3 May 2011

The following article first appeared in Socialist Worker (US)

THE ASSASSINATION of Osama bin Laden is being celebrated as rough justice by U.S. politicians across the spectrum and a mainstream media that is glorying in every grisly detail.

It is nothing of the sort. Bin Laden’s death did not make the world “safer” and “a better place,” as Barack Obama claimed in his televised speech Sunday night. On the contrary, this political killing will be used to make the world less safe–by building support for more violence committed by the U.S. government in the name of the “war on terror.”

The hunt for bin Laden while he was alive was never about justice, but justification. Revenge for al-Qaeda’s September 11 attacks was the most effective selling point for U.S. wars and occupations that weren’t designed to make the world safe from terrorism, but to safeguard the flow of Middle East oil and ensure the continued domination of the U.S. empire.

Now that bin Laden is dead, this former U.S. ally-turned-public enemy number one will be exploited again–his killing proclaimed as a vindication of 10 years of bloodshed on a scale far more horrible than anything al-Qaeda was ever capable of.

News of bin Laden’s death produced an outburst of jingoism and anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. The New York Daily News printed “Rot in hell!” across its front cover. In Portland, Maine, the words “Osama Today Islam tomorow (sic)” were found spray-painted on a mosque. As Obama was announcing the killing on television, crowds of people gathered outside the White House to chant “USA, USA, USA”–the very image of callous arrogance that stokes bitter anger toward the U.S. around the world.

Anyone who cares about peace and justice needs to raise their voice against these celebrations, because they only pave the way for more war. “Whenever America uses violence in a way that makes its citizens cheer, beam with nationalistic pride, and rally around their leader, more violence is typically guaranteed,” wrote Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald.

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THE OPERATION to kill bin Laden–carried out by Navy SEAL commandos inside Pakistan with no notification to a supposed ally, apparently ending with bin Laden being summarily put to death–was typical of the “war on terror.” The U.S. government claimed the right to be judge, jury and executioner far beyond its borders–a calculated message to the world that the U.S. recognizes no limits on its actions, either from international law or the norms of civilized behavior.

But this is nothing new. For 10 years, America’s military machine has been judge, jury and executioner for tens of thousands of Afghans who did nothing more than go to a wedding or travel in the wrong area–and that’s not to mention the victims of the U.S. who are labeled “rebel fighters,” and whose only crime was to resist an occupation of their country.

The toll of the “war on terror” has been compounded many times over with invasions and assaults carried out or backed by the U.S. in Iraq–the greatest killing field for the American empire in recent years–in Palestine, in Pakistan and Yemen and Sudan, and now in Libya.

No reader of SocialistWorker.org will mourn bin Laden’s death in and of itself. He was a political reactionary whose ideology and actions set back the cause of democracy and freedom.

The victims of al-Qaeda’s attacks against U.S. targets have almost always been ordinary people who bore no responsibility for the crimes of imperialism. In the Middle East and elsewhere, bin Laden and his followers have been equally vicious, if not more so, toward fellow Arabs and Muslims who oppose their hard-line version of Islam. The U.S. and its allies around the world have not been weakened by September 11 and other such attacks–on the contrary, al-Qaeda’s violence has been used as a pretext to advance the imperial project.

But bin Laden’s assassination is already being used to renovate the “war on terror.”

According to the Bush administration’s plan following September 11, the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq would be the springboard for a transformation of the Arab and Muslim world–at the point of U.S. guns. But the resistance in Iraq made a mockery of Bush’s claim of “Mission Accomplished”–just as the continuing opposition to the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan has frustrated Obama’s troop “surge” there.

For the last five years, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown steadily more unpopular. But now, at last, the U.S. war machine and its cheerleaders have a “success” to celebrate. That is the importance of bin Laden’s killing to the U.S. political establishment–and the reason the fawning media relishes the grotesque stories of his corpse being dragged away from the murder scene and dumped in the sea.

Obama’s speech announcing the killing included not a single word about the lies used to justify invading and occupying countries halfway around the world–nor the least recognition of the terrible toll on the region. On the contrary, as antiwar activist Phyllis Bennis pointed out, Obama equated the operation to kill bin Laden and the ongoing “war on terror” with, among other things, the “struggle for equality for all our citizens.” As Bennis wrote, “In President Obama’s iteration, the global war on terror apparently equals the anti-slavery and civil rights movements.”

This twisted hypocrisy must be exposed and opposed–along with future operations of the U.S. military machine undertaken in the name of stopping terrorism.

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ONE INCONVENIENT truth you won’t hear much about in the media’s celebration of bin Laden’s death is the fact that the U.S. government helped him form al-Qaeda.

When the former USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the U.S. saw an opportunity to turn the country into a battlefield in the Cold War. The Democratic Carter administration and then the Republican Reagan administration supported fundamentalist rebel groups, known as the mujahideen, against the USSR’s occupation. According to James Ingalls and Sonali Kolhatkar’s book Bleeding Afghanistan, “The amount of U.S. and Saudi assistance to these groups started at around $30 million in 1980, and increased to over $1 billion per year in 1986–89.”

The U.S. ignored progressive and secular forces in Afghanistan, instead funneling support to fundamentalist groups that were not only anticommunist, but notorious for their brutality–warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, for example, was known for throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women. These were the rebels who Ronald Reagan praised as “freedom fighters.”

The Taliban emerged in 1994 and took power in the war-ravaged country a few years later. Its members were trained in religious schools set up by the Pakistani government–with U.S. support–along the border. The Taliban’s ultra-fundamentalist view of Islam–including denying women the right to work or even show their faces in public–wasn’t condemned by the U.S. government at the time.

As for Bin Laden, he was a businessman from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia and one of the first non-Afghan volunteers to join the mujahideen. He recruited some 4,000 of the 35,000 non-Afghan Muslims who fought in Afghanistan, and developed close relations with the most radical rebel leaders. He also worked closely with the CIA, raising money from private Saudi citizens.

“In 1988, with U.S. knowledge, bin Laden created al-Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across at least 26 countries,” wrote Indian journalist Rahul Bhedi. “Washington turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda, confident that it would not directly impinge on the U.S.”

Now that bin Laden has been executed, there will be no trial to examine the U.S. government’s connections to the man whose murder allegedly makes the world “safer.” Nor will there be any difficult questions about the Taliban’s offers in 2001 to turn over bin Laden to the U.S. for trial if Washington provided evidence of his crimes.

The Bush administration wasn’t interested in a peaceful solution. It wanted the “war on terror” to project U.S. power around the globe. September 11 wasn’t a tragedy to the leaders of the U.S. government, but an opening. Thus, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice urged aides to speculate about “how you capitalize on these opportunities” from September 11, as she told New Yorker magazine writer Nicholas Lehmann.

