The death of Osama bin Laden and its implications

The May 1^st presidential announcement of the execution of Osama bin Laden has been fêted as a great tactical victory by the White House, by Western governments and the world’s media. The longed-for news saw a wave of nationalistic, back-slapping hysteria in the US and the killing has served as a sorely needed propaganda tool to enhance the standing of the US military in the eyes of the domestic public.

Despite world-wide celebrations and Obama’s rise in popularity at home and the propaganda value of the killing, there is no evidence that the death will have any impact on the flagging military and political situation of the US in South Asia, the Middle East and other theatres of high tension.

The Socialist Party are not conspiracy theorists, but we note that the initial White House bin Laden story was so amateurishly broadcast, that within three days it had been altered several times, making it seem that Obama was involved in a game of Chinese whispers with his advisors. And what stands out is the nonchalant and haughty clumsiness of this and similar official announcements, as if the White House has become so convinced of its ability to hoodwink us that practically no attempt is made to make reports credible. So long as the US has an agenda then it can be sold with any version of a story, regardless of its credibility.

So just what agendas does the news of a dead bin Laden story help promote? Well, firstly, and not surprisingly, within a few hours of Obama’s statement, CIA director Leon Panetta ominously suggested that bin Laden’s death would trigger new 9/11-type attacks from al Qaedians seeking revenge for the death of their leader. Paradoxically this can only increase the demand for more profits from the military-industrial complex, whose lobbyists will waste no time in promoting the case for more investment in the US war machine.

Homeland Security jumped on board and posited that the killing of bin Laden would inspire “homegrown violent extremists” (inclusive of environmentalists and anti-war protestors) to acts of political fanaticism.

Helping with the post-Osama spin, Senator Hilary Clinton seemed all too keen to help boost the profits of the military/security complex and the authority of Homeland Security, by asserting that bin Laden’s death was testament that the war on terror was paying off and must be allowed to carry on, unfettered, until the enemies of the US are no more.

Elsewhere, others in the Obama administration quickly seized on the Pakistan achievement to promote their own sinister agenda, with Americans reliably informed that their doubts on the use of torture were misplaced and that bin Laden was actually found as a direct result of information gleaned by the CIA’s torture of captives

Some have suggested the death of bin Laden affords the US an escape strategy from Afghanistan, bringing closure to a decade of embarrassment in the country. To be sure, the US’ attempts to create a pliant puppet regime in Kabul are failing. The Taliban, indeed, al Qaeda, is no nearer defeat than ten years ago and still notching up US casualties. Quite significantly, in the latter regard, at Kabul airport on 29^th April, nine high-ranking US military officers were assassinated by a "reliable" Afghan fighter pilot That this attack happened in an ostensibly high security area, implies that no place in Afghanistan is secure from attack by the Afghan resistance, that anyone is vulnerable, and that not even allied Afghan military personnel can be trusted.

With the US tied down in an unpopular war in Afghanistan, domestic woes rising and his political standing falling, it would seem Obama was desperate for a military success story, moreso considering 9/11 is now a decade ago and years of rampant military expenditure are factoring high in the current budget deficit.

Undoubtedly, the ‘War on Terror’ will continue to serve many interests, with politicians promoting the concept at every opportunity to justify overseas military excesses and to keep the public in a state of mild panic. It is thus worth looking at the concept of terrorism itself and to judge the definers by their own definition.

The US Army Manual definition of terrorism is “the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence, to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature, through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear.”

This is quite close to the British government’s definition, which is “the use, or threat, of action which is violent, damaging or disrupting, and is intended to influence the government, or intimidate the public, and is for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological case.”

When these two definitions are considered, then it becomes clear that the very creation of government terrorist-related propaganda, pumped daily by a fawning media, is itself an act of terrorism on us. Make no mistake, the war on terror is intended to frighten us – to get us all paranoid about a freedom-loathing bogeyman who is just waiting to come and destroy all we hold sacred – and to get us to fall in line behind the wider objectives of US and British foreign policy, which are in reality the objectives of a small corporate elite who really call the shots in both countries.

George Bush was every bit the terrorist when he introduced the “Shock and Awe” strategy of 2003 and indeed when he announced “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists”. Likewise with Tony Blair who announced to a terrified British public that Saddam could reach Britain with his WMDs within 45 minutes – a fact that that later proved to be total fallacy.

It is, perhaps, important to set the war on terror in context. America, for 45 years, terrified us with the threat of the Soviet menace, meanwhile expanding its reach all over the world.

When the Kremlin’s empire collapsed, America suddenly found itself deprived of its hegemonic credentials, no longer able to use its anti-communist passport to interfere in global affairs from Cuba to Vladivostok – the end of the cold war meant it was stamped null and void.

It now needed a new propaganda framework through which to assert its authority on the international stage, a new enemy, a new bogeyman to protect us all from – and the first bogeyman who reared his head was Saddam Hussein, who invaded Kuwait within two years of the Berlin Wall falling, sparking the first Gulf War and the start of the US obsession with Iraq that has lasted 20 years. Saddam would later be joined by Osama in 2001 after 9/11, the events of which all of us are now over-familiar with.

Notably, the language and jargon used to discuss the war on terror, all its definitions, is chosen by the US political elite. Likewise it is the US that gets to delineate the ideology of the enemy, whether it be fascist or communist or militant Islamic. In the case in question it would have been insensitive in the extreme to declare a war on Islam, so North Korea had to be incorporated into Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’, less the entire Islamic world rise up against the USA.

The US has certainly benefited from the war on terror, extending its reach like no empire in history. It now has in excess of 700 military bases around the world, and these bases can be found in 177 of the world’s 193 UN recognised countries. More likely, it seems the war on terror has everything to do with full spectrum dominance and the desire of the US capitalist elite to control the world’s mineral wealth, trade routes, foreign markets, areas of influence and to maintain the strategic sites from which all these sources of profit can be defended. Little wonder there are many who claim that if Osama bin Laden did not exist, it would be necessary to create him to get into Afghanistan.

Then why Afghanistan? The Caspian Basin, which the country borders, contains an estimated $12 trillion dollars worth of oil. It is not the case that he US wants this oil for itself, but needs a presence in Afghanistan to be able to control just who does have access to it.

There are real contenders for US economic supremacy, namely India, Russia and China, all with a growing and insatiable thirst for oil to lubricate the wheels of their own profit machines. By controlling as much oil as they can, the US gets to stack the odds in its own favour.

But before you can mobilise to take over the world’s scarce resources you first need to terrify your people. You need them on your side. You need their consent, their support and their approval of you as the champion of freedom.

This is why George Bush could so cleverly tell the American people: “They hate our freedom, our freedom of religion, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with one another,” and that “you are either with us or with the terrorists.”

This was not just Orwellian double-speak. This tactic came straight from Nazi Germany and from Joseph Goebbels:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the governments of George W. Bush and Barack Obama and Tony Blair have told and repeated a “lie big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' statement, and the American and British people have come to believe it. It is the "War on Terror."

Whilst we were informed that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were in retaliation for 9/11, it is now clear that the Bush administration had them clearly in mind upon taking office, and set in motion as early as Feb. 3, 2001, some seven months before 9/11 and thus had nothing to do with terrorism.

9/11 presented a fantastic opportunity. In the ensuing anger and bewilderment, the bush administration could disguise its objective and the true nature of its intended wars and swing into action.

In Afghanistan, the duplicity of the "War on Terror," however, is clearly revealed if we consider a few simple facts:

In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of capturing the terrorists. Taliban offers to hand over Osama bin Laden, if the US could provide proof he was responsible for 9/11, were dismissed.

Neither the CIA nor the FBI have ever stated that Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11. Although bin Laden was on the FBI’s list of most wanted men, it was for something unrelated.

