|
8th
International Conference |
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Contribution
of
Ray O’Light Group, USA
Country Report – USA – April
2004
By Ray O. Light Group
The main enemy of the world’s people is imperialism,
headed by US imperialism. The USA remains today the leading imperialist power,
the lone ”super-power”, the number one terrorist. It has proven itself to be the
most aggressive imperialist power with its launching of unprovoked, ”preemptive
and unending” wars, including the criminal invasion and occupation of the two
sovereign states of Afghanistan and Iraq, its recent military occupation of
Haiti, its increased military intervention in Colombia and the Philippines and
the massive expansion of ”permanent” military bases and strategic military
foothold in the oil rich Middle East and Central Asia. US imperialism represents
a powerful and lethal enemy of the world’s people.
Contrary to the views of pacifists, social democrats
and other opportunists, Leninism teaches
”Imperialism means war”. The
US imperialist terrorist war on the workers and oppressed peoples of the world
is not a deviation of the system or the outcome of a mad ”lone ranger” in the
White House. US imperialism’s war on the world’s people is the inevitable
outcome of the imperialist economic system and its drive to maximize
profit. US imperialism seeks to
re-divide the world for the enrichment of US finance capital at the expense of
its imperialist rivals and the oppressed peoples and toilers of the
world.
However, US imperialism is neither monolithic, with
divisions in its own ruling class, nor all- powerful, with increasing
contradictions with its imperialist rivals, evident in the struggle over the oil
riches of Iraq and the Middle East.
It is vulnerable to strategic military overextension and to the
resistance of the workers and oppressed peoples of the world. Imperialist war
and occupation bring untold suffering and misery to the workers and toilers of
the world. It also brings resistance, national liberation and socialist
revolution.
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The United States is a multi-national state of some
280 million people formed on land taken by conquest and extermination of the
native peoples (once 20 million strong) and built upon the 300 year long brutal
slave trade. Nations are forged through life and are not mainly determined by
imperialist state boundaries. The
stolen nations and land of Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Alaska, and Aztlan (the
Southwest United States) are imprisoned within the US state boundaries. The
Afro-American people in the traditional black belt have forged a nation through
life, oppression and struggle in the traditional black belt US South, as have
the people of Appalachia living in the traditional coal mining mountain region
of the United States.
In his brief but profound work, Imperialism and
the Split in Socialism, more than 85 years ago, Lenin observed that
”…[colonial] monopoly yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits
over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the
world. The capitalists can
devote a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe
their own workers, to create something like an alliance … between the
workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other
countries.” It is this fact of life
that explains why many of the oppressed and exploited in the USA today have
acquiesced in or even endorse Bush’s open-ended, multi-decade, declared,
undeclared war on any and every country or people he and his wealthy patrons
deem ”terrorists.” It explains the material basis for the extremely large,
parasitic and loyal US petty bourgeoisie, as well as for the political
backwardness of the US working class, its great nation chauvinism, its lack of
proletarian internationalism and the weaknesses of the working class and
communist movement in the United States.
But it would be erroneous to draw the conclusion that the relative
privileged position that many US workers (particularly the white section of the
working class in the US North) temporarily hold vis-à-vis the rest of the
international working class means that capitalist exploitation of them has
ceased. The ulcers and misery of capitalism based on the system of exploitation
of man by man are all present in the USA: poverty, hunger, dangerous workplaces,
low wages, unemployment, discrimination, homelessness, destruction of the
environment, police brutality and repression, lack of health care and old age
security. And this contradiction has intensified in the recent period.
The War at
Home
In our September, 2003 Newsletter, Revolutionary
Workers Organization is Key, we wrote: ”As we entered the new millennium,
the economic system of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, the highest stage of
capitalism, had been with us now for more than a century. The world capitalist
economic crisis, the crisis of ”over-production” from the system’s point of view
or ”underconsumption” from the standpoint of the international working class and
oppressed peoples, had been acute, leading to massive unemployment almost
everywhere in the world outside the USA. This economic crisis finally began to
hit home here at the beginning of 2001, right when George W. Bush was sworn in
as the new (unelected) President of the USA. On the eve of 9-11, with massive
lay-offs and an illegitimate presidency, George W’s approval rating was already
at a dangerously low 37%!
