Four Years On - The War's Still Wrong!

On the fourth anniversary of the war on Iraq, Cardiff Respect pays tribute to the Iraqi people and pledges to continue to stand with them in struggle against the most brutal, savage and clear case of imperialist aggression in modern history.

The entire world now knows that the US and Britain's decision to invade Iraq was never and at no point motivated by the threat of weap ons of mass destruction.

Nor was it ever motivated by a desire to liberate the people of Iraq and introduce democracy to the region at the point of a gun.

Instead, four years of carnage in that country was unleashed and continues today for one reason and one reason only: OIL.

Iraq's vast oil reserves were and are the prize for a US ruling class worried about the encroachment on their economic hegemony posed by the emerging economies of China, India and the EU.

Their goal in the Middle East is to control the future supply of energy to these competing economies and in the process smash OPEC's stranglehold on oil prices.

But in the process of such a cold and clinical calculation a human catastrophe of biblical magnitude has been inflicted on the Iraqi people.

As if thirteen years of genocidal sanctions which accounted for the premature deaths of 2 million wasn't enough, four years of war and occupation have resulted in a further 650,000 being slaughtered, millions more seriously injured, millions made refugees, an entire country's infrastructure decimated, and the unleashing of sectarian violence on a massive scale.

Such crimes against humanity, committed by men who practice state-craft like gangsters, are the price the people of Iraq have been forced to pay to ensure that a superrich minority in the United States and Britain are able to maintain their obscene status and wealth.

And with George Bush and Tony Blair as their champions, this clique of oil executives, armaments manufacturers, and their superrich investors have seen this wealth grow exponentially.

But the power of money is as nothing when faced with the power of a risen people, and the people of Iraq, despite the huge odds and hardships they have and continue to face, continue to resist, attesting to their right to self determination with their lives and their liberty.

A rich man's war but a poor man's fight is the simple truth behind the war in Iraq.

It is a truth which dispels the mountain of propaganda employed by the establishment both here and in the US to beguile us into believing otherwise.

As such Cardiff Respect calls on both the American and British troops, the vast majority of whom are economic conscripts, to return to their own communities in their respective countries and join the struggle against their real enemy and the enemy of all working class people - the billionaires, the corporations and governments that govern on their behalf.

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!