Oppose Canada's Involvement in Imperialist War and Aggression

The Necessity to Organize for an
Anti-War Government

The present era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, which began at the beginning of the twentieth century, poses a continuing danger of a catastrophic world war. The dominant imperialist power of any period within the era constantly provokes and goads other rising or competing powers into waging war. Within the worldwide competition for markets, sources of raw material and spheres of influence, the dominant country maintains its superiority by adding to its vast arsenal of armaments and spreading its military and political power throughout the world. The dominant country blockades, isolates and undermines internally all countries it seeks to annex within its imperialist system of states, and directly attacks those that refuse to submit.

The present period is similar to all others within the era. The dominant imperialist power, the United States, actively engages in all those traditional types of imperialist activities and more to maintain and enlarge its worldwide military, economic, cultural and political empire. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has intensified its campaign of wars and interference against smaller countries, consolidated its military presence in Europe through expanding NATO, which it dominates, and now appears ready to single out larger and more powerful countries, in particular China and Russia, that it considers must be brought under U.S. control almost certainly through war unless the people's anti-war movement can rise to the occasion and stop it.

Through an expanded NATO, the U.S. has brought Europe under its military control or at least into an uneasy compliance. The U.S. continues to strengthen its military presence in Europe with new bases such as the largest ever in Kosovo, which it built after dismembering and conquering Yugoslavia in its final war of the twentieth century and by positioning missile installations along the entire north/south frontier of Eastern Europe.

In Africa, the U.S.-led NATO predatory war against Libya destroyed a regime that was considered not fully annexed within the U.S. Empire. Now, the U.S. brandishes conquered Libya as a spoil of war and stern lesson to all who would defy the dominant power and cosy up to any other, especially China and Russia at this time or have aspirations of independence and sovereign rule. To ensure its continued superiority in Africa, the U.S. military has launched an extensive drone war in country after country and let loose its Special Forces and mercenaries to assassinate and terrorize the continent to ensure it remains within its sphere of influence.

In Asia, the U.S. has destroyed Iraq, annexed the Persian Gulf states, is waging war against Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is preparing similar attacks on Iran and Syria or at least their gradual strangulation and internal destruction through blockades and the use of political and military mercenaries. The U.S. is strengthening its existing military bases throughout the continent and in the South Pacific, continuously adding and consolidating bases and installations such as the new U.S. Marine base in Darwin Australia and the massive new military complex on Jeju Island in the Republic of Korea even in the face of opposition from the vast majority of the people in the area.

The U.S. has convinced the ruling circles of India that their interests are best served through joining the U.S./Japan military alliance to isolate China within Asia.

In Japan, the current dominant section amongst the militarists and ruling political class has promised the U.S. to suppress any opposition to the U.S./Japan military alliance, in particular the anti-war movement in Okinawa that wants U.S. bases removed entirely from its territory. For its own imperialist interests, the current dominant section amongst the Japanese militarists and ruling political class has for the moment decided to strengthen its war alliance with the U.S. and just recently announced the purchase of a fleet of U.S.-built and -controlled F-35 stealth fighter jets. The Japanese purchase of F-35s along with other pro-war governments such as Canada effectively finances the U.S.-led arms race and prods China, Russia and others to waste the people's resources by trying to match U.S. weapons, which adds to the economic crisis pounding the world and the scale of destruction imperialist wars will bring.

The U.S. is preparing to poke China and Russia with provocations that will lead to war, most likely involving internal disputes within their countries, utilizing independence movements such as those in Taiwan or Tibet, or expanding into a full-blown international conflict a regional dispute in the South China Sea between China and a smaller country. The provocation and response will set the stage for the U.S. to launch large-scale military operations.

The fact that certain U.S. monopolies have extensive economic interests with China that would be disrupted when war breaks out is overwhelmed by the reality that imperialism is inherently adventurist and anti-conscious of the mutual destruction its actions will generate. The ruling imperialist elite believe they can gain more from war than what they may lose. Besides, in the mould of the German Nazis, the U.S. ruling class considers its military power invincible. The first and second world wars proved conclusively the inhuman anti-conscious nature of the imperialist ruling class. It is driven by forces beyond the control of reason and can only be stopped by people everywhere organized into conscious anti-war anti-imperialist movements and governments.