During the Cold War era, the U.S. had justified its stockpile of nuclear weapons capable of destroying the planet, its war on national liberation movements, and its support for repressive regimes as a means of combating “communism.” But after the collapse of the USSR, the U.S. struggled to find an enemy that could justify its efforts to expand its empire.

September 11 was the “catastrophic and catalyzing event–like a new Pearl Harbor”–that neoconservative supporters of the Bush administration had openly longed for one year previously to make Islam the new enemy, with their old ally Osama bin Laden front and center.

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THUS, WHILE most people were still dealing with the enormity of what happened on September 11, the U.S. political and military establishment was demanding blood. But as Socialist Worker wrote in an editorial that night:

In their rush to assign blame and demand revenge, no politicians or journalists bothered to ask a simple question: Why would someone target the U.S.?

The answer is the devastation and misery wreaked around the world by the U.S. in its role as the world’s biggest superpower. In the last two decades alone, the U.S. has launched military attacks on Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia–and this is not even to count wars where the U.S. backed a proxy force.

In the Middle East, U.S. policy has left millions embittered and angry. America’s support for Israeli repression of Palestinians is one part of the picture. So is the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. The war killed as many as 200,000 Iraqis–most of them civilians–and left the country in a “pre-industrial state,” according to the United Nation. Since then, UN sanctions against Iraq–backed most strongly by the U.S.–have killed more than 500,000 Iraqi children.

In a chilling 1995 interview, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright justified these deaths, saying, “We think the price is worth it.” We should remember Albright’s words when we hear the drumbeat about “terrorists” who “have no regard for human life.” To the Bushes and Albrights of this world, such rhetoric is only an excuse to justify atrocities far worse than the ones committed in New York and Washington, D.C.

The nearly 10 years of the “war on terror” have taken an even greater toll–at least 1 million people are dead as a result of the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq alone. U.S. military action has spread from Afghanistan to Iraq, and now to Pakistan, Libya and many more countries. The “devastation and misery wreaked around the world” by the American empire is greater today than 2001.

The “war on terror,” justified as the only way to stamp out bin Laden and al-Qaeda, has made the world a more violent and dangerous place. With every bomb that falls on an Afghan wedding party or every carload of Iraqis slaughtered at a checkpoint, the world’s only superpower created more despair and bitterness toward the U.S. and its allies–creating the circumstances in which terrorism can thrive.

Since the beginning of this year, the Middle East has become a focal point for the world for very different reasons. From Tunisia and Egypt in northern Africa to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf and many countries in between, masses of people have risen up against dictators and regimes that uphold the imperialist order–some of them backed wholeheartedly by the U.S. and others more tentatively.

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were made irrelevant by the actions of millions of people who rebelled on the basis of mass action and solidarity, not the violence of a small minority seeking to impose its religious views.

The assassination of bin Laden will help Washington in its attempts to retake the initiative with a revitalized “war on terror.” We need to stand up against the grisly celebrations of bin Laden’s killing–and insist, as Martin Luther King did more than 40 years ago, that the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world” is the U.S. government.

Eliot said the game was up
after the First World War. How wrong!
For after the Second we fell
into a state of disbelief
that still must make us shake our heads.

And on then to Hiroshima,
To Korea down to Vietnam,
And all the other names we call-
Cambodia, Timor, Iraq.

The list a litany of grief,
and what now to say about this
except Beckett may have the words
to sum it up: ‘No matter, Try
Again, Fail again, Fail better.’

He’s five feet tall and he’s six feet four,
He fights with missiles and with spears,
He’s all of thirty-one and he’s only seventeen,
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years.

Universal Soldier (Buffy St Marie)

In Dundee’s Eastern Necropolis there is a headstone-free area known as the Poor Ground. As the name would imply, this is where the poor of Dundee’s past lie in unmarked graves, in stark contrast to the imposing headstones and memorials of Dundee’s Victorian industrial barons and merchant class.

Even in death, it would seem, equality can be an elusive concept—the prosperous proclaiming their earthly greatness for all to see, while many of those whose sweat and toil created for them their fabulous riches lie unmarked, unknown, forgotten.

The Poor Ground is possessed of the solemn tranquillity common to graveyards, and on a pleasant day it is a calm and peaceful place to sit on one of the three benches that form a row on the northern edge of the area. Each of the benches has a plaque on it, and the inscriptions on the two westernmost make for an eye-catching and interesting read. They are as follows:

Peter Grant

In memory of PRIVATE PETER GRANT VC Born 1824
He was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in India 16 November 1857.
He died 10 January 1868 and was buried near here.

And, on the other bench,

Thomas Beach

In memory of PRIVATE THOMAS BEACH VC Born 1824
He was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in The Crimea 5 November 1854.
He died 24 August 1864 and was buried near here.

Neither Beach nor Grant fared well after their brief flirtation with fame, and both were dead in their early 40’s, almost within a decade of receiving their VC’s. Thomas Beach left the army in 1863. He returned to Dundee, where he died in the Royal Infirmary on August 24, 1864, aged 40. The cause of death is believed to have been severe alcoholism.

According to a report in the Dundee Advertiser, dated January 11, 1868, Private Peter Grant (who at the time was still a serving soldier of the 93rd Regiment, stationed in Aberdeen) had been missing from where he lived since Friday, December 27, and had not been seen again till the previous morning. His body was removed from the river, near Craig Harbour, by a Constable Bremner.

Still pinned to his uniform coat was his Victoria Cross and his campaign medals. In the pockets of the coat were a fourpenny piece, a penny and a knife. He had been on a visit to friends in Dundee. The last sighting of Private Peter Grant had been in Wheatley’s Public House in the Overgate.

What the inscriptions on the benches at the Poor Ground tell us is instructive.

Despite being feted by the state, their country bestowing upon them its highest award for valour on the field of battle, that same state which honoured their courage so, in death abandoned them, not even caring enough to provide a simple headstone to mark the last resting places of those it had so recently proclaimed heroes, one of whom was, at the time, still a serving member of the army.

Indifference and callousness

Fast forward now from the mid-to-late nineteenth century to the first decade of the twenty-first century. On August 26, 2007, I am reading an article in the Independent on Sunday, the headline of which reads Our boys deserve better treatment than this.

I am habitually and instinctively wary of articles containing the words our boys. Usually, they are flag waving, shallow pieces of jingoism, designed to inculcate in the population the belief that all British foreign military adventures are benign, and to make us feel that there is something wrong with us if we do not support our troops.

