WfJ/lNElIS,,I"(J(J,I/I, 25¢No.519 ~X-523 1 February 1991

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ar in I e•• •

erslanLess than 16 hours after the deadline

ran out for George Bush's ultimatum,squadrons of U.S. jets and bombersscreamed off runways in Saudi Arabiaand aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulfand Red Sea to drop their payloadsof death upon the people of Baghdad.Across the U.S. and Europe, outrageddemonstrators poured into the streets bythe thousands. While the media presentedgushing accounts of a high-tech videowar game and romantic sunset shots ofU.S. fighter planes, millions in Baghdadand other Iraqi cities were experiencingthe all-too-real stench of death on· thestreets and the screech of terror from theskies.

The White House proclaimed: "Theliberation of Kuwait has begun." theSpartacist League said: "The mass mur­der of the Iraqi people had begun."

To believe the first hours of TV cover­age, the high-tech U.S. war machine wassweeping the field in a seemingly blood­less war that would be all but over bybreakfast. Bush cheered that his dogs ofwar were "right on schedule." Beforemidnight the first "instant poll" resultswere in: 86 percent say "yes" to war.Evangelist preacher Billy Graham wascalled to the White House to stay in theguest bedroom and conduct a prayerbreakfast the next morning.

Wall Street, too, thanked god for beingon "our side": "After a moment of si­lent prayer for the troops in the PersianGulf and a short clang of the openingbell... trading got off to a flying start,"the New York Times (18 January) wrote,

continued on page 7

Bush's "New World Order"Means Imperialist Slaughter

APThe Revelation of "High Tech." Battleship Wisconsin launches Tomahawk cruise missile. U.S. rains death on Iraq withthousands of "smart" weapons.

On the night that American planes began bombing Baghdad, therewere immediate spontaneous angry protests in cities from New Yorkto San Francisco. At these and subsequent demonstrations, speakersfrom the Spartacist League read the following statement:

As we demonstrate here, the United States government israining death down on Baghdad. The mass murder of the Iraqipeople has begun.

George Bush has been planning this holocaust against the Arabpeoples of the Near East for months. The war criminals in theWhite House and the Pentagon are aided /and abetted by theDemocrats in Congress, both those who voted for this dirty warand those who have done nothing to stop it.

There must be a cry of outrage and action by the Americanworking people to stop this mass 'murder. Forget about writingyour Congressman to pressure this White House of war. What weneed is not just demonstrations on the streets, but power.

It is the sons and daughters of black, Hispanic and workingpeople who will die in the desert along with hundreds of thou­sands of Iraqis. The working people make this country run. Wehave the power to bring it to a grinding halt. Use that power now!

continued on page 7

-

Spartacist League

... ~"'lWV Photo

Spartacist League banner at January 26 San Francisco demonstration against Persian Gulf War.

u.s. Bombs Baby Formula Factory

VancouverBox 2717, Main PO,Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2(604) 255-0636

NorfolkBox 1972, Main PONorfolk, VA 23501

OaklandBox 32552Oakland, CA 94604(415) 839-0851 .

San FranciscoBox 5712San Francisco, CA 94101(415) 863-6963

Washington, D.C.Box 75073Washington, D,C. 20013(202) 872-8240

That afternoon the White House letloose with what the New York Times(24 January) called a "highly unusualpersonal attack on an individual jour­nalist." Bush mouthpiece Marlin Fitz­water declared Arnett was being "used"by the Iraqis. And then General Powellended up his Pentagon briefing stating,"It is not an infant formula factory nomore than the Rabtachemical plant inLibya made aspirin. It was a biologicalweapons facility, of that we are sure, andwe have taken it out."

CNN got in trouble with the feds whenit broadcast the government's illegaltapes of General Noriega talking with hislawyer. The former Panamanian leaderwas seized by the U.S. in the bloodyinvasion a year ago. The network has hadmillions' of intent viewers around theglobe during the Gulf War, but like therest of the media it is ultimately thehandmaiden of U.S. policy. So the nextday, the CNN anchor badgered Arnettwith "questions" about whether he isbeing "misled," whether he was "free,"was his information "reliable," was he"being told what to say" and "instructedto report the Iraqi line." The veteran war.correspondent replied that "I learned inVietnam to believe only what my eyeshad seen."

Now every report from Arnett isaccompanied by a disclaimer saying hisreports are "based on statements by Iraqigovernment officials" and his "limitedpersonal observations." The caption atthe top of the screen reads "Cleared byIraqi Censors." It shouldsay "And by theCensors at CNN and the Pentagon." Somuch for CNN CEO Ted Turner and hisfiancee, the former "Hanoi Jane" Fonda,standing by their man in Baghdad.•

EdmontonPSS.E P.O, Box 96.05Edmonton, AB T6E 5X3(403) 436-5105

, MontrealC,P Les Atriums, B,P. 32066Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 '

New YorkBox 444, Canal St. Sta.New York, NY 10013(212) 267-1025

Los AngelesBox 29574, Los Feliz Sta,Los Angeles, CA 90029(213) 380-8239

MadisonBox 1492Madison, WI 53701

DetroitBox 441043Detroit, MI 48244

E1C 8L9

Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LO~AL DIRECTORY

TorontoBox 7198, Station AToronto, ON M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138

MonctonP.O. Box 563Moncton, NB

National Office:

AtlantaBox 4012Atlanta, GA 30302

BostonBox 390840, Central Sta.Cambridge, MA 02139(617) 492-3928

ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 663-0715

ClevelandBox 91037Cleveland, OH 44101(216) 781-7500

beating Arnett on the air. And in ablatant case of censorship, Arnett's replyto the Pentagon slanders was blanked outon the American side.

But the information broadcast aboutthe plant utterly demolishes the Penta­gon's claim. As Arnett was saying thatthe plant produced 20 tons of powderedmilk a day and was "the only source ofinfant formula food for children one year,and younger in Iraq," the screen showedshots of a milk bottling line and cansof baby food filmed by the news net­work just a few months ago! Arnettreported: "CNN had visited this. plantlast August for a story on .how Iraqwas trying to beat the internationaleconomic embargo by producing moreessential foods at home to make up forthe loss."

Immediately, the "spin controllers" atthe U.S. military command in Riyadh,Saudi Arabia, rushed in. In the middleof a news briefing Lt. Col. Mike Galla­gher was handed a piece of paper fromwhich he read that "this facility has mili­tary guards around it, barbed wire fence,it has a militarygarrison outside" andit was "associated with biological war­fare production." His proof? "Numeroussources" say so.

CNN quickly got back to Arnett atthe Al Rashid hotel in Baghdad. Arnettbegan: "There was one guard at the gate.As we arrived, they were bringing out acart full of powdered milk from Britainthat they used to. .," At this point com­munication was cut for a full minute.When he came back on, Arnett statedthat the break in transmission "was noth­ing to do with this end," whereuponAtlanta anchorman Bob Cain cut off

. Arnett's effort to continue his account.

LENIN

1 February 1991

winning journalist as Saddam's dupe!Caving in before this anathema, CNNheadquarters in Atlanta began brow-

TimeIraq's only infant formula factory (right), before U.S. obliterated It claiming It was "biological warfare" plant.

No. 519

TROTSKY

'!~!!!!!v.~~!~!!.~'!.! ~DIRECTOR OF PARTY PUBLICATIONS: Liz Gordon

EDITOR: Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jorge Ramirez

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Valdez

EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson,Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer, Marjorie Stamberg

The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the lriternational Communist League (Fourthtnternatlonatlst) .

Workers Vanguard (USPS098-770) published biweekly, except 2nd issue August and with 3-week interval December,by the Spartacist Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial),(212) 732-7861 (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Domesticsubscriptions: $7.00/24 issues. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER:Send address changesto Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116.

Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint.

To Young FightersAgainst Imperialist War

As American bombs devastate Iraq, massprotests in the United States have broughtout a new layer of young people appalled bythe horrors ofimperialist war. Many youngerdemonstrators are moved by pacifist senti­ments, while liberal andfake-socialistprotestorganizers seek to channel outrage into sup­port for Democratic Party "doves." In themid-1930s, as Mussolini's Italy prepared toinvade Ethiopia, the Russian internationalist

revolutionary Leon Trotsky addressed a message to socialist youth warning against a"popular front" for peace that would tie working people to the imperialist parties ofwar.

The youth are at present deeply preoccupied with the question of the war danger.And rightly so. Their heads are at stake first.. ..

For Marxists the struggle against war coincides with the struggle against imperialism.The means for this struggle is not "general disarmament" but the arming of the prole­tariat for the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of aworkers' state. Our slogan is not the League of Nations, but the Soviet United Statesof Europe and of the entire world!

Today we see in France how the reformists and the so-called "Communists" (inreality only Stalinists) 'have allied themselves with the Radicals, ostensibly for thepurpose of struggling against war and fascism. Who are the Radicals? A thoroughlyimperialist party which stands for the Versailles treaty and for the French colonialempire. How can one lead a struggle against the imperialists' war together with animperialist party?

Naturally, the Radicals readily speak for peace. Hitler also works in the sweat ofhis brow for peace. They are all for peace: priests, bankers, generals. But what doesthe pacifism of the bourgeois governments and parties mean? Vile hypocrisy. Everyrobber prefers, if possible, to take away his victim's purse "peacefully" without takinghis life. Mussolini would naturally prefer to pocket Ethiopia "peacefully," that is,without the expenses and sacrifices of war. England and France would like to enjoytheir plunder "in peace." But woe to whoever hinders them! That is the meaning ofcapitalist love for peace.

Petty-bourgeois pacifism is in general sincere, but so much the more blind andhelpless, since in essence it is but the belief of peasants and petty merchants that itis possible to make the ruling classes better, to disarm the great capitalist robbers andinduce them to live peacefully side by side. But with all its good intentions petty­bourgeois pacifism becomes a drug with the help of which the imperialists overcomethe masses at the proper moment and make cannon fodder out of them: We accusethe leaders of the Second and Third Internationals of helping capitalism to preparea new world slaughter through their nonsensical twaddle. In a new war the reformistsand the Stalinists will in the majority of cases stand on the side of their governments,especially in France, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia. Whoever really wants to fightagainst war must speak to the people clearly, must gather the fighters under onerevolutionary banner, under the banner of the Fourth International.

-Leon Trotsky, "To Young Communists and Socialists Who Wish to Think"(July 1935)

On January 20, American bombs de­stroyed an infant formula and powderedmilk plant on the outskirts of Baghdad.Two days later CNN's Peter Arnett, theonly U.S. media correspondent in Bagh­dad, personally toured the factory andreported this atrocity.

Arnett's January 23 broadcast reportimmediately touched off a fire storm ofofficial cover-up lies. This was no babyfood factory, they declared, it was a"biological weapons plant"! And to makesure everyone toed the line, no less thanthe chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,General Colin Powell, and the WhiteHouse denounced the Pulitzer Prize-

White House TargetsPeter Arnett

2 WORKERS VANGUARD

The Press and the Pentagon

War, Lies and Videotape

McCarthy/NY Times Gamma-LiaisonIn war, the first casualty is truth. Imperialist media whips up war hysteria and.fear, while marching in lockstep withrigid government censorship.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell lecturing compliantmedia hacks with videO show-and-tell of high-techweaponry. "Trust me," said the general. Do you?

These exceptions only prove the rulethat in war the first casualty is truth. Thepress skedaddled out of Baghdad whenthe U.S. State Department called up afew days before the war and told them toget out. The Los Angeles Times (19 Janu­ary) reported: "a key factor in their deci­sion was an unofficial warning to Ameri­can networks in Baghdad, purportedlyfrom Administration sources in Washing­ton, that a U.S. attack was about to takeplace on the Al Rashid Hotel, where all.but a few of the journalists were stay­ing ... several of the reporters who leftsaid they now suspect that the U.S. warn­ing also was a subtle, but effective, prop­aganda device by the U.S.-led forces toend all reporting of the war from theIraqi side."

The press like to portray themselves asa "Fourth Estate," some kind of inde­pendent force seeking truth and objectiv­ity. This is the message of David Halber­starn's The Best and the Brightest on theVietnam War or Woodward and Bern­stein's All the President's Men on Water­gate. But those exposes were publishedonly because a section of the bourgeoisiebecame convinced that Vietnam was follyand Nixon was so mired in muck that hehad to go. Today the press is shown inits true light, as the world's secondoldest profession (spies), eagerly engag­ing in the activity 'of the oldest one as thewhores of war for the Pentagon.

During World War II, one Americancensor wrote: "Newspapers ... and broad­casting stations must be as actively

.Qel1in,g .the warc:cffort ~(i,Jnerch,:mts ormanufacturers." And as a World War IIcorrespondent reviewed the press' per­formance 30 years later:

"It's humiliatingto look back at what wewrote during the war. It was crap.... Wewere a propaganda arm of our govern­ments. At the start the censors enforcedthat, but by the end we were our owncensors.Wewerecheerleaders. I supposethere wasn't an alternative at the time. Itwas total war. But, for God's sake, let'snot glorify our role. It wasn't good jour­nalism. It wasn't journalism at all."

-Phillip Knightley,The First Casualty

The big papers and TV stations are bigcapitalist enterprises, and fundamentallyloyal to their class. It is to those whostand for the interests of the world work­ing class that you will have to look forthe truth about this bloody imperialistslaughter. •

There have been a few exceptions tothe initial gung ho media enthusiasm.Veteran CBS anchor Walter Cronkitecautioned a wild-eyed Dan Rather not tobelieve everything he heard the firstnight. Later Vietnam-era veteran reporterBob Simon, visibly trembling with furyin Saudi Arabia, burst out on the air:

"Information so far has been minimal. .This does not come as a surprise. In factweare a little bit pleasantly surprisedthat our satellite transmissions were notcut off.. .. The only report we've had ofanything that has gone wrong has beennot' from official channels but from ourone CBS newsman who is not operatingwithin the Pentagon pool framework."

As we go to press, the latest word onSimon was that he and a crew, seekingsome real information, bad mysteriouslydisappeared into the desert-s-one can onlyhope they reach safety behind Iraqi lines.

And of course there has been CNN'sPeter Arnett in Baghdad. The tough NewZealander won a Pulitzer Prize for hisVietnam reporting (which included stay­ing behind after the Americans evacuatedSaigon). His under-the-bombs reportsfrom Baghdad have helped the CableNews Network to achieve air superiority(and profitability). But he is now underfire from the White House and Pentagonfor reporting and filming how U.S.bombs are hitting civilian targets. AndUPI's Helen Thomas continues to be athorn in the side of the president, as' shepointedly asked Bush why the U.S. wasso upset about Iraq counterattacking withits Scud missiles.

If the military hates the press, as onePentagon "news" briefer frankly said, it'snot because "the media lost the VietnamWar." The fact is, the U.S. lost on thebattlefield, and the military is still seek­ing a scapegoat. The media were perfect­ly happy to go along with the Kennedyand Johnson administrations on Vietnam-until the U.S. forces started getting soobviously creamed militarily by theNorth Vietnamese forces on the groundthat a significant section of the bour­geoisie decided to pull out.

As Phillip Knightley documented inhis book The First Casualty (1975), itwasn't until after the 1968 Tet Offensivethat a lot of the dirt began coming out inthe press, and even then the big storiesweren't usually on-the-spot reports. TheMy Lai massacre wasn't uncovered untilover a year after it happened, by free­lancer Seymour Hersh. And the militarymanaged to keep its massive bombing ofCambodia in 1969-70 secret for over ayear, despite hundreds of correspondentsin the field.

For months now the Pentagon has beensuccessfully running the media aroundthe Persian Gulf. Any vestigial news­gathering instincts among press corpsveterans were crippled early on by thetechnique of severe alcohol deprivation.They put the traveling caravan of reportersthrough dozens of pushups, in order 10qualify for the highly restricted "pools"that are the only access allowed by themilitary, which escorts reporters every­where and then censors their reports.

The war began promptly at 7 p.m.EST, right on target for the nightly news(like Reagan's bombing of Tripoli, whichstarted at 7:06 p.m.). The first days ofthe Talk Show War were designed toknock out the American audience bysaturation jawboning, as platoons ofretired generals, think tankers and warcriminals like Henry Kissinger hit themedia beachheads. These were thewarm-up acts for the Pentagon's laser­magic shows, the daily 3:30 p.m. brief­ings which are the new version of itsVietnam-era "Five O'Clock Follies."

"If Vietnam brought war into thedrawing rooms of the world, the Gulf'conflict-to date at least-seems only tohave moved it to the video arcade,"noted a British journalist of the firstweek. For all the anchor-generals playingwith their own high-tech toys, themillion-dollar networks of flybys, sat­ellite dishes, transponders and on-the­spot instant images, rather than CNNwe're watching "PNN-Pentagon Net­work News," as a Pacifica radio com­mentator put it. One Columbia Universityantiwar protester carried a sign reading,"I want to kill my TV."

