Communist Party of Australia

Communist Party of Australia (CPA) General Secretary Dr Hannah Middleton strongly condemned the government’s decision to send 450 additional Australian soldiers to Afghanistan and called for the war budget to be cut by ten percent.

“The war in Afghanistan is not about terrorism. It is about oil and pipelines. It is about the United States attempting to dominate our planet through control of the world’s diminishing resources.

“It has nothing to do with the security of the Australian people. In fact it is likely to make us a greater terrorist target,” Dr Middleton said.

“The rich don’t go to front lines. Working people pay in blood on battlefields. Young men and women sign up because they have no prospects for the future and they mistakenly believe they are fighting for a just cause.

“It is appalling and inexcusable that our sons and daughters die for big oil and Wall Street.

“In times of recession, capitalist states like Australia promote war and the threat of war to protect corporate empires and divert working people from their economic problems.

“War is the supreme destructive activity of capitalism. It provides seemingly limitless markets, absorbs limitless credits, raises prices and revives profits, and uses production to produce super profits through slaughter and annihilation.

“The US staved off serious recession for 20 years, largely through profit-generating wars and massive accumulation of debt.

“We are tired of the fighting, the killing, the environmental contamination, none of which solve any of the problems they are claimed to resolve,” Dr Middleton said.

“We want peace, justice, real economic security and a sustainable environment.

“The CPA calls for all the ADF forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to be brought home immediately.

“We call on the Rudd government in this time of economic crisis to cut the current military spending of $62 million a day by ten percent and divert the savings to socially and environmentally responsible programs,” Hannah Middleton concluded.

Next article — Peace Conference in South Korea

Back to index page