Many thousands of us have, of course, been supporting our boys in the best way possible, urging prior to March 2003 that we should not attack Iraq, and calling for the withdrawal of the troops ever since the launching of that ill-thought-out foreign misadventure.

But the article in the Independent is highlighting the plight that our boys face when they are wounded, either mentally or physically. Two cases in particular are highlighted, each in its own way a shocking indictment of the indifference and callousness of the state which would send our young people into combat on a mixture of half-truths and downright lies.

On the Military Families Support Group website, one mother tells of her son, who is home on two weeks’ leave from Afghanistan. She discovered that he was suffering from a double fracture to the jaw, caused by a faulty rocket launcher, which recoiled into his face. Other than pain relief he had received no treatment at all for the injury.

It was not till his mother sent him to her dentist that the true extent of the injury was discovered. He was told at Selly Oak Hospital that as the fractures were, by that time, four weeks old, there was nothing they could do and he was sent back to Afghanistan after being told to eat only soft food.

The second case is, if anything, even more harrowing.

A mother tells how her 19-year-old son, an infantry soldier who served in Iraq, is haunted by witnessing a child sliced in two by a British bullet which was fired into a crowd in Basra. The memory of the boy’s father gathering up the pieces of his child, sitting on the curb and hugging them, torments him.

When the nightmares come he has to climb into bed with his mother and her husband. Before he can sleep she has to cuddle him and rub his nose as she did when he was a baby. Clearly, his mother says, he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but this young soldier has received no counselling.

Many who leave the armed forces fare no better. An article in The Scotsman on August 8, 2007, stated that as many as one in ten homeless people are ex-forces’ members. To put that figure into perspective, if it was proportionate to the size of the armed forces, Britain would have six million serving members in the army, navy and air force.

It is feared that the traumatised of Iraq and Afghanistan will begin to swell the number of homeless ex-service personnel in the not-too-distant future. Many will leave with alcohol related problems and find it hard to adjust to civilian life after traumatic experiences in the forces.

War crimes

At least, unlike during the First World War, we no longer execute those suffering from PTSD. In that most terrible of conflicts three hundred and six disturbed young men, many only boys really, were executed on the orders of military top brass and senior officers. Their sole crime was to have become mentally unwell due to the unspeakable horrors they had witnessed in the human slaughter house that was trench warfare.

Most of those who were executed were vulnerable, defenceless teenagers who had actually volunteered for duty, deliberately selected and found guilty as a lesson to others. Their heinous crimes included desertion (ambling around in a confused and dazed state, suffering from PTSD), cowardice (the same symptoms) and insubordination (some trivial incident that could be twisted into an excuse for trial, conviction and execution).

Regularly, these trials would take place one day (the accused would often have no defence), they would be convicted and found guilty on some specious charge, and they would then be shot at dawn the day after the trial.

The British commander-in-chief, General Haig, himself signed the death warrants of all those killed by their own side for the crime of being human, for the crime of being able only to take so much before becoming ill.

It is a war crime to execute the sick and the wounded.

Following allied victory, in 1919 Haig received the thanks of both houses of parliament, was given a grant of £100,000, and rewarded by a grateful state with an earldom.

Just over a decade after the end of the war, in 1929, the world’s stock markets crashed in capitalism’s great crisis.

For many who had escaped with their lives from Europe’s killing fields of 1914-18, who had endured the unendurable in places which were to become forever synonymous with savage slaughter on an industrial scale—The Somme, Paschendale, Ypres et al—a good day for them would be one when they and their families went to bed at night with full stomachs. Not for nothing were those times known as the Hungry Thirties.

From Victorian England, to the dark days of the First World War, to the present day, a pattern of neglect, and at times, sheer bloody-minded vindictiveness, emerges concerning the treatment and after-care of military personnel. Some might say, I believe harshly, that they knew what they were signing up for and take a hell mend them attitude towards them.

Economic conscription

Instead, it should be contended that, as in most things, prevention is better than cure, that these young men and women should never have been put in harm’s way in the first place.

Many of the troops now doing tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan will be young, working class, economic conscripts, lured into the armed forces with the promise of a trade and regular paid employment. They will see it as an escape from low paid, slave wage, short term employment, they will see it as a career.

But it is a career which, just as much now as it ever has been, can come with a lethal price. They are the young men and women denied a fair chancein civilian life by the market forces of capitalism, as well-paid jobs are shipped abroad, where labour is cheaper and health and safety not really much of an issue at all.

How ironic it is, then, that the youth of this country who take the queen’s shilling will, almost inevitably, end up shipped abroad themselves to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where, too, health and safety willbe perilous issues.

What, then, of the future? It does not bode well. Recently, to much rejoicing among the mainstream political parties and shipyard workers, the government announced that it was placing orders for two giant aircraft carriers, the largest warships ever to be built for the Royal Navy. The deal was touted as securing thousands of jobs.

But the implications of this alleged good news have a darker side. The building of these two giant warships tells us much about the government’s long-term perception of what Britain’s role in international affairs should be.

The military purpose of an aircraft carrier is not a defensive one. They are the long arm of imperialism, designed to facilitate the ability to strike anywhere on earth that their political masters deem necessary for the furtherance of imperial wars and ambitions, the chastisement of undemocratic dictators or any of the other familiar, oft-used excuses needed to unleash the dogs of war.

However powerful these ships are, the aircraft carrier is only one tool in the armed wing of imperialism. The chosen target’s population, having been suitably shocked and awed by aerial bombardment, and we from the comfort of our armchairs treated to video game TV news items showing surgical strikes by smart bombs, the dirty work still has to be done.

The task of enforcement and occupation, thinly disguised and euphemistically described as liberation, the bringing of democracy, etc., etc., will fall, as always, to the troops on the ground. It is they who will have to live with the day-to-day horrors of any occupation.

Some will be driven slowly mad by what they witness; others, tragically, will die amid those horrors.

In a letter home from Iraq a young nineteen-year old soldier wrote, I do not see why our lads have to die for something that will not make an iota of difference. Despite his tender years he had come to understand how rotten, how bankrupt his country’s policy in Iraq had become, had always been, how wasteful of young lives it was.

That young soldier was killed while on sentry duty in Basra.

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth,
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

Rudyard Kipling

After four years of existence it is time to face some hard truths with respect to the antiwar movement in this country. And in facing those truths it becomes impossible to deny that by and large this movement has failed to effectively challenge Blair’s government with respect to the war; failed completely to impact on the government’s ability to aid the US in the prosecution of the war; failed to precipitate the political crisis required to affect the government’s policy or plans with respect to the war; failed to turn the mass support present in the run up to the war into the kind of vibrant, conscious and militant movement required to constitute any kind of challenge to the status quo after three years of war and occupation.

