The Party for Socialism and Liberation is a member organization of the ANSWER Coalition

The Trump administration is waging a new war of aggression in the Middle East. The target this time is Syria. More than 70 U.S. cruise missiles hit Syria tonight.

The ANSWER Coalition is calling on people and organizations to mobilize nationally coordinated protests Friday at 5:00 p.m. and throughout the weekend to demand an end to the U.S. war against Syria. These protests will be taking place in cities across the country, including Washington, D.C., at the White House.

It is noteworthy that in the hours before Trump ordered military strikes on Syria, Hillary Clinton emerged back into the public spotlight to demand that Trump carry out military strikes against Syria.

Again, following a tried and true script, U.S. imperialist military actions against an independent, sovereign Middle Eastern government takes place under the pretext of protecting civilians from weapons of mass destruction.

The hypocrisy of the war-mongering politicians and media is astounding. The United States has been bombing Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere daily, killing hundreds of civilians in Mosul, Iraq in one attack alone. Scores of families, including their children, were murdered by American bombs. The U.S. media has been virtually silent about this crime.

In March, the Pentagon carried out 70 bombings of Yemen, more than in all of 2016, and continues to provide the bombs and bombers for the genocidal Saudi-led war on that country.

Now, the U.S. government is bombing the secular government of Bashar al-Assad at the moment that the Syrian national army was defeating al-Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State and other terrorist armed organizations. The Syrian government denies using chemical weapons. Instead of bombing first and asking questions later, shouldn’t there be an objective investigation into the facts?

Again, the U.S. government describes its war motives as humanitarian. Again, the U.S. government asserts that the targeted government possesses and has used weapons of mass destruction as the rationale for another bombing campaign.

At this point, every person in the United States should assume that the U.S. government, the Pentagon, and the CIA are lying when they seek to justify this new military aggression.

Let us not forget that the U.S. government insisted that it was required to go to war in Iraq to prevent the government of Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons existed in 2003. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, tens of thousands of American troops suffered life-changing injuries or were killed, and the country of Iraq was fragmented, allowing ISIS to come into existence.

Trump’s military strikes against Syria pose a grave danger of escalating into a regional or even global confrontation. The Syrian government, in its battle against al-Qaeda, ISIS and other armed groups, has the support of Russia and Iran.

The ANSWER Coalition is calling on people and organizations to mobilize nationally coordinated protests Friday at 5:00 p.m. and throughout the weekend to demand an end to the U.S. war against Syria. These protests will be taking place in cities across the country, including Washington, D.C., at the White House.

Click here to submit details of your local action.

Check this page for a growing listing of events.