity carried out against the other nations of the world by the same class that lives as a parasite on the dignified labour of American working people as well is not representative of the actual interests of the vast majority of Americans, and it pains us to see these people forced to endure the violence reaped from the exploitation their government has sown in their name. For this reason, in Ireland and around the globe, we call upon our class to open up communication with the many different peoples of this world, who also live not through the deprivation of others but through their own honest toil, so as to ensure that never again will any nation be forced to confront the needless tragedy that so many thousands of Americans experienced on September 11th, 2001. ________________________ Statement of the North American Coordinator of the International Department of the Irish Republican Socialist Party on the Attacks on the United States Allow me, as one living in the belly of the beast, to offer another perspective to those most loudly being expressed regarding the attacks made against the United States of America on Tuesday. The Irish Republican Socialist Party and its members and supporters in Canada and the US join you in grieving those innocents among the dead and injured. We do not support targeting of civilian locations in any form of warfare--conventional or waged through guerilla tactics or the use of terror, even when, as in the case of the World Trade Center, it is also a strategic economic target. The Pentagon or Capitol Hill must be recognised as legitimate military targets. Certainly the United States has time and time again bombed such targets of other nations around the world. The Pentagon is the strategy center of the American military services and can hardly be argued to be anything other than a legitimate target. Certainly one might have thought that the White House or the CIA headquarters would have been more appropriate targets than the Capitol Building, but who can say that in a military attack, the center of the government is not a legitimate target. We fear with near certainty that the American government's response will not be measured nor calm. The American government has a long history of reacting as though it was immune from the very actions it so often perpetrates around the globe against others. France, Germany, England, Russia, Italy, Vietnam, Japan, Algeria, Sudan--all these nations have at one time or another experienced the devastation of full scale war on their national soil. While hardly shining models all, I think it is clear that all of these nations show more restraint about jumping into armed conflicts than does the United States. Other than a civil war fought in the middle of the 19th century, the US people and the US government have not experienced the slaughter of innocents, the disruption of civil society, the destruction of a generation that other nations have and perhaps that has helped to ensure the American government's continued arrogance. For that reason, we imagine the actions taken on Tuesday in New York and DC were a desperate attempt to get the US government and the US people to look anew at what they are doing to the rest of the globe, to the other nations and peoples of this planet. Let's hope that rather than flying into a blind rage, instead the people of America take this opportunity to see--to see through the eyes of others in this world; to recognize the horror, the despair, and the rage their bombs caused in Iraq, in Libya, in Yugoslavia, in Laos, in Vietnam, in Grenada, in Panama, and the list goes on and on. Let us hope that the American people and their government recognize that it is impossible to gain justice for those slaughtered in New York by slaughtering equally innocent people in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan or somewhere else. There are no bombs so "smart" they will know how to seek out only those who killed civilians in New York, while leaving unharmed the mother with her infant standing beside him. It is not only Americans who feel the loss of loved ones and the agony of violence. Humans of every nation suffer, die, and lose the will to live from adversity to arduous to bear. Let's hope that in looking at the horrifying images of New York, the American people immediately are prompted to thinkback to the innocent people on the streets of Baghdad when the US air force rained bombs down on them, on their children and on the millenniums old Ziggurat originally built there by one of the very first civilizations to arise among humankind and rightfully a treasure of the whole of humanity. Let us hope they suddenly recognize how the Palestinians armed with only stones feel when an Israeli helicopter fires a missile into their home. Let us hope that they are immediately granted an insight into the feelings of the people of Laos, whose Plain of Jars the US bombed so many times there was nothing but bomb craters left to be destroyed by the new bombs falling. Let us hope that they translate their own dread and sorrow into a recognition of how those in Hiroshima or Nagasaki must have felt--before they were vaporized into shadows on the sidewalks. Let us hope they learn what it must have been like, when the civilians of Dresden had the air torn from their lungs by the firestorm caused by the Allies bombs and then watched one of Europe's most beautiful cities be erased in flame with their final look out upon the world. Make no mistake concerning our sentiments in the Irish Republican Socialist Movement. We believe that violence and war are ugly. They are brutal. They are inhuman. And we believe this is true, whether they take place in the midst of New York's skyscrapers or in the deserts of North Africa. We believe that no sane individual will choose war over peace, if she or he can see another option available to them. For too long, America has acted as though the lives of thousands upon thousand of human innocents were nothing when compared to their own national interests. Millions of human lives were lost last year to hunger, while the US government purchased vast quantities of foodstuffs for the purpose of destroying them, to maintain the prices of US agricultural products. Delicate and imperilled ecosystems were pressed beyond redemption for future generations to use, because it enhanced the quarterly earnings of this or that corporation. Unique and proud communities of cultures whose history stretches across the centuries were rendered unstable and unsustainable because doing so provided--however briefly--a source of labour for sale cheaper than in another spot 75 miles away. The people of Iraq were forced to endure daily bombings for every single day of a four year period for daring to exercise its sovereignty in opposition to American designs. The people of Palestine were told