[Oct. 17 Seattle] ETS! article

[chr2eemail at comcast.net]

Comrades,
This is the draft article that I sent to Geov, who will no doubt have comments. Meanwhile, if you have comments, criticisms or suggestions, I think it best to send them directly to me rather than sidetrack this listserv into discussion of them. (It’s 895 words, with the limit being 900.)--Fk.


Solidarity with the Afghan people against their U.S.-NATO and domestic oppressors!
To sideline the growing opposition to the supposed good war in Afghanistan, Barack Obama is using the same fear-mongering tactics as Bush and Cheney: 
“We must never forget… This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting…this is fundamental to the defense of our people.” (August 17 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.)
Problem. Neither Afghanistan or any other far-away physical haven is needed for plotting terrorist attacks inside the United States. 9/11 showed that apartments in U.S. and European cities suffice.
But Obama also proclaimed that his is a “strategy that recognizes that Al Qaida and its allies ha(ve) moved their base from the remote tribal areas---to the remote tribal areas of Pakistan,” while on September 11 U.S.-NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in The Hague that he saw “no signs of major al-Qaida presence” in Afghanistan. 
Oh. Then why are some 100,000 foreign soldiers and 70,000 military contractors (mercenaries) occupying Afghanistan, with McChrystal reportedly wanting to send 40,000 more U.S. troops? 
In August, at a more private Brookings Institution setting, the adviser to four presidents, 30-year C.I.A. veteran, and chair of Obama's Afghan task force (Bruce Riedel) answered this way: 
“The triumph of jihadism or the jihadism of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in driving NATO out of Afghanistan would resonate throughout the Islamic World…And, those moderates in the Islamic World who would say, no, we have to be moderate, we have to engage, would find themselves facing a real example. … So I think the stakes are enormous.” 
Thus, Riedel worries over the effects U.S. defeat will have in other Muslim countries, not over terrorist attacks in the U.S. This flows from the fact that when Osama bin Laden launched his terrorist crusade it was to drive the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia and several other oil-rich Muslim countries; and that he actually represented the extreme wing of a more moderate pan-Islamic bourgeoisie with the same underlying desire. (Bin Laden even had support among some dissident members of the House of Saud itself.) Riedel’s “enormous stakes” are that U.S. defeat in Afghanistan will embolden exploitative local rivals for domination of oil in these other countries, i.e., they’re imperialist stakes, pure and simple.
So the war must go on, indeed, it must be escalated! If tens of thousands of innocent Afghans have been killed, if over 830 U.S. soldiers (mainly working-class youth) are also dead, if the U.S. war machine is being used to defend a corrupt Afghan government dominated by murderous warlords and fundamentalists, so what? 
Enough of this imperial arrogance! 
After already being devastated by more than 30 years of almost continual wars, the Afghan people are today constantly threatened by death from the U.S.-NATO controlled skies, death from the warlord-dominated government, and death from the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban. But they’re not just passive victims. In fact, the Revolutionary Organization of Women of Afghanistan’s slogan “Neither the occupiers nor the bestial Taliban and the criminal Northern Alliance; long live a free and democratic Afghanistan!” represents a broad sentiment that periodically erupts into protests and clashes with the U.S.-NATO troops and Kabul authorities. Moreover, the people of Farah Province elected by a landslide a woman (Malalai Joya) to the 2005 parliament who is a militant advocate of secular democracy---and who angrily denounces both the Northern Alliance warlords and Taliban reactionaries. Such facts as these show the potential for developing a mass revolutionary-democratic upsurge. The missing key is organization, just as in this country.
Demonstrate October 17!
The justifiably angry Afghan people want and deserve our help in getting U.S.-NATO monster off their backs. But to have a movement that can drive the U.S. out of Afghanistan requires building up the political trend in society that grasps that the bloody injustices in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, and elsewhere are the inevitable product of the capitalist system, and that to end them this system must be overthrown. A large step in this direction is taken when large numbers of people in the anti-war movement realize that they must organize on their own, and fight against both parties in Washington. And Washington is giving us help

In nine months Obama and his filibuster-proof Congress have revealed to millions of people that the Democrats’ real program is reactionary on all fronts, a gussied up continuation of Bush‘s program. This is giving rise to new political realizations and anger that can really change the anti-war movement. The Nation, Progressive Democrats and others, however, are working overtime to steer these new realizations and anger right back into reliance upon saviors from the Democratic Party, while the right-wing demagogues are speculating on the developing political vacuum to build a racist, anti-immigrant, militarist, capitalist-loving mass movement. And they’re using tea-bagger and other reactionary demonstrations to do it with.
So we’re faced with an exciting opportunity, but taking advantage of it requires stepped up anti-war organizing in the working class and in oppressed communities, and that we use demonstrations to build up the anti-war and other progressive movements of the oppressed. 
U.S. imperialism, get the Hell out of Afghanistan!








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