HE ATTACK on the World Trade Centre has played right into the ism and the right-wing world- and they will play it for all it is worth.
At the time of writing the world awaits the first brutal military strike by forces against Afghanistan.
A huge task force warships, sands of troops, artillery, and missiles have been mobilised in the Middle and few really believe that this force will not be used against one of the poorest countries in the world. Bush has declared that the USA is at war, and that he wants Bin Laden dead or alive. But many more lives are at stake. Whatever Ise results from a military strike, tarian disaster.
Even before the first salvo bombs and sacis explodc, milon! are already starving in Afghanistan withdrawal of humanitarian aid, and tens of thousands are on the move as a result of Yet plans are being actively considered to go beyond a straight milsary strike on Aignanistan and to take it over by military conquest and install some kind of regime as yet undefined) in its place. British empire, and later the Soviet Union discovered in the past, if this can be done at all, it can only be done by more wholesale military action.
Blair and Straw travel the world drumming up support for Bush Governments - and by implication whole populations are warned that they either back the new imperialist offensive or, by definition, they will be seen as backing the War fever is being whipped up in the USA, and, in other countries, like Britain, the media is preparing the population for war.
T he elects or all tais on world politics will be Unfortunately most of these effects will be to the direct advantare of Us imperi alism (which has been politically strengthened events nember snoo oceanct of the working class and its allies world-wide and all those fighting for national and other rights.
This is a direct result of an act of be condemned. This is not only because we are totally opposed to of civilians, but because such acts of cannot advance the struggle of the working class and its allies one jot.
new-found alliance are not just planning and preparing US special forces (essentially death squads) are to be sent around the world eliminating Palestine - a policy condemned up to now by the Usa and Britain.
The policy is not new: Clinton has revcaled that he illegally) ordered the assassination of Bin Laden when he was President. The scale of operation being proposed by Bush, bowever, is of a different Looking for victims: Bush with Colin Powell order, and the ban on assassinations Although the ban was never fully enforced, its lifting will lead to its greatly expanded use.
The lifting of the ban on CIA assassinations is fust one aspect of a huge attack on civil liberties are being prepared on the basis that such civil mocrues namper toe wat against the terrorists. A string of measures are being prepared in the USA. while Home Secretary Blunkett is preparing a string of measures acte M ore than two weeks the attack the WTC the are no nearer estabthing approaching hard evidence, WE Was ConsiDe They have not even established the identity of all of the hijackers - since some of those initially named are still alive and well.
Whoever did it, however, it is icy in the Middle East and its support for the murderous policies of the Israeli government.
This lack of proof has not stopped the US from declaring that they have conclusive proof, which they now say that they unfortunately cannot make public - because they don't want the Taliban to know!
How proof Bin Laden's involvement would Taliban rather undermine them is not explained.
Bush, however, intends to invoke the rhetoric of "democracy" and "Freedom", but the old traditions of lynch law. The US will go to war first and produce the evidence (if They are building a coalition which is based largely on cynicism not survive the pressures of war.
Putin likes it because it legitimises his vicious war in Chechnya (where Chechens a week are still being killed, but which he has claimed is not to crush a national liberation And the Chinese bureaucracy like it because it legitimises their own The Indian government and the Pakistani dictatorship have joined in because the USA has reciproimposed against their development of nuclear weaponry, and nodded prop up Pakistan's collapsing economy. Others have Joined in for tear of the consequences to them - in terms of US retaliation - if they This attack came at a time when the rise of the anti-globalisation lenge the forward march of globalisation and the US neo-liberal project. US hopes and intends that this will be an opportunity to turn back the clock. In this sense the war drive is the military wing of the process of globaltsation and the neo-liberal offensive. The anti-globalisation movement must ensure that this does not bappen. But cach of the big recent mobilisations has met increasing levels of repression likely to get much worse. The tactics may have to modified.
The effects on refugees and asylum seekers and in Muslims and Arabs is already clear enough. Millions more refugees are being created are already facing increasing vioWeasel words from Blair and Bush abour "not being at war with which which him are presented i beavily racist and in Islamic fundamentalism is now seen by Bush as the new enemy was largely created by US imperialdenial of national rights, abject social conditions and the absence of a socialist alternative Remarkably Bush and Blair continue their war drive with little regard to its effects on the stock markets - which have been crashwas to caches Have unus The USA was already slipping towards recession, taking many advanced economics down enough. The anti-globalisation movement must not be allowed to energy and new impetus.
It may be that tactics will have to máss mobilisations which are not so vulnerable to state repression.
conditions which created the anti-globalisation movement - the increasing gap between growing ranks of the dispossessedare still there, and getting worse.
At the same time the left has to build a broad-based anti-war movement against the jingoism which is being whipped up, and which will get worse once the shooting starts.
This needs to be combined with the anti-globalisation movement and built at every level, including This is crucial, since acts of indi. vidual terror and their effects dis. tort the class struggle.
Already we have seen the TUC conference called off early, and with it whatever fight there was by the vatisation proposals of Blair's secDIU CEll Now the Labour Party conference is being cut to a half of its usual length, ensuring that the same battie over privausanon and olnei highly controversial politics for New Labour's second term is sup pressed or curtailed.
leaders and some politicians argues that it is "inappropriate" to debate party and polítical issues while there is a war It is seen as impolite and unpatriotic even to question the wisdom of backing Bush's lynch-mob offensive.
But behind the facade of warmongering rhetoric and the offensive to reassert imperialist dominance over the world's oppressed, Blair's govemment is not pausing, but pressing abead with all of its most reacGony bones and even more draconian suppression of civil rights in the name of "defending democracy".
The left must rally the unions and the lahour movement to a political Tight that must continue and intensify the more Blair wraps himself in the union jack, resorting to patrio"the last refuge of the scoundrel" as a pretext for further attacks on working people, at home and abroad.