Statement by the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada, April 7, 2017
US President Donald Trump’s illegal bombing of Syria yesterday is a war crime.
Prime Minister Trudeau’s statement this morning, supporting the US airstrikes, makes Canada complicit in these war crimes.
We call on the Liberal government to oppose the US airstrikes, to take a firm position supporting a return to the peace process and a negotiated settlement, and to demand a full investigation into the release of sarin gas which led to the deaths of 80 civilians.
There is no proof – nor any investigation – to determine who is responsible. What is known is that the Pentagon has trained the terrorists in the use of sarin gas, and that the terrorists had stock-piled sarin gas in secret storage facilities that were bombed by government air strikes last week.
Trump’s rush to war suggests the truth is incidental – or inconvenient for the US administration, which has fought to overthrow the Assad government for years, using mercenaries and terrorists recruited and trained to do their dirty work from the most reactionary countries in the Middle East.
Now that the Syrian government is defeating the terrorists, including ISIS, Al’Nusra, and others, the US has no more proxy forces inside the country able to overthrow the government from within.
In fact the peace process was proceeding well at the international level, with peace talks including the Assad government well underway, and the war against the terrorists nearly won. For the democratically elected Assad government, the prospects of a peaceful and negotiated political solution were at hand. They clearly had no interest in derailing the peace process.
Honest people must ask themselves, who benefits from the sarin gas deaths and the US airstrikes on Syria?
The answer, clearly, is the reactionary states in the region which have called for a no-fly zone and US military intervention to overthrow the Assad government, and a US President and Republican administration in deep trouble at home, unable to move legislation forward in the Congress, with very low public approval ratings and mass opposition growing, including inside the Republican caucuses. Not least, Trump is in trouble because of a budget which shifts $54 billion out of social spending into spending for war.
The terrorist stock-piling of sarin gas and the terrible deaths resulting from its release after the facilities were hit by bombs, has created the incident that the US government has been seeking to directly intervene in Syria. Their aim is to overthrow the Assad government by force, and to distract US public opinion from Trump’s catastrophic foreign and domestic policies including on immigration, healthcare, the EPA, and civil and democratic rights.
Trump claims that US national security interests in the region are threatened and that this gives the US the right to launch a war on Syria, is not credible. This was the justification given by the Bush and Obama administrations in launching their wars on Iraq and on Libya, leaving thousands of civilians dead and those countries in ruins.
The US airstrikes have also escalated the frightening scenario of a direct military confrontation between the US and Russia on the territory of Syria. The world is now facing the horrific possibility of a confrontation between the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenals in the world.
The Canadian government must be the voice of reason, and the voice of peace and a political solution, not the weak-kneed echo of Donald Trump and his crimes against the Syrian people.
We call on the labour and democratic movements and all those peace-loving peoples across Canada to speak up and mobilize against the US airstrikes, and against any Canadian support for or involvement in this new US war on Syria.
Canadians must make it clear in every possible way – in protests on the streets, in the media, in Parliament and on the Hill, that war is not an option. The only solution is a negotiated political solution, based in international law.
Hands off Syria! End Canadian complicity in this dirty U.S. war! Bring the troops home!