Canadians must realize that the time to oppose imperialist war is now and not wait for a catastrophic conflict to begin. The objective reality of this era proves that imperialist war is inevitable unless the people empower themselves with an anti-war anti-imperialist movement and government that take Canada and other countries out of the imperialist system of states and its aggressive military alliances such as NATO and NORAD.

Canadians must face the reality that the ruling political class in the country is extremely pro-war and fully engaged and annexed within U.S. imperialism's global empire and war machine. Two examples give credence to this view:

First is the unqualified support the Prime Minister and the leader of the official opposition gave to the U.S.-led NATO war of aggression against Libya and triumphant celebration of the destruction it wreaked upon the people. Canadian air force planes took a leading role in bombing and destroying Libya's military and much of its infrastructure and important economic and political institutions.

Secondly, the hooligan statements of abuse both the Prime Minister and leader of the opposition issued following the news of the death of the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Kim Jong Il show that the ruling political class is unfit to lead the country as it promotes war and is doing everything it can to mobilize public opinion behind the war aims of U.S. imperialism. In this regard, it must be further noted that the official opposition in Parliament has called upon the government to use even more resources to interfere in the internal affairs of Syria and prepare conditions both within that country and internationally for a U.S.-led NATO military assault and regime change, which would be one more step into the abyss of a catastrophic worldwide imperialist war.

The time to stop war is now!

Let us boldly change the direction from war to peace and organize a powerful and effective anti-war anti-imperialist movement that weakens and stays the hands of the warmongers and those who conciliate with war!

Let us together organize and prepare conditions for an anti-war government!

 Reference Material

Click to enlarge.

Posted below are are series of items that shed light on U.S. imperialist designs in the Asia Pacific, especially with respect to China.

America's Global Warfare:
Military Redeployment to Asia and the Pacific Threatens China
- Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 20, 2011 -

The 2000 Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was the backbone of the NeoCon's agenda, was predicated on "waging a war without borders."

The PNAC's declared objectives were to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars" in different regions of the world as well as perform the so-called military "constabulary" duties "associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions." Global constabulary implies a worldwide process of military policing and interventionism, including covert operations and "regime change."

This diabolical military project formulated by the NeoCons was adopted and implemented from the very outset of the Obama administration. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, Obama has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than his White House predecessor, George Bush Junior.

Escalation and Military Redeployment

The Iraq war is "officially over." The thrust of US foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq war is not towards "peace" but towards military escalation and redeployment in all major regions of the World. This process is supported by new military technologies including cyber warfare as well as the development of special forces.

The Pentagon's global military design is one of world conquest. The emphasis in the wake of Iraq will be placed on the militarization of the Asia Pacific region requiring the redeployment of military capabilities from Europe to South East Asia and the Far East, visibly implying a military build-up directed against the "region's rising economic and military power," namely The People's Republic of China. To this effect, the US will be reinforcing its military ties with several Asian and Pacific countries including Australia, South Korea, Japan, India, Singapore and The Philippines:

"The United States has laid bare its concerns about China. Obama last month announced that the United States would post up to 2,500 Marines in the northern Australian city of Darwin by 2016-
17, a move criticized by Beijing.

"The United States also has some 70,000 troops stationed in Japan and South Korea under longstanding alliances and has offered assistance to the Philippines which launched its newest warship on Wednesday.

"Singapore is also a long-standing partner of the United States. The U.S. military already operates a small post in the city-state that assists in logistics and exercises for forces in Southeast Asia. (AFP Report, December 17, 2011)

A report published in Stars and Stripes (newspaper of the U.S. Military) December 19, 2011 confirms the Pentagon's continued resolve to wage a global war, with increasingly advanced weapons systems:

"A day after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the U.S. military must redirect its focus of the last 10 years from preparing for continuous deployments to training, with an eye toward the growing strategic importance of the Pacific region.

"As a global power, 'we cannot afford to pick a point on the spectrum of conflict and say that's what we're going to be best at. We have to be capable of providing options to our leaders to deal with problems across the entire spectrum. The U.S. military will look at how to integrate new capabilities into training, such as cyber expertise and special forces, the number of which have quadrupled over the last decade or so. We have to restore readiness for all potential forms of warfare, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey told a crowd of more than 400 U.S. military members and civilians at a town hall meeting Monday in Ramstein's officers' club.