By the end of Week One it seemed theAmerican population was already suffer­ing war fatigue. As Scuds flew throughthe air, presidential spokesman MarlinFitzwater launched salvos at the press,complaining of "the way the media iscovering this thing." Actually, the mediahas done more or less exactly what thePentagon and White House had told themto. Ole Fizzwater's problem is that afterinsisting this would be a short war, offi­cial spokesmen are now having to pro­nounce the "M-word" (months).

The point of the massive U.S. censor­ship, of course, is not to keep informa­tion from Iraq, but from the Americanpopulation. And the Pentagon has beengetting away with it for some time now.The U.S. war machine tested its censor­ship apparatus in the Grenada and Pana­ma invasions, with great success. Themedia still has a clamp on publishinghow many casualties there were in themass bombing in Panama.

On the day the bombing of Baghdadbegan, a Pentagon spokesman vowed thatthis would not be another "living roomwar," with the American public shockedby TV images of U.S. soldiers torchingVietnamese villages and body bags beingshipped home. This time they want torigidly control the flow of news, and themedia moguls have patriotically gonealong. The New York Times (9 January)complained about Pentagon press restric­tions, but added: "the media have littleor no choice except to go along grudg­ingly-and hopethe military will enforceits rules with understanding." ,

1 FEBRUARY 1991 3

WV PhotoWashington, D.C. January 19 protest drew opponents of Persian Gulf War including pacifists and pro-sanctions flagwavers. Spartacist League's call to defend Iraq against U.S. attack attracted much interest as up-front communistopposition to imperialist war.

Hundreds of ThousandsProtest U.S. War

Coast to Coast

Bay Area with signs reading: "GeorgeBush, Read My Labia, U.S. Out of SaudiArabia!"

But the flag-waving media barragehas affected the antiwar protests. Buyingthe lie, popularized in "Rambo" movies,that '60s antiwar activists "spit on"returning soldiers, today signs and ban­ners at demonstrations across the coun­try proclaim "Peace Is Patriotic" and"Support Our Troops-Bring ThemHome." And the liberal and pseudo­socialist demo organizers imposed on the"peace" crawls a program of supportingthe "moderate" war party of Americancapitalism.

The demonstrations on January 19thand 26th bore a marked similarity, bothcalling for "Bring the Troops HomeNow!" and trying to pressure the Demo­crats into opposing a war which theyoverwhelmingly support. January 19 wasorganized by the "Coalition to Stop U.S.Intervention in the Middle East," domi­nated by the eclectic Stalinoid reformists'of the Workers World Party, and tendedto attract a more leftist and pacifistcrowd, while January 26 was run by theliberal-led "National Campaign for Peacein the Middle East," which supported theimperialist "UN sanctions" which are noless an act of war.

Consequently, the character of thelatter demonstration was markedly morepatriotic, with no leftist speakers andmore American flags than a VFWparade. With demonstrators and somemotley crews of right-wingers both sport­ing American flags and "Support OurSoldiers" signs, at times it was hard totell the pro-war people from the antis,unless you could read the fine print ontheir T-shirts (right-wingers' shirts said"Free Kuwait"). The New York Timesnoted approvingly of the 26th: "yester­day's antiwar demonstrators in Washing­ton mostly shunned crude slogans like'No blood for oil!' Most of them would

. dress. Martin Luther King .mernorialcelebrations in Atlanta became antiwarprotests, while Catholic parishes andProtestant congregations held candlelightvigils. For the most part this wave ofrejection has been blacked out by TV andpress, which gave "equal time" to everygroup of a dozen right-wing nuts scream­ing "nuke Iraq."

Opposition to the war remains verybroad, with even the Roman Catholicauxiliary bishop of Detroit calling forsoldiers to desert in protest against a warthat the Bishops Conference officiallydeclared does not fit the criteria for a"just war." Many came to demonstrationswith creative homemade signs such as,"What If Kuwait's Main Export WereBroccoli?" and a drawing of the Capi­tol with the slogan, "Best Little Whore­house of. Texaco." On January 22,ACT-UP activists in New York invadedDan Rather's CBS Evening News chant­ing "Fight AIDS, Not Arabs!" Ourfavorite: a group of women in the

walk and West Hartford, Connecticut;South Olwick and Bangor, Maine.

Elsewhere in the country demonstra­tions against the war were held in suchbastions of the military-industrial com­plex as St. Louis (McDonnell Douglasand General Dynamics), Seattle (Boeing)and Rochester (Kodak); in small townslike Fayetteville, Arkansas or St. Cloud,Minnesota; in state capitals like DesMoines, Iowa, where protesters disruptedthe governor's "state of'the state" ad-

convictions." The article reported pro­tests in Northampton, Hyannis, Orange,Greenfield, and Springfield, Massachu­setts; Concord, Hanover, Durham, Dover,Portsmouth, Tilton, and Plymouth, NewHampshire; Montpelier, Norwich, Bur­lington, and Brattleboro, Vermont; Nor-

Make my day. They're collapsing any­way. Three hundred and eighty-fivestructural defects on the Manhattan,Williamsburg and Queensboro alone,says the Department of Transportation.If they fall down, we New Yorkers willhave to pay to rebuild them. But if youknock them down, it'll be a lot easierto get the feds to pick up the tab. Wardamage. We'll get the sympathy vote inCongress.

Random violence? No way, Saddy.We invented it. Face it every day. NewYorkers who are afraid of drive-bymurderers and dart men move toWyoming. And those who can't affordto go aren't about to be intimidated bya few extra commandos on the block. ,

And if New Yorkers are willing tokill and die for leather jackets anddrugs, we're certainly willing to take afew hits for a war even if we'reambivalent about it. We know thoseKuwaiti rulers are no great sheiks, butcompared to the causes for which weusually die, it would be martyrdom.

How about decimating apartmentbuildings? Old hat, Sad. Con Ed did itmore than a year ago. A busted watermain blew asbestos all over GramercyPark. A crater 10 feet across, five feetdeep, killed three. Better than a Scud!

Reprinted from Newsday

deal. Happens all the time. Happenedthis month, in fact, to AT&T. Somepoor slob in a Newark manhole did bymistake what Abu Nidal has probablybeen plotting since August. ...

Speaking of halted in its tracks,forget about torching the subways,Saddam. That's been done, too. Lastmonth. Two passengers dead, 148injured ....

How about blowing up our bridges?

in a row, demonstrators closed downthe Bay Bridge. In New York City, thou­sands converged on Times Square.

There were antiwar protests on collegecampuses across the country, but not justthere. In New England, the Boston Globe(20 January) reported: "Throughout theregion last week there were hundreds ofprocessions, vigils, rallies, walkouts,teach-ins and other demonstrations asNew Englanders opposed to the war inthe Persian Gulf expressed their fears and

flaming American flag up the FederalBuilding flagpole. Some 20,000 marchedthrough the Castro and the Mission Dis­trict. Next day civil disobedience groupsblockaded the Federal Building-forcingit to close for most of the day-and laterthe Pacific Stock Exchange. Three days

By Marty Goldensohn

About TerrorismIn the Apple, Who'd Notice?

Humiliation. This is why I think Sad­dam Hussein shouldn't try any ter­rorism in New York. It will embarrasshim. New York is too big to noticeanything smaller than a hydrogen bomb.We've seen everything else already. AsGeorge Bums once said, "Death. It'sbeen done."

Let's suppose for a minute that Iraqicommandos attacked the phone com­pany to disrupt communications. Big

As the feds whipped up' their "terrorism" scare, they naturally targeted NYC fora "fear city" blitz. The CBS News program 60 Minutes (20 January) included asegment interviewing Vince Cannistraro, described as "former CIA Head ofCounter­terrorism." Cannistraro was standing in Grand Central Station, which he describedas "the kind ofplace that the Abu Nidal organization might go after," since 180,000people pass through it every rush hour. New Yorkers howled in derision: why wouldany terrorist bother to blow up the subway and rail system, the MTA is quiteaccomplished at this itself. Capturing the popular response, satirist Marty Goldensohnwrote a column (Newsday, 22 January), excerpted below:

On the eve 'of the U.S. war againstIraq, Bush's popularity was at an all-timelow; his war resolution barely squeakedthrough the Senate and large demonstra­tions against "Operation Desert Shield"had already taken place in many cities.But on January 16, when the "Shield"turned to "Storm" and the bombs beganto fall on Baghdad, the marching orderscame down. Bourgeois "public opinion"swung sharply overnight. The next morn­ing's New York Times warned it was timefor this "divided country" to pull togeth­er. The message was relentlessly ham­mered home in the media, as Americanswere bombarded with "rally 'round theflag" rhetoric from all sides. Anti-Bush"doves" in Congress suddenly metamor­phosed into pro-war hawks. The pollsshowed four out of five approving thewar, and Bush's ratings topped FDR'sthe week. after Pearl Harbor.

Yet the nation is far from marching inlockstep: the flag-waving patriotism thatturned the Super Bowl into a Nurembergrally will dissipate as soon as the corpsesstart coming home. Moreover, this or­chestrated war fever has been met, fromthe very first minutes, by an outpouringof hundreds of thousands of protesters inthe largest antiwar demonstrations sincethe Vietnam War. In fact, the Vietnamprotests did not swell until it becameclear that the U.S. might actually lose thewar. This time around the protests beganbefore the shooting started, and by nowhave become daily events throughout thecountry. On January 19 there were some35,000 in Washington, D.C. and doublethat on the 26th; in San Francisco therewere 70,000-plus on both weekends, andthousands more in Los Angeles,Bostonand numerous other cities.

Across the country, the SpartacistLeague mobilized with banners andsigns, selling our press, leafletting andsoapboxing with our call for revolution­ary opposition to this heinous war.

The first hours of the war were markedby furious protracted demonstrations onboth coasts. In San Francisco, thousandsbroke through police barricades, sackedmilitary recruiting offices, and ran a

4 WORKERS VANGUARD

Protesters on the Brooklyn Bridg~

First Casualties in the "War at Home"

Brian Palmerflmpact VisualsAntiwar protesters rush to aid of victim struck by speeding car on BrooklynBridge, January 17.

WV PhotoNYPD slams demonstrators at UN before march downtown to the BrooklynBridge. -

dozen eyewitnesses, yet four days later theassistant district attorney assigned to thecase had never seen or heard of this list!

Christa Roberts is lucky to be alivetoday, as are several of the other dem­onstrators. Imperialist war abroad pro­duces casualties at home, like the fourcollege students at Kent State and thelesser known black protesters at JacksonState in Mississippi who were killedprotesting the Vietnam War. The copswho clubbed protesters on the BrooklynBridge are the same NYPD which goesafter Daily News strikers while "pro­tecting" scabs and herding them throughthe picket lines, the same racist policewho shot black grandmother EleanorBumpurs in her Bronx apartment severalyears ago and then gunned down Mrs.Mary Mitchell in her own home just afew months ago.

The protesters who were struck by thespeeding car and beaten by the cops wereexpressing their outrage over the criminalmass murder the U.S. was unleashingover Baghdad as they were marching onthe bridge. Dema Mantooth, one of thevictims of the car assault, explained, "Ifwe slowed down traffic, if we stoppedthe city, we'd make people care ... aboutthe unnecessary loss- of innocent lives"(Village Voice, 29 January). What is nec­essary is to forge this just outrage into arevolutionary fight to get rid of the sys­tem that rains death on Iraqis, uses copsas scabherders and carries out "evictionsby murder" on black people at home .•

WBAI Pacifica radio reported extensivelyon the case, and the Village Voice ran astory. Still the cover-up goes on.

Khursh Mian went with five others tothe NYPD's Fifth Precinct to give state­ments. He and the other witnesses wereforced to freeze outside the precincthouse for four hours and were allowed inonly one at a time (to guard against"terrorists'") to give statements. A detec­tive told Yarde, "normal people don't getup on a bridge." Mian gave police thenames and phone numbers. of over two

and seemingly aiming his car at demon­strators. "I yelled and jumped out of theway. I heard the first two people get hit.When I turned around I saw people get­ting lifted into the air and people werescrambling. He kept going into the mainpart of the crowd, then I heard a seriesof thump, thump, thump-people gettinghit." Another eyewitness, 19-year-oldMalachi Dean, a member of the "StopU.S. War Machine Action Network,"said, "It looked like puppets being tossed10 to 15 feet into the air."

When Yarde, who works for CISPES,saw the bodies sprawled on the ground,he tried to get swift medical attention forthem. "I ran down the exit to get police,because I knew the police were there.They were totally unresponsive. I toldthem that we needed paramedics. Onepoliceman in his car rolled up his win­dow." Demonstrator Jay Everett told WV,"When we went to leave to obey their[police] orders to head down the off­ramp, all of a sudden about eight of themattacked from behind with nightsticks."Other demonstrators and eyewitnesseshave also reported that the cops returnedin force and started swinging their clubsat the remaining demonstrators.

The serious injuries and vicious policetreatment of antiwar protesters the nightwar broke out has been virtually disap­peared in the mainstream media. Newsdaywrote one story that read like it came offthe police blotter. Like news in the Per­sian Gulf, the official "pool coverage"has not deemed this atrocity newsworthy.

Some of the first domestic casualtiesof the imperialist onslaught against Iraqwere a group of antiwar demonstratorswho took to the Brooklyn Bridge thenight the bombs began falling on Bagh­dad. On the freezing cold evening ofJanuary 16 thousands of demonstratorsgathered in Times Square upon hearingthe news that the American war machinehad launched its Persian Gulf attack.

Protesters rallied and marched fromTimes Square to the United Nations,where Columbia University studentsarrived after a campus rally. Then backto Times Square and south again to lowerManhattan. When the demonstrators de­cided to take the Brooklyn Bridge, carsstopped and some honked horns in soli­darity. But one car, driven by ThomasWade, didn't stop. Shortly after 2 a.m.on Thursday morning, Wade plowed intothe crowd of 1J10re than 200, seriouslyinjuring seven people. One woman,Christa Roberts, fell off the bridge to theground 70 feet below. Several of thevictims are still hospitalized.

One demonstrator told WV that theywere inspired by the news of antiwarprotesters taking the Bay Bridge fromSan Francisco to Oakland. The demon­strators on the bridge were a diversegroup, racially integrated and includingyounger and older political activists,college students and homeless people.All night long the demonstrators hadbeen shadowed (and harassed) by NewYork City police. But after the car drivenby an apparently drunk Wade, who hasbeen subsequently charged with feloniesof "reckless endangerment" and "vehicu­lar assault," slammed into the crowd at _about 50 mph, the cops delayed medicalattention/or the victims and clubbed thosestill standing.

As Christa Roberts scrambled to getout of the way of the speeding car shefell between a gap in the main roadwayand an access ramp, crashing to theground below. She was hospitalized incritical condition at St. Vincent's Hos­pital, where at press time she is still inthe intensive care unit with a fracturedpelvis. A doctor who treated several ofthe victims reported there were lots ofbroken limbs and compound fracturesand at least one of the victims sufferedfrom breathing complications. Some ofthe protesters lack insurance to pay fortheir medical treatment

Alexander Yarde, one of the demon­strators and an eyewitness, told WV howhe heard the driver Wade "revving up"

Speaker: Paul Collins, Spartacist League Central Committee

agree with Vice President Quayle aboutthe need to support America's troops inthe gulf."

For Labor Strikes Againstthe War!

One notable fact has been the presenceof contingents of unionists at the demon­strations, and thousands of workers haveindividually come out to oppose the war.During the long war buildup, the pollsrepeatedly showed a strong degree ofworking-class opposition. Reading a NewYork Times/CBS poll, one commentatorsaid, "Quite simply, it's a class thing."The San Francisco Examiner (25 January)noted that the "anti-war stance of asignificant segment of organized laborstands in vivid contrast to labor's posi­tion at the outset of the Vietnam war­and in fact until about 1971, two yearsbefore U.S. troops departed."

The Washington demonstrations in­cluded union groups from the Post OfficeMail Handlers, Laborers, ACTWU, strik-

ing Greyhound drivers and Daily Newsstrikers now in the fourth month of theirstrike, hospital workers Local 1199,UAW District 65 and the Hotel andRestaurant Employees. In California,1,500 unionists marched including ILWUlongshoremen, AFT teachers, CWAphone workers, hotel and restaurantworkers, school bus drivers, electriciansand public employees. The January 26Bay Area demo was endorsed by thelabor councils of San Francisco/SantaClara, San Benito; Alameda and SanMateo counties.

