Protest against Obama - but for the right reasons!

When Barack Obama makes his state visit to Britain this week, there will be a demonstration organised by the Stop the War Coalition and others - in protest at what the US is doing in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Protesting against Obama is, in itself, right, but we do not support Stop the War's protest. In particular, its attitude to Libya is shameful.

Workers' Liberty opposes Obama, the commander in chief of US capitalism and imperialism. We support the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and oppose the US's attempts to prolong its residual presence in Iraq. We criticise Obama for saying he supports a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, but refusing to put any serious pressure on Israel even for his tepid version. (Stop the War, the vast majority of whose leadership supports the dismantling of Israel, would make a rather different criticism, if they were honest. Instead they hide behind the vague slogan "Free Palestine".)

Obama has acted in the interests of capitalism at home as well as abroad, overseeing a carefully planned bail out of the US ruling class and attack on the living standards of workers and the poor. Black Americans have suffered worst.

When they intervened in Libya, Obama, the United States and NATO did not magically become something other than what they are and always will be. Supporting or giving credit to the intervention is out of the question. We can and should also point out the US government's hypocrisy. Obama's speech last week about democracy in the Middle East did not include one word about Saudi Arabia, a hideously reactionary regime responsible for crushing the Bahraini revolution - but one of the US's key allies in the region.

But why would socialists who support the heroic wave of uprisings and revolutions in North Africa and Middle East denounce a relatively limited military action which has prevented the Libyan rebels from being crushed? For Stop the War, it seems, opposing everything the US does is more important than the survival of the Libyan revolution.

Protest against Obama, but for the right reasons!

The protest is at 5.30pm, Tuesday 24 May, Buckingham Palace London SW1A 1AA