"In the last 10 to 15 years, Dempsey said, there's been 'a pretty prominent shift of strategic risk towards the Pacific,' as defined by changing demographics and the region's rising economic and military power [i.e. China].

"That doesn't mean the U.S. military is 'going to pick everybody out of Europe and put them in Japan' or South Korea, he said, but 'you will see some shifts.'

"Dempsey didn't say what those shifts might be, but stressed that 'as we shift, we're going to have to think through, how do we maintain the foundation of our traditional strategic relationships,' with the country's current partners and allies.

"As a global power, 'we cannot afford to pick a point on the spectrum of conflict and say that's what we're going to be best at,' he said. 'We have to be capable of providing options to our leaders to deal with problems across the entire spectrum.'

"One area future training may focus on is the ability of the U.S. military to operate in areas without fixed bases, unlike the so-called 'forward operating bases' in Iraq and Afghanistan, complete with working fiber optics and satellite dishes, for example. 'We've got to rekindle our skills to be mobile, to maneuver and to have the ability to establish architectures that don't always exist,' Dempsey said.

"The U.S. military also will look at how to integrate new capabilities into training, such as cyber expertise and special forces, the number of which have quadrupled over the last decade or so, according to Dempsey. (See Jennifer H. Svan, "Dempsey: Future to focus on training 'for all potential forms of warfare,'" Stars and Stripes, December 19, 2011)

U.S. bases worldwide (click to enlarge).

Maybe that War with China Isn't So Far Off
- Peter Lee, Asia Times Online, December 22, 2011 (excerpts) -

The year 2011 has been a tough one for Sino-United States ties. And 2012 does not look like it's going to be a good year either, with a presidential election year in the United States. For both the Democratic and Republican parties, bashing the Chinese economic, military and "freedom-averse" menace will probably be a campaign-trail staple.

Tensions will also be exacerbated by the Barack Obama administration's "return to Asia" -- a return to proactive containment of China  -- and the temptation to apply a dangerous and destabilizing new doctrine, preventive diplomacy, to China.

China, as it approaches a leadership transition, wants to avoid friction. However, the United States appears to welcome it and, in the election year, might even incite it.

The U.S. under the Obama administration and thanks in large part to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's team at the State Department, has been quite adept in putting China at a geopolitical disadvantage in Europe, Africa and Asia. [...]

In any event, the media are happy to stir the geopolitical pot on America's behalf. In quick succession in December, the Western press hyped dubious stories about China's military posture. [One was] the Karber/Georgetown report aka "Tunnelgate," rehashed old information in the public domain and combined it with wishful thinking disguised as speculation to raise the specter of a previously unknown underground arsenal of Chinese nuclear missiles. [...]

Questions of newsworthiness and accuracy notwithstanding, clearly stories about the China threat attract eyeballs, accumulate links, and feed into the official Western narrative, so we can expect more of them in 2012. They will also reverberate inside an echo chamber thanks to the anti-China dynamic of U.S. presidential politics, and the China-containment posture built into America's security doctrine. The "return to Asia" is built around a security narrative that relies on framing China as an arrogant, aggressive, and destabilizing presence in the region.

The Obama administration jumped into the South China Sea issue -- an insoluble tangle of disputes between the nations bordering the sea and the People's Republic of China (PRC)  -- with the argument that the U.S. has a national interest in freedom of the navigation in the South China Sea.

This posture usually involves an invocation of the critical economic importance of the South China Sea, citing the fact that 25% of the world's crude and half the world's merchant tonnage currently pass through its waters. As a look at a map and a passing acquaintance with patterns of maritime traffic reveals, the vital nature of this waterway is something of a canard. It is a big ocean out there. There are big ships out there as well, ships that are too big to pass through the Strait of Malacca that feeds into the South China Sea  -- they are called "post Malaccamax." These ships pass through the deeper and wider Strait of Lombok west of Java. The bulk of Australian iron ore shipments destined for Asia already pass through Lombok.

If the route through the South China Sea [were shut down], Japanese crude carriers from the Middle East could simply swing south of Sumatra, cross the Lombok Strait, and sail up the east coast of the Philippines. Studies have concluded that the detour would add three days to sailing times and perhaps 13.5% to shipping costs; an annoying inconvenience, perhaps, but also not an energy or economic Armageddon. The bloviating about the vulnerability and critical importance of the South China Sea maritime route can probably be traced to the fact that it is an international waterway and therefore a suitable arena for the United States to flex its "freedom of the seas" muscle. [...]

