At a recent talk in Sacramento, Ray McGovern, a former Central Intelligence Agency executive, condemned the U.S. led bombing campaigns of Syria and Iraq. He explained to the crowd that the U.S. bombs will only increase the people’s suffering and misery, and worsen the situation with ISIS rather than help.
McGovern was in the CIA for 27 years as an analyst and then became chair of the National Intelligence Estimates. In the 1980s he prepared several US Presidents’ Daily Briefs, from John F. Kennedy to George H.W. Bush. Now he is an anti-war and civil liberties activist and uses his extensive inside knowledge of the United States intelligence agencies for the good of the people.
In the talk McGovern began by laying out the U.S. agenda for control of the world’s resources. He explained that by the end of World War II the U.S. had emerged as the global super power. Then the U.S. openly announced that its task was to maintain its position of power by controlling the world’s resources. Considering this policy, all the U.S. war drives take on a much more sinister character.
In fact, all of the massive bloodshed that the U.S. caused in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not, as the government had proclaimed, to stop weapons of mass destruction, but rather to further its agenda for domination. Nor was entering the war “a mistake resulting from bad intelligence” as many liberal pundits on mass media said. We know this because the government itself fabricated the intelligence. As McGovern stated, the war “wasn’t a mistake; it was fraud. And some of my former colleagues participated in that fraud to get ahead, for careerism.”
The imperialist quest for control didn’t stop with the invasion of Iraq. The U.S. has since openly overthrown the Libyan government and decimated the country, given key support to the semi-fascist Ukrainian rebels, and aided a right wing coup in Honduras – just to name a few cases. In addition it has attempted countless covert operations around the world.
McGovern explained that the current bombing of Syria and Iraq is just the latest episode in this long list of U.S. attempts at global domination. He showed that if the U.S. was truly concerned with stopping ISIS it wouldn’t do exactly what helped create them in the first place – principally U.S. bombs, war, and occupation.
McGovern was explicit that he is neither a Republican nor a Democrat. He does not believe the current system is working. We can see that he is right about this by looking at the past two presidencies. George Bush, a Republican, took us into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Barack Obama, a Democrat, led the invasion against Libya, has now taken us into war against Syria, and has continued another war in Iraq. Instead of relying on the two imperialist parties, we need to rely on ourselves.
We can stop this bombing by building a strong and united anti-war movement that will not succumb to lies and propaganda. We can further stop the whole endless cycle of imperialistic warfare by connecting the strong anti-war movement to other struggles. Moreover, we can stop this nonstop stream of horrendous warfare by taking on a revolutionary socialist direction which would replace this system with one based on peace and justice. No more bloodshed in our name! Join the anti-war movement today!
