Statement on the
U.S. WAR ON AFGHANISTAN
from the FREEDOM SOCIALIST PARTY
International Committee
www.socialism.com
21 October 2001
High-tech murder, as real as the World Trade Center attack and much more
deadly, is underway in Afghanistan as U.S. bombs continue to fall in the
third week of President Bush's obscene war on terrorism. However, CNN
carries no interviews with the victims' families or with the workingclass
heroes on the ground. Instead the airwaves are filled with U.S. officials
issuing orders: Osama bin Laden must be destroyed, domestic opposition is
unpatriotic, unconditional surrender or else. Welcome to the New World Order!
With the fall of the Soviet Union, U.S. imperialism became the unchallenged
power in world politics and our planet became a much more dangerous place
to live. Now another capitalist war for markets, influence and natural
resources is being unleashed in one of the poorest places on earth.
George Bush wants a change of government in Afghanistan, not because he
hates terrorism, but because those who put him in office seek to secure a
gateway to the oil rich regions of the former Soviet Union. He is not the
first U.S. president to attempt this feat.
In 1985, Ronald Reagan wanted exactly the same thing. Only he praised Osama
bin Laden and the forces that would become the Taliban as "freedom
fighters." He directed the CIA to promote the growth of Islamic
fundamentalism in Central Asia to destabilise the Soviet Union. Between
1978 and 1982 the U.S. government funneled at least six billion U.S.
dollars in training and arms into the region to promote rightwing
fundamentalism. Others, including Saudi Arabia, provided similar levels of
financial support.
The women and girls of Afghanistan paid a terrible price for Reagan's
anti-communism and the greed of U.S. oil giants. Once in power, the Taliban
outlawed female education, prohibited women from employment, and denied
them basic human and civil rights. Now Bush callously heaps even greater
misery on the region, by bombing their country and sending U.S. troops to
kill their sons many of them draftees in the Taliban's army.
It is incumbent upon all those who oppose this war to cooperate in building
an international antiwar movement to radicalize a new generation of
fighters against capitalism --an economic system that is bringing the world
to the edge of chaos and barbarism.
RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM--
A PRODUCT OF IMPERIALIST FOREIGN POLICY
U.S. interest in Afghanistan has always been driven by two factors: oil and
anti-communism. When a pro-Soviet regime came to power in Afghanistan
through a popular uprising, the U.S. immediately tried to destabilize it
and allied itself with right-wingers in the Taliban--men violently opposed
to the new government's plan to educate all women and girls and to outlaw
child marriages.
Today the Taliban exists both because the U.S. directly helped create it
and because capitalism gives rise to the economic and political conditions
which fuel religious fundamentalism all over the world. U.S. policy in the
Middle East involves murdering leftists and stamping out their
organizations, strangling democratic rights and deliberately
under-developing a region rich in natural resources in order to maintain
political hegemony and control of oil reserves.
This Machiavellian U.S. policy leaves the vast majority of people destitute
and without the means to influence their governments. Thus imperialism
prepares the soil in which religious fundamentalism flourishes as a
contradictory expression of anti-imperialist sentiment.
The Taliban, bin Laden, Hamas and all the other religious zealots offer an
outlet for anger and protest against the "decadent" ways of the Western
world. At the same time, they promise a return to "traditional" values,
like the imprisonment of women in the home and a legal system based on
religion. Because of their essentially conservative and anti-communist
character, imperialism found these reactionaries vastly preferable to
leftist and democratic causes before September 11, 2001.
Rank-and-file fighters for Arab liberation have never given up, as shown
today by the second inspiring Palestinian intifada and by strikes and
student rebellions in Iran. The first prerequisite for peace in the Middle
East is for the U.S. to withdraw from the region and allow the people
themselves to decide their future.
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TALKS OF FREEDOM
BUT EVERYWHERE SPREADS MISERY
Mass murder is nothing new for the rulers of the U.S. They dropped atomic
bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that killed over 100,000 people. They
installed Pinochet in Chile in 1974 and orchestrated Suharto's massacre of
more than a million Communists and suspected Communists in Indonesia in
1965. They trained the murderous military henchman of Central and South
America and now they are delivering $1.6 billion in military aid to the
blood-soaked Colombian army to fight a leftist insurgency.