Any U.S. attempt to lord it over the Lombok Strait in a similar fashion would presumably not be welcomed by Indonesia, which exercises full, unquestioned sovereignty over the waterway. Also, if traffic shifted to the Lombok Strait, the Malacca Strait -- that romantic but shallow, narrow, and increasingly problematic passageway to the South China Sea -- would be superseded, a rather bad thing for faithful and indefatigable U.S. ally Singapore and its massive port facilities at the east end of the strait.

All things being equal, the nation with the biggest interest in a peaceful South China Sea looks to be the PRC. Heightened tensions in the South China Sea are bad for China, and good for the United States. So expect them to persist in 2012, and don't expect to hear about the continued growth in traffic across the Lombok Strait and other strategic Indonesian waterways.

The United States also rather maliciously fiddled with one of China's important hedges against disruption of its Middle East energy imports through the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea: the Myanmar pipeline. Construction of the pipeline began in 2009; when completed, it will transport 12 million tons of crude oil per year -- perhaps up to 10% of China's total imports.

After the Myanmar government pulled the plug on a massive, China-funded hydropower project in the northwest of the country, the U.S. chose to endorse the Myanmar junta's rather risible efforts at democratization with a visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. If the Myanmar government mismanages its dance with the sizable and U.S.-supported democratic opposition, the PRC may find itself dealing with a hostile, pro-Western government that will find many reasons to dislike the pipeline.

A Reuters report in October gave an indication of the importance of the pipeline, and Chinese anxiety:

"China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) continues work on an oil pipeline through Myanmar and has given aid to show its goodwill, the official Chinese news agency said after Myanmar abruptly halted work on a Chinese-led power dam.

"The Xinhua news agency said construction of the pipeline was 'proceeding smoothly' and that CNPC said it gave $1.3 million to Myanmar on Monday to help build eight schools, as part of an agreement signed in April to provide $6 million of aid."

China, of course, has more to worry about than hypocritical American mischief-making in its backyard. It has to come to terms with the fact that its trade-driven foreign policy model has been rather resoundingly repudiated. Perhaps the biggest wake-up call for China was not downtrodden and put-upon Myanmar opening to the West. It was the spectacle of Australia -- a key focus of China's economic strategy and site of massive resource investments -- welcoming a U.S. military initiative to station 2,500 U.S. troops in the Northern Territories, the bending of Australia's own restrictions on dealings with non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty nations by selling uranium to India, and endorsing President Obama's efforts to nurture an anti-China trade bloc, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. China is not an obvious military threat to Australia, and Australia is a natural economic partner for China. However, Sydney had no qualms about throwing Beijing under the bus, as it were, in order to take a high-profile role in the anti-China economic and security condominium the Obama administration is constructing in Asia.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the U.S. push into Asia is its effort to cast its economic interests as a matter of national security, thereby providing a new 21st century pretext for projection of military force into the region. In a speech before the New York Economic Club in October 2011, Secretary Clinton declared:

"The challenges of a changing world and the needs of the American people demand that our foreign policy community -- as Steve Jobs put it -- think different. We have to position ourselves to lead in a world where security is shaped in boardrooms and on trading floors, as well as on battlefields."

In 2011, the Obama administration appears to have come to terms with its status as the world's only military superpower. It has displayed a willingness to deploy force in a surprising number of venues, especially when drones or proxies eliminated the politically toxic exposure of U.S. service personnel to death and injury.

Beyond the acknowledged war theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. injected force into Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Uganda through the use of advisers and/or drones, as well as supporting a full-scale air war against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