to refrain from defending themselves when Israel broke its word in the treaty they signed, refused to negotiate, and unleashed a wave of ongoing violence against the long exploited Palestinian people. The people of Yugoslavia suffered loss of life, or loved ones, or the chance for a life free of fear because of the relentless bombing by America and its NATO allies, yet noone seemed to weep for these mothers as they buried their murdered infants. Likewise, America said nothing when the Guatemalan government failed to honour its word to the indigenous majority of that nation, despite the URNG keeping theirs. The American people didn't clamor for justice for the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina or Chile, nor did they appear concerned when the masses of South Africa were still being told they must wait for the promise for a better life that had been flashed before them after their courageous struggle against Apartheid had. Let us hope that from here forward, the working people of America will have cause to think carefully before they respond to some other nation differing with American polilcy by raining devastation from sleek and expensive, state-of-the-art aircraft--never having to pause long enough or get close enough to see the blood and twisted limbs or hear the cries and screams that are left in their wake. Not forced to think twice because they are now riddled with fear, as many US pundits have suggested--we do not need more people in the world living in terror--but forced to think twice because they have been so vividly reminded that innocent human life is precious and that we are most human when we are moved by our concerns for the well-being of other people, not by the bloodthirst for vengence or the callousness of brutal self-interest. While we in the Irish Republican Socialist Movement, both in North America and across the Atlantic in Ireland or England, believe that--as Malcolm X warned the US long ago--the chickens have now come home to roost. We take no pleasure in making that observation. Like all people with the capacity for caring, our thoughts are above all with the husbands, daughters, sons and wives, friends, co-workers, team-mates, lovers of the thousands of innocent, working class women and men whose lives were tragicly cut short for sins not their own, but transgressions made in their name, without their consent by a State that undercuts continuously their ability to legitimize the pride they so long to feel for the land of their births. The tragedy we see, is that callous disregard for innocent human life by the US government was answered by equally cynical disregard for more innocent human beings, so that none can lay claim to justice having been done, but only others having joined US imperialism on the path to barbarism. But, as true as it is that such violence is barbaric, base, and vile, let us also remember that there are things even more dehumanizing. Such as the experience of being confronted by another with the capacity for terrible violence, being forced into submission and being too frightened to do anything but live as a slave, in degradation and oppression without answering this injustice. If violence is used to hold a people in unjust and humiliating bondage, then as abhorrent as it is, violence must often be used in response to gain back ones freedom, dignity, and humanity. No nation, no class, no people should ever feel that they are free to use violence for their objectives while claiming those against whom they direct this violence against have no right to do the same. So long as the weapons that America wields in its military and sells to virtually every repressive regime on this planet serve to exploit and violate another people, those people will have no recourse but to use the same in their quest for justice and liberty. A State standing with gun in hand and innocent blood up to its elbows is ill-advised to select that time to lecture to another nation on the sanctity of human life and and concern for the grieving of widows and orphans. One is reminded of the British government, its occupation of six Irish counties punctuated with the presence of thousands of armed soldiers and police or loyalist paramilitaries, fresh from hurling bombs at five or six year-old girls adopting tones of self-righteousness while telling Irish republicans and republican socialists that their is no room for the gun in Irish politics--preaching the imperative of decommissioning weapons used to defend the terrorised members of the nationalist working class communities while insisting that their own, far more massive, stockpile of weapons remain outside any discussion of threats to peace and agents of terror in the hearts and minds of the people of Ireland. If so convinced of the correctness of dialogue and the barbarism of brute force, let Britain and America show the way by ending their international weapons trading and provide a model to the rest of the world by relying on the compelling force of their arguments, not the coercion into agreement by threats and violence. Convince us of the claim to leading human civilization by their willingness to trust in the benefits of their vision to gain their desired goals and foreswear any attempt to gain acceptance of their rule if it becomes necessary to employ steel, fire and blood to obtain it. Until that time, however, the power of the truth to set men free and the superiority of reasoned dialogue over brute force will retain the hollowness of promises made with fingers crossed. The instance by the United States of its right to treat other nation's with cruelty and contempt will remain a key source of carnage, regardless of who wields the weapon. The old adage remains true that it is better to die on one's feet, as a human being, than to live on one's knees. So it is the best interests of preserving the humanity of all, that those who presently bully so as to exploit for their own benefit the toil of the people of another nation, stop now. That they instead extend their strong arms and hands in comforting embrace and selfless assistance to those who have yet to enjoy the prosperity created in the course of their exploitation by others. Because the working people of this planet, whose brain, muscle, creativity, and commitment has made possible every advance in improved quality of of life, scientific breakthroughs, development of the arts, and expansion of human liberty and justice, are rewarded with degradation and violence, they will feel compelled to respond in kind. In the process, we will experience the additional tradegy of these honourable and well meaning working people being forced to sacrifice some of their self-esteem in order to not stand idle in the face of outrage and inhumanity. Peadar Baile ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-09.13.01-22:57:15-3269