Editorial:
Playing into Bush's hands
The attack on the World Trade Centre has played right into the hands of US imperialism and the right-wing and reactionary forces all over the 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 US and British forces against Afghanistan.
A huge task force of warships, tens of thousands of troops, artillery, fighter aircraft, bombers and missiles have been mobilised in the Middle East and Central Asia – 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 Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive". But many more lives are at stake. Whatever else results from a military strike, however, it will trigger a humanitarian disaster.
Even before the first salvo of bombs and shells explode, millions are already starving in Afghanistan as a result of the withdrawal of humanitarian aid, and tens of thousands are on the move as a result of the threat of war.
Yet plans are being actively considered to go beyond a straight military strike on Afghanistan and to take it over by military conquest and install some kind of regime (as yet undefined) in its place. As the 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 "terrorists".
War fever is being whipped up in the USA, and, in other countries, like Britain, the media is preparing the population for war.
The effects of all this on world politics will be absolutely profound. Unfortunately most of these effects will be to the direct advantage of US imperialism (which has been politically strengthened by the events of September 11) and to the detriment 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 individual terrorism, which must be condemned. This is not only because we are totally opposed to the indiscriminate mass slaughter of civilians, but because such acts of individual terror cannot advance the struggle of the working class and its allies one jot.
The US and its new-found alliance are not just planning and preparing an attack on Afghanistan: US special forces (essentially death squads) are to be sent around the world eliminating suspects in the way Sharon does in Palestine – a policy condemned up to now by the USA and Britain.
The policy is not new: Clinton has revealed that he (illegally) ordered the assassination of Bin Laden when he was President. The scale of operation being proposed by Bush, however, is of a different order, and the ban on assassinations by CIA agents is to be lifted. 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 just one aspect of a huge attack on civil liberties are being prepared on the basis that such civil liberties hamper the war against the terrorists. A string of measures are being prepared in the USA, while Home Secretary Blunkett is preparing a string of measures here.
More than two weeks after the attack on the WTC the FBI are no nearer establishing, with anything approaching hard evidence, who was responsible. 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 most likely to be connected US policy 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 of Bin Laden’s involvement would help the Taliban rather than 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 any) for its actions later.
They are building a coalition which is based largely on cynicism and convenience, and which may not survive the pressures of war.
Russian leader Putin likes it because it legitimises his vicious war in Chechnya (where 200 Chechens a week are still being killed, but which he has claimed is not to crush a national liberation struggle but against "terrorists". And the Chinese bureaucracy like it because it legitimises their own abuses of human rights.
The Indian government and the Pakistani dictatorship have joined in because the USA has reciprocated by dropping sanctions imposed against their development of nuclear weaponry, and nodded through new loans to prop up Pakistan’s collapsing economy.
Others have joined in for fear of the consequences to them – in terms of US retaliation – if they don’t
This attack came at a time when the rise of the anti-globalisation movement was beginning to challenge the forward march of globalisation and the US neo-liberal project.
US imperialism 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 globalisation and the neo-liberal offensive.
The anti-globalisation movement must ensure that this does not happen. But each of the big recent mobilisations has met increasing levels of repression and this is likely to get much worse. The tactics may have to modified.
The effects on refugees and asylum seekers and in particular Afghans, Muslims and Arabs is already clear enough. Millions more refugees are being created while refugees in western countries are already facing increasing violence and persecution.
Weasel words from Blair and Bush about "not being at war with Islam" go alongside a war drive which is heavily racist and in which Muslims are presented as synonymous with terrorists.
Islamic fundamentalism is now seen by Bush as the new enemy world-wide, a phenomenon which was largely created by US imperialist policy in the region, by the denial 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 crashing as the events have unfolded.
The USA was already slipping towards recession, taking many other advanced economies down with it. Mass redundancies had begun and more which were already on the way before September 11.
US consumer confidence has now collapsed, and the crisis of profitability has been exacerbated. The extreme uncertainty over the outcome of military action has caused a crisis which has begun spinning out of control.
The effects on the neo-liberal project and the process of globalisation is now bound up not just with the war drive but economic developments.
There is even speculation that the major economies and the imperialist bankers may be forced to retreat into some form of neo-Keynesianism for a period in order to retrench – as was the case with some of the South East Asian countries during the Asian crisis.
Generally, however, the answer to each turn in the economic situation has been more neo-liberalism not less, and this may well be the case again.
For the left the task is clear enough. The anti-globalisation movement must not be allowed to falter, rather it must be given new energy and new impetus.
It may be that tactics will have to change – with more emphasis on mass mobilisations which are not so vulnerable to state repression.
The conditions which created the anti-globalisation movement – the increasing gap between rich and poor and the growing ranks of the dispossessed – are 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 in the labour movement and the trade unions.
This is crucial, since acts of individual terror and their effects distort the class struggle.
Already we have seen the TUC conference called off early, and with it whatever fight there was by the trade union leaders against the privatisation proposals of Blair’s second term.
Now the Labour Party conference is being cut to a half of its usual length, ensuring that the same battle over privatisation and other highly controversial politics for New Labour’s second term is suppressed or curtailed.
The union leaders and some politicians argues that it is "inappropriate" to debate party and political issues while there is a war on.
It is seen as impolite and unpatriotic even to question the wisdom of backing Bush’s lynch-mob offensive.
But behind the façade of warmongering rhetoric and the offensive to reassert imperialist dominance over the world’s oppressed, Blair’s government is not pausing, but pressing ahead with all of its most reactionary policies – including a new, and even more draconian suppression of civil rights in the name of "defending democracy".
The left must rally the unions and the labour movement to a political fight that must continue and intensify the more Blair wraps himself in the union jack, resorting to patriotism – "the last refuge of the scoundrel" as a pretext for further attacks on working people, at home and abroad.