”Within the USA today, Bush’s War Against
the US working class and oppressed nationalities continues to
grow. In May 2003 the
US unemployment rate hit a 9-year high. Those workers still employed are in many
cases working longer hours. In this setting the Bush Regime is formulating new
federal rules to change the Fair Labor Standards Act enacted in 1938 requiring
employers to pay one and one-half times a worker’s pay for each hour worked in a
week more than forty. No doubt Bush and his corporate pals are working toward
elimination of overtime pay and the forty-hour work- week over the long run.
”With diversion of pension plans into stock market
swindle 401K programs, last year over 4.5 million retirees over 60 years old
returned to work---- up 50% from the year before! US government plunder of
Social Security to help pay for Bush’s unending war threatens to eliminate this
basic benefit for future retirees. Within the past two years 75 million people
(almost 30% of the US population) have had no health insurance coverage for a
substantial period. With the economic slowdown, the tax coffers at the federal,
state and local levels have been seriously depleted leading to accelerating
erosion of public school education, and other social benefits. Meanwhile, the
wealthiest citizens of the USA are getting huge cuts in their capital gains and
dividends taxes which will result in $350 billion dollars less money flowing
from them into government coffers. Who will make up this loss? The rich get
richer and the poor get poorer, as Karl Marx so profoundly observed.
”In November 2002, the US Congress, with the
Democrats controlling the Senate and the Republicans controlling the House,
enacted the Homeland Security Act, at the insistence of the Bush Administration.
With his establishment of the Homeland Security Department and placement of
170,000 (including many unionized) civil service government workers under the
dictatorship of Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge, George W. Bush, in the name
of national security and labor flexibility, stripped these workers of all
collective bargaining rights on the job. Another 700,000 workers are currently
threatened with the same fate. This blow to the union movement weakens the
general defense of the working class and the oppressed national minorities in
their fight back efforts. Such job categories as airport baggage screeners
became exclusively for US citizens, with 30,000 mainly national minority and
immigrant workers fired and many former screeners deported, creating real
animosity and hardship among workers.
In this period the Bush Regime took an unusually aggressive stand against
affirmative action plans aimed at uplifting the Afro-American people, a further
attempt to fan the flames of chauvinism and division among workers of different
backgrounds.
”In 2002, Homeland Security Chief Ridge, threatened
the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) when they were in the
midst of negotiations with the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), saying that
he would militarize the port, if they struck. Then the Bush Regime invoked the
Taft-Hartley Act which was combined with the PMA’s lockout of the ILWU in an
effort to intimidate the ILWU and its membership. The ILWU has been the most
progressive and most internationalist of US unions throughout the entire post
World War Two period. They refused to unload military ships during the Vietnam
War. The ILWU struck in support of the anti-WTO protesters in Seattle in 1999.
”While most of the companies in the PMA wanted to
settle with the ILWU, and they ultimately did settle, Stevedoring Services of
America (SSA), the largest stevedoring company in the USA and one of the world’s
largest, provided the main roadblock to settlement. They got their
pay-off this year when SSA was the first company to be awarded an USAID
contract for rebuilding Iraq---to manage and repair Iraqi ports, including the
country’s major deep-water port in Umm Qasr---despite the fact that it had never
before worked in a war zone. In June the US/British military administration at
the Port transferred control of the port to SSA. This contract gives SSA a foot
in the door in this region with so much oil wealth. This is one of many
instances where the war of the monopoly capitalists against the working class at
home is directly connected with the imperialist war against the oppressed
peoples abroad.
