The Militant (logo) 
   Vol.65/No.16            April 23, 2001 
 
 
End all U.S. spy flights, naval probes and "joint" exercises, and other provocations in the Pacific and Asia!
 
The following message was sent April 10 by Socialist Workers Party national secretary Jack Barnes to Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers Party of Korea.

The Socialist Workers Party sends revolutionary greetings to the Workers Party of Korea on the occasion of the April 15 national celebration of the Korean people. We salute the Korean people's determined struggle to reunify your nation, free from imperialist presence or influence. We join with others around the world in calling for the unconditional removal of all U.S. troops and weapons from the Korean peninsula.

Washington's current propaganda barrage over a U.S. spy plane damaged while operating provocatively close to China's borders highlights the U.S. government's maintenance of a massive concentration of military forces, including a nuclear arsenal, in Asia and the Pacific. These weapons are targeted at the working people of China and Korea.

In April 1969 the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) shot down a manned U.S. spy plane, forcing the U.S. government to back off for some years from its most provocative frequent probes against both Korea and China. The previous year, after issuing warnings to Washington for weeks to withdraw the spy ship USS Pueblo from waters off your shores, the DPRK apprehended the Navy vessel and stood firm in face of U.S. military threats. Your action won support from millions of toilers the world over, including those in Vietnam who were under murderous assault by U.S. imperialism at that time. The Pueblo, still docked in Pyongyang to this day, is a floating monument to the resolve of revolutionary people throughout the world in face of Washington's imperial arrogance and saber rattling.

If the U.S. rulers had learned a lesson from assertions of national dignity and sovereignty such as these, Washington would not today confront the situation it does over a spy plane on Hainan Island. To have done so, however, would run counter to the U.S. rulers' determination to aggressively advance their class interests throughout Asia and the Pacific. The large-scale military exercises now being planned by Washington and the government in Seoul are aimed at legitimizing the permanent military presence of U.S. imperialism in the region.

The U.S. ruling families have remained implacably hostile to the workers and farmers of Korea because you overturned capitalist rule, liberated the northern part of your nation on the road to national reunification, and continue to stand up to imperialist aggression and threats for the past half century. Washington and Tokyo consider this to be a dangerous example to working people worldwide. The U.S. rulers also remain determined to reverse the historic conquests of the Chinese revolution.

This is why both the Clinton and Bush administrations have charted a course to deploy an antimissile system that would target Korea, China, and any other people in the world whose actions are not to the U.S. rulers' liking. It is for the same reason that the U.S. government maintains 37,000 heavily armed troops in Korea enforcing its partition, against the will of millions throughout the peninsula. The Clinton administration ended talks with the government of the DPRK three months before leaving office, and President George Bush continues this freeze.

Class-conscious working people in the United States are heartened by the workers in the south of Korea who have taken to the streets against the threatened layoffs resulting from Seoul's economic "restructuring" plans. Working people in other countries around the world, from dockworkers in Brazil defending their union rights to striking workers in Indonesia, are standing up to the brutal effects of the same imperialist oppression.

In the United States, working people are resisting the assault on our rights and conditions of life and work, from striking garment workers in Los Angeles to meat packers speaking out against large-scale factory raids by the federal immigration police from Pennsylvania to Nebraska to Minnesota. The stagnation of the growth of the world capitalist economy, from the decade-long decline in Japan to the current downturn in the United States, is leading to both increased "shocks" and further pressure by the employers on working people's jobs and working conditions, and will be met with resistance by workers and farmers and by militant youth attracted to them. These struggles internationally reinforce the fight by the Korean people for the unification of your country.

The Socialist Workers Party pledges to tell the truth to fellow workers, farmers, and youth about the Korean people's battle to get Washington, Tokyo, and other imperialist powers off your backs. We demand:

End all U.S. spy flights, naval probes and "joint" exercises, and other provocations in the Pacific and Asia!

U.S. troops and nuclear weapons out of Korea!

Normalize relations now with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea!

Comradely,
Jack Barnes
National Secretary
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home