21 March 2011 /International Bureau / Statement No: 55

Imperialist forces have launched an attack on Libya on the 8th anniversary of the occupation in Iraq in 2003, which had faced with the great hatred of peoples of the entire world.
Right after the decision of the UN Security Council to create a no-fly-zone in Libya, the NATO summit that was held on Saturday in Paris decided over a military offence on Libya. In the evening, firstly the French warcraft, later the US and British warships started bombing Libya. Spain, Canada and Italy take part in the attack, too. It was announced that Qatar, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and Norway have also accepted to join the military interference, while Japan gave support to the attack. The Russian and Chinese imperialists, although such attack does not serve their interests, kept to the international balance of powers; they even did not use their right to veto and they just limited themselves with abstaining form a vote and releasing statements after the attack to convey their condolences. The German state did not join the attack due to "its risks" but raised political support.
The French government led by Sarkozy, which leads the attack politically and militarily, pulls attention with its statements against Gaddafi. However, it has not been forgotten that they had rolled out the red carpet for the dictator Gaddafi right on the Human Rights Day just a few years ago. It has not been forgiven that the same French government offered police support to dictator Ben Ali when the revolt of the Tunisian people reached to the level of revolution. Its hypocritical statements about bringing democracy to Libya only pull the hatred of the world's peoples.
Due to the deep hatred of the world's and US people against the occupations and Iraq and Afghanistan, the principal force of the occupation in Libya, the USA, do not want its role in the attack to be seen clearly. With the words "This is not an outcome the US or any of our partners sought. We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy", Obama repeats the arguments of his predecessor Bush against the Saddam government within the context of the scenario of occupying Iraq.
Meanwhile, dictator Gaddafi plays the spokesman of the Libyan people whom he oppressed brutally for so many years. As if it were not him who exploited his people in collaboration with imperialism and put them into the service of the imperialists' interests, he states that he will "confront this colonial crusade".
The collaborationist Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, President Gul and the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs defend the legitimacy of the UN decision by saying "We cannot sit with our hands in our laps while Libyan people are suffering so much". The collaborationist Turkish bourgeois state is doing just what imperialism expects from it. It tries to defend the occupation without being disclosed by the peoples of the region and loosing the role of establishing relationships with the peoples of the region in the name of the imperialists.
The main goal of the attack on Libya is neither overthrowing of the dictator Gaddafi nor putting an end to the civil war in Libya. This attack is in fact an operation of liquidation against the wave of peoples' revolts that shook the Middle East.
On the 8th anniversary of the occupation in Iraq, the imperialist forces spill blood in the Middle East once more on the pretext of "bringing freedom and democracy". However, the dirty face of the lies about freedom and democracy told by imperialism that has been stuck militarily and politically in Iraq and Afghanistan has been disclosed long ago; the peoples of the Middle East have shown that the real representative of freedom is the will and the action of the peoples - first through their resistance against imperialism and recently through the wave of revolt and revolution that they raised against the collaborationist dictatorships.
This attack of the US and EU imperialism has been launched against the revolutionary process in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries of Northern Africa/Middle East, which has been unleashed in the Middle East, exposed the collaborationist regimes, overthrew them and showed to the peoples of the world the hypocrisy of the bourgeois lies and distortion about the "clash of civilisations" and "barbarity of the eastern peoples". This wave of revolts showing the how strong is the ground for regional revolutions has brought the imperialist forces' policy of aggression on the regional level.
The imperialist forces want to hold the reins again in the Middle East, to structure the overthrown regimes according to their wishes, to detain the wave of revolts by liquidating the Gaddafi-like collaborationist forces, who served their interests in the past, before they are overthrown by the peoples' revolts and revolutions and the most importantly, to show that the address of freedom and democracy is their bloody clutches and not the will of the peoples. By this way they aim at distort the content of these peoples' revolts. By completely disregarding the peoples' will, they revile at the resisting Arab and Middle Eastern peoples once more. They try to erase the psychological victory gained by the revolts. They plunder the achievements, values and victory of these revolts once more by this way.
However, the struggle of the Middle Eastern peoples for freedom and democracy targeted imperialist aggression and the collaborationism of the dictatorships, too. The openly disclosed collaborationist character of Ben Ali, Mubarak and the other dictators was among the reasons of the revolutionary process that extended over the Middle East.
Neither the reactionary regimes of dictator Gaddafi and the other collaborationist dictators nor the imperialist aggression can stand against this will of the Middle Eastern peoples. The Middle Eastern peoples have seen their destructive and constructive power of their own will during the last three months. Imperialist aggression can neither obfuscate nor restrain this great lesson of the revolts.
All progressive, revolutionary and communist forces, all peoples of the world should take to the streets against imperialist occupation and Gaddafi's reactionary regime and defend this new and magnificent post of the working class, labouring masses and oppressed people achieved by the revolts in the Middle East.

Down with the collaborationist dictatorships! Down with Gaddafi's reactionary regime!
Down with the imperialist aggression! Down with the occupation in Libya!
Imperialism and collaborationist dictatorships will be defeated; peoples of the Middle East will win!
Long live revolution, long live socialism!