------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 3, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
EDITORIAL: OUR GRIEF, THEIR OPPORTUNITY
New York's Sept. 11 hearings reawoke the political atmosphere of September 2001. Their supposed aim was to explore what went wrong with the rescue effort at the World Trade Center and how to improve such efforts in future disasters. But their side effect was to arouse both feelings of grief and awareness of how ruling circles manipulated this grief.
There are still many unanswered questions about the collapse of the giant buildings and the loss of life. But the political impact is easier to sort out. The government and media used the grief, fear and anger people felt to mobilize for endless war abroad and repression at home.
From the beginning there was a spark of resistance to this war drive. In New York beginning the day after the attack, young people gathered in Union Square Park to express this feeling. They put up the pictures of the dead--but they said, "No revenge, no war." And they asked the big question: "Why?"
Why indeed had U.S. foreign policy--its imperialist intervention on every level from military to economic to cultural, its support for the murderous Israeli government--aroused such strong feelings of resentment throughout the region that U.S. residents were now at risk? While this question was explored, the more politically aware section of the U.S. population wanted no vengeance in their name. Their slogan: "Our grief is not a cry for war."
Riding roughshod over that feeling like an out-of-control tank driver, the Bush administration launched a war on Afghanistan. It unleashed a wave of repression on Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants. And it began plotting an assault on Iraq. The administration saw Sept. 11 as a golden opportunity to carry out its plans for a U.S. conquest of the world.
Right now the Bush administration, especially the "neo-con" grouping that from the start aimed to invade Iraq, has come under increasing attack from within ruling-class circles. Elements in the Pentagon itself like Gen. Anthony Zinni, sections of the Democratic Party, and some of the most powerful media are criticizing Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Bush himself for creating what they now see as a disaster for U.S. imperialist interests.
But the workers and oppressed people who are paying for the Bush gang's crimes should never forget the entire U.S. ruling class's criminal role in the days after Sept. 11. With exceptions you can count on one hand-- indeed only Reps. Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee come to mind--no politician from either party dared to challenge them. Most cheered them on. The big media were unanimous behind the wars, first on Afghanistan and then on Iraq, when they thought there would be easy victories. The owners saw themselves growing ever richer.
Pentagon generals like Zinni and Eric Shinseki were all for the war on Afghanistan. Apparently they had doubts that Rumsfeld's "shock and awe" would work in Iraq, and with good reason. But if they spoke up behind closed doors, they certainly didn't do anything to support those millions of workers around the world and in the United States who protested to stop the war. These generals were loyal servants of the billionaires, bankers and oil magnates who rule U.S. capitalist society, just as the Bush gang was. If they criticize Bush and Rumsfeld now, it's because they realize that the Iraqi resistance, with blood and courage, has exposed the U.S. policy as a criminal occupation. And they believe that the Iraqi people will sooner or later smash a unilateral U.S. occupation.
The main lesson of the Sept. 11 hearings is that the entire U.S. ruling class is responsible for the criminal wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and can't be trusted to bring them to an end.
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