The Obama administration also showed a Bush-like disregard for the headaches of nation-building, i.e. the geopolitical consequences of its military adventures. Libya has largely slipped off Western radar screens after the death of Gaddafi, but the country is a train wreck. The U.S. and other powers are footdragging on the release of frozen funds to the new regime until it can demonstrate its ability not to embezzle them -- or catapult Islamists into positions of power. Representatives of the International Criminal Court have appeared in Libya to investigate traveler's tales of rape-related war crimes by Viagra-stoked Gaddafi fighters, but seemingly ready to ignore the well documented, continuing campaign of rape and murder against sub-Saharan African women by anti-Gaddafi militia. The National Transitional Council is a picture of impotence as competing rebel militia swarm the capital. After one angry demonstration by residents of Benghazi, the TNC cravenly declared Benghazi "the economic capital of Libya" and promised to relocate key government ministries to the eastern city. Rebels from Zintan have leveraged their prolonged custody of Saif Gaddafi into the portfolio of the Ministry of Defense and refuse to withdraw their troops controlling the main airport. In order to dilute the power of Abdulhakim Belhadj, the Qatar-backed head of the Tripoli Military Council, the Libyan government is apparently encouraging him to shift his area of operations to Syria on behalf of the anti-Assad opposition. Despite the bloody precedent of Libya, the Obama administration apparently has few qualms about supporting regime change in Syria, or conducting a covert war to destabilize Iran.

It makes one wonder if the much-touted "strategic pivot" away from the Middle East, is a matter of changing targets, not tactics, and the Obama administration might be as blithe about beating up China as the Bush administration was about pounding on its Muslim enemies.

Would the United States regard chaos in China as a must-to-avoid death sentence for the global economy -- or an interesting opportunity to put paid to a nettlesome competitor, as long as U.S. boots could be kept "off the ground"?

In East Asia, the seriousness of U.S. containment strategy could traditionally be measured by the respect Washington showed for the clear red lines of PRC sovereignty claims: Tibet and Taiwan. [...]

Perhaps, however, with the doctrine of "preventive diplomacy" the U.S. will decide that red lines were made to be crossed.

One of the most interesting by-products of the Libyan war and the failure of Syrian dissidents to oust the Assad regime was the U.S. announcement of an Obama pre-emption doctrine. Actually, it's a development of the neo-liberal R2P -- "responsibility to protect" -- doctrine that declares that a stated need for international humanitarian intervention trumps what the PRC calls "non-interference in internal affairs" also known as national sovereignty. Josh Rogin described the policy in Foreign Policy:

"For the United States, preventive diplomacy means combining all the tools of international leverage -- including the use of force -- to prevent conflicts from breaking out or preventing hot conflicts from getting out of hand. It also means building sustainable economies and functioning democracies, with the goal of creating societies that can manage disputes on the national and regional levels.

"[US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice] covered a lot of ground in her speech, not explicitly defending armed intervention but arguing for its use in some cases. 'We should cease to make false distinctions between peacekeeping and prevention; they are in fact inextricably linked,' she said.

"She also argued that the use of sanctions under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter can be a tool of conflict prevention, a position council members such as China and Russia don't support.

"Some other countries used the meeting to explicitly defend the U.N.-sanctioned international military intervention in Libya and called for harsher U.N. measures against the Syrian regime.

"'When conflict looms, the world looks to the U.N. for a decisive response,' said British Foreign Minister William Hague. 'In Libya our swift action prevented a human catastrophe and saved the lives of thousands of civilians'."

From the Chinese perspective, the message is that there is only one thing more dangerous to a regime than a successful democratic movement and that's an unsuccessful democratic movement. If the local dissidents can't cut it, then the U.S. can claim that it is obligated to interfere.

With generational change threatening to sideline more moderate antagonists in Dharmsala and Taipei creating a hard core of domestic opponents, the United States may start to see the PRC's frantic concern in these areas as vulnerabilities that should be exploited.

The temptations may be strongest in an unusually toxic US election year, as a faltering economy, an angry electorate, and a cynically obstructionist opposition might lead to a wag-the-dog strategy (promoting an overseas adventure to distract attention from domestic political difficulties) to advance President Obama's electoral fortunes.

There is a danger that China will draw the lesson that the U.S. believes that snubbing China is cost-free: that China is too dependent on global trade and too weak militarily to be taken seriously as an antagonist. Perhaps, resentful Chinese leaders will decide that the PRC, despite its reliance on a peaceful, trade-friendly international environment, needs to push back in a more overt way. That would be a risky decision, given that the U.S. has announced that Asia is a key U.S. national interest -- presumably, an interest it is prepared to defend with the full range of options available to it. Or, as Secretary Clinton put it: "Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests."

America possesses the doctrine, the means, and the motivation to make mischief for the PRC. All that is lacking, for the time being, is a suitable opportunity -- or a fatal miscalculation by either side. 2012 promises to be an anxious and unpleasant year in U.S.-China relations.