Yet the Cold Warriors of the AFL­CIO International remain foursquarebehind the bipartisan imperialist murder.Lane Kirkland pronounced that in SaudiArabia, "the sons and daughters ofworking Americans once again are onthe firing line in the defense of vitalinterest of the free world"! The wing oflabor officialdom which graces the plat-

- forms of the popular-front "antiwar"coalitions simply reflects the politics of

the Kennedy liberal wing of the Demo­cratic Party. In this case that spells sup­port for "sanctions" against Iraq. At theJanuary 26 Bay Area rally, where LaborCouncil head Walter Johnson, ILWUpresident Jimmy Herman and the publicemployees local president spoke, theirslogan was: "Labor Says: Support Our

Friday, February 8, 7:30 p.m.

NEW YORK CITY

Troops-Bring Them Home Now."These unions could deal a crippling

blow to the war-longshoremen, Team­sters, communications workers havemore power than a thousand "peace"crawls. But these labor misleaders cameout only to save imperialism from

continued on page 7

Room 304 Barnard HallBarnard College

For more information: (212) 267-J025

1 FEBRUARY 1991 5

"Terrorism" Scare Targets Arab AmericansAs Bush's bombers rain death and

devastation upon Iraq, the U.S. govern­ment has whipped up a hysterical "anti­terrorist" campaign at home. For weeksthe FBI has been singling out for inter­rogation hundreds of Arab immigrantsand citizens of Arab descent. Thisominous campaign aims to smear ArabAmericans as potential "terrorists"­people without democratic rights andsubject to unrestrained attacks.

The Gulf War has indeed provokedterrorism in the U.S.-against ArabAmericans. In the space of one week,Detroit police reported four firebombattacks against people of Middle East­ern descent (Detroit News, 21 January).An Iraqi store owner on the NortheastSide narrowly escaped being murderedwhen two men in army fatigues firedguns at him shouting, "You're dead,Arab!" And in the rural town of Bliss­field, Michigan a Dairy Queen ownedby a Palestinian American was burneddown as "punishment" for his opposi­tion to the Near East war.

Arson, beatings, death threats anddiscrimination have targeted ArabAmericans around the country. In Flor­ida a 15-year-old was arrested when hereportedly exploded a pipe bomb in

front of the house of a family he be­lieved to be from Iraq (they were fromIndia), And in a token of pervasiverepression to come, Pan Am just an­nounced that holders of Iraqi passportsare barred from all flights. Since pass­ports aren't needed on domestic flights, ,in practice airline security personnelcomb airports scrutinizingand harass­ing anyone who "looks like" an Arab.

Meanwhile, official attacks have beenstepped up as the FBI announced acampaign to deport Iraqi citizens resid­ing in the U.S. as their visas expire. InEurope, Germany, France and Britainhave been expelling Iraqis for weeks.This is especially pernicious sinceamong the deportees are many oppo­nents of Saddam's regime who facerepression in Iraq because of theirpolitical views. One group of 30 Iraqistudents in Britain were declared "pris­oners of war" and locked up.

Where the campaign of governmentrepression is headed is shown by theexample of Detroit, which has the larg­est concentration of Arab Americans (aquarter million) in North America. OnJanuary 19, Mayor Coleman Youngdeclared a state of emergency andcalled on the Michigan governor to send

in the National Guard! Young feignedconcern for Arab residents, while rail"ing against "potential terrorist activity"supposedly aimed at the bridge andtunnel connecting Detroit with Windsor,Canada.

The National Guard's role hasn'tchanged one whit since it was sent intothe Detroit ghetto in 1967 to shootdown blacks. Once mobilized to combatthe spectre of "terrorism," the Guardwould be used to bust strikes, break upanti-racist protests and clamp down ona population growing restive over theslaughter in the Arabian desert wherefully one-third of the U.S. groundtroops are black or Hispanic.

Many in Detroit's Arab populationare Yemenis who were recruited duringthe 1970s to work in the Motor City'sauto plants (now almost all closed).There is also a large, predominantlymiddle-class Chaldean Christian com­munity. Even those in the suburbs arenow caught in the cross hairs of thegovernment's "anti-terrorism" scare andsubjected t~ the disgusting anti-Arabchauvinism which comes not just fromracist yahoos, like the Chrysler foremanand his son who beat Chinese AmericanVincent Chin to death while screaming

about Japanese auto imports, but alsofrom the likes of liberal black DemocratYoung.

The purpose of the government's "se­curity"· blitz is not to stave off "ter­rorism" but to regiment the populationfor war. For this purpose they go toabsurd lengths, with everything fromNew York City police seminars on sup­posed dangers to Wall Street CEOs tothe massive security mobilization forthe Super Bowl-dubbed by some jour­nalists the "Big Brother Bowl." In SanFrancisco police arrested an Iraqi manon a bomb possession charge for whatwas later described as a partially dis­assembled "vibrating massage pillow"!

There is a very real threat of theU.S. government launching a massiveroundup of Arab Americans. DuringWorld War II more than 100,000 Japa­nese Americans were imprisoned innotorious "internment" camps. Theconcentration camps are there, andplans for new dragnets are ready tobe implemented (see "Fight the Anti­Arab Witchhunt!" WV No. 518, 18 Jan­uary). We call again on the labormovement and defenders of democraticrights to smash the racist "terrorism"witchhunt.

In Baghdad Under the Bombsbe determined that mass murder of theIraqi people is being carried out.

Spartakist: Are there other things thatyou have personally seen, not only thewar itself, but also the blockade, whichwas part of the war?Dudin: What most deeply impressed mewas the attitude of normal people. On theway back to the hotel, about 6 or 6:30 inthe morning, I met people, more andmore people. We had dozens of inter­views, with women, girls, men, youths.We said, you know a war has begunhere. They said, but we're going to work.Bush wants our economy to collapse.And really, they took it for granted, itjust radiated from them.

We went into tea shops where thepeople sat around unbelievably relaxedand smoked their water pipes, and talked,of course, about what's to be done now.And this tranquility of the people, thisconfidence. So they said: they're comingback. We fought with the English in theFirst World War against Germany andTurkey for our independence, and theresponse was that England and Franceripped apart our country. The multina­tionals, wherever they found an oil well,found themselves a sheik and set up anemirate.

Spartakist: We call for the defeat of theU.S. and NATO imperialists, and defendIraq. There is the demand for a Near-Eastpeace conference, where the imperialistswill sit down after •. bavingoppressedpeople for years, divided them, commit­ted mass murder. What do you think ofthat?Dudin: I'm absolutely against the An­schluss [annexation] of the Near Eastunder Article 23 of the Basic Law [theGerman constitution, under which EastGermany was swallowed up by the West].Europeans make the mistake of under­estimating the intelligence of otherpeoples. Let's go back to the Gulf War.This marvelous mixture of boundlessignorance and master-race mentality thatyou saw at Fitzwater's press conferenceeight hours after the attack began. Hestands there, tries to laugh-his laughterseemed plastic-and says, well, the job isdone.now Iraq must capitulate, and he isflattered by his court scribes. That wasa historic moment for him, and it's crazythe amount of ignorance these peopleshow. They sell their ignorance as theultimate in wisdom.•

the defense mimstry, to a demolishedbuilding. An old man, perhaps between50 and 55 years old, lay there dead. Oneof his relatives was overcome withsorrow and wept, saying, why have theydestroyed this building? After all, it wasevacuated on August 3 last year. Therewas just this watchman there, it wasn'tany defense ministry. But they reportedthat the defense ministry had beendestroyed.

The number of victims is rising fromone minute to the next, the number fromthe civilian population. The Iraqi armyis located in defense lines against whichattacks can't do much. That is the reasonwhy the Americans haven't begun theirground offensive, because they know thatthe losses among the Iraqi military aresmall. A city, Al Dour, about 280 kilo­meters north of Baghdad, it's proven thatthere was no base there, no militaryfactory, nothing at all. That city wasleveled, it was bombed, hundreds ofvictims among the civilian population.What I want to say is that this war isbeing waged first of all against theIraqi civilian population. But they won'tbreak the morale of the Iraqi populationthrough terror attacks. And it can already

which was destroyed. There were chil­dren of roughly the same age lying there,I would judge between nine and elevenyears old. And they were apparentlyhaving a painting lesson. The paint intheir coloring books wasn't even dry.And they lay there dead, all of them. Iwas told there were 23 children, I onlysaw seven myself. When I arrived in theoutlying areas, the victims had alreadybeen partially evacuated. There was anolder lady, maybe 70 years old, dead.

What happened was this: after theydetermined that they hadn't taken out themilitary defense, the pilots began bomb­ing from such a height that they simplycouldn't hit their targets and only hit thecivilian population. They even broughtthe pilots to the scene of their acts, butthe racists naturally believe that theIraqis are just making propaganda, forexample with the baby food factory,right? So a journalist sifts through thepieces of cardboard at this factory, actslike a criminal investigator, even thoughit's obvious to any idiot that it's a babyfood factory.

Naturally, the Americans attacked~ prestige targets. They said, we have

destroyed the defense ministry. I went to

eutersDay One of U.S. onslaught against Iraq. Ministry of Defense building inBaghdad burning from U.S. bombing raid.

We print below excerpts from an inter­view conducted on January 27 in Berlin byour comrades of Spartakist, the newspaperof the Spartakist Workers Party of Ger­many, with Sa'id Dudin, the editor forGermany of the Palestinian news agencyWAFA. Dudin had just returned from avisit to Baghdad, where he was during thefirst nights and days of the Americanbombardment.

Spartakist: You know that the newsabout the war in Iraq is "sanitized,"particularly in the United States. It's sortof a video-game report, everything issurgical strikes, there are no civiliancasualties in this war, etc. So it is,urgentto counter these lies, and I wonder if youcould speak a little about your own expe­rience, what you saw yourself in Iraq.Dudin: One can say precisely the oppo­site of what is generally claimed here inthe media. The losses among t~e Iraqimilitary are minimal, absolutely minimalcompared with the devastating lossesamong the civilian population. On thefirst day, as the attacks began, the Amer­icans went so far as to claim that theyhad taken out the entire Iraqi air defensesystem, and Fitzwater even advised Sad­dam Hussein to capitulate. I am no mili­tary expert, but anyone who saw theintensity of the Iraqi antiaircraft defense,night after night, knows that it has re­mained unbroken. Only on the fifth daydid the Americans admit their failure toneutralize the Iraqi antiaircraft defenses.But they had already committed massmurder against the Iraqi people.

The American military explained thefailure of their attacks on military targetsin Baghdad with references to bad weath­er there. To me that was such a primitivejoke, and it reminded me of the view ofthe Nazi generals, that the cause of theirdefeat in the Second World War lay inthe fact that there was too much snow onthe ground between Berlin and Moscow.But the more obvious this lie became, themore obvious it was that they were tryingto force Iraq to its knees by mass mur­der, the more varied were the explana­tions of the media.

As far as the population in Baghdaditself is concerned, I went to one place

6 WORKERS VANGUARD

Sink U.S.War...(continued from page 1)

Le Monde of Paris headlined its marketreports, "Wall Street: America Is Back"and "Tokyo: Banzai!" More than 70years ago, revolutionary leader RosaLuxemburg summed up the relationshipbetween capitalism and war: "Profitsrising, proletarians falling."

In Riyadh, an American general de­clared this was "a technology war" as heplayed a video of "my counterpart'sheadquarters in Baghdad" being zappedby a "smart bomb." But as the first IraqiScuds landed on Tel Aviv hours later, the"techno-euphoria" started evaporating.Daily Pentagori briefings replaced themagician's smoke and mirrors withmeaningless charts and figures. Even themost insipid questions from the house­trained Pentagon press corps were baitedas feeding info to "the enemy."

Had the U.S. achieved "air superi­ority"? Why, JCS chief General Colin

Powell blathered on, he'd written thetextbook defining air superiority, andwhatever it is, the U.S. has it. Were therefigures to back up U.S. damage claims?"Trust me," he responded. Are Americanplanes carpetbombing Iraq and Kuwait?"I don't know what the definition ofcarpet bombing is," replied the theatercommander, General "Stormin' Norman"Schwarzkopf.

Washington is lying through its teethbecause what they intend to do is trulyhorrendous. The hallmark of this war,writes R.W. Apple in the New York Times(17 January), will be "overwhelmingforce, relentlessly applied." What thatwill mean, increasingly, is relentlessterror against the Iraqi population andoverwhelming civilian casualties.. "Thisis not a war," an Egyptian fleeing Bagh­dad after the first few days of bombingsaid bitterly, "This is the annihilation ofa Muslim people."

The American-led imperialist "allies"are terror-bombing the cities and townsof Iraq. And they are out to assassinateIraqi leader Saddam Hussein: in Bush's"State of the Union" war rally in Con-

gress, he pointedly repeated several timesthat Hussein was "dead wrong." Soon thegory, bone-crunching ground war willbegin and the rivers of Mesopotamia willrun red with blood. Amid all the talk ofSaddam Hussein using chemical warfare,the U.S. is already shelling Iraqi posi­tions with white phosphorus. And theU.S.' Persian Gulf armada has thousandsof nuclear warheads.

We of the Spartacist League andInternational Communist League (FourthInternationalist) have warned from theoutset that this rapacious ruling classwhich presumes to be cops of the worldwas preparing to plunge the world'sworking people into a bloody holocaust.And now they've started. If imperialistcarnage is not to be the continuing fateof humanity until this system of warand destruction finally incinerates allof civilization in a nuclear fireball, itmust be swept away through proletarianrevolution.

A stinging defeat for U.S. imperialismin its onslaught against the Iraqi peoplecan spark revolutionary struggle through­out the Near East. We call on the work-

ing people of the U.S. and the otherimperialist countries to mobilize theirsocial power in class struggle against theexploiters and oppressors at home.

Democrats Rally 'Roundthe War

For months the capitalist media andCongressional Democrats regurgitatedBush's transparently lying "peace" ploys."A resolute Bush maneuvered U.S. to theedge of war," headlined the PhiladelphiaInquirer (16 January), claiming: "No oneforesaw that in August." But a formerReagan aide says of Bush: "It's clearnow that he took steps from the verystart to make war inevitable." HistorianJames MacGregor Bums added: "Con­gress had the power and the time tooppose him. It didn't."

It was clear all along that Bush wasmoving toward war. While pleading to"give sanctions a chance," the bourgeois"opposition" marched in lockstep behindthe White House. Capitol Hill cheeredwhen Bush deployed 200,000 troops to"defend Saudi Arabia" in August. The

continued on page 8

Iraq! Defeat U.S. Imperialism!" goteverybody's attention. Although theycouldn't seem to get the various leftists'slogans right, even the more obtuse bour­geois media recognized the SL/SYC asvintage communism: the San FranciscoExaminer wrote, "The Spartacist Leagueurged us to go back to the teachings ofTrotsky and Lenin." The Washington Postreported that protesters in the capital"range from sweet little seventh-graderson officially sanctioned field trips to bigcity. office workers on lunch break torevolutionary Spartacists ...." The VillageVoice saw Sparts everywhere.

Over 10,000 copies of Workers Van­guard and other Spartacist publicationswere soldat antiwar protests around thecountry over the past two weeks. Ourpamphlet "Black Soldiers in the JimCrow Military" (in the Black History andthe Class Struggle series) attracted specialattention. The bombs dropped on Bagh­dad can explode the Reagan/Bush reignwhich glories in the ostentatious displayof greed and privilege while sticking itto the working class and minorities. Inthe coming months we look to win thosewho recognize that our enemy is at home,and that a defeat for U.S. imperialism isa victory for the oppressed of the world.

What sets the Trotskyist SL apart fromthe American social-patriotic left is ourforthright opposition to our "own" impe­rialism. Not endless peace crawls topressure the ruling class, but revolution­ary struggle to overthrow the racist capi­talist system. Not writing letters to Con­gress, but organizing labor strikes againstthe war, to unleash the power of theintegrated working class in defense ofour class brothers and sisters beingbombed in Iraq. To defeat the U.S. rulingclass, the most vicious and deadly forceon earth, we need a revolutionary partywhich is not afraid to swim against thestream. Take a side-Join us!.

WV PhotosAs the bombs began falling: protests in Chicago (left)and NYC (above), January 17.

For a Revolutionary Party!In contrast to the sea of liberal imperi­

alist "doves" and red-white-and-blue"socialists" preaching "patriotic" opposi­tion to the war, the revolutionary politicsof the Spartacist League and SpartacusYouth Clubs stood out like a bright redbeacon. Our banner reading "Defend

A Washington Post poll revealed that60 percent of black D.C. residents disap­prove of the war. Blacks know that theirwar is at home, fighting for employment,decent housing, education, health careand simple equality. "Black Veterans forSocial Justice," a New York group whichhas participated in antiwar protests, is­sued a statement declaring, "The irony ofthe President's war frenzy is in. the his­tory of this country's treatment of thosewho have answered the call to arms. Wewere sprayed with Agent Orange in Viet­nam. Among the homeless population,we veterans number 40 percent nation­ally. We are 20 percent of the prisonpopulation. And we are one of the high­est groups of unemployed persons in thiscountry" (New American, 17 January).