”Finally, on the basis of the first USA Patriot Act,
passed by Congress at a time of Bush-inspired mass hysteria, more than a
thousand Muslim and South Asian men were rounded up in the aftermath of
September 11th and held for months in violation of previous US law. Since then
thousands more were ordered to report to the Immigration Service and were then
deported en masse. The USA Patriot Act and its sequel represent a fundamental
alteration of the bourgeois democratic rule that has operated domestically at
least since the [end of the] McCarthy Era. Even bourgeois media refer to these
post 9-11 laws as totalitarian powers and witch hunting. These laws provide for
secret arrest and imprisonment without charges, warrantless searches, wholesale
invasion of privacy, increased police surveillance and vastly strengthened
police powers over the citizenry. As we pointed out in November 2001, ”the US
working class and oppressed nationalities are facing a rapid and intense
militarization and fascisization of US society.” (Emphasis in original,
”Bush’s Global Terrorist War and the September 11th
Events”)
”The domestic war waged by the Bush Regime against
the US population has been vital to the efforts of these thieves and cutthroats
to keep such massive crimes as the multibillion dollar theft by Enron of
California state energy funds from leading to the impeachment of President Bush,
Vice President Cheney et al. Enron had been the biggest supporter of Bush’s
campaign for President of the USA.
Prior to September 11th V.P. Cheney refused to turn over to Congressional
Committees the records of his discussions with Enron executives regarding the
new Bush Administration Energy Policy. As a result of his refusal, Cheney became
the first top government leader ever charged with contempt of Congress by the
General Accounting Office!
”Bush’s War at Home has allowed corporate criminals
such as Vice President Dick Cheney to move from the CEO position at Halliburton,
the second largest provider of oil and gas pipeline services in the world, where
they agreed to pay $4 billion in cash and stock to settle more than 300,000
asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits to the top of the US government where
he has been a drum major of death for the people of Afghanistan and now
Iraq.
”Even
more remarkable is the fact that while Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO two
Halliburton subsidiaries sold $73 million worth of oil equipment and services to
the Saddam Hussein Regime in Iraq!! Moreover, in violation of a 1995 Clinton
Executive Order banning US trade and investment in Iran and in violation of the
Iran-Libya Sanctions Act passed by Congress providing sanctions to foreign
companies involved in Iran’s oil industry, Halliburton provided oil equipment to
Iran through its foreign subsidiaries with Cheney defending the company’s
actions. Even now, through this means, Halliburton continues to do business with
Iran, one of Bush and Cheney’s key members of the ”Axis of Evil”!!! Despite
similar US sanctions against doing business with Libya, another so-called ”rogue
state”, since the US embargo against Libya was implemented in 1986, Halliburton
has continued to the present day to perform work there, through its British
office. In 1995 Halliburton was fined $3.8 million for re-exporting US goods
through a foreign subsidiary to Libya in violation of US
sanctions.
”Yet
it is the Bush-Cheney Regime that has sent the sons and daughters of the US
working class to kill and be killed by citizens of these same countries in the
name of national security!! The same ”energy pirates” responsible for the
California energy crisis of 2000-2001 and the recent blackout across much of the
Northeast and Midwest in the USA (and in Canada) and in fact for the US
government’s energy policy (Enron, etc.) were the biggest backers of the Bush
campaign in 2000. Key to the ”(s)election” of George W. Bush in 2000 was the
elimination of thousands of Black voters ineligible (or ruled ineligible) in
Florida and elsewhere because of felony drug convictions. The opening round of Bush’s global war
of terror was against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan which had just carried
out a successful campaign to eradicate a majority of the world’s poppy
production. Even before that war was declared over, as US and coalition troops
moved into areas vacated by the retreating Taliban, poppy production was
immediately resumed, thus enabling the resumption of this key component in the
international drug trade and ensuring that the record U.S. prison population
would not be shrinking as the next US Presidential Election looms on the
horizon.
”Is
this not the very personification of a ”rogue regime”? ”Regime change” at home
is on the order of the day. Clearly, such a regime and the system that has
generated it cannot be replaced by ”the customary methods of the working
class---trade unions and co-operatives, parliamentary parties and the
parliamentary struggle” as Stalin described it.”
(See Revolutionary
Workers Organization is Key, ROL Newsletter, Sept.
2003)
The manufacturing base in the United States continues
to shrink as US finance capital, backed by military might, continues to scour
the oppressed nations, semi-dependent countries and former socialist countries
for cheap labor and maximum profit. Neo-liberal trade deals like NAFTA and
computer technology accelerate the process. From 1979 to 2000 over 4.5 million
manufacturing jobs were eliminated in the US. Since George W. Bush took office a
little over three years ago, an additional 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have
been lost. New jobs that are created are generally in the low wage service
sector (now representing 80% of jobs) such as hotel, hospital, retail clerks and
cashiers. While millions of people in the US live parasitically by clipping
coupons (stocks, bonds, real estate, commodity investment, etc.), one-half of
all workers live paycheck to paycheck. One area of job growth has been the
prison industrial complex, a vast source of cheap labor where workers have no
rights. US prison population is at an all time high with some 6.5 million people
either in prison or on parole or probation, over triple the number 25 years ago.