U.S.-Sponsored Trilateral Asian Alliance:
U.S., India, Japan To Hold First Trilateral Meeting -- China Targeted
- Yashwant Raj, Hindustan Times, December 19, 2011 (excerpt) -

India, the US and Japan are holding their first trilateral meeting later in the day [December 19] in Washington in what is being widely seen as a move to coordinate push back against a common competitor -- China.

All three countries are seeking to enlarge their respective roles in the Asia-Pacific region, with the US pushing most aggressively. They are members of the East Asia Summit.

The trilateral meeting is being held at the level of officials only -- joint secretaries Jawed Ashraf and Gautam Bambwale from India will be meeting counterparts from the US and Japan.

While the three countries will have a lot of talk about trade, economy and nuclear weapons, experts expect China to be the big issue on the table.

At a Track II discussion on the talks in August -- hosted by think-tank Center for Strategic International Studies -- participants agreed China was a shared concern.

Could F-35 Act as Game Changer in Asia-Pacific Region?
- Li Hongmei, Xinhua, December 22, 2011 (excerpt) -

Since Yoshihiko Noda took office as Japan's Prime Minister last September, Tokyo has obviously geared back to its traditional security stance, once again viewing the U.S. to be the best security partner.

U.S.-Japan relations frayed after the Democratic Party of Japan took power in 2009 for the first time in half a century, vowing to recalibrate the alliance on a more equal basis and attempting, though in vain, to keep a pledge to move a U.S. military base off the Okinawa island.

In this case, the F-35 purchase seems to signal Japan's desire at the moment to lean more tightly toward Washington to gain its sorely needed sense of security amid the regional uncertainties. Therefore, building up its prowess in air force with the help of the U.S. could be taken as a decision that stands a chance.

But it is far from mature to say that Japan's security environment would be changed as expected with the introduction of a fleet of F-35 stealth jets, nor that Japan would get plenty of room to handle the changing situation and wrest more influence in its neighborhood by merely opting for the U.S. fighters.

While Pentagon wished to take advantage of the reset rapprochement between allies to work as a stepping stone to gaining a predominating presence in the Asia-Pacific region, the jets deal, however, can not necessarily work to that effect.

"The F-35 Program Office looks forward to strengthening partnerships with Japan, and contributing to enhanced security throughout the Asia Pacific region," as it said in a statement after Japan announced its decision.

Unfortunately, the purchase spree would not only give a boost to Lockheed Martin's fighter business, but would also give rise to a scenario with "swords drawn and bows bent" -- perhaps, a region of turbulence and intranquility is just what the U.S. needs to retain its position as a "Pacific power," ready all the time to reach out the meddling hand.

22nd Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Panama

Denounce U.S Imperialist Interference in the
Affairs of Latin America!

El Chorillo neighbourhood of Panama City razed by the U.S. military during its December 1989 invasion.

On December 20, 1989, 27,684 U.S. imperialist troops and over 300 aircraft invaded the small Central American country of Panama, overwhelming the 3,000 soldiers of the Panama Defense Force (PDF), who fought bravely against all odds. U.S. military helicopters raked the countryside, attacking both military bases and working class communities. The poor working class neighborhood of El Chorillo was burnt to the ground. An estimated 2,000-6,000 people were killed in the invasion. About 20,000 people lost their homes and became refugees. Many of those killed were dumped into mass graves. Following the invasion, U.S. forces seized Panamanian President, Manuel Noriega, and flew him to the U.S. for secret trial. "Elections" were held later in Panama under conditions of U.S. military occupation to guarantee that the new regime would serve U.S. interests. The invasion of Panama represented a tightening of the U.S. grip on Panama and all of Latin America. It was one of the first open aggressions by the U.S. as the world's "only superpower" and served notice that the previously secret "Dirty Wars" of the '60s, '70s and '80s that the U.S. previously conducted in Latin America in collusion with the local ruling circles had become open.

The U.S. imperialists' main excuse for the brutal invasion of sovereign Panama was supposedly to arrest Panama's "evil dictator," General Manuel Noriega for his involvement in the drug trade, even though then U.S. President George H. W. Bush had already refused an offer by the PDF in October 1989 to quietly hand over Noriega to the U.S.