A quite recent survey in Afghanistan’s Helmand province found that 97% of people interviewed had not heard of 9/11 almost 10 years after the event.

The War on Terror has not only validated the US passport - allowing it to play the role of globo-cop to further the interests of its own capitalist elite - pushing aside anyone who gets in its way - it has also strengthened the hand of the state at home also. For out of the war on terror came the Patriot Act (USA) and the Terrorism Act (Britain) which put civil disobedience on a par with a felony. Any one of us can now be charged under anti-terror legislation if we step out of line and challenge the power of the state and, with it, the capitalist system which it overseas.

Orwell’s words come only too readily to mind when contemplating White House pronouncements: “Who controls the present controls the past. Who controls the past controls the future.”

George W Bush - Middle East peace advocate or just plain gangster for capitalism?

Tomorrow sees Dubya Bush jet off for Israel – perhaps the only country where his visit would not result in angry demonstrations – and ostensibly in an attempt to shore up perhaps the most catastrophic foreign policy legacy of any US president and a popularity at home that has saw republican supporters leave in droves. It’s perhaps no accident that his 9 day departure for the Middle East coincides with the important early stages of the US election campaign – the imbecile is quite simply perceived to be one huge and embarrassing liability at the moment and someone no repuke candidate wants to be seen acquainted with.

Few if any have any confidence in Bush personally pulling off anything remotely resembling an agreement between Israel and Palestine, this being a pledge he made at the Annapolis conference back in November. Said Bush:

"I am looking forward to sitting down with friends and allies to assure them of my commitment to the Middle Eastern peace and to work with them to make sure they are committed to Middle East peace."

Not only are Bush’s plans seriously hampered because of the split in the Palestinian leadership and which has left Hamas in power in Gaza and the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority, lead by the President Mahmoud Abbas, more importantly he underestimates the level of support in Palestine for Iran, a country he quite obviously intends to attack.

As Uzi Mahnaimi wrote in yesterday’s Times: “Israel security officials are to brief President George W Bush on their latest intelligence about Iran’s nuclear programme - and how it could be destroyed - when he begins a tour of the Middle East in Jerusalem this week.”

Way to go, George. What better way to promote Middle East peace than to start another war there! Sheesh, why didn’t I think of that?

Muhnaimi continues: “Ehud Barak, the defence minister, is said to want to convince him [Bush] that an Israeli military strike against uranium enrichment facilities in Iran would be feasible if diplomatic efforts failed to halt nuclear operations. A range of military options has been prepared….While security officials are reluctant to reveal all their intelligence, fearing that leaks could jeopardise the element of surprise in any future attack, they are expected to present the president with fresh details of Iran’s enrichment of uranium - which could be used for civil or military purposes - and the development of missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.”

In response to this fresh “intelligence”, Bush said: “I read the intelligence report carefully. In essence, what the report said was that Iran had a secret plan to develop nuclear weapons. I’m saying that a state which adopted a non transparent policy and had a secret plan for developing nuclear weapons could easily develop an alternative plan for the same purpose. So to conclude from the intelligence report that there is no Iranian plan to develop nuclear weapons will be only a partial truth.”

Maybe Bush should start reading reports by his own people, such as last November’s CIA National Intelligence Estimate, which states:

“We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

“We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.

“Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”

The report can be downloaded in pdf format here.

And, back to Bush again: “My message to all countries in the region is that we are able to solve the problem in a diplomatic way, but all options are on the table.”

In a “diplomatic way”, George? Like when Saddam bent over backwards for a diplomatic way out of the invasion of Iraq, bending over backwards to comply with UN Resolutions and to prove he had no WMD?

Anxious for some “false flag” incident to revive support for an assault on Iran after the NIE upset plans for an attack on the country, the Pentagon coincidentally kicked off at the weekend over the “hostile intent” of Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats after an alleged incident in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend.

“In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels, reports the Associated Press.

“U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats turned and moved away, a Pentagon official said. ‘It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we've seen yet,’ said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.”

Click here for the MSNBC TV report of the incident.

Writing on the Counterpunch website today, Gideon Levy says:

“A man is coming to Israel this week who has left a trail of killing, destruction and global hatred. Never has the U.S. been so despised as during Bush's seven years in office, which abruptly brought his county back to the not-so-merry days of Vietnam.

“He led the U.S., and the free world in its wake, into two brutal and completely futile wars of conquest, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. He sowed mass killing in these two wretched countries under the false pretext of a battle against global terror.

“In Western Europe, in South America, in Asia, in all parts of the Arab and Muslim world and in parts of Africa, the sole global superpower has come to be viewed as a hostile, arrogant and ostracized entity…. The Middle East has only moved further away from peace during Bush's tenure.”

Make no mistake about it, the last thing on Bush’s mind during his trip to the Middle East is peace. He is the ambassador of powerful oil interests, not only concerned about US oil security but, more importantly, anxious which aspiring superpowers will have future access to world oil supplies and thus emerge as a serious contender on the world capitalist stage. Expect war to be high on the real Bush agenda over the enxt nine days!

Hail to the Chimp

Rarely do I not owe the morning's first smile to Steve Bell, the multi-prize winning Guardian cartoonist and the man who turned a president into a chimpanzee. The Bush-monkey idea has, in the past five years, been copied a million times around the world. The idea crops up on hundreds of websites. I've seen tee shirts with the image on, badges, posters and even a huge papier mache head-piece being worn at the anti-G8 at Gleneagles back in July.

In this morning's Guardian, Bell writes how the Bush-monkey idea came to him. Says Bell:
"I first drew Bush as a monkey after his installation by the Supreme Court, exactly five years ago. It was by accident. I was trying to depict him as a spiritual heir to Ronald Reagan, another useless chump whose most celebrated movie hit was Bedtime For Bonzo in which he starred with a chimp. So Bush became a chimp before I ever realised how closely he resembles our hairy forebears. Somewhat dim-wittedly, in retrospect, I had been trying to depict him as a turkey, because Bush's reputation for uselessness was growing as we got to know him, and (barring underpants) there is no better symbol of uselessness than that poor, maligned bird. But no amount of drawing him as a turkey would ever make him look like a turkey."

"...There was something about the way he held his arms as he walked up; then, as he faced the cameras, his mouth formed into a distinct pout. He moved like a chimp, walked like a chimp and even talked like a chimp. This was no play acting; George Bush actually was a chimp.

"...Some have written complaining that my depiction lacks subtlety and fails to convey his unique qualities and depth of character as a politician. I reply that I would be failing in my duty if I refused to acknowledge his unique qualities as a chimpanzee, for how often does a leader of the free world come along who resembles a monkey in every particular? Depth of character requires complexity, even contradiction. Bush betrays no such doubts or uncertainties. His confidence in his line of communication with the Almighty is total for the very simple reason that he knows he is God, and that is his most chimp-like feature."

For further Bell cartoons, try the Guardian's Steve Bell archive.

A Fantasy of Freedom

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 24th January, 2005

Dear Sir,

GY (A Fantasy of Freedom, 24th January) highlights well the hypocrisy that punctuated President Bush's inauguration speach. What Mr Y failed to consider was that President Bush also declared that freedom overseas was a precondition for freedom in the USA.

I can only presume the words 'freedom' and 'liberty' (used 42 times in Bush's speech) have taken on new meanings in the White House dictionary. History testifies that as soon as the US takes an interest in your country then you can say goodbye to freedom. Since 1945 the US has leant its support dictators and tyrannical regimes on every continent, from Pol Pot and Suharto to Saddam Hussein and Pinochet. Since 1945, this same defender of the global well-being toppled 40 governments and helped crush 30 populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe, turning a blind eye to the most horrendous affronts to the democratic process. During this same period the US has armed terrorists, trained right-wing guerrilla movements in the art of torture and financed armies intent on overthrowing democratically elected governments.