A number of blacks and Hispanicshave participated in the demonstrationsacross the country, compelling blackelected officials to oppose the war. In theHouse of Representatives, the vote forthe war was 396-6 (five from the BlackCongressional Caucus,' and Vermont"socialist" Bernie Sanders). Jesse Jack­son, after initially supporting the inva­sion, has been backpedaling since thebombing began, and showed up to speakin the Washington demonstrations, typi­cally couching his opposition in guns­versus-butter terms. What motivates thesepoliticians is not opposition to U.S. im­perialism, but fear that blacks and otherminorities will rebel against the twinparties of capitalism to which these mis­leaders have tied them for decades.

class struggle. And it's our job to do it,all of us. We are millions around theworld who hate this racist, bloodthirstygovernment. The enemy is capitalism.That's what produces millions of home­less. The technology exists to feed every­one on this planet, but instead this sys­tem produces mass starvation and warafter war after war.

American imperialism must be defeat­ed in its bloody grab for oil and worlddomination. It is our duty to stand withthe Iraqi people in defending themselvesagainst the American warmongers, Westand with the Palestinian people, whoface genocide at the hands of the racist,Zionist butchers who rule Israel.

The working people of the Near East,the Kurds and other minorities, must riseup to bring down all the sheiks, all thedespots, including Saddam Hussein, butnot just the despots who are on the outswith Washington today. And we're fight­ing here, in the belly of the beast, forworkers revolution to sweep away thebiggest despots of all.

16 January 1991

restoring the venal Kuwaiti monarchy.As many as 80 percent of the esti­

mated 3,000 soldiers who have filed for"conscientious objector" status are black.One of them, E. A. Stanley, recentlywrote, "As an officer in the Army Re­serves, I often wonder why this countryalways fights for the rich man's causeswhile the poor man's causes are oftenignored right here in the U.S." (ScoopUSA, 21 December 1990). Another, U.S.Navy fireman Donald Alexander, held apress conference at the National PressClub, stating, "I cannot fight in a war touphold chattel slavery .... Fighting in thiswar in the Persian Gulf would be for meequivalent to fighting for General Leeagainst Abraham Lincoln."

U.S. Protests...

SpartacistStatement...(continued from page 1)

We need labor strikes against this crim­inal war. We call on longshoremen tostop handling all munitions shipments andwar materiel. Is this pie in the sky? No!French dock workers refused to ship warmateriel. Striking Turkish coal miners aredemanding down with the war, downwith the warmongering government.

What this war is about is the AmericanEmpire wants to be cops of the world.Remember Reagan's rape of tiny blackGrenada! Remember the thousands mur­dered in Panama only a year ago! Re­member the two million murdered inVietnam by Washington. But the Viet­namese people prevailed and made arevolution. Some people say, "No MoreVietnams." That is what Richard Nixonsays. We say: Vietnam was a victory!

American imperialism is the enemy ofmankind. It must be defeated, through

Bush Lies, Black People Die­Down with the RacistImperialist War!

Black Americans especially don't wantthis war. The NYC black newspapers, theAmsterdam News, City Sun and NewAmerican, all ran antiwar front pages, instark contrast to the chauvinist hype ofthe mainstream media. As in the VietnamWar, blacks are disproportionately rep­resented in the army, with almostone-quarter of all black families havinga member in the Gulf, as opposed toonly seven percent of white families.As poverty and joblessness ravaged theghettos during the Reagan years, a defacto "poverty draft" occurred. Withover one-quarter of black men either inprison or on parole, the lure of collegeaid or the (largely illusory) opportunityto gain job skills enticed many blackand Hispanic youths into the army-andreserves. Now they find themselves sit­ting ducks in the desert, expected to sac­rifice their lives for the privilege of

(continued from page 5)

another costly defeat like Vietnam. These"antiwar" labor fakers seek to derailworking-class struggle against the war,just as they have buried a decade ofstrikes-from PATCO to Hormel toGreyhound and Eastern-v-through reli­ance on Democratic Party politicians. Incontrast, the Spartacist League fights forlabor strikes against the war, to choke offthe munitions and materiel that fuel theU.S. war machine.

1 FEBRUARY 1991 7

War in Babylon

From Death Row,This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal

rich ruling families of the region from swelling Arabrage and burgeoning humiliation, as New OrderImperialists, Americans, take the place of the old, theBritish. .

And the bulk of troops sent to the Arabian Desertto defend the regions' ruling elites are themselvesmembers of the working class, or, all too often, thenon-working class-people who joined, not to fight,but for jobs and benefits! To what shall the Westernwarriors return after the flames of war have ebbed,and the region has been declared "safe" for U.S.corporate interests?

When American oil companies cackle in acquis­itive, avaricious glee at unhampered supply, andnew age Arab pashas re-establish their lifestyles ofdecadent opulence, those who faced and fought thefires. of a man-made firestorm will, if they survive,return to human hells in the concrete jungles of NorthAmerica.

For defending their country's elite they will inherita lifetime of empty tomorrows in inner city slums, notunlike those of the denizens of Sabra & Shatila, urbanvillages isolated in deserts of despair.

Once again African-Americans will have fought,and shed precious blood for another class, anothercause, and remain unfree, embittered and oppressed-unable to fight for ourselves.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Philadelphia black journal­ist, is on death row at Pennsylvania's Huntingdonstate prison. Framed up because of his politicalviews, Mumia faces death for his defiance of theracist, capitalist order. His columns appear periodi­cally in Workers Vanguard and other newspapers.

To get involved in the fight to save MumiaAbu-Jamal and abolish the death penalty, contactthe Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99,Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013. Ifyou wish to correspond with Mumia, you canwrite to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, Drawer R,Huntingdon, PA 16652.A banner in Washington, January 19.

(restructuring) with a vengeance!It is said that "power abhors a vacuum," and in the

empty hole left by USSR retrenchment, the U.S. hasmoved decisively to fill the gap.

No matter what the outcome of the Mid East War,forces of the U.S. Empire will occupy Arab lands fordecades to come, modern reflections of Romanlegions, mercenaries bought to protect the rich/super-

A shimmering reggae backbeat springs intohypnotic repetitive consciousness, underscoring thereedy tenor of Rastafarian singer, Max Romeo, as helaunches into a catchy chorus;

"War inna Babylon! War inna Babylon!"Over a decade has passed since I've heard the song,

an arcane allusion to a mystic, coming Armageddon.But the Jamaican vision does not dominate my

mind today. Several hours ago, the startling newsswept the world that the United States struck the firstmartial blow against the Middle East country of Iraq,by a night strike on Baghdad. .

U.S. jets rained death upon the desert capital, thenation that is the modern day descendant of a once­proud empire-Babylon.

It can be said now, with the ring of truth, there istruly War in Babylon.

The U.S. Empire, "New Babylon," has unleashedthe dogs of war to insure dominion over the Arabianoil fields, and, by extension, its New World Order,an "order" that appears, at first glance, much likethe same old "order" of colonial, white, capitalisthegemony.

But, at bottom, this "New Order" offers none ofthe contrasts of the old, none of the balances ofsuperpower, none of the past concerns of "sphere ofinfluence"; for the counter-balance, the opposingsuperpower, is all but lost in a growing maelstrom ofinternal chaos.

Indeed, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics hascome dangerously close to becoming neither a"union," nor even nominally "socialist"-perestroika

SygmaCenter for Defense Information has estimated that U.S. invasion of Iraq couldproduce over 300,000 casualties, including tens of thousands killed. Above:eight-year-Iong Iran-Iraq War produced one million dead. Washington aidedboth sides in this bloody slaughter.

Sink U.S.War...(continued from page 7)

Democrats kept mum over the Gulf dur­ing the election campaign and thenfeigned surprise when, two days later,Bush ordered another 200,000 troops in.

After months of empty chatter byliberals and reformists alike about en­forcing the War Powers Act, when Bushput it to the Democratic-controlled Con­gress, they went for war. And as soon asthe warplanes started bombing Iraq, whatpusillanimous opposition existed col­lapsed entirely, as all but a handful ral­lied 'round flag and Fuhrer. Erstwhile"antiwar" Democratic Senator Boren ofOklahoma proclaimeds.t'Now that the warhas begun ... Congress must be preparedto vote to' provide our troops 'anythingthey need to prevail." '

The Democrats did nothing to blockBush for the simple reason that for yearsthese partner parties of American imperi­alism have both had a war policy. The

U.S. war on Iraq is not about "Iraqiaggression" against the oil emirate ofKuwait, and certainly has nothing to dowith freedom or democracy. This muchis obvious to all. Many also recognizethat the oil companies will rake insuperprofitsas a result, but it is morethan that. Ever since the 1973 "oilshock," all wings of the U.S. bourgeoisiehave agreed that "the oil is ours" and thePersian Gulf must be an American lake.

In January 1980, shortly after theSoviet Union intervened in Afghani­stan, Democratic president Jimmy Carterproclaimed the "Carter Doctrine": "Anyattempt by any outside [!] force to gaincontrol of the Persian Gulf will be re­garded as an assault on the vital interestsof the United States of America and suchan assault will be repelled by any meansnecessary, including military force."Presidential Directive No. 51 later thatyear specified that this included the useof tactical nuclear weapons.

"New World Order"with Feet of Clay

American capitalism is in deep trouble:industrial regions turned into a vast "rust

belt" years ago, a recession under way,per capita foreign debt the highest of anycountry in the world, with U.S. financevirtually in hock to Tokyo. No longerundisputed master of the capitalist world,with Germany and Japan surging forwardas economically more dynamic powers,the U.S. is seeking to regain its positionof unchallenged imperialist hegemony bythrowing around its military weight.

Echoing Hitler's talk of a "New Or­der," Bush is out to create a "New WorldOrder" of U.S. imperialist domination. Inhis triumphalist "State of the Union"speech, Bush called on "every Americanto prepare for the next American cen­tury"! The lasf"American century," U.S.imperialist hegemony following WorldWar II, was buried in the rice paddies ofVietnam. And the attempt to restore itcould lead to World War III. In the mid­1930s, as the last imperialist world con­flagration loomed, Leon Trotsky wrote:

"U.S. capitalism is up against the sameproblems that pushed Germany in 1914on the path of war. The world is divided?It must be redivided. For Germany it wasa question of 'organizing Europe.' TheUnited States must 'organize' the world.History is bringing humanity face to facewith the volcanic eruption of Americanimperialism."

-"War and the FourthIntemational" (June 1934)

While the Germans have turnedEurope into a D-mark zone and theJapanese have re-established with thepowerful yen the "Greater East AsianCo-Prosperity Sphere" they lost in WorldWar II, there is one thing which Amer­ica's imperialist rivals don't have-amassive, technologically sophisticatedmilitary arsenal. The U.S. ruling classintends to "correct the imbalance" in theworld capitalist market by seizing controlover the world's oil supplies and black­mailing its imperialist competitors intosubmission.

And now the U.S. has the chutzpah todemand that Japan and Germany pay forthe oil grab which is aimed against them.Japan has agreed to cough up an addi­tional $9 billion, but the Germans havebeen less forthcoming. (Kohl needs gobsof Deutschmarks right now to pay for the

takeover of East Germany and Bonn'sEast European and Soviet deals.) Yet theestimated cost of a war lasting severalmonths-some $80 billion-is no morethan the payouts this year alone for thetrillion-dollar S&L scam.

At bottom, it is not a question ofBush's ego or war-mania in the WhiteHouse, no more than the assassinationof an archduke was the cause of WorldWar I, or a Japanese "sneak attack" onPearl Harbor brought the U.S. into WorldWar II. This is the way imperialismworks: in the final analysis, deep-goingeconomic contradictions can only be re­solved by force of arms. And until thesystem of competing capitalist nation­states is swept away through workersrevolution, war will continue to be thefate of humanity.

The Spartacist League warned from theoutset: "Having lost its economic pre­dominance, Washington is now trying toreassert its role as imperialist globalpoliceman through brute military force"(WV No. 509, 7 September 1990). Whileliberals cheered the United Nations"sanctions" and various fake-socialiststried to duck the issue, we said straightout that the embargo itself was an act ofwar against Iraq and declared: "Break theBlockade of Iraq!"

Washington wants to paint its grubbyoil grab in the Near East as a replay ofWorld War II, which was popularlyperceived to be a war against Nazism.And the capitalist press goes along, refer­ring to the U.S.-led "Allies" vs. the"Saddam Hussein (read, Hitler) forces."Theywant to wipe out the memory of thehumiliating U.S. defeat in Indochina. Butthe Pentagon's ban on TV cameras atDover Air Force Base, where Americanwar dead in the Gulf will be returningstateside, will do little to black out theimage of body bags "coming home" fromthe minds of bereaved parents and sweet­hearts and children.

The U.S. certainly has the militaryfirepower to "prevail" in the end oversmall, semicolonial Iraq. But at whatcost? As Prussian military strategist Karlvon Clausewitz observed in the wake ofthe Napoleonic Wars, war is "a test of

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

U.S. imperialist rulers want to be cops of -the world.

moral and physical forces." Neither theAmerican population at large nor the ­troops in the Gulf see any stake in thiswar. As President Bush was celebratingThanksgiving in the Saudi desert, U.S.soldiers yelled out to reporters, "This isnot our war!" The Iraqis, on the otherhand, even those who have no love forthe despot Saddam Hussein, have nodoubts that they are defending theircountry against an imperialist invaderwho is raining destruction down on theirheads.

Middle East Powder Keg

As the Americans should have learnedfrom Vietnam, and even strategic bomb­ing surveys during World War II showed,bombing population centers neither winsa war nor does it break the will of thepeople. On the contrary, as Patrick Cock­burn observed in the London Independent(22 January): "there is little question thatthe bombing and missile attacks of thepast five days have politicised the Iraqipopulation in a way that five months ofpropaganda from their own governmentfailed to do. By Saturday, there was asense of anger and determination com­pletely lacking on 15 January."

It may be an exaggeration to say atthis point, as Jordanian political scientistKamel Abu Jaber does, that "Saddam hasalready won the political war." But in awar in which political factors are rapidlysurpassing military-technical consider­ations in importance, Iraq is certainlywell ahead of the imperialists. Through­out the Near East and North Africa, aswell as South Asia, there has been anexplosion of popular support for. Iraqsince the bombing began, includingamong Muslim fundamentalist forceshistorically indebted to the Saudi theoc­racy. AUPI dispatch reports the follow­ing typical sentiment in Cairo bars andcoffeehouses:

"America was screwed in Vietnam.America was screwed in Korea as well.Why then could not America be screwedin the gulf? The Arabs are not inferiortothe Vietnamese or the Koreans."

The Iraqi Scud missile attacks onIsrael turned Saddam Hussein into themost popular Arab leader at least sinceEgypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser-and si­multaneously shattered the myth of invul­nerability which is one of the ideologicalpillars of the Zionist garrison state. TelAviv residents have been clogging thehighways out of the city to fill up hotelsin Jerusalem left vacant by the halt intourist traffic, only to be denounced as"deserters" by the mayor of Tel Aviv.Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post interna­tional edition (26 January) reports thatdozens of Israeli Arab families haveopened up their homes to Jews fromareas hit by missiles.

Arabs are particularly infuriated by theoutrage expressed by Western capitalsand the press over the Scud attacks­which have produced minimal casual­ties-even as thousands of bombs raindown on Baghdad and Basra daily. OnePalestinian exclaimed after the firstScuds fell on Tel Aviv: "Two missileattacks on Israel that do not kill anybody,and the whole world cries and moans."In the three years of the Intifada wellover 700 Palestinians, many of themyoung children, have been gunned downby Israeli troops. Since the Gulf Warbegan, the entire Palestinian population

in the occupied West Bank has beenunder house arrest, under pain of beingshot on sight if they leave their homes.One 24-year-old woman who appearedon her balcony in the West Bank town ofNablus was shot dead as she was breast­feeding her baby.

The White House has been disingenu­ously claiming that Israel is not part ofthe anti-Iraq "coalition." But fearful thatan Israeli retaliatory attack on Iraq wouldcause problems for its bought-and-paid"for Arab "allies," Washington rushedPatriot missile launchers and U.S. crewsto Israel. For the moment the Israelishave refrained from retaliating, anticipat­ing a whopping $13 billion in additional

oos:0..

