Open letter from the UK;
Soldiers! Don't be pawns in a deadly game...
War is coming - potentially the most catastrophic war of our lives - what will our role be?
With your strategic role in the war machine you must surely be questioning why this is happening now. Most soldiers in the UK enlist for economic reasons as much as any - to learn a trade, escape unemployment have a chance to travel etc. - and not because they want to go to poor countries and kill civilians so that the US ruling class can control the world's oil supplies. This war could easily plunge the world into global military carnage - World War III appears closer than ever.
We have nothing but contempt for the war-mongering rulers on all sides. Both Bush and Saddam Hussain want to control the resources and the people in the Iraq region. Neither of them is on the side of the Iraqi people, but rather on the side of money and power. Bombing people does not liberate them, but frees them up for exploitation by the US instead. Almost nobody but politicians and arms dealers wants this war.
Since 1945 the US has militarily intervened over 250 times in various countries. This is the future being offered you - to become the storm troopers of America's brutal foreign policy and expansionism, moving from one escalating intervention to another. If we want to be anything more than a part of a New World Order that is happy to sacrifice us like pawns on a chess board then we have to stand up and resist now - soldiers and civilians alike.
The next London anti-war demonstration (Feb 15) will be huge - so, using some pathetic excuse about protecting the grass, the government has tried banning it from Hyde Park in the hope it will be less visible. The UK-wide Fire-Fighters strike continues - with troops and their old Green Goddesses used as emergency cover. The strikers have been called the enemy within by Blair's government. If resisting their continual drive for more work for lower wages or questioning their war logic makes you the enemy then it is something we will all have to become if we are to build a movement to stop this war and challenge a society that makes it possible.
The strike raises the possibility of anti-war resistance connecting to other struggles - e.g. fraternisation between strikers and soldiers during wartime, perhaps leading to joint commitment to only provide emergency cover for civilians and for property unrelated to the war effort?. Why do we need to sacrifice our lives for institutions that make money out of us and send us to war for their financial gain? Let the building burn.
You remain "Our Boys" to The Sun and other patriotic cheerleaders who risk nothing and warmongers; but only as long as you obey the orders of our bosses to kill and be killed without question -only the bosses, politicians and their propaganda tools like The Sun will benefit from war. We know that anti war action, i.e. the refusal of orders, seems impossible, but soldier have done this before and it has proved later to be the right thing to do. And mass action and solidarity can win: the Vietnam War ended largely due to resistance by US troops in the battle zone - mutinies, desertion, strikes, even the killing of officers. This was supported by a massive anti-war movement and general social turmoil back in the US, something that there is the potential for in the UK today. Since the 1967 borders some Israeli soldiers have been refusing do service inside the occupied territories of Palestinian.
So soldiers - resist and refuse your role in the war machine - Don't go! Talk about this and organise with your comrades. Your refusal will have the support of millions across the globe and become part of a global resistance to the greed and arrogance of our rulers on all sides in this conflict. It's your move?