Statement by the PCP's Press Office
August 28, 2013
1. The PCP vehemently condemns the dangerous escalation of war threats against Syria by the governments of the USA, France and England and by their allies in the Middle East region.
2. If it were to materialize, a direct military aggression by the imperialist powers and NATO against Syria would be, not just the corollary of the covert war that has been long unleashed against the Syrian people and against all peoples of the Middle East, but also a military adventure of unforeseeable consequences threatening to engulf this entire region and beyond.
3. A direct military aggression against Syria would represent a new qualitative leap in the disrespect for international law and the sovereignty of peoples. The exacerbated warmongering of the imperialist powers deliberately affronts the principles of international law that are enshrined in the UN Charter – notably the repudiation of war and the respect for the sovereignty of States – and the United Nations system. The replacement of these principles with the law of might and war is an undeniable goal, which is almost overtly proclaimed by the imperialist powers.
4. The PCP, reaffirming its frontal opposition to the use of weapons of mass destruction, underlines that it is impossible to ignore the long history of disinformation, fabrications and lies which have served as a pretext for imperialist wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia or Libya. It is also not possible to ignore the long history of crimes committed by terrorist gangs that are armed, trained, financed and at the service of imperialist powers – such as those that have executed, on the ground, the aggression against the Syrian people – and which have also served to create the pretexts or conditions facilitating the onslaught of direct imperialist aggressions.
5. The PCP, considering it necessary to ensure a full assessment of the facts, draws attention to the seriousness of conveying or uncritically accepting campaigns of manipulation of facts that do not just require unquestionable proof – regarding both their nature and any possible responsibility – but which have in previous occasions proved to be fabrications by the imperialist forces. The repeated statements by the Syrian government, which categorically denies having ever committed any attack with chemical weapons and charges the so-called “rebels” with their use, must be registered, as must be the statements by various international authorities regarding the existence of indications pointing to the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, not by the Syrian Army, but by the so-called “rebels”.
6. The PCP recalls that the imperialist powers who today claim to be shocked by the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria have a long history of using chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons against civilian populations, including weapons whose terrible effects strike future generations (as with the atom bombs dropped on Japan, “agent orange” which devastated Vietnam or depleted uranium-based weapons used in the destruction of Yugoslavia). It is an unacceptable hypocrisy that the leaders of the USA, France or England invoke this argument to unleash yet another war of aggression.
7. The PCP denounces and condemns the role played by the most violent and backward regimes in the region – Saudi Arabia and Qatar – in the aggression against Syria, in sponsoring the most barbarous terrorist groups of Islamic fundamentalism and in inciting sectarian conflict in numerous countries throughout the region, as well as in the military repression of the just popular revolts in countries such as Bahrain (where the US Fifth Fleet has its headquarters) and Yemen.
8. The PCP recalls the consequences of previous imperialist wars, many of which were initiated invoking “humanitarian” pretexts. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, countries that have been destroyed, fragmented and reduced to chaos, with rampant armed gangs often tied to the most sordid trafficking of weapons, drugs and people, this is the reality today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or Kosovo. The PCP draws attention to the context of generalized conflict and war that today marks the martyr region of the Middle East and vehemently condemns the terrorist attacks with car bombs that are routinely committed in Iraq and Syria and recently in Lebanon, as well as the recent attacks by the Israeli air force in the suburbs of Beirut. The PCP also denounces and condemns the successive Israeli incursions in Palestinian territories, namely the recent murder of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army in the West Bank.
9. The PCP highlights the prominent role played by social-democracy in the active promotion of imperialism's aggressions, confirmed once again by the positions of the French “socialist” government and by the statements of leaders of the [Portuguese] PS in relation to Syria.
10. The true reasons for the never-ending imperialist military aggressions have nothing to do with the legitimate aspirations of the peoples to freedom, sovereignty, and their countries' economic and social progress. Rather, they lie in the goal of recolonizing the planet, notably that crucial region for energy reserves that is the Middle East, as well as in ensuring – through the destruction of sovereign States with a history of resistance to imperialist domination in the region – the regional impunity of imperialism and of Israel and its policies of State terrorism and occupation of Palestine.
11. The new upsurge in imperialist warmongering is an expression of the threats that grow with the ever-deeper structural crisis of capitalism. Threats that make it necessary to recall the dark moments in world History when the capitalist system reacted to its crisis by resorting to fascism and war. The workers and the peoples – who are the main victims of militarism and war – the revolutionary and progressive forces face the need to make their voice heard and to strengthen a vast social front of resistance against war and imperialism. The PCP calls for strengthening, in our country, the struggle for peace, against imperialism and war, which is inseparable from the struggle for a patriotic and left-wing alternative that can invert the course of national disaster and promote a foreign policy of peace and cooperation with all peoples of the world.
12. The PCP demands form the Portuguese Government an attitude which, does not just distance itself from the current warmongering escalation and blackmail, but which fights, as is required by the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, for the peaceful solution to conflicts, for the intransigent defense of the sovereignty of peoples and for the principles enshrined in the UN Charter and in International Law.