>~

San Francisco,January 26­

Spartacist Leagueand Labor Black

League fight tomobilize workers

power againstimperialist war.

aid from Washington as payoff. But theIsraeli rulers will strike at Iraq, andhealth minister Ehud OImert vowed thatIraq will suffer "painful scars that wouldstay with them for a long time" (NewYork Times, 24 January).

What sort of "painful scars" are theZionist madmen planning? As Israelinuclear technician Mordechai Vanunucourageously revealed to the world, theZionist state has more than 200 nuclearwarheads. Israel's rulers have alreadyvowed to take out the Jordanian air forceshould it attempt to prevent Israeli jetsfrom flying over Jordanian airspace inorder to attack Iraq. They are intent ondriving the Palestinians out of the WestBank and into Jordan. The internationalworkers movement must raise an outcryto demand: Defend the Palestinians!Israel out of the Occupied Territories!

As one of the oldest crossroads ofcivilization in the world, the Near Easthas always been a mosaic of numerousconflicting nationalities and ethnic andreligious groupings attempting to carveout living space at each other's expense.Under the domination of imperialism andthe imposition of artificial borders, capi­talist rule in the Near East has taken aparticularly bloody and horrendous form.Israeli Jews murder Palestinian Arabs,Egyptian Muslims suppress Copts, Sun­nis feud with Shi'ites and MaroniteChristians in Lebanon, Alawites domi­nate everyone else in Syria, and every­body goes after the Kurds.

The only way out of the national andsectarian fratricide which has wrackedthe region-short of mutual annihila-

Maguire/Philadelphia Inquirer

tion-lies through the revolutionarydestruction of capitalism and the creationof a socialist federation of the Near East.And particularly from among the nu­merous oppressed minorities can comesteeled internationalist cadres of Bolshe­vik parties capable of leading the work­ers to power. In Iraq, it was precisely theKurdish minority, as well as Christiansand Jews, who made up the bulk of theCommunist Party which was decimatedby Saddam Hussein's bloody repression(using hit lists supplied by the CIA).

A defeat for U.S. imperialism willembolden the working people in the NearEast to deal with their own despots andbutchers, including in Iraq. Leaving

Baghdad after a week of the U:S. bom­bardment, Financial Times correspondentLamisAndoni observed (25 January):"People in Iraq want freedom, but for themoment the battle is a matter of life anddeath. After the battle they will wantmore."

Reforge the FourthInternational!

The American empire has embarked ona major war with its population dividedand its economy bankrupt. The' U.S.ruling class and its NATO allies are farfrom unanimous in supporting Bush'ssingle-minded focus on the Persian Gulf,and if things bog down there the imperi­alist war front could crack. Many Demo­crats agree with. European politicianswho want to step up pressure on theSoviet Union as Gorbachev flails abouttrying to hold back secessionist forces inthe Baltics. Columnist Anthony Lewisgripes that Bush is too "obsessed" by theGulf War to "be forcefully protesting therepression in Lithuania and Latvia" (NewYork Times, 28 January).

The stage for the Persian Gulf Warwas set by the collapse of Stalinist rulein East Europe and the escalating crisisin the Soviet Union. No longer is theUnited States, the leading imperialistpower, restrained by fear of what theresponse would be from Moscow. Ratherthan ushering in an era of internationalharmony, complete with the mythical"peace dividend" ballyhooed by liberalsand social democrats who talked of"shifting priorities" from military to so­cial expenditures, instead George Bush's"New World Order" is one in whichthe U.S. arrogates to itself the role ofworld policeman to impose its imperialinterests.

The death agony of Stalinism has hadanother effect as well: the disarrayamong the "socialist" and "communist"leftists in the West, who are prostrate inthe face of this bloody imperialistassault. Communism is supposed to bedead, and according to State Department"theoreticians" maybe history too, butthat doesn't square very well with what'sgoing on in the Persian Gulf. With theonset of the "first post-Cold War war,"there has been a wave of antiwar unrestencompassing sections of the working

class from the very moment the shootingbegan and even before. This opens uptremendous possibilities for building anauthentic communist vanguard.

At the outset of World War I, as well,there was a widespread sense that social­ism had failed. The vote of the GermanSocial Democracy on 4 August 1914 forwar credits to the Kaiser's governmentregistered the collapse of the SecondInternational, as most of its nationalcomponents became rabid "social­patriotic" flag-wavers for the war aimsof their "own" bourgeoisies, and muck ofthe "left" social democracy was para­lyzed by "social-pacifist" politics. Theresolutions of the Second International

for internationalist socialist action againstwar were revealed as so much worthlesspaper.

Among socialist opponents of the war,the left wing led by the Russian Bolshe­viks called for a very different policy.Instead of appealing to the imperialiststo make a robbers' peace, Lenin calledon the workers to "turn the imperialistwar into a civil war," to bring down thewarring governments by socialist revolu­tion. And so they did, in the BolshevikOctober Revolution of 1917. Key to theBolshevik victory was their determinedstruggle to forge a new, genuinely revo­lutionary International. After Stalin'sbetrayal of the principles and program ofthe Communist International, the Bolshe­vik struggle was continued by Trotsky'sfight for the Fourth International.

Today, America's rulers have gone allout to whip up a war fever, marshalingall the forces of Madison Avenue in theservice of the Pentagon. This was epito­mized by George Bush's message duringhalf time of the Super Bowl footballgame, as 75,000 spectators held up cardsforming a giant American flag. But thismood is transitory at best. In his "Warand the Fourth International," Trotskywrote:

"For a revolutionary party, the moment ofdeclaration of war is especially critical.The bourgeois and social-patriotic pressin an alliance with the radio and movieswill pour out upon the toiling massestorrents of chauvinistic poison...."Even if at the beginning of a new warthe true revolutionists should again findthemselves in a small minority, we can­not doubt for a single moment that thistime the shift of the masses to the roadof revolution will occur much faster,more decisively and relentlessly thanduring the first imperialist war. A newwave of insurrections can and must be­come victorious in the whole capitalistworld."It is indisputable at any rate that in ourepoch only that organization that basesitself on international principles andenters into the ranks of the world partyof the proletariat can root itself in thenational soil. The struggle against warmeans now the struggle for the FourthInternational!"

Today in countries around the world,the sections of the International Commu­nist League fight to defeat the imperialistonslaught against the Iraqi people. Forlabor strikes against.the war! Defeat u.s.imperialism! Defend Iraq!.

1 FEBRUARY 1991 9

North Africa SeethingOver Attack on Iraq

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

***Today, Arab nationalists and Islamic

fundamentalists are in the forefront ofprotests against the U.S.-led attack onIraq. Should they come to power, suchforces will inevitably turn on the massesin order to consolidate a new capitalistregime, as occurred in Khomeini's Iran.But should the war drag on, the potentialfor serious' anti-imperialist struggles inthe region will grow enormously, andwith it the possibilities for interventionby proletarian-internationalist forces.

The former subjects of French colo­nialism also form a human bridge tothe imperialist metropole, where NorthAfrican workers are in key industriallocations. Moroccan workers have rep­resented alarge segment of coal minersin northern France and took the lead inauto workers strikes of the early 1980s.Today, second-generation immigrantNorth African youth (beurs) have playeda leading role in the student struggleswhich have swept France, while con­fronting racist cop terror in the ghettos.

From one end of the Mediterranean tothe other, the key is to forge a Trotskyistvanguard.•

time broke their silence by demonstratingin support of Iraq.

Obviously, the government, the rulingparty (the Constitutional DemocraticRally [RCD]), the opposition parties andthe UGTT trade-union federation are tak­ing the easy road of collecting blood forthe Iraqis. The Tunisian newspaper AlSabah reports on a demonstration, in thecity of Kaf, of 50 children between theages of three and five shouting pro-Iraqiand pro-Saddam Hussein slogans.

According to Le Monde, the RCD "hasbeen able to channel the popular move­ments in favor of Iraq which haveunfurled across the country without inci­dent." The speech of Prime MinisterAhmed Karoui on January 23 sharplydenounced the destruction of Iraq'scapabilities by the forces of the imperial­ist coalition, without naming any ofthem. He proclaimed Tunisian solidaritywith the Iraqi people as well as with theKuwaiti people, without ever mentioningSaddam Hussein.

Algeria

Algeria has seen the largest and mostmassive demonstrations, organized sep­arately by the secular parties and bythe Islamic fundamentalists of the FIS.Following Friday prayers on January 18,"More than 100,000 Algerian demon­strators cheer the fiery fundamentalistpreacher, Ali Ben Hadj, as he parades,dressed in army fatigues, on a jeepthrough Algiers," reports the FinancialTimes (23 January). Women carry signsproclaiming, "We will sacrifice our soulsand blood for Islam."

No longer singing the praises of SaudiArabia, the FIS appears entirely devotedto Saddam Hussein and doesn't miss anopportunity to insult, at each demonstra­tion, the Saudi monarch. The FIS hascalled 'On Algerians to volunteer for mil­itary action in Iraq, and demanded of theauthorities that they open training camps.The response of the ruling FLN was notlong in coming. According to Le Monde,at a January 22 press conference, a gov­ernment spokesman spoke sarcasticallyof those who want Algeria to send mili­tary reinforcements to Iraq while it "hasnot even been capable of transporting toIraq a shipload of wheat." He was refer­ring to the "peace ship" sent by Algerianwomen's organizations which "wasstopped by the U.S. Navy in the Gulf.

As for President Benjedid Chadli, ina speech on January 23 he accused thefundamentalists of trying to "outbid"others with "demagogy." Benjedid avoid­ed bringing up Algeria's official positionof condemning the annexation of Kuwaitby Iraq. He called on the population tosolidarize with the state and not to washtheir dirty linen in public. At the sametime, in the event that the Algerians gotout of hand, the government just boughtfrom Mercedes-Benz anti-riot vehiclesand equipment.

Under the headline "National Consen­sus to Condemn the Imperialist Attackand an Immediate End to the AggressionAgainst Iraq," Al Bayane reports that "theopposition [Stalinists, social democratsand nationalists of the Istiqlal] demandsthe withdrawal of Moroccan troops(1,500 men) stationed in Saudi Arabiaand the United Arab Emirates, to permitthe Moroccan people to express its fer­vent pan-Arab sentiments, to mobilizethe Moroccan people' to support andstand with the Iraqi people ... and to ex­press its joy at the victories of the Iraqiarmy on the field."

The youth of the various oppositionparties called for a demonstration onSaturday, January 26 in the capital ofRabat under the slogan, "Demand a Haltto the Gulf War, For a Peaceful Solutionin the Region."

At the same time sentences are contin­uing to be handed down as a result of theriots which took place following thegeneral strike of last December 14. Thatstrike against the government's austeritypolicy and for an increase in the mini­mum wage touched off a spontaneousexplosion by the plebeian poor in whichbanks, luxury hotels, jewelers and fash­ionable boutiques were attacked. Scoreswere killed and over 200 remain in jail.

On January 23, the appeals court ofFes handed down sentences ranging upto ten years in prison in the trial ef37 people, among them 26 students. InMeknes ten others received up to fiveyears in prison.

TunisiaDemonstrations were held throughout

Tunisia in support of Iraq. Tens of thou­sands chant "Mitterrand, assassin!" and"Saddam, we will sacrifice ourselves foryou!" The position of the governmentpoints toward an initiative to cease hos­tilitiesand resolve the conflict throughnegotiations. As for the formerly pro­Saudi fundamentalists, they for the first

blood collection drive for Iraq. The strikeis to coincide with the call of the opposi­tion parties for a day of fasting in allNorth African countries on January 28.They also called for the withdrawal of allArab and Islamic troops in order to avoidspilling Arab and Islamic blood.

The editorial in Al Bayane (organ ofthe PPS, the Moroccan Stalinists) of24 January is headlined "To Save thePeace." The PPS has a classical pacifistline. Thus, it supports the demand of theNorth African governments for a specialsession of the UN Security Council to re­establish peace in the Near East.

o $3/3 issues of ,Women and Revolution

o $2/10 introductory issuesof Workers Vanguard(includes English-languageSpartacist)

MoroccoWith the launching of the Gulf

War, "Our Friend the King" (title of arecent biography of King Hassan II byGilles Perrault) threatened that if mat­ters seemed to be getting but of handhe would declare a state of siege. Heretreated afterwards, granting legal or­ganizations the right to demonstrate oncondition-that each organization demon­strate in a different city from the others.

According to a 25 January dispatchfrom France-Infos, the three Moroccantrade-union federations (UMT, CDT,UGTM) have called a general strike forJanuary 28 in solidarity with the Iraqipeople.

The CDT and UGTM submitted arequest for an authorization to demon­strate in 13 cities to support the Iraqipeople. Furthermore, they called for a

cation has decided to extend school anduniversity vacations until February 2,presumably out of fear of student demon­strations for Iraq.

Der SpiegelBush's war unleashes protest across North Africa. Above, Islamic funda­mentalist demonstration in Algiers.

all foreign aggression. Several profes­sional associations (associations of doc­tors, nurses, engineers, etc.) and dozensof intellectuals have condemned the U.S.­Western aggression and expressed theirsupport to the Iraqi people.

The Tunisian newspaper As Sabbah (24January) reports that, according to theEgyptian newspaper Al Ahali (organ ofthe PPU), "thousands of Egyptians arevolunteering for the Iraqi army." It addsthat "many Egyptians have refused toleave Iraq and have insisted on stay­ing." The. Egyptian information agencyreports that the Ministry of National Edu-

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EgyptIn a communique published on January

23, the Muslim Brotherhood demandedthe withdrawal of Egyptian forces fromthe Gulf, while the main opposition par­ty, the (Arab nationalist) ProgressiveUnionist Rally (PPU), published a call onJanuary 21 in which it merely called onthe Egyptian forces to respect the objec­tive which they had set for themselves,name1y defending Saudi Arabia against

Almost two weeks of bombing ofBaghdad and Basra by the imperialistwar machine has sparked an outpouringof solidarity with Iraq among the Arabpopulations of North Africa and Egypt.The unrest provoked by the war threatensto blow apart the U.S.-led coalitionagainst Iraq and could ultimately bringdown the brittle pro-imperialist regimesof North Africa.

The widespread protests involve highlydisparate forces. Pro-Iraq demonstrations,many of them led by Islamic fundamen­talists, have swept Algeria and Tunisia.Doctors and nurses in Tunisia haveoffered their services in support of Iraqand have begun collecting blood. And inMorocco labor federations have called ageneral strike in solidarity with Iraq.

Across North Africa volunteers areenlisting to go fight on the side of Iraq.In Tunisia 3,000 have already signedup, according to the UGTT trade-unionfederation (Le Monde, 25 January). InAlgeria several hundred youth presentedthemselves at the Iraqi embassy after thefirst day of bombing to volunteer forcombat.

The New York Times (24 January)headlined that "In Egypt, Public Senti­ment Is Shifting in Baghdad's Favor."The significance of this fact is not loston the imperialists. With over 40,000Egyptian troops under U.S. command inthe Gulf, the Cairo regime is a key im­perialist "asset" in the assault on Iraq.At the same time, the numerous Egyp­tian working class can be an importantforce for socialist revolution in theNear East.

Two days later the Times (26 Janu­ary) noted that "Pro-Iraq Sentiment IsIncreasing in North Africa" as well: "Amajor reason most Tunisians, Algeriansand Moroccans back Mr. Hussein isthey see him as their brother in fightingagainst the rich. The masses of peoplehave few kind words for Kuwait andwere not sad that Iraq gobbled it up."

The impact of the imperialist war onIraq is reverberating through the region,sparking mass unrest that with Trotskyistleadership qould point to workers revolu­tion. A North African comrade inPariscompiled the following report:

10 WORKERS VANGUARD

Weak Link in Imp.erialist War Coalition

Workers' Struggles Rock Turkey

Spartacist LeaguePublic Offices

- MARXIST LITERATURE­

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maintaining the rule of their class ene­mies under a more "democratic" guise.At the head of their march, the minerscarried a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, thebourgeois-nationalist modernizer whofounded the Turkish republic. Yet 70years later, Turkey is under the militarythumb of the U.S., economically behold­en to German imperialism and suffocat­ing in religious obscurantism, while theTurkish ruling class savagely denies overten million Kurds of eastern Anatoliatheir national rights.

Turkey provides a stark example forthe Trotskyist perspective of permanentrevolution: only through the proletariat-led by an authentically Bolshevikparty-taking power at the head of allthe oppressed can the democratic andnational tasks facing this backward coun­try be accomplished. Yet from the UnitedCommunist Party (a fusion of the formerTKP and Workers Party) and SocialistParty to various "Marxist-Leninist" na­tionalist guerrillaist groups, the largeTurkish left is dominated by the Stalinistprogram of the "popular front" with oneor another sector of the bourgeoisie.