Noriega, who came to power through a 1983 coup, was a long-time paid agent of U.S imperialism. Noriega graduated from the infamous U.S. School of the Americas in 1967 and was immediately put on the CIA payroll. He allowed the U.S. to set up listening posts in Panama to spy on Cuba and Nicaragua, helped set up the CIA drugs for guns trade that used cocaine trafficking to finance the secret U.S.-backed Contra war against Nicaragua in the 1980s, and aided U.S. warfare against the Ortega government of Nicaragua and the resistance movements in El Salvador.

The real reason for the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 was Noriega's threat to take control of the Panama Canal. The Canal Zone was then "owned" by the U.S. who had stolen it from the Colombian people in 1903, backed by U.S. warships. The Panama Canal opened in 1914 and the U.S. directly controlled the Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties provided for the "official" transition of control to Panama in 1999. The Panamanian people had long opposed U.S. ownership. For example, in January 1964 20 people were killed during anti-U.S. demonstrations. From 1979 to 1999 the canal was under joint U.S.-Panamanian administration, and from December 31, 1999, control was ostensibly assumed by the Panama Canal Authority, an agency of the Panamanian government. However, the 1977 treaties give the U.S. the right to intervene at any time as the U.S. retains the permanent right "to defend the canal from any threat that might interfere with its continued neutral service to ships of all nations," i.e., at any time that U.S interests -- which encompass the entire world -- are threatened.

Click to enlarge.

Control of the Canal Zone has long been key to U.S. domination of Latin America, both as a channel for ships and as a military base. Prior to the 1989 invasion, the U.S. already had a long and bloody history of organizing and backing violent coups d'état in Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Honduras and Haiti, to name only a few, as well as a long history of trying to undermine anti-imperialist governments through subversion. The U.S. assassinated former Panama leader Omar Torrijos Herrara in July 1981 by sabotaging his airplane because Torrijos wanted control of the canal to be transferred to Panama. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine served notice that the U.S. claimed Latin America for itself, and since the 1890s, when it achieved regional supremacy over Spain and Britain, the U.S. has forcibly intervened in Latin America over fifty times. A significant role in these interventions has been played by the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation, which was founded in 1972 by Guatemalan death squad leader Mario Alarcon as the Latin American branch of the World Anti-Communist League, co-founded in Taiwan in 1966 by Nazi war criminals.

Twenty-two years after the invasion of Panama, the U.S. continues to organize and back violent coups d'état as it did in Honduras in 2009, and to try to subvert those democratically elected Latin American governments such as Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia that exercise the right to choose their own political system, free of U.S. interference. Two major channels for U.S. subversion are the millions of dollars channelled to U.S.-supported political groups in Latin American countries through USAID and the so-called U.S. "National Endowment for Democracy" (NED).

The Harper government is also playing a nefarious role in Latin America in the name of promoting "prosperity and security." As the countries of the Americas work to defend their sovereignty and establish alternatives to an economic model which devastates them, the Harper government is praising the so-called Inter-American Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), infamous for perpetrating U.S. coups d'état and the dirty wars. On September 5, Canada's Minister of State for the Americas Diane Ablonczy spoke in Chile, claiming that in the Americas "coups d'état are no longer feasible as they would attract immediate condemnation from the states of the hemisphere." Prime Minister Harper recently signed free trade agreements with Honduras and Colombia to support the U.S.-backed reactionary regimes in those two countries, even as Colombia is being groomed as a launching pad for U.S. aggression against other countries in the region.

But the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are not standing idly by in the face of imperialist aggression and subversion. A recent most excellent development is that on December 2-3, representatives and heads of state from 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries, meeting in Caracas, Venezuela, made history. After extensive discussion, they signed the constituent act of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) (see TML Daily, December 12, 2011 - No. 128). For the first time in over 200 years, the peoples of the Americas and the Caribbean have an organization to defend their political, economic and cultural sovereignty and as a bulwark against foreign interference in their affairs, namely that of the U.S. imperialists and their lackey Canada, through the pro-imperialist Organization of American States (OAS). The creation of CELAC is an anti-imperialist achievement of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean who have suffered so much at the hands of the United States and its service followers such as Canada. The task of liberation and emancipation of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean remains the historic necessity which the founders of CELAC have acknowledged.

December 24, 2011 Bulletin • Return to Index • Write to: editor@cpcml.ca