We only have to look at the recent deployment of more Scottish troops to Iraq, the recent announcement by the government that another 6,000 British troops are to be deployed to Afghanistan, to see evidence of the absolute failure of the antiwar movement to present a strong challenge to the ruling class.

Not that anyone should glory or derive satisfaction from this sad state of affairs. On the contrary, one of the biggest regrets all socialists and people of consciousness should experience, now and in years to come, is that such a major opportunity was lost to challenge the State and alter the course of history in as fundamental a way as was undoubtedly possible at the height of the antiwar movement in the run up to the war in late 2002 and early 2003.

February 15, 2003 was a historic day not only in this country but throughout the world. On that day, in over 600 towns and cities internationally, an estimated 15 to 20 million people took to the streets to raise their voices against war, against imperialism; against, by extension, the free market variant of capitalism which lies at the root of the war in Iraq and the current crisis facing our planet.

That said, the only two countries in which this outpouring of anger and protest could possibly have had any meaningful effect were the UK and the US, given that these were the two nations leading the march to war.

Within the US on that day, despite it being a nation in the clutches of a wave of nationalism and fear post-9/11, 2 million came out in over 150 towns and cities to raise their voices against going to war. For those involved the sense that something important was or could be happening – the laying of the foundations of a new political movement of such power and force that it could not simply be ignored by the ruling class – was palpable. However, for potential to materialise into actuality human agency in the form of conscious leadership must be present. Alas, in the case of both the US and UK antiwar movements it is precisely this kind of conscious leadership that has been lacking. And whilst the US antiwar movement can perhaps offer the excuse that they represented the minority view in the nation as a whole, given the fear and nationalism that had been whipped up by a government aided and abetted by a complicit media, the UK antiwar movement cannot.

When you are two million in the streets of London you own the city. It is yours, undeniably and emphatically. It then becomes a question of what you do with the city on the day and in the hours that it is yours. There is no question that on February 15, 2003, a political crisis could have been created if only the leadership had seen and then seized the opportunity. What was to stop them taking over the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, indeed any major symbol of ruling class power and privilege? Nothing stopped them except their own lack of courage and willingness to mount a serious challenge to the British State.

London, February 15, 2003

Rather than rely on the moral rectitude of a ruling class in whose interests this war was about to be waged, the leadership of the movement on this day had an obligation to seize the opportunity presented by 2 million people on the streets to take the struggle as far as they could.

Yes, there may have been violence.

Yes, people may have been hurt.

But in comparison to the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis about to be slaughtered, the one and a half million already killed due to sanctions, surely this would have been small price to pay for the very real possibility of rocking the government back on its heels and seriously hampering Blair’s ability to continue to support Bush and the right wing cabal surrounding him.

The knock on effect which such a crisis in the UK would have had on US antiwar movement and US body politic is anybody’s guess.

What we can say for certain is that there would have been one, and that it would undoubtedly have produced more political and social opposition to the war in the US than there was.

History provides irrefutable proof that peaceful protest only ever produces marginal gains for working, poor and/or oppressed people, while militancy and force can and does alter history.

The Labour movement, both at home and abroad, was built on the back of violent struggle, as was the movement for women’s rights, gay rights, and so on. The antipoll tax movement was a movement of mass civil disobedience which culminated in the riot of Trafalgar Square, an event which shook the British ruling class to its foundations and led directly to the fall of Thatcher.

From the streets of Ireland to the townships of South Africa, and most recently in the streets of Paris, it has been the willingness of people to confront the state, thus exposing its true savage and violent nature, which has radicalised movements and thereby produced qualitative change.

Many of a weaker consciousness within progressive movements continually tout the example of Gandhi or Martin Luther King as the model to emulate as a way forward to social change. This does a disservice to the truth and a service to the establishment, who would enjoy nothing better than to see ineffective peaceful protest after protest take place while they continue to plunder the planet.

In the case of Gandhi, the British Empire had become unsustainable, with the collapse of the British economy after World War II, and it was either sacrifice political power in India in order to retain economic power in the face of Gandhi’s peaceful and benign movement, or face the real possibility of losing it all in the face of the violent and secular forces that were also arrayed against them, and which were attracting increasing support away from Gandhi. The British opted for Gandhi.

Something similar took place with respect the US Civil Rights Movement led by MLK. His nonviolent movement was only as effective as it was due to the rise of black nationalism in black ghettoes represented by such figures as Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Fred Hampton, and others. The US government, under John F. Kennedy and later Lyndon Johnson, finally caved in and embraced MLK and the cause of black civil rights, a man and a cause whom the white establishment had previously reviled, in order to nullify and check the rise of the much more potent black militancy which constituted the real threat to the status quo. Indeed, at one time J. Edgar Hoover, then head of the FBI, declared the Black Panthers to be the biggest threat to the internal security of the United States. It was this militancy, the threat it posed, which led directly to the rise of MLK and the nonviolent Civil Rights movement that he led.

The last national demonstration against the war in London, which took place in September 2005, was pitiful. A mere 25,000 people marched behind the empty and anodyne slogan, ‘March For Peace And Liberty.’ A slogan of which the Salvation Army would be proud, surely this demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt the degeneration which has taken hold within the antiwar movement. It is a movement shorn of all militancy, fire and coherence, one that has never managed to break out of a comfort zone consisting of replicating the same tired and worn actions time after time, in the forlorn hope that somehow, miraculously, they will suddenly produce the desired result, cause Blair to experience some sort of Damascus moment and order the withdrawal of British troops from the Middle East.

This will not happen. As a complement to the courageous resistance being offered by the Iraqi people to the occupation, the UK antiwar movement must take a long hard look at itself. Nothing will change significantly unless people are willing to make sacrifices and take risks. The only effect that attending a peaceful demonstration has is to make those participating feel better. This clearly isn’t good enough.

Ultimately, the verdict of history will be a harsh one unless sooner rather than later the antiwar movement moves beyond the impotence associated with bourgeois pacifism.

Freedom to profit

In the aftermath of the atrocities of September 11 2001, Bush and his ruling junta declared the start of the War on Terror. The subtitle for this crusade was to make the world a safer place, particularly for the freedom loving peoples of the world i.e. for global capital and its client states. The subsequent attack on the Taliban and the destruction of Afghanistan was about revenge. Although, it was less for the 3000 deaths at the World Trade Centre and more for the symbolism these attacks meant for the US military industrial complex. However, it was also about letting the world know that every corner of the planet must be open to US imperialism and the capital it serves. The freedom they are fighting for is the freedom to make profit. This doctrine provoked the attack on Iraq and a hundred other interventions – military and ‘diplomatic’ – around the world. Continued US state attempts to overthrow the elected left populist Chavez in oil-rich Venezuela shows that the excuse of ‘defence against terrorism’ is a sham. Similarly, the former death squad leaders of the notorious ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, who were prominent in the recent overthrow of Haiti’s populist President Aristide, also appear to have had clandestine US state backing for their efforts.