Perhaps Bush was telling the truth, considering the growing restrictions on personal freedom in the USA - i.e. the Patriot Act. If freedom is not allowed to thrive overseas, then why the hell should it be allowed to exist in the USA

Yours,

JB

Manifest Destiny

At the end of his State of the Union address, a speech hypocritically punctuated with references to the US as the champion of liberty and democracy, the saviour of oppressed people everywhere, President Bush declared that “the liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, but God’s gift to humanity.”

The message is simple. The US is enacting God’s will with its constant invasions of far away countries. It’s right to intervene anywhere it sees fit is conferred by divine right. This is hardly a new idea. Defending the US annexation of Texas in 1845, John O’Sullivan asserted that the US was simply fulfilling its ‘manifest destiny’ with ”the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government.”

References to God and the US’s divine mission now fuse every speech Bush makes with reference to Iraq. His unique brand of divine right imperialism - his promise to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq - now accompanies the usual rhetoric about ridding the world of a mad man.

We can only assume the writers of Bush speeches suffer massive bouts of historical amnesia, for this journal has several times in the past had cause to quote comments by senior US officials in relation to Iraq.

We need only observe Madeline Albright’s (former UN Ambassador) comment, when asked her opinion of the 500,000 Iraqis who had died since sanctions were imposed. She replied it was a “price worth paying.”

Colin Powell, now seated on the right hand of Bush, was once asked his opinion of the number of Iraqi civilians killed during the Gulf War. He replied: “Frankly, that’s not a figure that bothers me.” Indeed, the number of civilians killed overseas never bothers US policy makers. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia to put an end to Pol Pot's bloody massacre of 2 million civilians, it was the US who supported a Chinese invasion and the US who sided with the Khmer Rouge. And where was the US when 1 million civilians were being butchered in Rwanda? Again it was the US who propped up other murderers who massacred their own people in their tens of thousands - Noriega, Pinochet Mobuto, Sukarto, Sukarno, Amin, Trujillo, Marcos, Papa Doc and Savimbi. On top of this the US has helped topple 40 governments since 1945 and subverted elections in another 23 countries. Always to further the interests of their corporate elite and always to the detriment of human rights and civilians who desire only peace. Whilst Bush is keen to find a link between Saddam and Islamic terrorism it is to be remembered that during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the US funded islamic zealots to the tune of $6 billion; training the terrorists of the future - some now prisoners of the US in Cuba - in US military bases such as Camp Peary, Camp Picket, Harvey Point and Fort Bragg. When it comes to human rights abuses and terrorism, the USA is top of the premiere league of rogues states. Bush's grievance with Saddam has nothing to do with saving lives and everything to do with securing US access to the region's oil and gas supplies

Madmen and Specialists

Remember the 11,000 page report that Iraq handed to the UN and which pertains to its weapons of mass destruction? As we have previously reported it was immediately seized by the United States and vetted before being distributed to the other 4 permanent members of the security council, with an edited version being given to the remaining members of the UN Security Council two weeks later.

Not much has been heard of the report and little wonder, for it names names. It lists the 150 plus western companies that assisted with Iraq’s WMD programme, including some who were still helping build up Iraq’s conventional arsenal a year ago. Some eighty German and twenty-four US companies are reported to have provided Saddam with the equipment and know-how to build his weapons arsenal from 1975 onwards.

It is not certain who leaked the document to Germany’s Die Tageszeitung newspaper, but it’s a fair bet it came from Baghdad which is keen to humiliate the alliance massing against it. Perhaps Saddam is all too aware of the hypocrisy and fork tongued cant of the Bush-Blair coalition. Certainly he is aware that the west armed Iraq to the teeth during its war with Iran, when Iraq was seen as a buffer to the spread of militant Islam from Iran and a threat to western oil interests in the region.

Die Tageszeitung reports: “From about 1975 onwards, these companies are shown to have supplied entire complexes, building elements, basic materials and technical know-how for Saddam Hussein’s programme to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction…They also supplied rockets and complete conventional weapons systems.”

And who are these US companies? I provide a list below and the category of military know-how they assisted with (A-nuclear, K-Chemical, B-biological and R-Rockets):

1. Honeywell (R,K). 2. Spektra Physics (K), 3. Semetex (R). 4. TI Coating(A,K).
5. UNISYS (A,K). 6. Sperry Corp (R,K). 7. Tektronix (R,A). 8. Rockwell (K).
9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (A). 10. Finnigan-MAT-US (A). 11. Hewlett Packard (A,R,K). 12. Dupont (A). 13. Eastman Kodak (R). American Type Culture Collection (B). 15. Alcolac International (C). 16. Consarc (A). 17. Carl Zeis-U.Ss (K). 18. Cerberus Ltd (A). 19. Elkectronic Associates (R) 20. International Computer Systems. 21. Bechtel (K). 22. EZ Logic Data Systems Inc. (R). 23. Canberra Industries Inc. (A). 24. Axel Electronics Inc. (A).

With Bush now fully intent on spreading his war on terror around the world and seeking to forge ahead with his Star Wars programme we can expect none of the above will be called upon to account for their relationship with a tyrannical regime. For one thing they will be busy supplying their own. Bush has already increased US military spending to unprecedented limits - $380 billion this year. Within 5 year it is set to increase to $500 billion per annum. Indeed, the US military industrial think tanks have been highly instrumental in providing the rationale for a ‘war’ with Iraq and developing concepts such as a ‘pre-emptive war’. And, as you have guessed, many a former defence company executive and consultant are well represented in the Bush administration, wielding immense influence on behalf od weapons manufacturers. And why not? War and hyped threats to the national security means bigger expenditure on weapons and massive profits.

Transatlantic Gobbledegook

A reader in the USA, though full of praise for Socialist View asks: “There is one thing I’d like to query. How is it you regularly highlight President Bush’s gaffes? If this is a British journal how come you don’t focus on British politicians and their lack of eloquence? Or are British politicians models of fluency?”

In reply, we highlight President Bush’s gaffes for two reasons. Firstly, he is an elected leader, and as we reject the concept of leadership, believing that workers are more than capable of sorting out their own affairs, he serves as an excellent example of the folly of trusting in leaders. Secondly, we find his gaffes amazing and amusing – though admittedly it is not amusing to have such an imbecile at the head of a military superpower, with his finger on the nuclear trigger. As for your query regarding the eloquence of British politicians, we must confess that we have a right bunch of gloopy bastards running British Capitalism plc from their executive meeting places in the Houses of Commons. One such is John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister and Member of Parliament for the Hull East constituency.

On Thursday, 4th July, Mr Prescott appeared on the BBC Question Time programme, and baffled the audience with a barrage of mind-boggling waffle. Below is a partial transcript of the answers he offered the audience.

On the question of cheap housing for nursing in the wake of rising property prices he said, “ The massive rise in house prices has caused us very real difficulties. We have put extra money available to meet some of those requirements, but the scale is far greater quite frankly, and we are now looking very seriously now at how you can actually do more that what we’re doing at the moment. Because the whole quality of life affected by public services are being affected by that, and if you want to provide houses, you can’t just provide it by simply giving the subsidies between the market price and what people can afford. We’ve got to do something much more effective than that. There’s going to be a statement by Gordon Brown on our public expenditure, then a number of statements flow from that. Let us wait and see. I’d like to see a step up and hopefully I’d be able to promise you that.”