The gap between rich and poor widens. The wealthiest
1% of the population owns the same amount of the wealth as the bottom 95%. CEO’s
of the largest 500 corporations average over 500 times the salaries of their
employees. (Ten times the gap between CEO’s and their workers in the other
imperialist countries!)
Government regulatory agencies such as the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), established to enforce
workplace safety, side more and more openly with big business and 10,000 workers
are killed every year in workplace accidents.
Increased Repression
and the Drive Toward Fascism
The Bush forces, led by white supremacist Attorney
General John Ashcroft, used the ”war fever” following 9-11 to pass draconian
”anti terrorism” laws that can be used against any force in the USA that resists
any part of the corporate program for maximum profits of the wealthy, starting
with the USA Patriot Act. With these new laws and other repressive measures and
the active implementation of old laws such as the 1996 Clinton era
”Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,” the US working class and
oppressed nationalities are facing a rapid and intense militarization and
fascisization of US society.
Bush created a new cabinet level position of Homeland
Security headed by none other than former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge who
signed the execution order for Afro-American revolutionary political prisoner
Mumia Abu Jamal. Congress voted a
$40 billion dollar down payment to upgrade and streamline the intelligence
apparatus. This was followed by the establishment of the new Homeland Security
Department (shades of Nazi Germany) which coordinates police and enforcement
agencies at the federal level. 14,000 US federal marshals have been added in the
name of airline safety. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (now part of
”Homeland Security”) hired new agents and border patrols were beefed up. Tens of
thousands of National Guard troops have been assigned to protect the ”Homeland”.
Programs have been implemented to encourage workers to spy on workers, neighbors
on neighbors, students on students.
There is currently underway a bipartisan
Congressional commission conducting an investigation into the events of 9-11.
This commission is thus far promoting the view that the intelligence ”failures”
leading up to 9-11 were both due to under-funding of the intelligence community
and unnecessary legal impediments to conduct investigations. This bipartisan
commission will likely serve up proposals to even further increase funding for
the repressive state apparatus, and further erode civil rights by propping up
and extending the process of the USA Patriot Act and the like.
The bourgeois democratic rights to protest, dissent
and demonstrate within the confines of the system are being replaced by
repressive martial law actions. Those who wish to demonstrate against the US
President are forced into ”free speech zones” out of sight of the public, or
face arrest. Anti-globalization and anti-war protesters have been herded into
caged areas and kept isolated from marching and demonstrating en masse. Last
November (2003), 30,000 protesters, including 10,000 workers associated with the
American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
gathered in Miami Florida against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas
(FTAA). They were met with
fascistic police repression including rubber bullets, tear gas, incidents of
violence set off by police provocateurs and arrests. This police response is now
being promoted in law enforcement circles as ”the Miami model”. The fact that
the brutal Miami police response was funded with $7 million of the $87 billion
allocated to carry out the brutal occupation of Iraq is another of the many
instances where the war of the monopoly capitalists against the working class at
home is directly connected with the imperialist war against the working class
and the oppressed peoples abroad.
Two Parties – One
Master
The US imperialist-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
were overwhelmingly supported by representatives of both major US political
parties, including Democratic Party Presidential contender John Kerry. Bush was
granted full war powers with only one dissenting vote. There was overwhelming
bipartisan support for the USA Patriot Act and for ”Plan Colombia” with $1.6
billion to fight against the liberation movement of Colombia and oppose the
peoples in the Andean region of Latin America. With little debate and virtually
no opposition, record ”defense” budgets of over $400 billion a year have been
passed, as well as an additional $87 billion allocated for the cost of the
occupation and ”reconstruction” of Iraq, a price tag that will continue to climb
and will continue to be supported by both political parties. Both parties
willingly provide billions of dollars of new funds for ”homeland security”.