Meanwhile the ‘road map to peace’ in Palestine has hit a ‘brick’ wall – the so-called Israeli Peace Wall. ‘Apartheid Israel’ with its West Bank and Gaza Strip ‘bantustans’ now paves the way for something even more sinister – Palestinian ghettos, like Abu Dis, communities completely surrounded by Israeli policed walls, controlling all entrance and exit. Sharon’s government contains ministers who openly advocate a ‘final solution’, for the ‘Palestinian problem’ – mass ethnic cleansing. Israel is a state with an openly racist constitution; which illegally occupies Palestinian territory in defiance of UN resolutions; and is in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Far from being opposed by Bush and Blair, Israel receives massive amount of aid, as a loyal ally of imperialism.

Today, 2½ years since 9/11, one year since the official start of Gulf War Two and in the shadow of the devastating Madrid train bombs, is the world a safer place? Even to the casual follower of current affairs and international politics that aim has been perversely thrown into reverse. This has been demonstrated by events internationally and in Britain. The recent attacks in Madrid, which killed over 200 and injured 1,000, have shown that Islamic supremacist forces have increased their capacity to strike.

The attack on the British embassy in Istanbul on November 20th, designed to coincide with Bush’s state visit to the UK, was a warning of what was to come. The most likely culprits for this and other attacks in Turkey are forces formed from the Turkish state backed death squads. These were created to suppress the Kurds. Just as many current Al Qaeda operatives, received their initial training and finance from US and UK security forces in the 1980’s; so these shadowy Turkish Islamic supremacists, were armed by the Turkish military, which has received massive US and UK political and financial backing.

The attack on Iraq and the continued occupation of that country by thousands of US and British troops have definitely made the world a more precarious place on two levels. Firstly, as a direct result of US and British foreign policy over the last 3 years, international terrorism has multiplied. Those who live outside the metropolitan countries have had their lives made hard, brutish and short over decades of European colonialism and then imperialism. Since 2001 those conditions have been exacerbated. Secondly, the limited but hard-won democratic rights and freedoms that those in the metropolitan countries, such as the US, Britain and France, have come to expect are being snatched back. Safety fears and scares are being whipped up to justify these draconian measures.

Tool of imperialism

As each day passes, new revelations appear that support the claims made by anti-war protesters that the only way we could have stopped the attack on Iraq was by direct action. The UN role as a tool of imperialism has been reinforced; useful cover if it obeys instructions but discarded and discredited when it starts to produce the ‘wrong’ answers. Recent revelations of the bugging of Kofi Annan’s office illustrate the contempt they have for this body. The UN weapons inspectors, lead by Hans Blix, sent into Iraq by the Security Council came back with the clear message that there were no WMD with a launch time of 45 minutes or even 45 days. Recently Blix has stated that no WMD have been found in Iraq since 1994! The only person across the planet left believing that there are WMD’s in Iraq appears to be Blair.

Not only are experts with a certain independence, such as Hans Blix and Scott Ritter, repeating their claims from over a year ago, but they have now been joined by some of George Bush’s own appointees. Greg Thirlmann, former director of Strategic Proliferation at the US State Department claimed that the Bush administration had seriously misled the American people over Iraq and WMD through twisted, distorted, simplified intelligence; Paul O’Neill, Bush’s former US Treasury Secretary, saw no evidence Saddam possessed chemical or biological weapons and claims Bush was planning the invasion of Iraq from the moment he became president; David Kay, head of Iraq Survey Group, having spent months looking has also stated that Iraq has not had WMD for years.

Despite their recent cries to the contrary, Blair, Straw, Hoon et al based their arguments for war, both in the House of Commons and through the media, on the threat of these mythical WMDs. Their evidence – the two disreputable dossiers – produced with thin or obsolete evidence and fleshed out with much spin, were exposed during the proceedings of the Hutton Enquiry. Hutton’s findings cannot go unmentioned: a pillar of the British judiciary acting as crutch to a wounded Blair government. His conclusions almost produced gasps of disbelief from government ministers. They couldn’t believe their luck that he had blamed the BBC and Andrew Gilligan for everything as a result of his unscripted, slip of the tongue in an early morning interview with Radio 4’s Today programme.

The pressure continues to build

The substance of Gilligan’s report was true. After Hutton’s exoneration of Blair, the pressure has continued to build. Poll after poll showed Hutton’s findings to be totally discredited in the eyes of the British public. Katherine Gun, a GCHQ whistle-blower, has hurriedly had her court case dropped, when her legal team asked to see the government’s legal justification for war. The Official Secrets Act was again defied when Claire Short went public over the bugging of the UN. To compound Blair’s discomfort, lawyer Michael Mansfield has lodged a case with the International Criminal Court accusing Blair of war crimes.

Instead of putting the Iraq war behind him, Blair has had to announce another enquiry, this time headed by another champion of truth and justice, Lord Butler. His restricted remit is to look at the role of the security and civil services in the lead up to the war, in other words the systems and processes. This is such a sham that even the Tories have withdrawn from it. Butler will go nowhere near examining any of the political questions such as the Attorney General’s legal justification for war. Butler, like Hutton, is another safe, dependable and loyal member of the British establishment who does not like to see the truth get in the way of expedient government and ruling class interests. So while Blair took the decision to go war against the advice of so many including the millions in the anti war movement, he will continue to pass the buck of responsibility hoping it won’t land on his desk. He is already trying to change the casus belli by taking the credit for the downfall of the tyrannical Saddam, but regime change had never been the Blair government’s public justification prior to the attack. Furthermore, as Milan Rai in his book, Regime Unchanged: Why the War on Iraq Changed Nothing, has made clear, it is only the thinnest layer at the top of Saddam’s regime – ‘the 52 cards’ – who have been removed. Many senior Baathist officials, with an atrocious record of human rights abuses, have been quietly rehabilitated by the occupation regime. Their ‘skills’ are still needed!

Chaos & devastation

While all this goes on in Britain, Iraq and ordinary Iraqis face devastation. The chaos and confusion created by the US/UK attack and occupation has allowed the Islamic supremacists of Al Qaeda to gain a cause and credibility in Iraq. Despite some US claims, informed opinion states that Al Qaeda never had any links with the secular Saddam regime. However, it seems that their co-thinkers are now descending on Iraq to fight the Jihad, not just targeting the forces of occupation or those they identify as collaborating with those forces, but trying to set the three main interest groups – Kurds, Shias and Sunnis, against one another. Indiscriminate massacres such as the car bombing of a Shia festival in Karbala and Baghdad will only increase the prospect of communal violence.