Asked to explain the government’s stance on ID cards, Bulldog Prescott blurted: “We’re in, in fact, a situation where we’re going to try, consult about things. The piece I mean about the illegal trafficking that goes on, in immigration in some places, tremendous fraud that goes on, it will be used in those circumstances to help that. There is card benefit. Everyone knows how much we get caught on our credit cards and things like that. It can help with things like that, but a judgement hasn’t been made. But let me be clear. Forty-three people have some identity in a passport. Thirty-eight million people, I think, are the ones who have driving licence, so that’s an awful lot of our population and I must say, when I was a seaman, I had to have an ID card for ten years.”

Of course, Prescott is not alone in expressing such waffle. It’s a fair bet that the majority of MPs in the House of Commons, caught unawares, would struggle to answer the simplest of questions. Indeed, so afraid is the government of being caught on the hop that the questions asked at Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons are actually put to the Prime Minister three days in advance.

Not only doe British MPs speak a load of twaddle, they are first class liars, hence the socialist quirk: How do you know when MPs are lying? Answer: When their lips move. Moreover, they are amongst the most disingenuous people in the country.

Back in 1999, Michael Meacher had this to say to a fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference: “One of the things I would argue for over the question of second homes- and let me say I am someone who has a second home so I am not denigrating the possession of a second home [is that] people like me who are privileged should not be in the position to rob other people of a home which is a basic right.” It was later revealed that Mr Meacher had in fact 9 homes (he boasted he had 12) valued between £250,000 and £500,000.

At that same conference, incidentally, Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary, said to the assembled faithful: “We will be giving the police the money they need to recruit 5,000 more officers.” However, Alan Milburn MP had written to Straw three days earlier saying: “I must stress…the package does not provide for 5,000 additional officers. There should therefore be no reference to this.”

And, forgive us for dwelling on that year, but only weeks after this, an all party committee of MPs condemned Labour’s Stephen Byers MP for his “regrettable habit” of giving “potentially misleading information” – a skill Mr Byers has perfected to a fine art these past three years.

But to your initial question: why do we highlight George Bush’s gaffes? Again, because here is the most powerful man in the world, the No. 1 representative of US Capitalism basically telling the workers of the world ‘hey, this is what you get when you vote for capitalist politicians.’ Or in his own words:

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier — so long as I'm the dictator." —George W. Bush, 19/12/200

Another American Cenury?

George Bush’s State of the Union address at the end of January was little short of a declaration of war on the world; an assertion that US interests are now paramount and woe betide anyone foolish enough to think otherwise.

Bush boldly announced that the ‘ war on terror’ was ‘only beginning’ and announced an enormous hike in military spending. This year’s military budget is up $36 bn to $379 bn and next year the US war machine will receive an extra $48 bn, with a further $120 bn promised over the next five years, bringing the total spent on the military by 2007 to $ 2 trillion. To get some estimate of this level of spending it is worth noting that this year’s increase alone is higher than the joint military spending of Europe, and larger than China’s existing military budget. Though just how such an awe inspiring arsenal of state of the arts weaponry is to stop September 11th type attacks on the USA is yet to be explained.

America has at last declared that the ’war on terror’ has replaced the threat of the ‘international communist conspiracy’ and found in this the pretext to set the agenda for the coming century. The Bush administration has embedded its flag in what it believes is the moral high ground. From now on it is a war of good against evil - evil being anyone standing directly in the way of the US and its aspirations of global domination, with the ‘war on terrorism’ allowing it to intervene anywhere and whenever and to deem who it likes a terrorist. Clearly this new ‘war’ will involve countless military interventions with no regard whatsoever for international sensibilities.

There are now bogeymen under every rock and the world needs protecting from them. Bush identified an ‘axis of evil’ in his State of the Union Address, pointing to the threat the world faced from North Korea, Iraq and Iran. Vice president Dick Cheney would later remark that the US is considering military action against 50 countries and that this ongoing conflict could last 50 years.

Bush’s advisor Richard Perle commented: “This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there…if we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

All of this has naturally left political analysts wondering just who will be next. Somalia, with untapped oil deposits off its coast and with whom the US has a score to settle following the botched ‘Restore Hope’ operation of a decade ago, which left thousands of innocents dead, or Yemen, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria or Libya? All harbour bogeymen whose existence sullies the notion of western cultural supremacy. Any could be the next target for a war machine drunk with its recent victory in Afghanistan. And what a victory! – Usama bin Laden still not caught (the entire campaign was about catching him), 5 thousand civilians dead and 7 million facing starvation in refugee camps.

A key element in the US game plan for global hegemony is clearly control of the Caspian’s rich oil reserves – estimated to be able to produce 3.3 million gallons of crude oil per day and 4850 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year. Hence US military manoeuvring in the states surrounding Afghanistan and thus the attaching of the ’bogeyman’ label to any state perceived as standing in the way of these profits.

Already Kyrgistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are under US military domination and there are US military tent cities in 13 states surrounding Afghanistan, with the map of US bases mirroring the route of a projected oil pipeline favoured by the US and which takes oil through Iran to the Indian ocean. To save the cost and inconvenience of laying a pipeline through Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is far easier to simply topple the Tehran regime, install a US proxy government and run Caspian oil directly through Iran. And who is to stop the US? The UN may object, but who is the UN? The best place from which to launch an attack upon Iran is Iraq, so both states now feature high on the US hit list.

Iran and Iraq are both perceived as the regional powers who challenge US strategic ambitions between Europe and East Asia. And invasions of these two countries would well fit the ongoing US strategy of asserting itself into strategic areas of the world, setting up is bases and installing US geopolitical influence in these regions. US interventions in recent years in Iraq, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan have allowed the US to leave behind its bases in these regions and to better oversee the activities of its corporate elite. With US economic power now being challenged by Europe and the East Asian bloc, military bases become a useful counterweight to the threat posed its corporate elite by its competitors and US control over Iran and Iraq gives the US control over extant oil supplies between Europe and East Asia.

Iraq has long been high up on the list of US targets, a fact perhaps best portrayed recently by the pathetic and futile US attempts to link the anthrax scare in the US to Saddam Hussein. The Guardian’s February 14th front page headline “ US targets Saddam” was not reporting anything new. The story had been doing the rounds in the Russian press for some time with Russian military intelligence suggesting a full scale attack on Iraq would begin in September. But now sources close to Bush say the CIA is already in Saudi Arabia and Northern Iraq preparing for a joint operation with Kurdish forces and that the third Iraqi war may commence in May with the mobilisation of 200,000 US troops from bases in Kuwait.

Undoubtedly the pretext for the US invasion of Iraq will be Iraq’s refusal to agree to terms laid down by a US lead weapons inspectorate into the country, hence Bush’s assertion in his State of the Union Address that Iraq “continues to flaunt its hostility towards the US” and that “this is a regime that has something to hide from the civilised world.”

The above may sound like so much scare-mongering, but when it is considered the US now accounts for 40 per cent of global military spending, that it spends more on its war machine than the next 19 states, that in the past year it has discarded numerous international treaties, including those pertaining to weapons control, that the space taken up by its military hardware covers an area the size of Sweden, that it has served notice on all countries opposing the notion of US hegemony that their days are numbered, we can’t but conclude that warfare will be as much a part of life in this century as the one we have just emerged from. And what do we make of Bush’s words in that most eloquent of addresses: “Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: ‘let’s roll’”? And what better way to distract domestic attention from the corruption of US politics – wonderfully exhibited in the Enron scandal – than to commence a war on the enemies of US freedoms?

We have every reason to be fearful for the future of humanity. War is competition for profits (either via trade routes, mineral wealth, resources or areas of influence) writ large, and to safeguard its future profits, its control of world resources the world’s greatest and largest military power is accumulating an unimaginable array of weaponry, rolling up its sleeves and marching forward to stamp underfoot all it perceives as being a threat to its interests.