There have been fissures within the ruling class
leading up to and since the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Within the
Republican Party and even within the Bush family, there were those who promoted
a multilateral approach with UN participation. Key representatives of the first
Bush administration like Brent Scowcroft and General Zinni promoted such a view
to the point that Bush was forced to go through the charade of seeking UN
support. The Democratic Party was apparently a major force behind the formation
of the pro-imperialist ”Win Without War” coalition, promoting ”diplomacy” in
Iraq over war, while embracing the same goals of toppling the Hussein government
and controlling the vast oil resources of Iraq. The differences within and
between the two parties have been tactical: whether it is best for US
imperialism to use multilateralism or unilateralism; whether the war in Iraq
”detracted” from the ”war on terror”. There is full unity between the two
parties on the objective of imperialist plunder and full support for the
so-called ”War on Terrorism”.
Labor Lieutenants
Fronting for Capital
The AFL-CIO leadership continues to be locked in a
long-standing embrace with the US imperialist government going back to its
formation at the height of the anti-communist McCarthy period in 1955 following
the driving out of the progressive ”left” unions and leadership. AFL-CIO head
John Sweeney offered full political support to George W. Bush and his ”war on
terror”, serving up the sons and daughters of the working class to be cannon
fodder on the altar of corporate profits. The Executive Council of the AFL-CIO,
representing the top leadership of all the major unions in the USA, stated after
the criminal invasion of Afghanistan was well underway, ”We support the
president in his decision to use military force…even as we recognize this
struggle may well be long and difficult”. Behind the scenes, the AFL-CIO
leadership worked hand in glove with US imperialism’s failed efforts to
overthrow the popular Chavez Government of Venezuela funneling National
Endowment for Democracy funds to the Chavez opposition. The AFL-CIO supports
reactionary and right wing unions from Haiti to the Philippines against the
genuine, class struggle oriented unions. And it was this same ”social
democratic” Sweeney and the AFL-CIO leadership that, after 9-11, cancelled long
planned anti-IMF protests scheduled in Washington, D.C. as part of their efforts
to line up the working class behind George W. Bush.
”Once they had put their prestige behind Bush it was
impossible for these leaders to defend on the domestic front even the most
immediate and partial interests of their own members against the Bush-led
corporate pirates with their economic stimulus packages for tax breaks for the
rich, massive corporate lay-offs, the Bush energy policy sponsored by Enron, the
fast track vote on the FTAA, etc.” (See The Social Props of Bush’s Terrorist
War, ROL Newsletter, March 2002)
The workers self-defense organization of trade unions
is now at its lowest rate of membership since the early part of the last century
with some 13% of workers in unions and less than 9% of the private sector.
Factories are routinely closed with no organized resistance. Only a few unions
do serious organizing and even this is on a ”business unionist” basis. Such
decline in the trade union movement has a direct correlation to the diminishing
standard of living of the US working class. On the other hand the AFL-CIO
withholds no resources when it comes to attempting to deliver votes to the
Democratic Party, the so-called ”friends of labor”.
With a few notable exceptions such as the successful
Teamsters strike against United Parcel Service a few years ago, organized labor
in the USA has largely abandoned the weapon of strike, a reflection of its
extremely defensive position. Nevertheless, there was a recent major four month
strike/lockout of some 74,000 grocery store workers in California in response to
company demands to increase worker health insurance costs, previously paid in
full by the companies. The union leadership had not developed the necessary
united front with other workers and the community that they could rely on to
defeat the united front of the employers, and the strike ended in defeat.
However, the workers displayed some real readiness to struggle, a positive sign
for the future.
Facing extinction, the AFL-CIO leadership now pays
lip service to union organizing. It has reversed its decades long divide and
conquer anti-immigrant worker position and is now calling for amnesty for
undocumented workers in the US, a positive step toward unifying the working
class. The AFL-CIO also called on unions to participate in the November
demonstrations in Miami against the FTAA and well over 10,000 trade unionists
responded. In spite of the efforts of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy to lead the
workers down a path of social chauvinism since the ”battle in Seattle”, the
worsening economic crisis and the anti-globalization movement continue to
present real opportunities for mobilizing the US working class and oppressed
nationalities in international solidarity against US imperialism. All these developments provide a wider
opportunity for revolutionaries to work within the US trade union
movement.
