The Socialist Party of Aotearoa opposed to military action in Afghanistan

9 October 2001

The Socialist Party of Aotearoa is firmly opposed to the US/UK military action in Afghanistan.

We also firmly condemn the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11.

War and terrorism have their origin in the very nature of the conflict system we live under and indeed the world today is very seriously and increasingly riven by conflict, economically, socially and politically.

For so long as the imperialist powers, particularly the USA, continue to dominate the global economy at the expense of the great majority of the world’s peoples there will be conflict and war. There will also be terrorism with the extreme danger of nuclear terrorism.

Although there are serious inequities of wealth distribution in this country, our people do not face starvation. We in New Zealand are prone to disregard the mass terror of some 40,000 children dying daily because of hunger and lack of medical attention and of some one billion of the world’s people living in poverty.

The best way to work to end imperialist oppression and terrorism and counter terrorism is to struggle for a new global re-alignment, to put the world’s resources at the disposal of the world’s peoples.

Such a re-alignment to end oppression and the resultant poverty and most tragic death toll would provide the most appropriate environment to end both war and terrorism. Meanwhile we face the imminent danger of a global conflict and more terrorism like the US/UK military action, which is being taken outside of the United Nations framework. We must fight to ensure that global decisions are taken legally and democratically with the co-operation of all states, and resist the on-going attempts by the US and its NATO clients to assert their imperial authority on a world scale, disregarding the UN and international law.

The New Zealand people asserted their mass influence against NZ involvement in the US-led war against the Vietnamese people. We were able to use the pressure of mobilised popular activity to prevent US nuclear warships visiting our ports and to stop collaboration with the apartheid regime.

Now the NZ people are faced with even a greater danger – the immediate threat of global conflict and the danger of nuclear war.

The NZ government, Labour, Alliance and Greens, the unions and the churches have a most serious obligation to choose the path of peaceful action to resolve world conflicts by addressing their causes rather than the path of violence which leads to more war and more terrorism.

G.H.(Bill) Andersen, National Secretary, Socialist Party of Aotearoa

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