So when will you join with us? When a million Iranians lie smouldering? When North Korea resembles a Stone Age society? Or when cruise missiles are heading towards Beijing? We owe it to the millions about to die in the name of profit to act now. They cannot, their fate is sealed.

George W Bush - Redefining War

As I write, it is having just learned that the Northern Alliance has ‘taken’ Kabul and that the Taliban are now in retreat. The ‘war’, if it could ever have been described as one, is said to be almost over. Already there has been much speculation as to the post-Taliban set-up in Afghanistan.

Speculation is not something socialists like to engage in. For one thing it is a forgone conclusion that any new government will have to be ready to bow with suppliant’s knee before the interests of US corporate elites and in particular the oil hounds, paying back the support their military wing the US air force and US my afforded them. And by all accounts, with the Northern Alliance suggesting they would decline the offer of an international peace-keeping force, Afghanistan is years away from any semblance of peace and order.

What is as important is that the rules of global interaction are changing. This is not least because the US is forging stronger links with repressive regimes in the Middle East and with governments in the Caspian region, but more importantly because of the ongoing delegitimising of international law, the US insistent it will act unilaterally where it wishes, regardless of any views of the UN and the threat of the war on terrorism finally replacing the threat of international communist conspiracy and how this will serve as the new pretext for US military adventurism. We can further anticipate the race for the militarisaton of space – albeit a one horse race and further sophistication of US war-fighting capabilities.

Whilst President George W has strutted and fretted about the US stage, his advisers burying their heads in their hands every time he speaks, Tony Blair globetrotting, drumming up support for the US cause like some keen-to-Republican foreign secretary, there has been every sign that Dubya is attempting to fulfil his father’s prophecy, mouthed during his presidential inaugural address all those years ago, that the 21st Century would be ‘another American century’.

For anyone interested in US domestic politics, aware that George W could never sway an electorate by the power of his words, it perhaps came as no surprise to learn that he could so blatantly repay his corporate backers and grassroots supporters so early into his administration. Within months of coming to office the gun lobbyists, oil companies, and defence contractors had their servitude recognised for the world to see. The 1997 Kyoto protocol on emission reductions is now history. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty – the cornerstone of all arms-control negotiations during and since the cold war is now only fit to wipe the presidential arse with, and down the proverbial toilet went the comprehensive test-ban treaty and the UN treaty on the control of small arms. Bush even denounced the recent UN convention on slavery.

Let’s just leave aside Bush’s recent meeting with President Putin of Russia and his suggestion that the US is willing to negotiate cutting it’s nuclear arsenal by one third , to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, for the simple reason that the US no longer perceives Russia as its prime military and economic threat. Moreover, Putin, in line with his Chinese counterpart, has given his blessing to the US bombing raids on Afghanistan in the hope the US will now support their own wars against ‘terrorists (in Chechnya and China’s Muslim Xingjiang province). So at the moment there is a lot of back slapping camaraderie amongst leaders whose countries are notorious for their state terrorism. This is not, however, a sign of the US seeking a more stable world, but an acknowledgement by the Republican right that National Missile Defence is still very much on the agenda and that the US does not need such a large nuclear stockpile now that it can depend upon other methods of defence. Neither does Bush’s promise to reduce the nuclear arsenal heed recent Russian and Chinese claims that any NMD system would only spur other countries to increase their own arsenals in the hope of overwhelming a nuclear umbrella.

On 25th July, the US scuppered a decade of international negotiations by announcing in Geneva its intention not to back a draft protocol to reinforce the biological weapons and toxin convention, which was initially signed in 1972. It’s reason? Such a move threatened US commercial interests. The protocol would have included verification measures that would have given international inspectors access to laboratories in the signatory countries. Perhaps the US has some stronger reason for denying inspections at thousands of its defence plants and biotechnology sites. What on earth are its commercial interests that it can nonchalantly destroy a treaty signed in the interest of humanity? What the hell is the US developing? And wasn’t it the US that was so damned insistent that an international scientific inspectorate search behind every Iraqi door capable of being locked?

In effect, President Bush has told the world: ‘Fuck off, it’s US first’. Somewhat echoing his father’s sentiments’ that he would ensure the 21st century was another ‘American century, son George W has announced his intention that the world will be ruled by force and on behalf of US corporate interests.

The evidence has been ever present since September 11th. Colin Powell, when asked to publicly provide evidence of bin Laden’s links to the attack on New York and Washington, avoided the issue by claiming its disclosure would be a breach of national security. When the Taliban wished to negotiate, offering to hand bin laden to a third party, Bush replied: “I said no negotiations and I mean no negotiations.” And while the US is keen to point out it has a ‘coalition’ of support against the Taliban it has bombed Afghanistan single-handedly, except for a few token cruise missiles fired from a British submarine (a doggie- snack for the ever-loyal poodle) on the first day of the attack upon Afghanistan.

It is now not only full steam ahead with the prized National Missile Defence system with a target date for the deployment of the system set for 2005 (See also the Socialist Standard of March this year), but plans are now afoot in the US to develop a space bomber that could destroy targets on the other side of the globe within 30 minutes; the bomber travelling 15 times faster than conventional bombers, able to hit a target from 60 miles up and paving the way for a new era of stratospheric warfare.

NMD, however is clearly a sign that the US is moving towards becoming a more aggressive and threatening military power. Experts now maintain that the issue is not so much whether an anti-missile system is feasible or desirable, but what kind of diplomatic and military policies the world’s only superpower would pursue from beneath the relative safety of a nuclear umbrella. It seems less the case that NMD is about protecting the USA from ‘rogue states’, and more the likelihood that such a sophisticated system of defence will ensure the profits flow in the right direction and that the global schoolyard bully can streamline its protection racket, safe in the knowledge it will meet little resistance.

Back in 1992, Paul Walfowitz (now Deputy Secretary of Defence) and Lew Libby (Bush’s National Security Adviser) formulated ideas which were presented as a confidential Pentagon document by none other than vice-president Dick Cheney:

“The US must hold global power and a monopoly of force. It will then protect the new order while allowing others to pursue their legitimate interests as Washington defines them. The US must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership, or seeking to overturn the established political order, or aspiring to a larger regional or global role…we will retain the pre-eminent responsibility for addressing those wrongs which threaten not only our interests but also those of our allies and friends. The US alone will determine what are those wrongs and where they are to be selectively righted.” (quoted in. Year 501 by, Noam Chomsky)

This is an extremely revealing document - a document that is also very worrying. And it’s not a one off. There are others, take for instance the US Space Command’s document “Vision 2020” which, now five years old, well telegraphs US designs for the 21st Century, suggesting that globalisation will lead to greater misery, to a lot more ‘have-nots’ with an axe to grind and who will have to kept in line:

“Although unlikely to be challenged by a global peer competitor, the United States will continue to be challenged regionally. The globalisation of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between the haves and have-nots. Accelerating rates of technological development will be increasingly driven by commercial interests not the military. Increased weapons lethality and precision will lead to new operational doctrines…..only military dominance will protect US interests and investments.”

In 1998, the US government report “The Long-Term Plan” reiterated this notion of there being trouble ahead from the dispossessed:

“The US will remain global power and exert global leadership. Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality of life, contributing to unrest in developing countries…The gap between the ‘haves and the ‘have–nots’ will widen, creating regional unrest. The US will remain the only nation able to project power globally.”

It is a fair bet that such sentiments have been prominent components of the US weltanschauung for some years – at least since 1945 and definitely since 1989 and the collapse of Soviet-style state capitalism. Moreover, it’s no bold assertion to suggest that China is chief the enemy in waiting – not the allegedly ‘rogue states’ such as Iraq and North Korea, nor the threat of international terrorism which has been a US favourite since the days of Reagan – for the simple reason that the republican right perceive China to be an economic and military power on a collision course with the US over domination of the Pacific. And if the US learns anything from its military history it is to strike first – hence the dire necessity of a fully functioning NMD.

