This statement was delivered by Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member Jose Monzon at an anti-war rally held October 7, 2018 in New York City commemorating the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The rally also demanded an end to all wars.
On behalf of the struggling Black peoples who are a part of the Black Alliance for Peace, we bring you revolutionary greetings.
We want to thank the organizers of this event for not allowing this date to pass without demonstrating people in this nation are still woke, still struggling, and still determined to defeat U.S. imperialism in all of its manifestations.
Seventeen years ago this weekend, citing the Doctrine of Self-Defense, the United States initiated a brutal war against the people of Afghanistan. And once again, the people of that nation found themselves expendable, no more than collateral damage for the Bush administration’s ideological objective of conditioning the people in the United States to support their real intention: the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
But like so many other empires and nations that invaded Afghanistan, the United States found it could smash a government, but it could not defeat the people of that small nation who were determined to defend their national dignity.
Today, 17 years later, the United States has been defeated. But in its imperial arrogance, it is prevented from admitting that fact to itself, the people and the world—and so the suffering of the people continues.
We in the Black Alliance for Peace say that in the war that should have never been, the war has been lost!
Bring the solders out, close the U.S. bases and provide reparations to the people of that nation who have unnecessarily suffered.
But if you continue to wage war, if your greed for the over $1 trillion worth of precious metals and oil and gas deposits seduce you into believing that you can remain, we pledge today that we will return to the streets, we will continue to resist you and to stand with the people to force you out of Afghanistan, out of Yemen, to force you out of all of the national territories where you attempt to impose your will.
End of the war in Afghanistan!
Stop the slaughter in Yemen!
Close all U.S. and NATO bases worldwide!
U.S. out of Africa and shut down AFRICOM!
Photo credit: Reuters