EDITORIAL
No peace, no justice
In the Vietnam War and again at the time of the Gulf War,
different slogans have defined contending currents in the
anti-war movement. That seems to be happening again today.
While the differences are important and perhaps inevitable,
they should not prevent the movement from mobilizing the
broadest mass participation in united struggle against the
warmakers.
For several years at the beginning of the Vietnam War, the
issue was negotiations versus withdrawal. Peace groups that had
until then been focused mainly on the issue of nuclear arms
raised the slogan "Negotiations now," counterpoising it to a
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. As large coalitions
began to form against the war, some of these groups sought to
exclude the demand for withdrawal from the coalition
demonstrations.
This struggle within the coalitions was ultimately resolved
in the streets. The demand to "Bring the GIs home" became so
immensely popular, and was so obviously the only way to end the
war, that it became the dominant slogan. Especially as news
began to filter out on how Henry Kissinger and others used the
Paris peace talks to threaten the Vietnamese with nuclear
weapons, the view that the movement here should support a role
for the U.S. government in shaping Viet nam's future became
discredited.
At the time of the Gulf War, the programmatic divide came
over the issue of sanctions. The first demonstrations, which
were organized by the precursor to today's International Action
Center, called for no war against Iraq. Period.
A second coalition formed in December 1991, a month before
the actual bombing started, that called for "Sanctions, not
war." This slogan implied that Iraq had to be punished--by the
U.S., but with UN cover, as it turned out. It also implied that
sanctions are not a form of war.
There are very few today who call themselves part of the
peace movement who would defend the sanctions on Iraq. After a
decade in which five times as many Iraqis have died of
sanctions than died of bombs, that slogan has withered away as
it became obvious to all that sanctions are a vicious and
brutal form of warfare targeting the most vulnerable members of
society--the old, the infants, the sick.
The issue today seems to be whether or not to have
confidence that "justice" for those killed in the Sept. 11
attacks can be had within the context of the existing
international framework.
The demand for justice is usually coupled with an
exhortation to hunt down and prosecute those responsible for
the terror attacks. In the meantime, without waiting for the
results of any investigation, the U.S. government is carrying
out a monstrous war against Afghanistan that threatens
literally millions of people with death by starvation and
exposure this winter. This death sentence is being carried out
on an innocent population long before the judicial niceties of
evidence, a trial and a verdict.
If the U.S. government were capable of bringing mass
murderers to justice, wouldn't the heads of the tobacco
companies be in jail right now? They knowingly condemned
millions of people in this country to a miserable death from
smoking-related diseases. And what about all the police who
have shot down unarmed people in the oppressed communities and
been set free after departmental review?
Are socially conscious people supposed to suddenly have
confidence that the authorities now investigating
terrorism--organizations like the FBI, the CIA, and local
police departments--can be trusted to dispense justice?
When it comes to activities abroad, the record is even more
dismal. If there is any organization independent enough of
Washington's pressure to bring mass murderers to justice, then
why isn't Chile's Pinochet behind bars? Why is Haiti's Toto
Constant alive and well in Queens, N.Y.? Why is Indonesia's
General Suharto enjoying retirement? Why are Henry Kissinger,
an architect of the Vietnam War, and Zbigniew Brzezinski,
mastermind of the Afghan counter-revolution, still powers
behind the throne in Washington?
The job of the anti-war movement is to stop the war. There
will be no justice while bombs are raining down on Afghanistan.
Justice for the victims of the terrible tragedy on Sept. 11
will come with a people's victory over the warmakers.
Reprinted from the Oct. 25, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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