At the beginning of July this year, only days before the New York Times announced Bush’s plans to ditch the comprehensive test ban treaty, his administration enquired of nuclear laboratories just how soon they could begin testing again – clearly intent on breaching agreements made 16 months earlier by 187 countries who had negotiated steps to strengthen the non-proliferation treaty.

On the 14th of July this year, the US launched a missile from the Marshall Islands. Twenty-nine minutes later a second missile, launched from Vanderburg, California, intercepted it at an altitude of 144 miles. The success not only strengthened Republican arguments for a competent star wars system, but was the order for similar multi million dollar tests to be carried out every month and helped justify the mobilisation of contractors into Fort Greeley, Alaska, to begin foundation work on a new missile silo.

Just over two years ago, President elect, George W Bush, gave a speech at Charleston, South Carolina. He spoke of the “contagious spread of missile technology and weapons of mass destruction” and hence the necessity of strengthening the unrivalled military power of the US. He then boldly announced that “the best way to keep peace is to redefine war on our terms.”

Which just about says it all – “to redefine war on our terms.” Economic war? Surely not the more bloodier version? And what is ‘redefining’ war? To provoke your competitors to the point that they begin arming themselves with better weaponry, then making a pre-emptive strike, bombing them back into the stone age on the pretext they threatened world peace, safe in the knowledge, there will be no retaliation and that you can then overtake their markets? We jest not!

Forget all the crap that George W’s father mouthed when he became president. The peace dividend’ that was supposed to replace cold war hostilities and benefit all after the collapse of ‘communism’ was as fictitious as fairies. The agenda now is as it was then and 40 years previous – US global domination in the military and economic fields and woe betide anyone foolish enough to think otherwise.

As socialists we certainly do not need to redefine our war. The war we must fight to end the insanity and horror Bush and Co would hurl us headlong into is the Class War. And this can not be fought with missiles, but something more powerful – our minds, our imagination, our solidarity and preparedness to unite as the majority exploited class and to wrest control of the planet from the madmen before it is to late.

Are you with us? Don’t take too long to think of a reply – the doomsday clock really is ticking.

Terrorists and Terrorists

Writing in The Guardian recently, George Monbiot observed that if Osama bin Laden did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. This is no brazen assertion, for the same has been said about many a US enemy over the years, the most memorable being Saddam Hussein. The reasoning behind such an outlook is simple. The US needs the threat of a bogeyman to scare us into falling into line as well as to justify large scale military actions on behalf of its own corporate elite and, of course, to provide the US with the pretext to play globocop on behalf of all god-fearing, peace-loving citizens everywhere.

Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organisation have been blamed for the September 11th attacks on the USA. Bin Laden’s photograph has been splashed across every newspaper front page in the world. Already there is a $10 million price on his head. The highly articulate George

W Bush is urgently reminded of the old Wild West wanted posters and has spoken of how bin Laden’s name is now on one. But who is bin Laden and how did he come to prominence? Osama bin Laden is a billionaire Islamic fundamentalist, former US ally and protégé, who fronts a terrorist organisation whose fighters were trained and financed by the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. This is no big secret. The US, in fact, were arming groups like the notorious mujahedin a full six months before the Soviet invasion of December 1979 and it is estimated that at the Soviet withdrawal, US aid to the Afghan cause totalled $5 billion (this monetary support for some seven fundamentalist and extremist groups beginning after 1980 when Reagan quadrupled the CIA budget to £36 billion). Even after the Soviet withdrawal, the US still supported the Mujahedin, though more covertly now and through Pakistan’s version of the CIA, the ISI, their game plan now to play on the differences between the varying groups and their leaders in an attempt to undermine the power of the factions for Washington’s ends. The game plan analogy is perhaps best revealed in the words of Jimmy Carter’s adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski, who described Afghanistan at the time as ‘the greatest chessboard’. (see also Unholy Wars book review).

Following the car bomb attack at the World Trade Centre eight years ago, four of those arrested and charged with the attack were found to be linked to bin-Ladens’s al-Qaeda organisation and amongst those trained by the US (Robert Fox, New York’s regional FBI director revealed this in a TV interview in 1993). When the US attacked bin Laden’s bases near the village of Khost in Afghanistan (along with the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory) following attacks on US embassies in Africa, they could do so with pin point accuracy for the CIA had planned and designed them. Moreover, US surveillance was well aware of bin Laden’s absence prior to the attack and it seems they purposely chose not to target him because a dead bin Laden would have dangerously enhanced his legendary charisma amongst the Islamic fundamentalists he inspires, his death inciting his followers to more crazed acts of vengeance.

It now seems that the US is reaping the bitter harvest of its foreign policy which used Islamic fundamentalism as a puppet in its perennial game of globo-political profit-making. For years it courted some of the most dangerous, conservative and fanatical followers of Islam and is now paying the price. The globalisation process, which the US has pursued obsessively, has only served to make political Islam more reactionary in defence of its own culture and strategic interests.

The Islamic zealots the US are prepared to annihilate, and indeed form an alliance with, in Afghanistan were, however, afforded most favoured status during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Under the Carter administration and beginning in 1980, they were trained in their thousands (sources quote 20,000) at the CIA’s Camp Peary and at the ex-army base at Harvey Point in Carolina; by the Green Berets at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and indeed by the SAS in Scotland. They would go on to be trained at Fort A.P. Hill, just off the Washington-Richmond interstate highway, and at Camp Picket in Virginia by Green Berets and US Navy SEALS. This was not simply ‘basic’ training. They were trained in over 60 deadly skills, including the use of sophisticated fuses, timers and explosives, remote control devices for land mines, incendiary devices and the use of automatic weapons with armour piercing shells. Thus the US went about supporting a ten-year long jihad in the hope Soviet state capitalism would not encroach upon its central Asian markets and that the military cost of the operation would cripple the Soviet economy.

Whilst the world is outraged at the terrorist attacks on the USA mainland, it must be remembered that the US has been conducting and supporting just as deadly covert acts of terrorism around the globe for 50 years. For instance, the US and the UK supported Suharto’s military coup in Indonesia in 1966, which resulted in the deaths of 600,000 members of the PKI, and more recently they have supported an Indonesian regime that massacred thousands who voted for independence in East Timor. And it was the US who helped topple the democratically elected Allende government in Chile which resulted in thousands of deaths and countless disappearances. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and massacred 17,500, this was a terrorist act fully supported by the US. It continues to support one of the most notorious state terrorist organisations around in Colombia, Colombia now being the worst violator of human rights in the hemisphere and at the same time the leading recipient of US Military aid – the previous being Turkey. And how can we forget Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and North Korea?

Since 1945 the US has toppled some 40 governments and supported every dictator imaginable (Pol Pot, Noriega, Pinochet, Mobuto, Amin, Trujillo, Marcos, Papa Doc Duvalier and Saddam Hussein) whilst seriously interfering in the domestic affairs of almost 70 countries.

In recent years the US has devastated Iraq in continuous bombing raids – even for using radar to scan the Iraqi airspace its own air force is excluded from. During the 40 day Gulf War, US planes dropped 177 million pounds of explosives on Iraq – the greatest aerial bombardment in history. It has imposed sanctions on Iraq that have resulted in the deaths of perhaps 2 million people and bombed Iraq in defence of the Kurds from the same air bases Turkey has used to bomb 3000 Kurdish villages. In the wake of the Gulf War, the US mercilessly attacked a retreating Iraqi army on the Basra road and quite literally fried to death 60,000 ill-equipped, ill-trained soldiers, the vast majority never wanting any part in the conflict in the first place. Only days previous to the September 11th attack on the US, the US and Great Britain again joined hands in a bombing raid on Iraq. No western newspaper reported it.