The Ozal regime dreams of occupyingthe oil-rich areas of Mosul and Kirkuk innorthern Iraq. This would pit Turkey notonly against Iraq but against Syria andIran as well. The Iranian foreign ministerwarned that "a possible attack by Turkeyon Iraq will mean war with Iran." Aspart of the preparations for war; brutalterror in Turkish Kurdistanhas dramat­ically increased in the last few months.The Voice of Kurdistan (January 1991)reports:

"Since July the Turkish army in Kurdi­stan has been in continuous operation... whole villages are being depopulatedand razed to the ground .... Entire groups

continued on page 15

police barricade several miles out ofZonguldak, the marchers refused to turnback, until finally the barricades were'removed. "No to -war," they chanted,"Let there be no wars, let no humanbeing die!" (Giinaydin; 6 January).

While the TUrk-i~ leadership opposedthe "Miners Convoy," many unionssent solidarity delegations. Even Islamicgroups and parliamentarians from theliberal SHP turned up to express support.The opposition parties are fearful thatgovernment intransigence could provokean even wider upsurge. Quoting the SHPleader, one newspaper ran the headline,"Government Is Facing a Civil War."The government surrounded Ankara withpolice roadblocks; Cankaya started tolook like it was under siege. Newspaperphoto captions reported: "Huge demon­stration in Zonguldak... tense waiting inAnkara" and "Workers on the road, statesecurity on its feet."

On January 6, police confronted themarchers with water cannon and bulldoz­ers. More than 200 miners were hauledoff by the cops. Two days later, as theconfrontation between' the militantmarchers and the state continued to in­tensify, Miners Union (Genel Maden-Is)leader Semsi Denizer acquiesced to TUrk­i~ pressure and "suspended" the march.Miners' wives wept openly as the march­ers were corralled onto buses to takethem back to Zonguldak. Fearful of •upsetting the anti-Ozal bourgeois oppo­sition, Denizer is now ordering thepowerful miners to sit on their handsuntil "the end of this war" (Hiirriyet,26 January).

Bring Down Ozal withWorkers Revolution!

Defending workers' rights ih. the. faceof the azal government's pro-imperialistwar mobilization requires a sharp breakwith the popular-frontist politics whichhave plagued the Turkish left and unions.Those fake-leftists who label the reac­tionary Ozal regime as "fascist" do so inorder to hold the door open to a blocwith the bourgeois "democratic"-oreven Islamic fundamentalist-opposition.And from the SHP's Erdal Inonu toveteran rightist warhorse Siileyman De­mirel, the capitalist politicians are eager­ly offering their services to head off the'burgeoning workers' upsurge.

In calling off the miners' march, Deni­zer announced:"Our workers made theirvoice heard in the world. You have beenregistered in history." But the minershave not fought sovaliantly only to maketheir "voice heard" for the purpose of

ed buses rented by the union from enter­ing Zonguldak, the miners shouted: "Wecan walk not 300 kilometers but even500 kilometers. Nobody can stopus onour path" (Hiirriyet, 6 January). Withwomen in the forefront, 60,000 minersand their families set off. The town re­verberated with chants of "The workerswill march, Cankaya will shake!"

Workers from other areas who hadbeen kept out of Zonguldak by the copswaited in nearby villages for the minersto pass. The march soon swelled to over1OO,OOO-acolumn stretching eight kilo­meters down the road. When the workerspassed a prison, they were applauded byprisoners chanting, "For general amnesty!Empty the dungeons!" Encountering a

Turkish miners'march on Ankarawas met by water

cannon andbulldozers.

bonapartist dictatorship has broughtTurkey to the boiling point. The spear­head of the current upsurge of labor andantiwar protests is the militant two­month-old strike by Zonguldak coalminers demanding a 450 percent wageincrease to make up for the ravages of a70 percent inflation rate (see "HeroicCoal Miners Strike Shakes Turkey," WVNo. 517, 4 January). Inspired by theheroic miners, large sections of the Turk­ish and Kurdish working class respondedto the January 3 general strike call by theTUrk-i~ trade-union confederation. Uni­versity students boycotted classes insolidarity and in many large towns shop­keepers shut down as well.

But the cringing union leadershipcalled on workers to stay home and notshow their power on the streets. Defyingthe TUrk-i~ tops, the Zonguldak minerslaunched their dramatic march on thecapital and the presidential residence atCankaya. When the government prevent-

"The Workers Will March,c;an~aya Will Shake!" #

Ten years of murderous repression andsavage austerity under the pro-NATO

ationist policies of American imperialismin the Middle East and their collabora­tors." While cops round up people evenfor putting up antiwar posters, studentprotesters have met police onslaughtswith sticks and stones. On January 25,Turkey was swept by antiwar protestswhich burned American and Israeli flags.In Tatvan, where demonstrators chanted"Down with Ozal" and "Freedom forKurdistan," one protester was shot deadby the police; many more were injuredand well over a hundred arrested.

_ . ~~ffi

Women at forefront of Z0ngttl'- str:itters' march on capital carry portrait ofKemal Ataturk, founder of'Tunc.ish ",public.

American F-15 fighter-bombers takingoff with their payloads of death dailyshake-the ground around Turkey's in­cirlikair base. But what is rocking thisfront line NATO state even more is anupsurge of working-class struggle andantiwar protest. On January 3, two mil­lion workers walked out in a one-daygeneral strike which shut down all majorcities. The next day, striking miners andtheir supporters began a march on thecapital of Ankara from the Black Seatown of Zonguldak.

The current strike wave, which rapidlyspread from the Zonguldak mines toprivate-sector metal workers and thetextile and paper industries, is the mostwidespread since before the 1980 mili­tary coup. The London Independent (7January) noted: "What is especially wor­rying for the government is the waylabour protests are becoming mixed withanti-war Sentiment." The explosion ofpopularly supported class struggle againstthe repressive Turgut Ozal regime threat­ens to pierce Washington's fragile war"coalition" against Iraq and trigger awave of social struggles throughout theregion.

Ozal's decision to turn the country intoa staging area for Washington's war onneighboring Iraq is universally unpopu­lar, even within the top echelons of themilitary. Last month the head of thearmy resigned in opposition to the gov­ernment's war policy. A recent pollshows that nine out of ten people opposeTurkish involvement in the war. On theeve of the U.S. bombing of Baghdad, theliberal Social Democratic Populist Party(SHP) pulled 20,000 people to a "No toWar" rally in Istanbul. Transport workersin Istanbul staged a hunger strike toprotest the war and support the miners.

Bombs have ripped through the head­quarters of Ozal ' s Motherland Party inAnkara and the U.S. Logistics Organi­zation Group complex in Maslak. Theguerrillaist Dev Sol took responsibility,saying this was "a warning to the annex-

1 FEBRUARY 1991

. . t:~··\,jlb"""mChristopher Moms . Dejong/AP

Bogged down in the Persian Gulf: U.S. air war can't win the war, so Pentagon will unleash bloody slaughter on the ground, using soldiers as cannon fodder.

Next: Ground War BloodbathPentagon Boasts Over High·Tech Air War

attacks alone dropped an astounding18,000 tons of bombs (London Inde­pendent, 19 January). This is far morethan the 13,000 tons dropped during theentire eleven-day "Linebacker II" B-52bombing of Hanoi-Haiphong in Decem­ber 1972 which marked the peak ofbombing in that war. Needless to say,bombing on such a scale cannot possiblybe "surgical."

Ironically, instead of learning anythingfrom Vietnam the U.Sc-imperialists havemagnified their own blind faith in tech­nology as a substitute for an army withthe will to fight, a blindness which wastheir downfall. One is reminded of De­fense Secretary Robert McNamara andhis Pentagon "whiz kids" confidentlypredicting they could crush the Vietnam­ese with fancy gizmos (such as electronicsensors along the Ho Chi Minh trail).The B-52 carpetbombing didn't destroyVietnam's will to resist or its militarycapacity to fight, and the current attemptsto obliterate the Iraqis' elite RepublicanGuard from the air will also come tonaught.

The fat-headed military would like tothink that now they have a completely"free hand," but since war is, asClausewitz noted, the continuation ofpolitics by other means, there are realrestrictions on their options. If the U.S.had unlimited time, for instance, perhapsthey could "prevail" over Iraq solely byair bombardment, since Baghdad has nosources of resupply. But the fragile "coa­lition" cobbled together by Bush andBaker threatens to unravel each day thiswar drags on, particularly as Israel isdrawn in and as the Muslim holy monthof Ramadan draws closer.

The approach of hot desett weather ina few months adds to the time pressure.If it took, say, several months and thou­sands of American lives to beat Hussein,such a "victory" would be a politicaldefeat for Bush. So there is a time limiton the air campaign, after which Bushwill have to try to end the war quicklyby sending in the ground forces. Alreadythe White House has activated the "eu­phoria patrol" to prepare Americans fora "long" war lasting "months," culminat­ing in a "bloody land campaign" (Phila­delphia Inquirer, 24 January).

It's the ground war the Pentagondreads because that plays to Iraq'sstrength: a well-armored and battle­hardened army-dug in in Kuwait. "It's

continued on page 15

"lesson" of Vietnam as stated by GeneralNorman Schwarzkopf (London Guardian,7 January), a veteran of that war andnow commander of U.S. forces in theGulf. And so the Pentagon brass havevowed that this time around there wouldbe no "gradualism."

The U.S. and its allies' warplanes havelaunched some 2,000 sorties. a dayagainst Iraq, double the rate of the heavi­est nighttime I,OOO-bomber raids onGermany in late 1944. The first day's

American war machine, its high-tech airpower, and get blown away in the proc­ess since Iraq can't match it. Iraq mayhave a one-time-use air force, but clearlyHussein is not so stupid as to throw itaway without purpose. It's become obvi­ous that Hussein has done the only sanething a commander could do in his situa­tion: hunker down and wait for theopportunity to hit the enemy at his weakpoints, namely on the ground. And in themeantime he can fire off Scuds, forcingthe U.S. to devote a lot of its sorties totracking down launchers (and to use upits limited supply of Patriot missiles).

Revisiting Vietnam"When you go to war, you're going

to war all the way," is the summary

Vietnam, where cocky Air Force boastsof targets destroyed were quickly deflat­ed when subsequent photos showed thestrangely "resourceful" enemy had notgiven up but instead had, for instance,built a makeshift replacement bridge.The arrogant imperialists never creditthe enemy with brains, let alonedetermination.

It seems the U.S. was expecting Sad­dam Hussein to send out his forces tochallenge the strongest element of the

pushing a few buttons, as Washington isnow rediscovering to its horror. Lieuten­ant General Thomas Kelly, director ofoperations for the Joint Chiefs, dispar­aged the Scud threat early on, claimingthe Iraqis had only about 50 launchersand suggesting that a large portion hadbeen "neutralized." But over the nextdays, every time a Scud came down onIsrael and Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon's"estimates" of the size of the Iraqi rocketarsenal went up.

The initially "decimated" RepublicanGuard turned out to be hardly touched;the Iraqi Air Force, which in initial brief­ings was declared wiped out, then 50percent destroyed, turned out to be hard­ly dented (45 planes "killed" out of 700­plus). It, was all eerily reminiscent of

. "'n. . Imperial War Museum

World War I: Battle· of the Somme, July 1916. British commanders tried tosmash German lines with massive artillery bombardment before assault. ButGermans were du'g in 30 feet deep. Result: 60,000 British casualties, 20,000dead In one hour/

The Pentagon-sanitized media is feed­ing America images of a bloodless high­tech war in which Iraq is supposedlybeing "taken out" at the push of a button.Videos from attacking U.S. planes, dis­played at press briefings by strutting AirForce brass, show laser-guided bombshoming in with pinpoint precision onsupposed weapons storage warehouses,air base runways and a high-rise towerin Baghdad. The viewing audience athome could groove on the first TV warin (almost) real time. A Tom Clancytechno-thriller on y,our screen: you toocan be Top Gun!

• Tomahawk cruise missiles: some200 were launched in the first two daysalone from Navy ships in the Gulf towipe out Iraqi "command and control"centers, antiaircraft defenses and otherfixed targets. At a cool $1.3 million apop, the Tomahawk finds its preselectedlong-distance target by following a ter­rain map stored in its computer.

• F-117A: the top secret "stealth"fighter also reportedly played a key rolein the initial attack, sneaking past Iraqiradar to drop laser-guided munitions.

• Patriot anti-missile missiles: themedia proclaimed this the first "hero" ofthe Gulf War, shooting down Iraqi"Scud" missiles at $700,000 per shot,and pushing up the stock price of itsmanufacturer, Raytheon.

In short, the vaunted "state-of-the-artleading edge" of the Reagan-Bush three­trillion-dollar arsenal designed and builtin the '80s to obliterate the Soviet Unionwas thrown at the Third World countryof Iraq. But the technocratic triumphal­ism which pumped up Washington in thefirst days of the war is just a cover forold-fashioned mass murder.

Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, chair­man of the Armed Services Committeeand now a backer of Bush's war,announced that "this is a new era ofwarfare." Reporters were impressed bythe Pentagon's meaningless statisticsabout their bombing runs being "80percent effective." Nobody asked what"effective" meant, until Scud missilesstarted raining down on Tel Aviv~ Tobe sure, some of the video footageshowed impressive technology whichdoes work under certain circumstances,namely that there are no high-techcountermeasures taken by the "enemy."But some returning pilots reported Iraqiantiaircraft fire became more intense asthe week wore on.

General Colin Powell, chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff, was forced to con­fess that "it is taking more of an efforton our part to go after those.Scuds thanwe had anticipated." But so far to noavail. Evidently there's more to war than

12 WORKERS VANGUARD

Toronto Protesters Say:Defend the Palestinians!

International Communist League(Fourth Internationalist)

Correspondence for: Address to:

Spartaclst League of Australia Spartacist League, GPO Box 3473Sydney, NSW, 2001, Australia

Spartaclst League/Britain Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041London NW5 3EU, England

Trotskyist League of Canada Trotskyist League, Box 7198, Station AToronto, Ontario M5W 1X8, Canada

Spartaklst-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands .... SpAO, Postfach 20020-1026 Berlin, Germany

Verlag Avantgarde, Postfach 11 02312000 Hamburg 11, Germany

L1gueTrotskystedeFrance Le Bolchevik, BP 135-1075463 Paris Cedex 10, France

Spartaclst Group India/Lanka write to Spartacist, New York

Dublin Spartaclst Youth Group PO Box 2944, Dublin 1Republic of Ireland

Lega Trotsklsta d'italia , Walter FidacaroC.P. 1591, 20101 Milano, Italy

Spartaclst Group Japan...... . . . . ... . . . .... . . .. Spartacist Group JapanPO Box 18,Chitose-YubinkyokuSetagaya-ku, Tokyo 156, Japan

Grupo Espartaqulsta de Mexico P. Linares, Apdo. Postal 45306002, M~xico 1, OF, Mexico

Spartakusowska Grupa Polski A.J., SKR 74150-950 Wroclaw 2, Poland

Spartaclst League/U.S Spartaclst League, Box 1377 GPONew York, NY 10116, USA

TORONTO-As soon as news broke ofthe U.S. attack on Iraq, antiwar protestshave swept across Canada. Late on theevening of January 16, over 1',000 dem­onstrators gathered at the U.S. consulatein Toronto. The CBC national newsreported that the Trotskyists were callingto "Defend Iraq Against U.S. Attack!"The second half of the Trotskyist Leaguebanner read, "Defeat U.S./Canadian Im­perialism!" The Canadian junior partnersof U.S. imperialism have supported thewar to the hilt, sending troops, .ships andCF-18 fighters to the Gulf.

In a demonstration the following day,3,000 antiwar protesters met at the U.S.consulate and marched on Conserva­tive Party headquarters. Demo organizerstried to drown out our comrades' "De­fend Iraq" chants, but demonstratorssnapped up hundreds of copies of Spar­tacist Canada and Workers Vanguard.Linda Torney, president of the MetroToronto Labour Council, called on work­ers to mobilize in the streets against this"war to defend capitalist interests." Butlast month the Labour Council, after asharp debate, moved to support the UNsanctions which are the cover for the in­vasion. After Torney's speech, TL sup­porters chanted for "labor strikes againstthe war," which was widely picked 'up.

The protests grew on January 19, when5,000 marched again in Toronto.Amongthe protesters were many Palestinian,Iraqi and other Arab militants with flagsand placards denouncing the imperialistwar and Israeli occupation of the WestBank and Gaza Strip. While demo organ-

Europe...(continued from page 16)

the Gulf," but also (vainly) chanted"Spartaco out of the march." Theyshowed that the kind of strike that theysupport is one where the reformists seekto impose on the working class thesocial-pacifist chains that would bindthem to their "own" bourgeoisie.

