No to war frenzy!
Workers World Party statement
The massive and stunning attacks Sept. 11 on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon pose tremendous challenges to the
working class and the progressive movement in this country and
around the world. The U.S. capitalist ruling class and its
political establishment are now preparing a warlike response
that can only lead to more suffering and deaths.
In times of crisis like this, the workers individually
mobilize with great selflessness and sacrifice to save lives,
aid the wounded and distressed, and try to return life to
normal. People of many nationalities work shoulder-to-shoulder
in an admirable spirit of cooperation and caring, in the same
way they respond to natural disasters.
However, there is no politically independent, mass
working-class movement in the United States at this moment that
can make its own investigation and evaluation of what happened
and why. Even the corporate press and media are being
restricted more and more in where they can go and what they can
say. The people are left totally dependent on the imperialist
government for information, analysis and a course of
action.
Under these conditions, it would be irresponsible at this
time to jump to conclusions as to what political forces were
behind these attacks. Many, many times in the past, going back
to the battleship Maine in this country and the Reichstag fire
in Germany, bogus explanations have been fabricated by the
authorities in order to line up the population behind a course
of aggression.
It should be remembered that the 1964 congressional
resolution giving a blank check to the Johnson administration
for the Vietnam War was passed 98-2 after a fabricated "attack"
on U.S. warships in the Tonkin Gulf that was later exposed in
the Pentagon Papers.
On Sept. 12, a resolution passed the U.S. Senate 100-0 that
gives the present administration the same kind of unrestrained
authority to wage war and to finance the Pentagon with whatever
funds it requests. In the context of the present capitalist
economic downturn, everyone should understand that this means
with Social Security funds--the trillions of dollars set aside
from workers' earnings for their retirement--more than anything
else.
The pronouncements of U.S. leaders from President George W.
Bush on down make it clear that the government's priority is to
restore the image of unchallenged U.S. hegemony in the world by
unleashing its powerful military somewhere. There can be no
doubt that the targets will be peoples in oppressed countries
where the mass sentiment is already one of anger at past U.S.
aggression and extreme exploitation.
If this happens, it could unleash a witch-hunt against
anti-war forces in this country and against immigrants whose
national origins are similar to the peoples under attack.
The progressive movement must stand firm on its principles
in these trying times. It must fight for the right to seek and
tell the truth to the people and not be swept along in a
torrent of chauvinism and war frenzy.
The representatives of the military-banking-industrial
establishment have no answers. They can only make the situation
worse as the system they defend spreads poverty and instability
around the world.
The movement must seek to implement a program of class
solidarity among workers of all nationalities, religions,
genders and sexuality. It must continue to combat national
oppression, racism and bigotry of all kinds.
It must counter the reactionary vision of Fortress America,
with its inane but dangerous "missile shield" and rapid
militarization of society, with the struggle for a truly
humane, democratic, just and equitable world run by the working
people.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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