Wanna stop war, racism? MOBILIZE

Workers World newspaper applauds all the forces who are mobilizing here in the U.S. and around the world.

Three years after “shock and awe” —the bombing campaign at the start of the Pentagon-led invasion of Iraq-it’s clear that the over whel m ing majority of people world wide oppose the war, particularly in this country. This sentiment has been fueled by loved ones com ing home in body bags or seriously physically and psychologically wounded and by the carnage of the occupation that has claimed tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and devastated the infrastructure of that country.

If administration fabrications about “weapons of mass destruction” awakened so many in this country to the lies on which the war was based, then the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and Guanta namo have become symbols of the sheer cruelty and violence with which it is being carried out. This public anger against the war is more and more holding Bush and the Pentagon responsible.

But Bush and the generals have made it abundantly clear that they have no intention whatsoever of retreating one inch from their quest to subdue by massive military force the entire Middle East and to recolonize it on a scale even greater than what the British and the French did after the first and second world wars.

It is also clear that Iran is the next target. And on this fact there is no division within the entire ruling class, including the leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

At this very moment they are laying the basis for attacking Iran and extending the war.

This must be a clarion call to all who oppose the war and the senseless deaths and brutality it brings. Close to half a trillion dollars is being wasted on war that could have been used for health care, jobs, food and education. But in addition, there’s a greater understanding that the causes behind this military madness are not “wea pons of mass destruction” or even the extre mism of one president—George Bush. The causes are systemic to imperialism, which is in deep crisis and, as a consequence, nurtures war, reaction and racism in a thousand and one ways, devastating and destroying the lives of people everywhere.

The working class and oppressed cannot rely on the capitalist parties, politicians and their elections—either the ones next fall, or the presidential elections two years later in 2008, to stop the war against Iraq, stop the threats against Iran and turn around the resources instead to come to the rescue of the people of this country who are experiencing more unemployment, lower real wages, racism and the oppression of women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.

The Katrina disaster, which forced yet another diaspora of African Americans from their New Orleans communities, must be seen in a broader global and historical context. How the U.S. government has dealt with the survivors, its ulterior motives of ethnic cleansing and displacement—mostly of impoverished African Americans—is not just a domestic issue, it is an outgrowth of imperialism as much as Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are.

That’s why on March 18 in New York City, after assembling at Times Square, thou sands of marchers will take their demands to the United Nations building for the immediate, unconditional and complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq. They will also raise, loud enough for the Security Council to hear the cry, “hands off Iran” and they will go to the U.N. to condemn Bush and the U.S. for massive human rights violation right here, epitomized by Katrina. On May 20, protesters will demo nstrate in Washington, D.C., against the U.S. threats leveled at Cuba and Venezuela.

There must be a revival of the mass, militant movement against the war like the anti-war demonstrations of millions of protesters around the globe on Feb. 15-16, 2003. It will take a united, independent mobilization of the people—moved first and foremost by the struggle to end the war, and incorporating all of the issues that confront society—to stop the war drive.

There is no other solution. There is
no short cut. The protests in New York, Cali fornia, throughout the U.S. and around the world on the third anniversary of the war can serve as engines to open a new phase of the global struggle against the war.

Ultimately, the struggle against war must be a struggle against capitalism. Capitalism and imperialism must expand or die in its quest for profit. That is the cause of war and intervention. And the struggle to get rid of capitalism can only take the form of the struggle for socialism and production for human need not for profit.