Middle East Is Being Destroyed.

Yemen in ruins because of bombing by US backed Saudi Regime of Islamic nut cases, billionaires, anti women degenerates and friends of the Bush Family.

by Sean O'Torrain

It was 1965. I was 21. I was in the merchant marine. We were sailing from Australia up to the Red Sea towards the Suez canal and Europe. We passed Aden. I could hear the gunfire of the war that was raging. It is now fifty years later and the guns are still firing.  And not only that but in the last few weeks Yemen and Aden have been laid waste by war.

I had a friend some years ago from the Congo. He had been a guerrilla fighter there. We were talking about his experiences, how his mother had been killed in one of the many wars there. And he said to me: “You know why we have the non stop wars? It is because we have too much wealth. As a result the rich powers either come directly or fund directly war machines to come and plunder us.”

I thought more about what my friend said in the last few days. Practically the entire Middle East is being destroyed by war. It would take a full article just to list the names of the countries in this state. . Why is this?  The Middle East is being destroyed because it has too much wealth in a capitalist world. Oil in particular. So the major imperialist powers invade and occupy and fund militias to slaughter and kill and rob the area of it wealth. This is why the Middle East is being destroyed. It has too much wealth. If you think this is over simplistic think about the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, the recent backing by the US of Saudi Arabia to invade Yemen, the US backing of the Zionist regime in Israel to slaughter the Palestinians and back up its proxy militias and forces in other countries. The Middle East is being destroyed because it has too much wealth and because that wealth is in private hands and used as a source of profit..

There is one other related feature to explain this destruction. The indigenous capitalist forces in the Middle East have been and are very weak. They allied themselves with the imperialist powers to cling on to power and to get a skim of the wealth. The Saudi so called princes, in reality degenerates in every aspect, are the prime example of this. The capitalist forces in all the countries of the Middle East were not able to take the wealth of their own countries into their own hands and develop these countries, develop their economies, unify their national territories, throw out imperialism. Instead they kissed the boots of imperialism. Any of them who got out of line even the least bit like Saddam Hussein or Qaddafi were invaded and overthrown and  lynched.

For a time there appeared as if there might be an alternative force to take the aspirations of the Middle East masses forward. This was Nasser and Arab nationalism. But Arab nationalism also kowtowed to imperialism. Then it appeared there might be an alternative in Stalinism. For a time it got a mass base in Iraq and also invaded and held Afghanistan. But Stalinism could give no way forward as it stuck to its stages theory its so called socialism in one country theory and also as it itself was collapsing.

So an unprecedented historical vacuum developed. The masses in the Middle East were and are robbed and are starving and beaten down. There is no mass force which can help them see the way to a unified struggle for a socialist Middle East. So radical Islam begins to fill this vacuum, gets a base and along with that splits in all directions and fights amongst itself, so its wars civil wars and religious wars and on and on.

Capitalism, imperialism is destroying the Middle East. The entire region is being blown to bits. The few parts that still have some strength and cohesion such as Iran are being assaulted by imperialism and threatened that they must come to heal or else they will be starved to death with the sanctions or bombed. US imperialism  prefers to bring Iran to heal with the sanctions given the increased chaos that a war would bring but what will develop is not sure. Its crazed mad dog of Zionism is biting at its heels to make sure it does not back away from being prepared to take military action. Putin and the Chinese elite are sitting at one and the same time,   happily  but also nervously watching US imperialism get impaled in its own contradictions both internationally and with the splits in its own political base at home.

What is going to happen? It is impossible to say with any certainty. But what does seem a sure bet is that the present destruction and wars and looting by imperialism  in the Middle East will continue for the foreseeable future. There is even the increased tension in the last couple of days between the two nuclear states Pakistan and India. On the basis of capitalism and imperialism there can be no solution to the destruction and crisis in the region.

Only the working class, united throughout the region and across national and religious lines can provide a way out. And it can only do this by carrying out the democratic socialist revolution and throw out imperialism, overthrowing its own domestic capitalist class and establishing a democratic socialist federation of the Middle East with the right of self determination for all peoples and the right of freedom of religion and freedom for no religions for all.

Trotsky wrote that in countries where the capitalist class came on to the scene of history late they could not carry out their historic tasks. This is correct and applies to the Middle East today. The capitalist classes in the Middle East cannot carry out their tasks. Instead they bow the knee to imperialism. Unless the working class take power and carry through the socialist revolution and spread this internationally the destruction of the Middle East will continue. It is fifty years now since I sailed up past Aden and the guns were firing then. Fifty years from now I strongly feel that these guns will be  silenced.  And silenced in one of two ways. One way is because the Middle Eastern working class will have taken power and transformed the region by carrying out a democratic socialist revolution. Or they will be silenced by the silence of the graveyard . And this will have come after decades of war, regional war, religious war, civil war, nuclear war.