There was of course a time when the US couldn’t help Iraq enough. During the Iran-Iraq war, the US gave its full blessing to Iraqi atrocities, turning a blind eye to the chemical weapon attack on the small town of Halabjah in 1988 with the loss of 5,000 innocent lives. Indeed, in 1987 when Iraq attacked the USS Stark, killing 37 servicemen, there was no US response as the White House was keen at the time that Iraq got the upper hand in its war with Iraq and that the US got its oil at the price it demanded.

The US has launched attacks upon Libya, Somalia and Grenada, propped up right wing tendencies in Panama, Chile, Brazil, Honduras, Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Colombia. In Africa it supported the right-wing Savimbi as he tried to make Angola more hellish for its impoverished millions, adopted a policy of ‘constructive engagement’ with South Africa’s apartheid machine and was all to willing to shoulder up with South Africa in its war with the frontline states. In the Middle East it has allied itself with anti-democratic currents in Iran and Iraq and more recently with Jordan, Egypt and Saudi- Arabia, whilst at the same time ensuring there is no Middle Eastern solution, that the Palestinian people are kept in a state of subjection and that numerous UN Resolutions pertaining to the occupied territories are ignored. This year alone Israel is receiving $6 billion in free US aid, in direct contravention of Congress rulings. During the retaliatory raids following the attacks on the US embassies in Africa, the US fired 70 cruise missiles into Afghanistan and killed tens of thousands in Sudan (a true figure is not available because the US blocked the proposed UN inquiry). The US catalogue of shame is indeed a deep one and we can only begin to scratch at its surface.

Whilst the September 11th attack resulted in an appalling loss of innocent life which no sane person could condone, it remains a wonder that the US has escaped the attention of terrorists for so long. For the poignant truth is that there are millions who have been murdered defeated, demoralised, impoverished and crushed by the US and its allies and who could well have turned to the pathos of terrorism as a means of evening up the score. Who knows the number of US-created Frankensteins walking the world, prepared to destroy the life of their master? This is not to suggest the US ‘deserves’ to be bombed, but hints at the number of enemies the US has created in pursuit of global domination, forever trying to carve out larger chunks of the world on behalf of its corporate elite.

If we set this terrorist attack in a wider context, however, then the loss of life in New York and Washington, whilst horrendous, is not incomparable. For instance we can’t realistically comprehend the horror of the dying days of World War 2 when, in one night alone, up to 100,000 died in a 1000 bomber raid on Dresden or when Hiroshima and Nagasaki lost 150,000 in unnecessary nuclear attacks. But it is to the present we make comparison. Is it not an atrocity that 40,000 children die of starvation each day? Is it not a most heinous crime when 1,000 children die each hour of preventable disease (these are UNICEF statistics) and do we not find sickening the thought that twice that number of women die or suffer disability during pregnancy because of a lack of simple remedies or medical attention? We are speaking here of an Hiroshima a day which never gets reported, which is taken as accepted because it is so much a part of our way of life in capitalist society. Where is the 25 page newspaper pull-out that accompanies the recent WHO revelation that more people died of starvation in the last two years than were killed in two world wars? Where is the 3 minutes silence for the 500,000 Iraqi children who have died of hunger and disease as a result of US sanctions in the past 10 years – a figure which presidential spokeswoman Madeleine Albright described recently as “a price worth paying”? Can we not also label the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation terrorist organisations, judging them on the premeditated carnage their policies have unleashed on the underdeveloped world?

All of this may sound churlish, but is in no way intended to diminish the fact that there has been an enormous loss of life in the USA. Those lying dead beneath the rubble in New York are our fellow workers - make no mistake about it - members of the working class, murdered whilst they were being exploited. Whilst we are revolted, as socialists we certainly do not crave the comfort of revenge. We take a more considered view.

Western leaders have claimed the attack to be an assault on civilisation. But what is this civilisation that has been attacked, where 600 million have no home, where 800 million are chronically malnourished, where 1 billion have no access to clean water? What is this civilisation where 3 individuals have more wealth than the combined income of the world’s 48 poorest nations? How can we condemn attacks on our ‘civilisation’ when we destroy food to keep prices high and employ scientists on weapons programmes whilst children die of preventable disease? What questions we can ask of those who destroy the lives of millions, then run for the moral high ground when disaster hits their own backyard!

Since the attacks on New York and Washington, The US and British media has become a history exclusion zone, feeding only the spreading contagion of patriotism, whilst flag waving and the repetitious singing of anthems trigger, in pavlovian fashion, national epidemics of jingoism, the only cure of which is reprisals. The dominant view is that extremists the world over are intent on destroying democracy and western civilisation – a myopic perspective which washes well with a news-hungry audience whose knowledge of US foreign policy and basic international affairs makes it impossible for them to separate reality from distortion.

Bush may well speak of the terrorism the US faces from Islamic fundamentalism, but a truer picture is one in which the real global terror is US fundamentalism. Since coming to power, Bush has helped scupper the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on emissions and all but wiped his presidential backside on the 1972 ABM Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the UN treaty on the control of small arms. His attitude to treaties and conventions suggests he has already declared war on the planet and that US foreign policy will continue as before and with one aim – to ensure the 21st Century is another ‘American Century’, as George senior poignantly prophesised all those years ago.

And so, the proverbial line has been drawn in the sand. President George W Bush has told the world “either you’re with us or you’re against us.” It’s a catch all sentiment that is taking hold. Indeed, one writer asked me through the letters page of the Shields Gazette: “A simple message to John ********. Which side are you on, ours or the terrorists?” “It’s that simple”, I’ve been told on the streets! This is presumptuous arrogance and not an option for the class conscious to dwell on. It’s a form of blackmail coming from both sides of the pond which has had some effect. Some campaigners feel that for the time being we should hold back with our anti-war campaign. Oxfam, for instance, cancelled a petition against US policy on pharmaceutical corps on the grounds it was ‘inappropriate to pursue criticism of the US’

The mainstream view is that the forces of barbarism have declared war on the bastion of democracy. George Bush boldly declared: “They hate our freedom, our freedom of religion, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with one another.” Yet wonders not why, if this were so, the Statue of Liberty, the White House or the Lincoln memorial was not attacked on September 11th. Why the Pentagon and the WTC - one a symbol of America’s global military reach, the other a symbol of US economic prowess?

Of course there is much missing from Bush’s assertion that Islamic terrorists are just simply jealous as hell of the democratic freedoms ‘enjoyed’ in the US. The simple truth is that throughout the Middle East, indeed the world, the US has, despite its alleged support for movements towards democracy and greater freedoms for all, generally hampered provisional steps in the direction of democratisation. The general line is that if a foreign election is not going the way Washington would like it to go, if the outcome could prove detrimental to US corporate profits, then it must be tampered with. Since 1945, the US has subverted elections in the following countries: Italy (1948-1970s), Philippines (1950s) Lebanon (1950) Indonesia (1955), Vietnam (1955), British Guyana (1953-64), Japan (1958-1970s), Nepal (1959), Laos (1960), Dominican Republic (1962), Guatemala (1963), Bolivia (1966), Portugal (1974-5), Australia 1974-5, Jamaica (1976), Panama (1984, 1989), Nicaragua (1984, 1990), Haiti (1987-1988), Russia 1996), Mongolia (1996), Bosnia (1998).


In the Middle East, whilst it has increased its support for despotic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco, it has invariably lowered its economic, military and diplomatic support for any Arab country embarking on major political liberalisation.