This movement co-ordinated by Al Qaeda stretches from Kashmir thorough Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, the Gulf States, Yemen and right through to north Africa. It is gaining a substantial footing in the Central Asian Republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgystan, through such organisations as the IMU. The current conditions in this area provide an ideal breeding ground for such a movement. The dire poverty of the entire population ruled by a small scab of extremely wealthy, politically corrupt and dictatorial elite. Perhaps the worst example is Uzbekistan, where President Karimov operates an excessively repressive regime tolerating no dissent. It is so bad that, in 2002, Britain’s ambassador there delivered a speech that included an open attack on the brutality of that government. He argued that Karimov’s human rights abuses, including the boiling to death of opponents, were as bad as those of which Saddam was accused. However, despite such a record, (some might say because of such a record) Karimov still enjoys the financial, military and political backing of Washington. Some reasons for this include the use of Uzbek territory by the US military during the attack on Afghanistan, the US plans for an oil pipeline from the region, the vast reserves of oil and gas waiting to be exploited by transnational oil companies and lastly it also gives them a ‘friend’ and a bridgehead in Russia’s backyard – an opportunity too good to turn down, despite the brutality. US attitudes to such tyrants justify the collective cynicism to Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ and his safer world catchphrase. When do ordinary Uzbeks get their share of the ‘freedom and democracy’ being championed by Bush, Blair and their disciples?

Hysteria

By riding shotgun for Bush’s attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, Blair’s government has undoubtedly made Britain a priority target for Islamic supremacist groups looking for their own revenge. Fear has been stoked up to the advantage of the British state to enable it to implement draconian and anti-democratic measures that interfere with many aspects of life in Britain. Hysteria is the Labour government’s new weapon in the war on freedom. Sheffield’s ‘loony-left’ council leader of the 1980s, David Blunkett (Home Secretary), appears to take great delight in being even more authoritarian and extreme than some of his most severe Tory predecessors. As part of the general xenophobia being whipped up around asylum seekers, Blunkett’s Home Office has recently endorsed the forcible repatriation of Iraqi asylum seekers back to Iraq, presumably on the basis that that country is now a stable, democratic bulwark in the Middle East. Tell that to the Iraqi trade unionists that have had their offices smashed up by the occupying forces, or the many that continue to die or are injured through the continual violence fuelled by the occupation, or those who have, or will, suffer from the tonnes of depleted uranium and cluster bombs that pepper the Iraqi landscape causing cancers and amputations.

Other measures being implemented or up for consideration in Britain include the detention without charge of terror suspects, with Belmarsh Prison being an urban, British reflection of the Guantanamo Bay gulag, the recruitment of more spies to MI5 and trial without jury.

In the last two and a half years the world has become a more dangerous place. The thirst of imperialism for markets and profit, particularly in the medium developed and developing countries has caused a backlash. In a large strategically important section of the world, this backlash has taken the form of Islamicisation. Angry, alienated and impoverished masses have had enough of living as the victims of western imperialism and their local client puppets. Today, the mosque and the mullahs seem to be increasingly offering a ‘solution’. Our role internationally must be to show that real freedom, democracy and a valued life are best achieved through the fight for socialism, which can achieve a genuine emancipation and liberation. In the imperialist countries the role of the socialist and working class movement is to overthrow the class that survives and expands by sending other people’s sons and daughters to fight their wars.

It is now one year since two passenger jets were piloted into the World Trade Centre’s Twin Towers, while another was diverted into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania. The images of the attack were broadcast around the world, having a profound and disturbing effect. The fact that they were continuously played and replayed on national television added to the heightened sense of shock and foreboding of what was to follow. The Republican Communist Network, like many on the left, opposed these attacks. Our pamphlet September 11th and The War after the War put those events in context and explained why. It concluded with an assessment of what it would mean for global politics and particularly for the left in the UK and internationally. It is important to collate what has happened in those 12 months; what has the effect been on global politics and the anti-imperialist and revolutionary left. We need to be alert to immediate, and longer term, imperialist threats, and to develop our response.

In recent months, the imperialist alliance between Bush and Blair has succeeded in shifting the political and media focus away from Afghanistan, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Instead they are concentrating on how to rid Iraq of the usual Western scapegoat Saddam Hussein and his Baathist dictatorship in Baghdad. From the very outset the US was determined to link, no matter how spuriously, the September 11 attacks and al-Qaeda with Saddam, but none of their accusations held any credibility. In fact, prior to 9/11, the CIA probably had more contact with the Taliban than the Iraqi leadership. The US also tried to blame al-Qaeda and Saddam for the outbreak of anthrax attacks that swept across America almost a year ago. Now the evidence points to someone working at Fort Dettrick, the top secret US biological weapons establishment. Most of the briefings coming out of Washington are not about whether there will be a substantial attack on Iraq, but when and how. As a result of Blair’s determination to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bush and the US, he has been publicly parroting the same line. However, it is clear that opposition to war with Iraq is appearing in military and ruling circles. Before dealing in any more depth with the imminent situation regarding Iraq, what has the War on Terror meant in the last 12 months?

What Bush’s New World Order and the ‘Coalition against terrorism’ have meant is the proliferation of state sponsored terrorism around the world. It has legitimised and sponsored the use of official death squads to eliminate internal opposition in all parts of the globe. Whereas before such activity was kept under wraps and the preserve of the darkest dictatorships or murky black ops teams, now we have those same dictators, along with democratically elected governments around the world in every continent, proudly and publicly announcing military action against their own citizens or their neighbours. Bush’s justification for carpet bombing Afghanistan and pursuing regime change in that impoverished divided country has allowed Russia to use the same tactics against the Chechens, India against the Kashmiris, Colombia against the FARC and of course Israel against the Palestinians. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has given permission for US Special Forces to use lethal force in countries the US is not at war with. He has also sanctioned the boarding and searching of suspicious (sic) vessels in international waters.

So what has happened in the past year?

Afghanistan

The Taliban, the stooges of two US allies (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia), were driven from power in Afghanistan by a combination of US carpet bombing, hi-tech surveillance and Northern Alliance forces on the ground. After years of warlordism and the Taliban, ordinary Afghans hoped things would change. What has replaced it? Hamid Karzai’s US-sponsored coalition government was formally endorsed by the Loya Jirga in June. The situation on the ground seems to be as volatile as ever. Tribal and ethnic warlords police their people, while vying for power and influence. The real scope of Karzai’s power goes little further than Kabul. Symbolic of the lack of unity and trust in his coalition government is his decision to replace his Afghan bodyguards with US Special Forces, following the killing of other government ministers.

