BLOWBACK

What Part of 'Failure' Don't They Understand?

The lesson of Vietnam, for the US rulers, was "the public won't tolerate losses among US troops". So the Pentagon developed the strategy of using technology to murder innocent civilians and reluctant conscripts in various countries, keeping American lives safe. They raised proxy armies like the moujahidin in Afghanistan to do work they were too cowardly to carry out themselves. In Iraq, Yugoslavia and other places the USA bombed, killed and maimed, but US casualties were so low that an American soldier has more chance of being killed in an accident than in a war. And US civilian casualties were brought down to zero.

THAT POLICY HAS COMPLETELY FAILED.

The government claims to be looking for the 'folks who did it'. The folks who are most responsible are dead. Other folks who share responsibility include bin Laden. But if folks not directly involved can be said to be responsible, it follows, as night follows day, that the US government has the blood of September on its hands.

Before the massacre, some reporters asked foreign policy strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Orrin Hatch about the wisdom of funding Islamic fundamentalists and other illiberal elements. They all said it was worthwhile - support for the moujahidin led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. These sorcerer's apprentices have been pretty quiet since the 11th.

One political gain the spooks are making from their failure to protect us against the terrorists they financed is an increase in censorship and surveillance. Another gain is landing US troops in Central Asia. But the most important advantage the bourgeoisie is squeezing out of the bloodbath is an attack on workers' living standards. Within hours of the massacre, the airline chiefs announced tens of thousands of layoffs. They can make workers redundant without giving them severance pay in the event of a war or similar disaster. They simultaneously got their hands on millions from the social security fund to keep them in business, and guarantee their own executive salaries. For all their talk of 'United We Stand', the bosses are using a crisis entirely of their own making to attack our living standards, to try to scam us into identifying with the nation, into abandoning our own interests in favor of the interests of the people responsible for September 11 and numerous other holocausts. We, the victims of economic crisis, war and terrorism, have to turn the tables.

We have to show the workers of the Middle East that we are not their enemies. We should defend immigrants being rounded up by the police and denied lawyers and phone calls. Soldiers and terrorists on all sides should turn against their commanders. This has happened before. The "Shi'ite" uprising in Southern Iraq after the Gulf war was really class struggle. Kurdistan has many anti-capitalists who hate Kurdish nationalism.

Virtually everyone in the Middle East has a problem with their rulers. The working class in the oil and service industries of the Gulf has a particular grudge, and potentially, the power to do something about it, to create a world where we are not enslaved and killed by technology. There is no alternative to proletarian internationalism. September 11 was, among other things, a wake-up call. We have to fight to survive.

Though the bosses are trying to make the most of it, this is no conspiracy. Pearl Harbor was arguably the result of Roosevelt's cynical foreign policy. The massacres of Iraq and Kosovo were acts of calculated brutality. But this time, they have no clear objectives. They have admitted they're making it up as they go along. In their blind rage, they could provoke wars and uprisings beyond the control of "the world's only superpower". Put it this way - if all this hate and violence had the aim of dividing the working class, it has been a little too successful.

They thought they ruled the world. The fall of communism, the triumph of the West, the end of history! Yet it transpires they can't even control a gang of medieval imams. Their 'solution' to the problem is to intensify the brutal foreign policies which led to it in the first place! They have to be forced to reverse the policies which led to September 11. We have to demand the US goverment
 - stops the bombing
 - abandons Israel, and withdraws from the Middle East
 - disbands the parts of the state which sponsor terrorism
 - gives the money saved from these changes back to the workers

There is TOO MUCH evidence of CIA/Pakistani/Islamic terrorism links to detail here. Search the Internet for the words 'CIA', 'blowback' and 'Afghanistan'. For a clear account of the US government's sponsorship of Islamic fighters - and a prophetic warning of its consequences - read John K. Cooley's Unholy Wars - Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, Pluto Press, 2000.