Israel, for instance, gets 40 per cent of all US overseas aid. Meanwhile Israel is in breach of 6 UN resolutions and continues oppressing Palestinians, the great majority living as second class citizens with almost no rights. During Jordan’s despotic and repressive rule in the 1970s and 80s, US aid for the Amman regime was enormous. Then when Jordan decided to oil the cogs of its political machine in the 1990s, that aid was vastly reduced and for a while suspended. Similarly, aid to Yemen was cut off within months of that unified country’s first ‘democratic’ election. In recent weeks, when it was discovered that Qatar’s satellite channel Al-Jazeera was beginning to sound a little ‘pro-democracy’, upsetting regional dictators, broadcasting images of the US bombings and airing bin Laden’s now famous video, it was Colin Powell who demanded the channel be closed down, insisting it fostered ‘anti-Americanism’.

When it comes to Middle Eastern peace, the US has ensured the region is as unstable as ever, cocking a snook at UN Resolution 687 which calls for region-wide disarmament - which would also mean an end to Israel’s nuclear capability – whilst at the same time selling $60 billion worth of arms to Middle Eastern countries in 10 years (80% of all world arms exports to the Middle East). Israel, by the way, receives $3 billion in US military aid on the pretext it is defending itself from its Arab neighbours – those same neighbours the US has armed to the teeth!

This side of the Atlantic, In his finest Orwellian double-speak, Tony Blair could announce: “The values we believe in should shine through in Afghanistan”. Could this be the same Blair whose government armed the Indonesian military machine during its recent rampage through East Timor, whose government signed 91 military export licences for Israel in the first eight months of the current Intifada? Such instances fly in the face of the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) claim that ‘we will not issue export licences where there is clearly identifiable risk that the equipment might be used for internal repression or adversely effect regional stability.’ Are these the same ‘values’ which, on the same day as the attacks on the US, allowed the DSEi arms fair to go ahead in London and to continue for another 3 days? And are these same ‘values’ informing a Labour government who, without any mandate from the UN, has helped notch up 15,000 RAF/USAF bombing raids on Iraq since the second Gulf War?


These same ‘values’ are now behind the decision that Britain and the US should support a proxy army, the Northern Alliance, an outfit with an impressive record of widespread rape, pillage and murder in Kabul, in its confrontation with the Taliban. One of the key figures in the Northern Alliance is Abdul Rashid Dostom, and ally of Uzbekistan’s President Karimov, who has made huge profits exporting drugs via Uzbekistan, and who allegedly was all to keen to secure Russian weapons and military supplies in exchange for keeping the gas flowing north.

Just as Blair’s values can enable him to curry favour with Israel’s Ariel Sharon, architect of the slaughter in Qibya in 1953 and the 1982 massacres in Sabra and Shatila, so can these same ideals prompt him into friendly dialogue with President Karimov, whose airfields are suddenly strategically important now the destruction of Afghanistan has commenced. Karimov, incidentally, holds 7,000 political prisoners, allows no free press and no political opposition. And Karimov, of course, has other reasons for supporting the anti-Taliban alliance. His corrupt police state is facing bankruptcy and to prop it up he is intent on running an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to a Pakistani port

But back to the US. It’s fair to say that the Bush administration is in the throes of foreign policy denial – there has been almost blanket rejection of any notion hinting that previous US policy has any bearing on the present. Yet few worthwhile commentators have not mentioned the Middle East linkage, the US support for Israel in its continual oppression of Palestinians and of Washington’s continuing victimisation of Iraq. In a video-recorded message to the world, bin Laden asked: ‘You American people, can you ask yourselves why all this hate against America and Israel? The answer is clear and simple, that America has committed so many crimes against the nations of Muslims.’ Bin Laden then proceeded to list the aforementioned grievances. The latter said, it could perhaps be that bin Laden is an opportunist - indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians – but who is a wise judge of issues that incense people across the Middle East.

Here in Britain, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was castigated by his Labour bosses for making such a link between Palestine and the recent terrorist attacks in the US when he said that Middle eastern terrorism was bred “by the anger many people in this region feel at events over the years in Palestine.” Tony Blair was to spend 15 minutes on the phone to Ariel Sharon, trying to calm him down and get him to agree to meet Straw

Neither will Washington acknowledge its complicity in other areas which have a direct bearing on the present. Whilst Bush is mouthing off about the importance of curbing the funding of terrorist groups and keen to see the Taliban’s overseas assets frozen, it was his own administration, May gone, that scuttled international efforts to clamp down on tax havens, withdrawing support for an OECD initiative that called for more transparency in tax and banking procedures.

Moreover, it was again in May of this year, that the Bush administration was giving the Taliban $43 million as an incentive to reduce the cultivation of poppies, knowing full well the Taliban were notorious abusers of human rights and that they harboured terrorists from all over the Islamic world, including number one bogey-man Mr bin Laden . And there was no criticism of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who for years gave the Taliban military and financial aid.

For quite some time now, US, German and Russian intelligence services have been alerting Washington to the fact that Osama bin Laden has been trying to acquire weapon’s grade nuclear material, indeed as early as 1993 from Russian outlets with poor controls. What was the response of the Bush administration to this? They proposed cutting funds for a programme aimed at preserving nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.

At every turn we find evidence that the US is not only the creator of the monster that now seeks to destroy it, but of also unlocking the door wherein the creator lives.

Of course all the cant and clever rhetoric and soldier speak of the last few weeks have helped mask what are now becoming the true intentions of the US. The attacks on the US on September 11th are now being used to serve US foreign and domestic policy.

The oil reserves of Central Asia are large enough to attract any oil baron (200 billion barrels by some estimates) and as Afghanistan is geographically located between the Caspian basin and the markets of Japan, China and the Indian sub-continent, we can well see the country’s strategic importance to foreign policy planners wishing to dictate the way in which the region’s oil and gas reserves are utilised to the benefit of the US dollar.

The ‘war on terrorism’ is clearly being used to induce fear and mistrust in the US, and through this fear a justification will be found to curb all manner of civil liberties, increase police powers and military spending.

Furthermore, the current crisis serves to extend US power around the globe and perhaps sets a definite agenda for the coming century, the ‘war on terrorism’ serving as a replacement for the Cold War, now that the US has had its anti-communist passport stamped null and void and is desperate to maintain a pretext to assert its hegemonic credentials. (With regards US intentions in the 21st century, please see the article ‘Redefining War’ in issue 5 of Socialist View).

To be sure, this is not the first war of the 21st Century as Bush has claimed, but just one battle in a larger war that began in 1945 with the US determined to control the world’s resources, and there is more than ample evidence to prove this. More importantly, though, The entire episode serves to show the insanity of the system we live in, and the desperate need to wrest control of our planet away from the madmen before it is indeed too late. In the 20th century, some 220 million lost their lives in wars, in conflicts over trade routes, areas of influence, foreign markets, mineral wealth and the strategic points from which the same can be defended or in other words, in the name of profit.

As socialists, as observers of international affairs and commentators on the way they impinge upon the lives of our fellow workers, we are well attuned to the machinations of the elites of powerful countries as they seek to promote the interests of their corporate backers. Though it is no easy task for the uninitiated, we urge our fellow workers to be as vigilant as ever. To believe the arguments of the likes of Bush and Blair is to disarm yourself intellectually - for it is at times like the present, when the media is dancing to the tunes of governments, when the trumpets of jingoism, patriotism and reaction are sounding, that we need to be fighting the war of ideas with a little more gusto.

The solution to the ongoing insanity, we insist, remains the same. There is one world and we exist as one people in need of each other and with the same basic needs. There is far more that unites us than can ever divide us along cultural, nationalistic or religious lines. Together we can create a civilisation worth living in, but before that happens we need the conscious cooperation of ordinary people across the world, united in one common cause – to create a world in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation, a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders and a world in which production is at last freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used for the good of humanity – socialism