If reports are to be believed then the main targets of the US, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, are still alive and active. So that’s one of the Coalition’s goals not achieved. This is a double-edged sword for the US. On the one hand eliminate them and claim victory. On the other keep them, and their myth, alive. This justifies US forces patrolling the world, stamping their imperialist prejudices and values with the alibi of making pre-emptive strikes against potential terrorists and enemies of the United States.

The view from Afghanistan is that the US and its local agents are rapidly losing any popularity that they had in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Taliban. Promised international aid for the country’s reconstruction has been very slow in coming. Combine this with the rising collateral damage inflicted through continuing attacks on Afghan civilians and villages by US forces, and the post- Taliban euphoria and goodwill is draining away. The routine intimidation, humiliation and interrogation of Afghans by American forces continues. In June, the bombing of a wedding party in Uruzam killed 55. No wonder the backlash has started as Americans come under attack almost every night.

Palestine

Israel continues its ruthless occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Even the independent Bantustans, created by Oslo, have been shown to be worthless. The Israeli-biased Oslo agreement is dead. The US, with Israel’s goading, is attempting to get Arafat replaced, as the leader of the Palestinians. Although this is likely to backfire on them. While the US is unilaterally prepared to go to war with Iraq over a flagrant breach of UN resolutions, it positively condones and connives in Israel’s flouting of 30-year-old UN resolutions. Such hypocrisy is breathtaking. The last few months have thrown up example after example of Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people: the attack on the Jenin refugee camp, the use of civilians as human shields by the IDF, continual destruction of civilian housing, the routine killing, maiming and brutalisation of Palestinian children, the daily assassination of militants and the exiling of relatives of militants. The list is endless.

At the end of July a 1 tonne missile dropped from an F16 into a residential area of Gaza City, killed 15 and wounded 145. Their target was Salah Shehada, the leader of Hamas’ military wing. The other casualties were just the collateral damage that the US and Israel tolerate, as long as they are Palestinian bodies and not Jewish or American. Sharon bragged that the operation as one of the great successes, stating that Israel cannot reach any compromise with terror; terror must be fought. As the worldwide condemnations of these Israeli actions started to fly, so even the US was sceptical of the shrewdness of this attack. Sharon, the butcher of the refugee camps and the racist leader of an apartheid state, had to apologise for the loss of life. However, this apology was small price to pay for his achievement in destroying a ceasefire that was about to be announced. It had been brokered by, amongst others, EU diplomats, who had got a commitment from the secular wing of the Palestinian liberation movement (the Tanzim militia and the Al Aqsa brigades) to stop using suicide bombers against Israeli cities. Even Hamas stated, before the missile was dropped, that they would do likewise if Israeli forces withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza and stopped targeting civilians. The F16 relies on components supplied from the UK, indirectly to Israel, via the US. Therefore the British government are complicit in these indiscriminate attacks on residential areas. Did anybody really believe Robin Cook, Blair’s first foreign minister, when he laid out the principles of Labour’s ethical foreign policy?

Since September 11 there is no pretence. Jack Straw, Cook’s replacement, does not even bother to try and throw up a smokescreen on this issue. At the height of the recent India-Pakistan tension he was happy to encourage British arms producers to supply the latest military equipment to either, or preferably both, sides – more profit to be made. British arms sales to Israel in the last two years have been £22.5 million – double what they were before the start of the current intifada.

Truth is the first casualty?

Objectivity in reporting and analysis is another casualty of the Twin Tower attacks. Journalists of the calibre of John Pilger, and Robert Fisk are rare gems in the reams and reams of mediocrity and the lazy parroting of government press releases and prejudiced conviction. Murder bombers seems to be the newly-spun term for suicide bombers. While not condoning the use of suicide bombers, it is important to understand the despair, the hopelessness, the alienation that drives young men and women to such ends. At least Cherie Blair tried to show some understanding of the issue and was widely condemned for expressing her thoughts. Steve Earle, the US rock musician, has recently released a song called John Walker Blues, which tries to give some understanding to the actions of the American Taliban, who was captured at Mazar-I-Sharif. Walker has been more vilified than Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, who killed hundreds of Americans. There have been threats of organising a boycott of any radio station that dares play Earle’s song.

Spain

Another attack on opposition and dissent has been taken up in Spain. Echoing the British government’s gagging of Sinn Fein in the 1980s, as well as Franco’s oppression of the Basques, the Spanish government has banned Batasuna, the most radical of the Basque nationalist parties, because of their alleged links with ETA. In June, a law was passed outlawing parties deemed to be actively supporting terrorism. At the end of August, the Supreme Court suspended the party’s activities for 3 years: closing its offices, banning demos and rallies. This is a party that has almost 1,000 elected representatives at various levels.

Colombia

In Colombia Alvaro Uribe, the newly-installed, right wing president, is one of Bush’s newest and enthusiastic recruits to the War against Terrorism. Their joint aim, with the help of right wing paramilitaries, is to crush the FARC army, which controls large areas of the country and number at least 17,000, and the smaller ELN. Their strength, and threat to the Colombian government, was highlighted by their disruption of the new president’s inauguration ceremony, causing a great deal of embarrassment to Uribe and Bush. In standing shoulder to shoulder with Uribe, Bush has lifted restrictions on £1 billion of military aid from the US to Colombia, which was initially earmarked for the War on Drugs, to pay for the Colombian War on Terror and has pledged more if Colombia increases its own military spending. On August 13, the new president announced a state of internal commotion (emergency), an additional 3,000 elite troops, 10,000 new police and a million strong militia who will act as informers, in an effort to defeat the FARC. No doubt US arms manufacturers will be rubbing their hands with glee, knowing they will be at the front of the queue when new weapons contracts are handed out.

Colombia is also willing to play its part in the co-ordinated discrediting of anti-imperialist and liberation movements across the world. Following the arrest last year of three Irish men in Colombia accused of training the FARC, Luis Osorio, Colombia’s prosecutor general, has blamed the IRA for hundreds of deaths in the country. Sinn Fein has condemned his accusations as a disgrace, and Mitchel McLaughlin, Sinn Fein’s national chairman, has questioned whether the three can get a fair trial in Colombia. Very unlikely I would think. It seems as if the concept of a fair trial is becoming a thing of the past, as the Western bourgeois democracies suspend established civil rights and encourage, collaborate and pander to their totalitarian allies. There are a number of examples of the US delivering al-Qaeda and terrorist suspects to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, on the understanding that they will use torture to extract information and confessions from such hostages, which will then be passed back to the US. Thus minimising the US‘s direct human rights’ abuses, but getting the required confessions!