Media Organizes for
War, Imperialist Culture Conditions the Masses
The US monopoly capitalist controlled media joined in
lockstep in justifying the march to war and becoming part of the propaganda
machine of the US government. The disturbing events of 9-11 were shown thousands
of times over, week after week, month after month in a mass media brainwashing
-- planting the horrific images into the psyche of the masses. They created a frenzy for revenge and
for the Bush terrorist war against humanity. TV reporters embedded with US
troops during the invasion of Iraq, turned the war into a ”sporting” event,
cheering the home team. Dan Rather, the anchorman of CBS evening news, took to
the talk show circuit as a drum major for war. In news reports, the corporate
controlled media consistently labels resistance fighters in Iraq as
”terrorists”; US mercenaries as ”contractors”. They create staged events such as the
pulling down of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad by the ”masses” of the
people, without showing either the US tank and soldiers that did it or the empty
square devoid of the multitudes. Goebbels would have been proud of the US
media.
The entire imperialist system is based on lies and
corruption. The US government with the help of the compliant and bought off
media covered up connections between the Bush and bin Laden families through the
Carlyle Group, the 10th largest defense contractor. Likewise it
buried the long standing CIA connections with bin Laden and the Taliban as well
as with Saddam Hussein. What Bush and the administration knew before 9-11 was
covered up, as were the economic reasons centering around oil for invading and
occupying Afghanistan. The ramp up to war and the ensuing occupation of Iraq
were based on lie heaped on lie—the alleged existence of weapons of mass
destruction, the alleged Al-Qaida/Saddam Hussein connection, the alleged
formulation of a nuclear program in Iraq, the alleged bringing of ”democracy”
and the projected jubilant response of the Iraqi people welcoming US troops as
”liberators”. Hidden initially was the fact that the Bush administration was
already planning for war in Iraq prior to 9-11 and the fact that giant
energy and construction firms of Halliburton and Bechtel were given contracts to
”rebuild” Iraq prior to the actual invasion.
US imperialist culture, with which the media is
interconnected, promotes the individualism, materialism, violence and decadence
of US imperialist society. US youth average 35 hours a week in front of
television sets. Clever ads, often sold with sexual themes, push crass
consumerism. The onslaught of ”reality” TV shows like ”Survivor”, promote
getting ahead at the expense of everyone else. The new hot ”reality” TV show is
”The Apprentice” where billionaire mogul Donald Trump fires the contestants who
are trying to get a job. The slogan, ”You’re Fired!” has now become an accepted
and ”positive” part of the cultural landscape, helping to solidify the bosses’
power over the working class. Rush Limbaugh, the rabidly white supremacist,
anti-union, anti-worker, anti-immigrant pro-war right winger, is the highest
paid radio talk show host ”earning” $31 million a year for spewing his
poison!
”The Passion”, the new controversial anti-Semitic
movie depicting the Christ crucifixion is already one of the top grossing movies
of all time. It not only pushes mysticism, but intolerance of other religions
and people. This fits nicely into the Bush-led ”war of terror” as US imperialism
in its new Christian ”crusade” invades majority Muslim countries and intimidates
and rounds up Muslim people at home.
The Anti-War
Movement
Initially, in an orgy of national unity, fostered by
mass propaganda and brain washing, the vast majority of the US people, including
its working class, tragically supported the US imperialist so-called ”war on
terror”. Bush’s approval ratings soared to 90%. The one notable exception of
opposition to the Bush policies was the majority of Afro-American people. This
reaction was undoubtedly based on the Afro-American people’s own experience of
400 years of US terror and the current experience of national oppression: ”last
hired, first fired”; lower pay and life expectancy; limited access to education
and healthcare; Bush attacks on affirmative action programs; police brutality
and murder; the highest incarceration and death penalty rates; stolen land and
the stolen 2000 election based on the theft of Afro-American (and other) votes
in Florida. While the Bush Administration has cleverly placed Secretary of State
Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in high places, and
this has undoubtedly played a role in keeping large masses of Afro-American
people from joining in the anti-war protests in the streets and kept them
serving in the military, it has nevertheless failed in winning the hearts and
minds of the Afro-American people for war.