Despite the trade-union bureaucracy'ssabotage, small sectors of militant work­ers continue to fight for strikes againstthe war. Numerous factory councils, like

izers tried to restrict chants to "Troopsout" and "No blood for oil," a contingentfrom the Trotskyist League joined withArab militants and others to demand"U.S./Canada, Hands off Iraq!"

As marchers rallied at the U.S. con­sulate, TL spokesmen addressed a sectionof the march numbering 1,000 withspeeches calling for defense of Iraq anddefeat of imperialism. Yossi Schwartz,who left the Canadian CP last fall for theTL, emphasized the need to defend thePalestinian people against the Zionistterrorists, and the crowd took up thechant, "Israel out of the Occupied Ter-

Toronto,January 17­

TrotskyistLeague marches

outside U.S.consulate for

defense of Iraqand defeat of

U.S./Canadianimperialism.

Ansaldo of Milano, have made clear thatthey will continue to pressure the uniontops to call for a general strike. But thelatter have sworn their fealty to Italiancapitalism, and the real line of the Com­munist Party (soon to be "DemocraticParty of the Left"), although it formallycame out against the war, is to "givesanctions a chance." As PCI leaderOcchetto said in parliament, to "reinforcethe embargo and the international isola­tion of Iraq" (L' Unita, 17 January).

The Catholic church has played aleading role in opposition to the war andhas been pushing a position ("war is an

ritories-Defend the Palestinians!" AMohawk woman took the bullhorn tospeak about the Canadian state's armedassault on Native Indian people lastsummer.

Rallies continued across Canada onJanuary 26, with protests from Montrealto Edmonton and Vancouver. In Mont­real, in the biggest rally so far, 15,000chanted "Pas de guerre pour le federal"(No war for the federal government).Many union banners and placards werepresent. In Edmonton, when New Demo­cratic Party speaker Svend Robinsonmade a pitch for sanctions, the Trotskyist

adventure with no return," as the Popesaid) which has been embraced by thePCI in its bid to give concrete expressionto a popular-frontist social-chauvinistresolution to the Gulf War.

PSI (Socialist) leader Craxi has goneto great lengths insisting on the necessityof the attack. The Italian bourgeoisiewould have preferred a "shOI1 war," lim­iting wider commitments. Italy's inter­vention is limited, in line not only withthe desires of U.S. imperialism but alsowith the limited aims of the Italianbourgeoisie.

Confindustria (the industrialists' asso­ciation) came out clearly for t~ inter­vention and went after the PCI over itscall for the troops out. However, the pro­war coalition is extremely fragile andunder much pressure. The Milano citycouncil last night tried to pass a motionof support to the government on theGulf. To everyone's surprise, the motionwas voted down and the Socialists areparticularly sore about this.

France: Marchers DefyDemo Ban~ Chant"Mitterrand Assassin!"PARIS, January 28-This isa very un­popular war, at least it was before itstarted. Hundreds of thousands of peoplemarched in nearly all major cities onJanuary 12. In factories around the coun­try, working-class opposition to the waris apparent. Also on the l Zth, rail work­ers in Chambery, where mass picketsstopped the "bullet trains" during the '86transport strike, stopped an Americanarms transport bound for the Gulf fromGermany via Italy. On the 13th, thenational CGT confederation circulated anorder to all union locals to organize 15­minute strikes to "win the peace."

Attempting to line up the workersbehind "His Majesty" Mitterrand 's flurryoflast-minute diplomatic activity (i.e., toget Saddam to capitulate), the CGTcalled for this strike time to be used to

League comrades chanted, "Pro-sanctionsis pro-war-Break with the pro­imperialist NDP." On the coast, therewas a family reunion of social democratsin Vancouver, as the reformist left hidthemselves in an orgy of pleas to "getCanada back to the peacekeeper role"-like when Canadian troops helpedslaughter three million in Korea!

From "support our troops" to "let sanc­tions do the job," the social democrats ofthe NDP and the labor bureaucracy standready to throttle working-class oppositionto this war. In contrast, the TrotskyistLeague fights to mobilize labor's powerin strike action, for the working class todo its duty to aid in the defeat of NorthAmerican imperialism. At the January 19Toronto rally, the closing TrotskyistLeague speaker linked the capitalists'war at home against Native Indians,workers, immigrants and all oppressed totheir bloody war abroad against the Iraqipeople .•

send "peace dove" postcards to the presi­dent and to sign petitions begging depu­ties to vote against the war on January17. In the end a handful of PS (Socialist)deputies voted with the Communist Party(PCF), the fascists and de Gaulle's sonand grandson against French participationin the war. They were censured but notexpelled, for even Mitterrand's war min­ister Chevenement is under fire for hislukewarm attitude toward the war.

When the bombing started, tens ofthousands took to the streets Thursdayand Friday nights, defying a governmentban on demonstrations. In the face of amassive cop presence, machine guns atthe ready, chants included "MitterrandAssassin" and "CRS [riot police] toKuwait." The leadership was the "Appealof the 75" marching behind a bannersaying, "No to War," which on Fridaybecame "Stop the War." The PCF, LCR(supporters of Ernest Mandel's "UnitedSecretariat of the Fourth International"),SOS-Racisme and Greens are prominent,as well as many beurs (second-generationimmigrants from North Africa).

The LCR whimpered, "Mitterrand, youdidn't get elected to make war." In fact,the "Socialist" president was elected,with the "critical" support of the pseudo­Trotskyist LCR, on a program of unam­biguous backing for NATO. On the left,only our comrades of the Ligue Trots­kyste de. France can say that they nevercalled to vote for Algerian war criminalMitterrand or his popular front!

On the 12th, contingents of passingPalestinians cheered as they passed theLTF's banner calling for defense of Iraqand defeat of imperialism, prominentlyplaced on an elevated sidewalk two me­ters above the march. They punctuatedthe air with the Intifada'S V-for-victorysign and snapped up copies of Le Bolche­vik. In Rouen, 30 people marched behindthe LTF's banner, including CGT mem-bers and high school students. .

continued on page 14

1 FEBRUARY 1991 13

Australian Wharfies Walk Out

Berlin protesters say, "No Blood For Oil-Soldiers, Desert!"

Europe...(continued from page 13)

North African workers and youth inFrance were initially dazed with anguish,as the bombing raids relentlessly raineddown destruction on the Arab populationin Baghdad, and the imperialist propa­ganda machine spewed out the lie thatSaddam had been KOed without resis­tance. The next day they breathed asigh of relief when the Iraqi Scuds ex­ploded the premature triumphalism of theracist imperialists.

The working-class population of NorthAfrican origin has been targeted as apotential "fifth column" in the govern­ment's "anti-terrorist" campaign: postoffice workers are requisitioned intosecurity crews to make rounds and checkthe wastebaskets for bombs. TV shotsshow the Champs-Elysees at night look­ing like a glittery ghost town. The pressplayed up a run oil gun shops in thesouth, making it seem like the entirepopulation was arming for imminentpogroms.

The heur youth, for the most partFrench citizens, have come to identifywith the Palestinian Intifada and nowIraq, as their future looks increasinglyhopeless here. "Radio Beur" in Paris isreceiving more than I ,500 phone calls anhour against the war. The bombing ofIsrael sharpened the polarization in· thiscountry, especially on the campuses.Four Zionist leaders of SOS-Racismeimmediately resigned from that organiza­tion when it participated in the antiwardemo Friday night.

It is a truly unholy alliance thatleads the peace movement-the Com­munist Party/CGT and the virulentlyRussia-hating social democrats of PierreLambert's pseudo-Trotskyist PCI. DenisLanglois, the PCI-influenced head of the"Appeal of the 75," calls for a generalstrike against the war, while lookingto the CIA-aided FO and Mitterrand­supporting CFDT labor federations toimplement it. Now an assembly of the"Appeal" is scheduled to debate whatposition to take on Iraq: an LCRspokesman is quoted as saying, "If wediscuss that, the movement will split"(Liberation, 28 January).

Squabbles in the "peace movement"reflect dissension in the French bourgeoi­sie, graphically shown in the zigzagpolicies of its governmental executivearm. For "negotiations" before the shoot­ing started, Mitterrand now wants toshow his military mettle, by turning overcommand of the French forces to theAmericans. (So much for France's Vaunt­ed "operational autonomy" in NATO!)

,

SYDNEY-Australia has three frigatesstationed alongside the USS Midway inthe Persian Gulf, clearly expressing theaspirations of the Hawke Labor govern­ment: to be deputy sheriff to U.S. copsof the world.

But the imperialist attack on Iraqhas sparked work stoppages and pro­test marches in Australia. On January18-19, some 70,000 people joined inmarches around the country, includingrallies of 20,000 in Melbourne andSydney. Thousands more marched aweek later. Protesters have been mostlyyoung, with many students, pacifists,church groups, "greens" and feminists.There have been smaller contingentsfrom unions such as the Miners andBuilding Workers, as well as Kurdish,Turkish and Arab groups.

When the U.S. bombing assault be­gan, militant wharfies, members of theWaterside Workers Federation (WWF),walked off the job in Brisbane, Sydneyand Port Kembla, shutting down thedocks as they attended an antiwar-rallyand meetings. The Brisbane WWF sent

14

But these disagreements are simply overhow best to defend the Near Eastern andNorth African interests of this second­rate imperialist power, whose principalexports are cognac and Exocets. The PCFleadership's "antiwar" line waving theFrench Tricolor is chauvinist poison,which plays into the hands of Le Pen'sfascists.

Now Mitterrand's police have bannedthree pro-Iraq Arab-language newspapers,on the grounds that in the present contextthey could "provoke disturbances of pub­lic order." And they are threatening toprosecute Gilles Perrault, the author ofThe Red Orchestra and a prominent oppo­nent of French colonialism's dirty war inAlgeria, for his call on French soldiersto desert over the Gulf War.

The Algerian War brought France tothe brink of a civil war, and mobiliza­tions for solidarity with the VietnameseRevolution were what sparked the move­mentthat led to the barricades and theprerevolutionary general strike of 1968.Where the PCI marches today with signssaying, "Noto War" and "No More Viet­nams," the Ligue Trotskyste says war isthe mother of revolution and proclaims:"Vietnam Was a Victory!"

Germany: BourgeojsieLooks East to Balties,Not South to GulfBERLIN, January 28-The biggest dem­onstrations in Europe against the NearEast war have been in Germany: over200,000 in Bonn yesterday, 150,000 inBerlin and tens of thousands more inHamburg and elsewhere. This is no acci­dent, for the German bourgeoisie sees theGulf War to the south as at best a diver­sion from its real interests to the east,

a resolution to their federal union andthe Trades and Labour Council callingfor a one-day national general strike.During the Vietnam War, maritimeworkers led the way in political strikesagainst the war.

After years of union-busting andCold War reaction; working people arefed up with Hawke. But the popular­front protest coalitions, with theirappeals to "Bring the Frigates Home"and "Sanctions Not War," seek tochannel this anger into social-patrioticappeals and support for sanctions. Ref­ormistslike the anti-Soviet internation­al Socialist Organization have disap­peared their initial slogans for "Victoryto Iraq" in order to build the "peacemovement" around church leaders, poli­ticians from the Australian Democrats(bourgeois liberals) and the Labor Partylefts.

More important than a few frigatesin the Gulf are. the U.S. bases inAustralia, especially the spy satelliteground stations at Pine Gap and Nur­rungar, crucial to the murderous bomb-

where it is aiming at the dismantling ofthe Soviet Union. "Unity chancellor"Kohl certainly intends to be in on thedivision of the spoils if Iraq is defeated.But if Washington has a hard time over­coming the "Vietnam syndrome," Ger­man ,imperialism has an ever biggerproblem with what might be called the"Second World War syndrome."

The concerns of the German capital­ist ruling class are refracted throughthe petty-bourgeois, German nationalistpeace movement and trade-union bu­reaucracy. On the eve of D-Day for theU.S.fUN Diktat to Iraq, the DGB laborfederation called for pacifist demon­strations, which targeted Saddam Husseinas the "guilty party." Now scruffy,purple-haired Autonomen could unitewith union bureaucrats in three-piecesuits, sitting in at the entrances of armsmanufacturers said to be breaking theblockade of Iraq. The DGB and the pow­erful IG-Metall union also called for"five minutes of silence" work stoppages.As the Spartakist Workers Party (SpAD)declaration on the war noted, "the bu­reaucrats will use any excuse to silencethe working class."

However, the response to this token­istic call has sometimes been more thanthe bureaucrats' bargained for. The Ger­man working class has no interest in theimperialists' war aims in the Near Eastor East Europe. In the SPD stronghold ofDusseldorf, 80,000 workers followed theDGB call for a five-minute antiwar stop­page on the 16th. The day before, 150apprentices at Daimler-Benz in Stuttgartand 400 workers at Bosch-Leinfeldensouth of Stuttgart staged 30-minute workstoppages. In Hamburg, work stoppagesincluded the subway, buses, half the

ing raids over Iraq. The government istrying to whip up hysteria over the sup­posed threat of "terrorism," while onthe streets there has been a wave ofracist attacks on Arab Australians. Fas­cist groups have also targeted Jewishschools, synagogues and even a Zionistmeeting. Meanwhile, troops are readiedfor a "peacekeeping force" to subduethe rebellious island of Bougainvillein Papua New Guinea, an Australianneocolony.

The Spartacist League/Australia hasuniquely fought to defend Iraq, withcontingents calling for labour politicalstrikes against the war, and for thedefeat of U.S. and Australian imperial­ism. Over 1,000 pieces of revolutionaryliterature have been sold in the pastten days. As a Spartacist speaker toldthe January 17 Melbourne rally: "TheLabor Party is the party of capitalistwar, depression and racism. The work­ing class needs to break from Labor inorder to unleash its enormous power.We need to build a revolutionary work­ers party."

harbor and a section of the airport. SocialDemocrat (SPD) and Green-led teachersunions have organized student "strikes"and mass student demonstrations, butthey feature school principals or the stateeducation minister as the main speaker!

At a Gulf "peace" demonstration onJanuaryl2, a group of Autonomen punkstore down theSpAD banner declaring"Defend Iraq! For the Defeat of USAfNATO Imperialism!" These anarcho­chauvinists place themselves in the serv­ice of Greater Germany no less than dothe Nazi skinhead terrorists who havebeen rampaging in the former East Ger­many. But at the same time that unionbureaucrats, social democrats and Greenpeaceniks wrap themselves in the black­red-and-gold German flag, there aremany others who look to the red flag ofsocialism. On January 13, well over100,000 came out to demonstrate on theanniversary of the assassination of Com­munist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and KarlLiebknecht. This year like last, the SpADcommemorated the Three L's (includingLeninl), laying a wreath and soapboxingunder our banners. Over 1,400 issues ofSpartakist were sold.

Now that the U.S. is using Turkey asan aircraft carrier for bombing missionsagainst northern Iraq, Germany may bedirectly drawn into the war. NATO sec­retary general Worner declared that ifIraq defends itself from U.S./Turkishattacks, it would be an attack on theentire alliance, compelling all NATOmembers to respond. Kohl wants to usethis war to eliminate the clause from theconstitution that constrains the use ofGerman armed forces outside of theNATO theater. But actually sending theBundeswehr into Iraq is another matter-it could be bad for business in theregion and elsewhere.

The Financial Times (22 January)reported that "Germans are paying rela­tively more attention to the Soviet crisisthan other Europeans." Here, too, theSocial Democrat-led DGB is in the fore­front of German imperialist Ostpolitik(eastern policy). Their call for antiwardemonstrations on the 26th included:"Send our peace demand.to the addressof the Soviet Union, to Mikhail Gorba­chev, to stop the military aggression inthe Baltic." At the demonstration itself,the Social Democrats repeatedly warnedagainst antiwar protests taking on "anti­American" tones. The Spartakist WorkersParty, which uniquely opposed the WestGerman annexation of the DDR (theEast German bureaucratically deformedworkers state) last year, has repeatedlywarned that the SPD is a Trojan horseof counterrevolution.

Having turned the DDR over to theFrankfurt bankers in a "peaceful" coun­terrevolution, now Modrow, Gysi & Co.of the PDS (Party of Democratic Social­ism, successor party to the former EastGerman Stalinists) want to smooth Ger­man imperialism's Drang nach Osten(drive to the East). On January 14, thePDS joined hands with the SPD, Greensand Christian Democrats in a "humanchain" demonstration in Berlin thatstretched from the American to theSoviet consulates, demanding "No forcein Lithuania and the Gulf."

