Tape Released, CIA Seeks to Shut Down Website

On Monday April 5, 2010, the website Wikileaks.org released a video showing American forces firing at civilians and journalists on a Baghdad street. On the lead-up to the leak, the American Intelligence community was hellbent on discrediting Wikileaks and discussing ways to undermine its policy of anonymity. Already the repressive tools of the imperialist state have acted to detain and harass anyone associated with Wikileaks and have also discussed making it illegal to look at the site. Corporations around the world have sued to have the site shut down. Not daunted by the intimidation, the Wikileaks staff released the video as promised, which can be found here:

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Not only are several reporters from Reuters killed, but the US soldiers in the helicopter fire on a minivan trying to assist the wounded. The minivan in question had two kids in it. Apart from the already incriminating evidence against the Pentagon for not only attempting to cover up the murder but instigating repression against those who leaked it, the video also shows the reactionary nature of the imperialist military.

Reactionary Nature of the Armed Forces
In the video, the soldiers doing the shooting make remarks which show how the U.S. military seeks to dehumanize its enemy. From the message to “Light ’em up” to “Ah, yeah, look at those dead bastards.” When it is discovered that children are among the victims, one soldier is quoted as saying “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids into the battle.” American massacres of civilians in war are not new. The American army creates the sons and daughters of the working class and turns them into enemies of the workers and rabid dogs in service of Americsan imperialism. These types of killings are not isolated incidents — they are the nature of the occupier. They go back since before the Indian Wars when General Philip Sheridan was quoted as saying “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead,” or Air Force General Curtis LeMay’s suggestion to “bomb Vietnam back to the stone age.” Who can say that the Mahmudiyah killings and rape of a 14-year-old girl by U.S. soldiers was just a bunch of “rotten apples?” According to U.S. soldiers present at Abu Ghraib, sexual assault of children took place, as well as using dogs to frighten them into losing control of their bodily functions for “sport.”

A Soldier Explains the Reactionary Nature of the Armed Forces
In one of the most revealing testimonies from a U.S. soldier turned anti-war activist, Michael Prysner tells an audience at the “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan” event that when he was deployed to Iraq in 2003, the word he learned there was “Haji,” and prior to that it was “sand nigger,” “camel jockey” and “towel head,” and that “Haji was every Iraqi – He was not a person, a father, a teacher, or a worker.” Prysner reveals these racist epithets not originating from the rank-and-file but from the command structure of the U.S. Army. One of the most disturbing events in Prysner’s testimony was the humiliation and intimidation of an Iraqi detainee, who was stripped to his underwear, hands behind his back with a sandbag on head. Prysner’s job was to smash a metal folding chair against the wall next to the man’s head, while a soldier screamed a question over and over again; no matter the man’s answer Prysner’s job was the slam the chair against the wall repeatedly. The conclusion Prysner reached was that he was not fighting “terrorism” but the true terrorist was himself (the soldier) and the occupation. Prysner realized from his tour in Iraq that racism in the military is a tool to dehumanize and and justify the destruction of another people.

The Resistance in Iraq
Absent of any popular progressive or Marxist-Leninist movement in any nation under occupation, or when these “progressive” or self-claiming “Marxist-Leninist” factions have compromised themselves, then the popular faction that is resisting imperialism’s occupation is just and should be supported by Marxist-Leninists regardless of the ideology of the faction, even if it is anti-communist, reactionary or bourgeois-nationalist. This is a litmus test for any self-proclaiming anti-imperialist and Communist Party or group. The American Party of Labor wishes the Iraqi people and the resistance a swift victory against American imperialism and calls for the American people and all truly anti-war elements in the country regardless of ideology to unite to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq.

Categories: Anti-War, Government, Imperialism, Imperialist War, International, Iraq, Racism, U.S. News