The Bush war drive and its lie machine did not go
entirely unchallenged even in the ”belly of the beast”. New York City Labor Against the War
(NYCLAW), formed by courageous trade unionists within two weeks after 9-11,
provided an objectively anti-imperialist response within the trade union
movement. At first a lone voice, they were joined in time by a number of local,
state and even a few national unions opposing the Bush war drive, especially as
the invasion of Iraq was being ramped up. A series of positive and large
demonstrations were held in Washington and San Francisco and many other cities
around the country culminating in massive demonstrations on February 15, 2003
where there were 500,000 people in NYC alone. In this latter protest there were
with far more working class and national minority participants than at the
previous anti-war demonstrations.
Lacking clear and decisive anti-imperialist and
communist leadership, two glaring weaknesses developed in the movement even as
it was growing large in early 2003. First was the view that the war in Iraq was
”different” from the US imperialist war on Afghanistan, that is was separate
from the Bush-led imperialist war of terror against the world’s people. Even in
most ”leftist” circles by this time there was nary a mention of Afghanistan.
Second was the view, pushed and accepted by various shades of opportunists from
Trotskyites, social democrats, revisionists, pacifists and anarchists (including
the Workers World Party which nevertheless played an anti-imperialist role as
the driving force behind the ANSWER coalition) that we could ”stop the
imperialist war in Iraq before it starts” without dealing with the imperialist
system itself or acknowledging the US imperialist war against the Iraqi people
had been waged for 10 years. After
the actual military invasion of Iraq and the quick initial US military victory,
both these opportunist tendencies helped lead to confusion and demoralization
among the many new anti-war activists and an ebb in the growing anti-war
movement internationally and especially within the USA.
On March 20th, 2004, the day of worldwide
anti-war activities on the one-year anniversary of the open invasion of Iraq,
there were once again positive anti-war actions in over 250 cities in the
US. These included over 100,000
demonstrators in NYC, 50,000 in San Francisco and even a demonstration in
Fayetteville, North Carolina, the home of Fort Bragg, one of the main US
military bases used for aggression abroad. These included leaders, speakers and
participants from the significant and growing US Military Families Against the
War movement as well as Veterans for Peace. The March 20th actions,
combined with the developing resistance of the Iraqi people against the
increasing brutal U.S. occupation, should help reinvigorate the anti-imperialist
war movement in the United States.
Quandary and
Quagmire: At Home and Abroad
The imperialist ruling class of the United States is
in a deepening military and political quagmire in Iraq. They are over-extended
militarily with two major invasions and occupations. (As always, the
imperialists underestimate the ability of the masses of the people to make
history.) They have had to invoke
”stop loss” measures extending the tour of duty of units in combat and call up
more and more National Guard and Reservists creating greater discontent among
the soldiers themselves. The ”lone ranger” Bush government is now begging the
United Nations and international community to bail them out. After having
successfully bullied and bribed almost every government in the world to join its
worldwide terrorist coalition ”against terror” in support of the invasion and
occupation of Afghanistan, US imperialism is successively more isolated from the
world community in relation to the war in Iraq. Even the so-called ”coalition of the willing” is breaking
apart with the Spanish government withdrawing its troops, reflecting a mandate
of Spain’s populace, followed by the Dominican Republic and Honduras. Despite
offering huge bribes, the US has never been able to utilize Turkish troops. It is very significant that the US
imperialists have not yet succeeded in getting Muslims to fight
Muslims.
The Bush administration and US imperialism are also
in a deepening political quagmire right at home in the United States. They stand
exposed as the corrupt liars they are. The economic basis for occupation of Iraq
is more and more exposed. Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton and subsidiary
Brown and Root reap massive cost plus contracts in the so-called
”reconstruction” of Iraq. On top of this, Halliburton has been caught with their
”hands in the cookie jar”, bilking the US government for artificially inflated
fuel prices and other fraudulent charges.