Like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, Iraq's Saddam Hussein was a creature
of U.S. imperialism. When he had served his purpose, the U.S. demonised him
but kept him in power to maintain the pro-imperialist status quo in the
Middle East. In Iraq, half a million children died as a result of U.S
sanctions while Saddam Hussein tightened his grip on power.
Now Condoleeza Rice, national-security advisor to President Bush, is
arrogantly advocating "nation building" as the means to replace the Taliban
government in Afghanistan. She proposes stitching together a compliant
puppet regime consisting of an 86-year-old Afghan king and the Northern
Alliance, a woman-hating fundamentalist-led army.
Rice, the duplicitous imperial messenger, talks out of two sides of her
mouth. While deploring the Taliban's treatment of women, she prepares a
future that will actually be worse for them and in which they have no say
once again.
In the capitalist New World Order, democratic rights are replaced by
social, political and military engineering to meet the needs of the
empire's center.
THE WAR ON AFGHANISTAN STRENGTHENS THE ENEMIES
OF WORKING PEOPLE EVERYWHERE
Governments in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Australia
have pledged to back Bush militarily to the bitter end. These loyal
imperialist partners are willing to spend millions on war production, while
ruthlessly implementing the domestic neoliberal agenda of privatisation and
cuts in spending on health, education and welfare.
Bush's Western allies are also using the war drive as an excuse to
implement long sought legislation to hobble dissent and undermine civil
liberties in order to curb growing protests against neoliberalism
worldwide. In Australia, the Government has announced sweeping new
anti-terrorism laws which give widespread powers to the sinister Australian
Security Intelligence Organization. And in Canada and the United Kingdom,
new laws are being swiftly pushed through curtailing the rights of
immigrants as well as freedom of expression, assembly and association.
For the people of Palestine, the terrorist attacks in the U.S and the
launch of war on Afghanistan have led to a massive increase in Israeli
aggression. Palestinian towns and villages have been subjected to the
tightest closure in history. At the same time, there is also an escalation
of military attacks.
In Pakistan the war is polarising society resulting in increased support
for the Taliban and their domestic allies while the military regime of
General Pervaiz Musharaf has been strengthened against those who sought
democratic reforms. Nonetheless, Labour Party Pakistan has denounced the
war and is organizing a peace movement opposed to the general's rule.
Bush's "war on terrorism" is really a war on dissent, on anti-capitalist
protest, and on the anti-corporate globalisation movement. It strengthens
the religious and political right and sows fear, panic and distrust within
the working class. But despite all this, it is being met with opposition.
FOR A GLOBAL, ANTI-CAPITALIST ANTIWAR MOVEMENT Opposition to this unholy
war for oil and hegemony is burgeoning. Recently in London, more than 3,000
people attended an antiwar meeting called by Socialist Alliance and 20,000
marched in the streets shortly after the assault began.
In Australia, anti-capitalist protests planned against the Commonwealth
Heads of Government gathering and the associated Commonwealth Business
Forum meeting quickly turned into militant antiwar demonstrations. In
Taiwan, students, labor activists and environmentalists held several large
protests within 24 hours of the U.S. bombing campaign. And in an especially
brave demonstration, 10,000 peace activists marched in New York City within
days of the World Trade Center attack, calling for an end to U.S.
aggression--a real inspiration to opponents of U.S. foreign policy everywhere!
Despite these demonstrations, much more remains to be done. The world
desperately needs a global antiwar movement which not only marches for
peace in the Middle East, but calls for an end to capitalism, the system
that terrorizes the working class of this planet with one insane war after
another. The time is growing short to build such a movement as the
imperialist masters fashion their new police states to stomp out all
dissent. It is imperative that the Left join forces in every country to
this end today.
* No to war, racism and the oppression of women!
* U.S. out of the Middle East!
* No to the U.S.-led coalition and its deadly war on the people of Afghanistan!
* Victory to the Palestinian Intifada!
* Defend Arabs, Muslims and immigrants in every country!
* No to police state powers! Defend civil liberties! For workers' rights to
organize, strike and protest!
* Build an anti-capitalist movement against corporate globalisation!
* Money for jobs, health, education and welfare, not for warfare!
ISSUED BY
Freedom Socialist Party
International Executive Committee
Solidarity Salon, 580 Sydney Road, Brunswick, Vic 3056, Australia
Postal: PO Box 266, West Brunswick, Vic 3055, Australia
Phone/fax 61-3-9388-0062
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more antiwar analysis, go to "No War" at www.socialism.com
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