This extraparliarnentary "Grand Coali­tion" obscenely equates Gorbachev'scrackdown on Baltic counterrevolutionarysecessionists inside the USSR with U.S.imperialism's campaign of mass murderagainst Iraq. (One day after the U.S.launched its bombs on Iraq, the PDSissued an unspeakably shameful leafletstating that "24 hours are enough"! In theBundestag PDS superstar Gysi said: "IfGermany: were neutral, the governmentcould be a force for peace negotiations."No! "Neutral" or not, the Fourth Reichof German imperialism is a force for'economic spoliation and war, no lessthan is the decaying American empirewhich seeks to hide its interests behindHitlerite talk of a "new world order."

The "human chain" demanded "Free­dom for the Baltics" and "Red tanks outof Lithuania" and was followed by a

WORKERS VANGUARD

AF-117A "stealth" fighters. $3-trilllon "high-tech" arsenal built to obliterateSoviet Union now being battle-tested against Iraq.

relatively antiseptic air war," notes theSan Francisco Chronicle, the U.S. nowfaces "an armored clash in the desert thatmany combat veterans and military ana­lysts think will be gruesome and bloodyand may drag on for months." This willcollapse Bush's support in the polls andgive him serious problems on the "homefront." The world working class muststand in defense ofIraq: every day Bagh­dad holds out against the most deadlywar machine on the planet brings closerthe demise of a declining imperialismwhich threatens all humanity in its driveto declare itself the one Superpower onthe planet.

Now that the war is not going accord­ing to plan, the Pentagon has added"non-lethal" gas to its "tool box" ofweapons-in violation of Geneva con­ventions on chemical warfare. Polls arealready asking Americans if they wouldaccept the use of "tactical" nuclear weap­ons. A century ago Karl Marx warnedthat the choices facing mankind were"socialism or barbarism," and today thiswarning is becoming terribly concrete.•

we warn today as well against illusionsthat this Ba'athist despot and formerU.S./NATO ally can be a savior of thePalestinian or Kurdish peoples. Buttoday it is the elementary duty of allopponents of imperialism to come to thedefense of Iraq against the bloody U.S.­led onslaught.

In fighting against the exploiters andwarmongers-and in sharp opposition toall the parties of the bourgeoisie-theTurkish workers movement must fightfor the right to self-determination of theKurdish people. As American jets thun-

_der over Iraq and an imperialist armadahas seized the Persian Gulf, international­ist class struggle by the Turkish andKurdish workers can spike the designsof rapacious U.S. imperialism and itslackeys' to build a "new world order"over the corpses of the world's workingpeople .•

Turkish and Kurdish communities tookplace in both Germany and Britain. InBritain, police attacked pickets in theLondon borough of Hackney, wherestrikes had closed several local factoriesand sweatshops. Some 65 -people werearrested, many beaten and forced to signa statement agreeing to leave the countryif they lose their case in court. The Spar­tacist League/Britain has called on theworkers movement to take up the de­mand: Drop the charges, no deportations!

In Germany, the Spartakist WorkersParty (SpAD) distributed a Turkish­language leaflet on the coal minersstrike. In Berlin, some Kurdish leftistsexcluded our comrades from a demon­stration in solidarity with the Zonguldakminers because of the SpAD's forthrightcall for defense of Iraq against impe­rialism. The ICL has for years denouncedthe bloody Saddam Hussein regime, and

Kemal DoganSpartakist Workers Party of Germany (SpAD) contingent joins Hamburgdemonstratio!.1 in solidarity with Turkish general strike. SpAD signs say:"Overthrow Ozal with Workers Revolutlonl" and "Defend Iraq! DefeatU.S./NATO Imperlalistsl"

suggests a penetration attack would beused, in which the attacking forces seeka weak point and "massive bombardmentby air and artillery on a very narrowportion of the enemy lines opens gapsthat armored units rapidly move through"(Los Angeles Times, 22 January). How­ever, this would require U.S. forcesto concentrate in a small area whichcould become a "killing zone" for Iraqiartillery.

And oil itself, the object of Bush'sdesire, has become a weapon of defense:the giant oil spill coming out of Kuwaiti

, pipelines into the Gulf will surely makean amphibious landing more difficult andthreatens to cut off the U.S. troops' watersupply by forcing the closure of desalini­zation plants which supply 90 percent offresh water to eastern Saudi Arabia.Some Kuwaiti oil wells have alreadybeen blown up, and if this is done on alarge scale the smoke would no doubtobscure the battlefield for the AmericanAir Force. In short, high-tech could befoiled by low-tech.

"After more than a week fighting a

of innocent peasants are being massacred.Half of Kurdistan is a war zone and is aProhibited Area."

Meanwhile, Iran recently executed sevenKurdish leaders. And Saddam Husseinpromised support for an independentKurdish state ... on Turkish and Iraniansoil!

Now Jallal Talibani, the leader of thePatriotic Union of Kurdistan, reports thatthousands of Kurdish rebels who hadtaken refuge in Iran "to flee the repres­sion of Saddam Hussein" had returned toIraq since the U.S. assault began. Vow­ing that the "Turkish army will have topass over our bodies to get into Iraq,"Talibani added that they would not allowthemselves "to be manipulated again andthen end up paying the price of agree­ments between regional powers."

Divided among four different capitaliststates in the post-World War I imperialistcarve-up of the region, the Kurdish peo­ple have been alternately used as cannonfodder by one or another imperialist orregional power against their enemies, andmurderously repressed by their respectivestate powers, including Saddam Hus­sein's Iraq. The International CommunistLeague (Fourth Internationalist) declaresthat the national. rights of the Kurdishpeople can only be won through socialistrevolution by the workers of Turkey,Iraq, Iran and Syria. For a socialistrepublic of united Kurdistan!

With several' million Turkish andKurdish workers strategically situated inkey industrial centers of West Europe,revolutionary proletarian struggle inTurkey will reverberate throughout thecontinent. On the day of the January 3general strike, sympathy actions among

Turkey...(continued from page 11)

(continued from page 12)

going to be a meat grinder," said retiredArmy Major General Stanley Connelly(San Francisco Chronicle, 25 January).Some computerized scenarios predict45,000 casualties including 10,000 ormore U.S. dead, and that's the con­servative estimate, On the ground, U.S.military hardware is well matched by theIraqis, and in some cases the Iraqis havethe advantage, particularly with theirlong-range Soviet cannon and SouthAfrican artillery, which have longerrange than anything the U.S. Army has.

Many experts think the highly adver­tised MI-Al tank may prove no matchfor the Iraqis' Soviet-made T-72, which"has a slightly larger main gun and cantravel just as far ... on half the amount offuel" (San Francisco Chronicle, 25 Jan­uary). And U.S. air power may not beable to cover the ground troops becausein that region the Iraqis have, accordingto Colonel Harry Summers, "one of themost extensive low-level air defensesystems in the world" composed ofthou­sands of antiaircraft artillery machineguns and cannon (Los Angeles Times,23 January).

So the Americans' high-tech in the airwill be pushed to the background, andeverything will depend on the foot sol­dier, as in all wars. Here the Iraqishave a tremendous advantage, as oneLebanese-born arms merchant familiarwith their army remarked on 60 Minutes(20 January): the American troops "havenot seen blood yet," he noted; unlikethe Iraqis who went through eight yearsof trench warfare during the Iran-IraqWar, losing a quarter million men. Thefirst shock of a mass bloodying willlikely magnify the dreaded "Vietnamsyndrome."

The U.S. options on the ground arelimited to "frontal attack, penetration andenvelopment," as Colonel Summers putsit. But Iraqi defenses are formidable,including miles of minefields, ditches totrap tanks and other obstacles. Summers

-Ground War...

Britain: Labour Lackeysof Bush's WarLONDON, January 22-The British havethe largest component of imperialistforces in the Gulf after the Americans,so Neil Kinnock and the Labour Partyand trade-union tops are marching inlockstep with the Tory government. Asa result, since the bombing began in theGulf antiwar demonstrations in Englandhave been far smaller than those on thecontinent.

At a London demonstration of about15,000 on January 19, called by LabourLeft MP Tony Benn's "Stop the War"committee, there was little trade-unionpresence. However, there were substan­tial numbers of foreign workers, many ofwhom greeted with clenched fists theSpartacist League contingent marchingunder the banner "Defend Iraq! DefeatUS/British Imperialism!" Much of oursales went to Irish, Asian, black andother minorities, whose families haveexperienced firsthand the savagery ofBritish colonialism and imperialism, andsome Asian workers joined our contin­gent. (In contrast to the SL's forthrightstand, Workers Power and its bloc part­ners in the "Hands Off the Middle Eas't''''committee again carried no. placards orbanners calling for military victory toIraq.)

On January 22, SL supporters partici­pated in a lunchtime antiwar picketat London University's School of Ori­ental and African Studies (SOAS). TheMinistry of Defense has declared SOASa "soft target" for "terrorist attack," anexcuse to intimidate and threaten stu­dents, many of whom are from the NearEast. Already several dozen Iraqis andPalestinians in Britain have been jailed,many facing deportation. The SL says:"No deportations, no victimizations, noto internment!"

In Glasgow, Scotland on the 19th, SLsupporters and sympathizers distributeda leaflet titled, "Spartacist Call for De­fense of Iraq, Militant/CND Call theCops." A Militant supporter who hadsought to use the Glasgow police toexclude the Spartacist contingent is aNALGO (local government workers)official. As the, leaflet, distributed toNALGO and other union contingents,noted: "It's not just the Spartacist Leaguethat's being set up here, at a time whenthe bourgeois state is gearing up an arse­nal of repression, anti-'red' witchhuntsand press censorship to regiment the pop­ulation for a bloody, unpopular war.".

Ireland: Refuse to HandleU.S./NATO Warplanesat Shannon!DUBLIN-The Dublin Spartacist YouthGroup (DSYG) calls for trade-unionaction to "black" (boycott) refueling ofmilitary transport at Shannon Interna­tional Airport, used by U.S. warplanes ontheir way to the Gulf. This is not anabstract demand. The Dublin Council ofTrade Unions has recently appealed totrade unionists at Shannon to implementsuch action.

The Labour Party/Workers Party or­ganizers of the Gulf peace committee,bogus "anti-imperialists" who support thepresence of British troops in NorthernIreland, tried to silence the DSYG con­tingent in a Dublin antiwar demo onJanuary 19. But sympathetic Republicansintervened in our defense. At the Dublindemo, Eamonn McCann (a supporter ofTony Cliff's British SWP) cynicallydevoted a substantial portion of hisspeech to "defeat of.the West and victoryfor Iraq," whereas in November hisgroup boycotted a Trinity College "Breakthe Blockade" action, initiated by theDSYG, because it took a side againstimperialism.

vigil in front of the Soviet embassy thatincluded Republikaner fascists! Indeed,when Reichs chancellor Kohl looks outover the Bundestag benches, from Rightto Left, he can say like Kaiser Wilhelmat the outset of World War I: "I see noparties here, only Germans."

1 fEBRUARY 1991 15

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Antiwar Work Stoppages,Protests Across Europe

L'HumaniteParis, January 16-Thousands demonstrate outside National Assembly against French participation in war on Iraq.

Over the past two weeks, millions havedemonstrated in various European citiescalling for peace in the Near East. Al­ready on the day after the U.S. beganbombing Baghdad, there were antiwarwork stoppages in France, Germany,Italy and Spain, ranging from a tokenfive minutes to de facto citywide generalstrikes. The outpouring of protests indi- '"cates revulsion at the mass murder beingunleashed by the NATO governments inthe Near East, and deep fears that theGulf War will spill over to a continentthat has been engulfed in conflagrationtwice already in this century.

This has put tremendous pressure onthe leaders of the trade unions and massreformist workers parties who seek tobind the masses to the interests of their"own" national bourgeoisies. And it hasopened tremendous opportunities forMarxist revolutionaries who fight for aninternationalist opposition to imperialistwar. As various pseudo-Trotskyists sim­ply tail after pacifist sentiment and thereformist misleaders, the sections of theInternational Communist League (FourthInternationalist) have been unique incalling forthrightly for the defeat ofimperialism and defense of Iraq.

When "Communist," "Socialist" or"Labour" misleaders talk vaguely of"peace" in the Near East, they offer "UNsanctions" as the alternative to war-inother words, starving the Iraqi massesinto submission instead of killing themoutright. They thus legitimize the vastimperialist military buildup in the Gulf,supposedly there to enforce the U.S.­ordered "UN" embargo that was the prel­ude to the present barbaric war on Iraq.In so doing, they call for a more "ration­al" policy for their capitalist masters,often in league with "enlightened" bour­geois leaders who worry about an explo­sion of Arab anger provoked by the war.

Behind the calls for negotiations fromthe Common Market 12, right up to theeve of Bush's January 15 ultimatum to

16

Saddam Hussein, there was also a fear ofwhat the U.S. will do to its imperialist"allies" (rivals) if it succeeds in regain­ing control of world oil supplies. Thisconcern is particularly strong in Ger­many, which together with Japan is theindirect target of Washington's PersianGulf invasion. Particularly following itsannexation of East Germany, Bonn islooking East for its expansion room (andoil supplies), and has refused to send itsmilitary forces against Iraq. It's notsurprising, therefore, that the German"peace" demonstrations have been thelargest on the continent.

Since the German Social Democrats'vote for war credits on 4 August 1914,and the French "Communist" Party'ssupport (on Stalin's orders) for theFrench government's war budget twodecades later, the social-democratic and

Rome,January 1~:Massive 'demonstrationagainstimpendingPersian GulfWar.

Stalinist traitors have played out theirrole as "labor lieutenants of the capitalistclass," sabotaging revolutions and infect­ing the working classes with chauvinistpoison. The Gulf War has exposed the"far left" as incapable of formulating arevolutionary, proletarian and internation­alist opposition to the imperialist war.Instead, as usual, they tail after the refor­mists, this time with social-pacifist ap­peals to "bring the troops home."

As in 1914 when the Second Interna­tional exploded with the.onset of WorldWar I, today the implosionof Stalinismin East Europe has produced massivedisorientation on the left. But already inthese early days of the war, there aremany in the ranks of the demonstratorswho recognize in the ICL's stand indefense of Iraq against imperialist attackthe program of authentic socialism andcommunism. We' fight for proletarianopposition to the war in the spirit ofLenin and Trotsky, emphasizing that thestruggle against this predatory and bar­haric war means the struggle to overthrowthe imperialist system through class strug­gle at home. The crucial factor is an au­thentic revolutionary leadership: reforgethe Fourth International as a world partyof socialist revolution.

The following reports from our com­rades around Europe indicate the revolu­tionary opportunities posed by this "firstpost-Cold War war."

De Facto General Strikein Northern ItalyMILANO, January 22-This morning,train engineers carried out a half-hourstrike against the war in which theyeffectively disrupted most rail servicesthroughout the country. In Milano, acouple of high school collectives went tothe train station in Lambrate to give theirsupport to this action. This kind of anti­war activity in the working class hasbeen going on for the last week ..

On the day Bush's ultimatum expired,the trade-union "Ireaucracy called foratoken five-min. strike. But in the Mi-

lano area there was a three-hour strikeexplicitly against the war, pretty muchspontaneous, involving some ten facto­ries. There was also a mass student rallyin conjunction with the workers' action,at which spokesmen for the Lega Trots­kista d'Italia intervened.

The first day of the bombardment ofIraq, January 17, workers in Milano lit­erally walked out of the plants with theirfactory councils and made their way toMilano city square where 100,000 gath­ered at the demonstration meeting point.This included factories like Breda, Falck,Maserati and Ansaldo, important metalfactories in Milano. There were alsogovernment workers, transport workers,financial center employees and othersectors of the working class.

In most of the major Italian cities inthe north, there was a de facto generalstrike. There was an immediate call fora national general strike, as the workerswere furious and wanting to put a halt tothe atrocities that were taking place. Thetrade-union bureaucracy resisted all callsfor a general strike with the excuse thatthis would damage the economy and thatit would be construed as a strike againstthe government!

The January 19 demonstration in Mila­no was primarily high school students.Some 25,000 turned up and part of themarch route passed in front of the Italianair force headquarters (Italy had just lostits first Tornado bomber). The LTd'lgave out several thousand copies of itsdeclaration on the war. With placards andleaflets which read "Defend Iraq" and"Defeat the Imperialists," accompaniedby soapboxing with a megaphone, theypolitically engaged the high school stu­dent pacifists.

The Lega Trotskista comrades alsocame up against Falcemartello, the Italiangroup linked to the British Militantgroup which is deeply embedded in theNATO social democracy of the LabourParty. Falcemartello chanted "Generalstrike against the imperialist war in

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1 FEBRUARY 1991