As the resistance in Iraq grows, as unity between
Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities increases, the working class of the US, who
in their majority has supported the war, is left holding the body bags of their
sons and daughters who had been forced into an economic draft. US mercenaries
who are now performing some 40% of military functions in Iraq are more and more
facing the righteous wrath of the developing Iraqi resistance. While bourgeois polls showed 90% of the
US population supported Bush in the aftermath of 9-11 and the invasion of
Afghanistan, the same polls now show that one-half the US population opposes the
current war in Iraq and George W. Bush’s approval rating hovers around 50%. The
orchestrated May 1, 2003 declaration of George W. Bush atop the aircraft carrier
proclaiming ”Mission Accomplished” and victory in Iraq is exposed as more
ludicrous by the day.
Over the last three months the Bush administration
has also been exposed from within. First, former Secretary of the Treasury Paul
O’Neill exposed that Bush planned for war in Iraq starting a few days after he
took office in January 2001. Then, David Kay, Bush’s head weapons hunter in
Iraq, quit his job saying there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Now, Richard Clarke, former White House anti-terrorism chief, has exposed that
Bush ignored warnings of a 9-11 type of attack and stayed fixated on Iraq even
after 9-11.
The system reeks with corruption and scandal. Bush is an unelected president, the
product of a stolen election. Massive corporate scandals from Enron (largest
Bush donor), WorldCom, to Imclone involving insider trading and ”cooking the
books”, left workers and investors high and dry, and represented multi-billion
dollar thefts. Few of these robber barons have gone to jail. The big oil and
energy administration in Washington (Bush and Cheney are both oilmen) turned to
the industry (including Enron!) to set Bush’s energy policy. Cheney is now the
first top government official to be cited for contempt of Congress for refusing
to supply his records of these discussions with energy companies. And Supreme
Court Justice Scalia, who will eventually be ruling on Cheney’s case and was
part of the five unelected judges that placed Bush into the presidency, has just
returned from a hunting trip with VP Cheney and refuses to recluse
himself!
Battered by political scandal and corruption, growing
economic and social suffering of the US populace, and the military quagmire in
the face of the Iraqi resistance and the difficulty in controlling its
reactionary allies in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration and US imperialism
may well create a ”Reichstag Fire”, a CIA manufactured incident, to provoke the
masses of US people back into full support of the Bush Administration and its
war of terror before the next election. Veteran bourgeois journalist Bob
Woodward has revealed that the Bush Administration has already made a deal with
Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices in order to lower gasoline prices in the USA
later this year in an attempt to manipulate the public and the outcome of the
November presidential election.
Having used thuggery and skullduggery to wrest the US presidency in 2000,
there is a good likelihood for a Bush cabal putsch in some form before the
election is held, if it is held.
Conclusion
In our September 2003 Newsletter, ”To Stop the
Bush-led War at Home and Abroad, Revolutionary Workers Organization is Key”
we said, ”Within the USA, genuine
international working class solidarity by the US working class with the Iraqi
working class involves fighting for an end to US military occupation of Iraq by
any means necessary, including support for the Iraqi national liberation
struggle. It involves working for the overthrow of the Bush Regime and the
global system of imperialist exploitation and plunder.”
”… in
the USA today, ‘nothing could be more important’ than the establishment of a
strong anti-imperialist movement composed of anti-war, anti-globalization and
anti-fascist elements with the cutting edge demand to ”Bring the Troops Home
Now!” as its key link to the rest of the international working class and the
oppressed peoples. … such a movement can only be consistently and effectively
led by the US working class through its revolutionary party, a genuine Leninist
Party, a party linked to the rest of the international working class and to the
national liberation movements of the oppressed peoples of Arabia, Asia, Africa
and Latin America.”
While there is today no Marxist-Leninist Party in the
USA, the sharpening contradictions in the United States itself provide an
impetus to the struggle of the workers and oppressed peoples within the state
boundaries of the USA to organize and resist. Many US workers are questioning
”our” ruler’s imperialist conduct not only on the issue of imperialist war but
on the issues of trade and globalization (remember the Battle in Seattle in
1999) and domestic policies as well. Well over one million US people have taken
their opposition into the streets. Working class troops are returning from Iraq
and Afghanistan, lied to by the government, and with eyes opened and questions
unanswered. While the danger of
fascism is growing, the opportunities for revolutionary work and activity
amongst the masses are increasing as
well.