Venezuela

Venezuela has also received the unwelcome attentions of Bush’s administration. In April, a military coup led by the country’s business elite, with the backing of the US, overthrew the elected president Hugo Chavez. However within 48 hours Chavez was reinstated through the mass mobilisation of the country’s poor. The coup started with a protest organised by the country’s business federation, demanding the reinstatement of the pro-US management at the country’s state-owned oil company. A confrontation between the demonstrators and Chavez supporters, set up by the coup leaders, gave them the opportunity they wanted. As snipers opened fire on both sets of protestors, General Vasquez announced on TV that the military had taken over, claiming that Chavez supporters had opened fire on an unarmed crowd, and to give the coup legitimacy claimed that Chavez had resigned. Within hours, Pedro Carmona, head of the country’s confederation of business and industry, an oilman, had been installed as president. His first acts were to suspend elections and laws regulating big business, he dissolved the elected national assembly and the Supreme Court, at the same time declaring a pluralistic vision, democratic, civil and ensuring the implementation of the law. To the delight of the foreign oil companies, big business and the big plantation owners he scrapped 49 laws regulating big business. Following the mobilisation of the masses in huge street demonstrations and serious splits in the armed forces, 36 hours later Chavez was restored to the presidency. Carmona’s US sponsored government had been crushed.

Venezuela is a key supplier of oil to the US, and therefore its stability is vital. Linked with this is Chavez’ willingness to supply oil to Cuba, his opposition to both the free trade agenda of the World Trade Organisation, and the attempt by the US to draw South America even further under its economic control. It is not difficult to find the White House’s fingerprints all over this failed coup. Senior officials in the US government with experience of the Central American dirty wars of the 1980s include John Negroponte, Elliot Abrams and Otto Reich.

These events illustrate the lengths that the US is prepared to go to prevent a critic such as Chavez from challenging their world view and economic interests. So the lesson for more and more countries around the world is that you can have a democracy but only if it coincides with US imperialist interests.

Russia

At the end of August Russian helicopters bombed villages in northern Georgia while trying to attack Chechen separatist fighters in the Pankisi Gorge. Their targets allegedly have links with al-Qaeda. So how did the White House respond: Ari Fleischer its spokesman, stated The US regrets the loss of life and deplores the violation of sovereignty he was deeply concerned about credible reports that Russian military aircraft indiscriminately bombed villages…resulting in the killing of civilians. The hypocrisy of such comments defies belief. What about Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, Venezuela, Somalia, Panama, Grenada, Cuba, Vietnam…the list is endless. The harshness of the condemnation might also have had something to do with revenge for the recent signing of a large trade agreement between Russia and Iraq. Back to the Bush administration’s main focus on the War on Terror: Iraq. As with most of Bush’s policy initiatives he tends to open his mouth without thinking. He is committed to regime change in Baghdad.

Iraq

At present there is quite a debate going on amongst the higher echelons of government and the military both in Britain and the US. Bush states that America is prepared to go to war with Iraq alone. It does not need UN resolutions or an international coalition. Bush, with his eager and vociferous hawks, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, believe that the USA, as the world’s only superpower can thunder around the world, like a rogue elephant, imposing its will in any hemisphere or region it chooses, irrespective of international mandates, clear war aims or the chaos and carnage that results. However some caution is being sounded in some unexpected quarters and must go someway to showing the unease in a substantial section of the American ruling class to Bush’s warmongering. The following Republican Party heavyweights have made comments suggesting they are against unilateral US action to overthrow Saddam: James Baker, George Bush senior’s Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, Baker’s successor and Brent Scowcroft, Bush senior’s National Security Advisor, the current Secretary of State Colin Powell, General Norman Swarzkopf. In Britain, while Tony Blair publicly supports the Bush plan, opposition is growing. This includes significant sections of the government, the Labour Party, the military and public opinion polls: Robin Cook, Margaret Becket, Douglas Hurd, Clare Short, former chief of the defence staff, Lord Bramall and a large number of back bench MPs. Most importantly though is the swelling anti-war mood on the streets. In recent weeks there has been conjecture as to whether Blair will allow a debate in the Parliament, before any commitment of British troops to a war against Iraq. Under the Royal Prerogative, Blair, as Prime Minister, has powers that mean he neither needs to consult his cabinet nor parliament before declaring war. Internationally, apart from the Australian government (who have already pledged troops), most countries oppose unilateral, precipitative US action. In the words of Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt, If you (US) strike at the Iraqi people because of one or two individuals and leave the Palestinian issue unsolved not a single Arab ruler will be able to curb popular sentiments.

There might be repercussions and we fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region.

Mubarak, considered one of the most pro-Western Arab leaders, spoke for most rulers in the region. King Abdullah of Jordan delivered a similar message to Bush in his summer visit to the White House. Pakistan’s Musharaf, an early convert to the War on Terror, warned against a unilateral US attack. Saudi Arabia is saying that Saddam should be dealt with diplomatically. These are all Usfriendly leaders. Their opposition to an attack is based primarily on the popular revolt such US aggression would unleash in their own states, against their despotic regimes.

It is not just the Middle East where official opposition is public. Many European leaders, including Chirac and Shroeder, see the danger of a US attack on Iraq without the fig leaf of a UN resolution. Even prior to any new Gulf War, Iraq is already devastated. Ten years of sanctions have meant premature death to more than a million Iraqis, due to lack of food, good quality water, medical supplies and drugs. Then there also the massive rise in numbers of cancer sufferers, brought on by the huge quantity of depleted uranium ammunition used by the coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf war. This spent, contaminated ammunition still pollutes the towns and cities of Iraq and is responsible for much illness. Due to the sanctions, the Iraqis cannot clean up these radioactive killers.

The role of communists, socialists and the international revolutionary left must be to build a mass, working class movement against imperialist aggression – military, economic and political. Here in Britain, it is not enough just to oppose and rail against Bush and US imperialism, the main focus has to be our own ruling class and its complicity with the New World Order. A mass movement has to be built in Britain, in Europe and worldwide to prevent the ruling classes in all states from engaging in such state terrorism in our name. Neither Washington, London nor Baghdad. It is not enough just to be against such aggression. The bottom line is that capitalism in its imperialist stage cannot act in any other way. It has to be replaced. We have to develop a positive, communist alternative. An alternative based on an emancipation from exploitation and a liberation from oppression, where humanity can really call itself civilised.