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Vets Say No To Rich's War: Once We Fought For Them; Now Our Fight's Against Them

By VVAW

Vietnam and Cambodia were liberated less than a year ago. Since that time we've seen US "technicians" stationed in Sinai, turmoil in Portugal, civil war in Lebanon, and foreign meddling in the war in Angola. One crisis calms down only to have another crisis erupt.

Angola is both the most recent and the clearest example of what's happening. For centuries the Angolan people were key under the heel of Portuguese colonialists, kept in poverty and misery, and driven like slaves to fill the pockets of their Portuguese "masters." Angola's vast resources, including large oil and diamond deposits have never gone to improve the life of the people, but have always been ripped off to benefit foreign powers. Like people everywhere, the Angolan people resisted this exploitation and oppression. In the last 12 years, they waged an heroic struggle which helped topple the Portuguese government and won independence for Angola. Today, less than a year after the Portuguese left, Angola is again occupied by foreign troops, this time by thousands of Cuban soldiers under orders from Soviet "advisors." Even though the MPLA forces have won the war, there's no sign of Cuban troops leaving; in fact, at last count the 12,000 Cuban troops in Angola were bringing their families to join them there as a permanent army of occupation.

In the US, government spokesmen and their media mouthpieces wail and scream about Russian expansionism in Africa. Roy Innis of CORE and the CIA recruit mercenary troops to fight against the MPLA (see attached story) saying it's like the anti-fascist wars of the 1930's. Even Ronald Reagan talks about "Soviet imperialism" in Africa.

On the other side, leaders of the Soviet Union and Cuba, and some people here in the US, present a far different picture. They speak about their "internationalist duty" to help Angola; they say they are preventing Angolans from trading one colonialist master (Portugal) for another (the US) and keeping out the rotten racists from South Africa. And now that the conflict is pretty much over, they will keep their troops there to "insure" the independence of Angola.

What it amounts to is two sets of international gangster who each present a part of the truth. Through their various spokesmen, agents and propagandists, they bend the truth to paint themselves as "defenders of the oppressed" while the other is labeled as the "imperialist warmonger." Each country speaks the truth in call the other imperialist, colonialist, and expansionist; each carefully omits the truth about itself--that it, too, is imperialist, colonialist, and expansionist. Each carries out the same policy and is guided by the same laws; each uses a different cover. The US cloaks itself in rhetoric about freedom and democracy while the Soviet Union covers itself with talk about the working class and socialism. Yet, despite the rhetoric, they act the same; in each case, they have no interest in permitting the Angolans to decide for themselves what their own future should be.

Angola is far from unique. In just the last year, there's been one superpower confrontation after another. In the Middle East, the US won a couple of points by getting US "technicians" stationed along the Sinai; in Portugal, the Soviet Union seemed to have its puppet Communist Party well in control for awhile, only to see it undermined; in Angola, a couple of points for the Soviet Union. There are only the most blatant instances of the two superpower parasites sticking their hands into other people's backyards.

Yet, they constantly talk about "detente" (or Ford's new version, "Peace through Strength"), but we just have to look at the defense budget to see what a farce this is. B-1 bombers, MIRV's Tridents, weapons of awesome destruction too secret to have public names, all point to the danger of war as the US and USSR more and more come into direct conflict all around the world. Caught in the middle are not only the people of Angola, Portugal, and the Middle East; the danger of another world war growing out of these constant crises is something that affects everyone in the world.

Look at the Soviet Union for a moment. They parade around as a socialist system--which they once were--and a country run by the working class--which was also once true. But not anymore. There isn't much difference, when you get right down to it, between Breshnev and his cronies riding around in Cadillac limousines and living off the sweat and blood of the Russian workers; and the Rockefellers, the Duponts, or the Melongs. The Soviet Union has huge armies outside their borders just like the US; and they'll go into Czechloslovakia just like the US will charge into the Dominican Republic.

And then there's the US. The US rulers have been making a big fuss about the Bicentennial and our history of freedom, and defending democracy at home and abroad. That barrage keeps going day and night, and will get louder. But we, as veterans, especially vets of the Indochina war, know better. Democracy in Vietnam meant keeping a corrupt dictator in power and using this puppet as an excuse to subjugate half of Vietnam. Freedom there meant freedom for American corporations to exploit the natural resources of the country and use it as a base to attack neighboring countries. At home, freedom means the freedom of the rich to speed up to squeeze more profits out of us, freedom for them to lay us off, freedom for them to cut social services we need like VA hospitals, disability checks--and freedom fro us to starve on an inadequate GI Bill. Or freedom for us to mark our tax forms to give some bigmouth turkey a buck to speak for the rich.

Two superpowers driven by the need for profit, exploiting their working people at home while seeking markets and raw resources abroad. Competing for markets abroad, they come into conflict with each other. And this conflict threatens to lead the world into another world war, a war to divide and re-divide the world.

Of course, they don't stand up and say "We're robbers--what we want is what you've got." Instead, they cover it up with sugary words and maybe a couple of bribes to the right officials. It's constantly, "We're your friends, just trying to help you out." Well, in Vietnam that "help" was over a decade of bloody war; in Angola, that "help" is a Cuban occupation force.

The line's getting old. The Russian people aren't our enemies, any more than the Vietnamese people were our enemies. They're exploited as much as we are. There's a ruling class in the Soviet Union, just like here, which is doing the exploiting of the Russian people. And the rich who run the system in the US aren't going to get us to save their skins just because they speak English or because they tell us that they're the "lesser of two evils." We're saying that we're not going to fight another rich man's war. And if the US rulers get into a war, especially if they get into a world war with all the suffering that means for the world's people, we're not going to fight it for them. Our fight's against the rich and their wars.