The US invasion of Iraq marks an irrevocable turning point in world history. Washington has embarked on an imperialist war of plunder aimed at seizing control of Iraq and its vast oil reserves as part of its broader ambitions in the Middle East and beyond.
The Bush administration decision to defy the UN has effectively shattered the entire structure of international relations established after World War II. The war on Iraq is just the beginning of a reckless drive for global dominance that will inevitably bring the US into conflict with its major power rivals and plunge mankind towards a third world war.
The present war is the culmination of a protracted and deep-rooted crisis that has been maturing for decades and finds its most concentrated expression in the United States, the centre of world imperialism. Its causes are to be found in the fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system—between the globalisation of production and the outmoded system of nation states, and the shackling of economic life by the private ownership of the means of production and the profit motive.
The powerful global antiwar movement, which announced its presence in the protests of millions around the world on February 14-16, reveals the strivings of workers and the oppressed towards an internationalist unity in the struggle against imperialism.
But protest by itself is not enough. What is needed is a strategy that tackles the root cause of militarism and war—the capitalist order itself. That requires a movement based on the international working class and a socialist program, which unites the struggle against war with the fight to abolish the social inequality, poverty and joblessness that, across the Indian subcontinent alone, plagues the lives of hundreds of millions.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party, the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, invites all those opposed to the war against Iraq to attend the public meeting in Colombo to discuss these issues.
Monday, April 7, 4 p.m.
Public Library Auditorium
Colombo 7.