Why we oppose the war in Afghanistan\n\n\r\n\r\n \r\n Untitled Document\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWorld Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
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WSWS : News\n& Analysis : The\nUS War Drive<\/b><\/p>\n\nWhy we oppose the war in Afghanistan\n\nStatement of the WSWS Editorial Board
\n9 October 2001\n\n
Back\nto screen version<\/b>\n| Send this\nlink by email | Email the\nauthor<\/b><\/p>\n\n
The World Socialist Web Site <\/i>condemns the American military\nassault on Afghanistan. We reject the dishonest claims of the\nBush administration that this is a war for justice and the security\nof the American people against terrorism.<\/p>\n\n
The hijack-bombings of September 11 were politically criminal\nattacks on innocent civilians. Whoever perpetrated this crime\nmust be condemned as enemies of the American and international\nworking class. The fact that no one has claimed responsibility\nonly underscores the profoundly reactionary character of these\nattacks.<\/p>\n\n
But while the events of September 11 have served as the catalyst\nfor the assault on Afghanistan, the cause is far deeper. The nature\nof this or any war, its progressive or reactionary character,\nis determined not by the immediate events that preceded it, but\nrather by the class structures, economic foundations and international\nroles of the states that are involved. From this decisive standpoint,\nthe present action by the United States is an imperialist war.<\/p>\n\n
The US government initiated the war in pursuit of far-reaching\ninternational interests of the American ruling elite. What is\nthe main purpose of the war? The collapse of the Soviet Union\na decade ago created a political vacuum in Central Asia, which\nis home to the second largest deposit of proven reserves of petroleum\nand natural gas in the world.<\/p>\n\n
The Caspian Sea region, to which Afghanistan provides strategic\naccess, harbors approximately 270 billion barrels of oil, some\n20 percent of the world’s proven reserves. It also contains\n665 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, approximately one-eighth\nof the planet’s gas reserves.<\/p>\n\n
These critical resources are located in the world’s most\npolitically unstable region. By attacking Afghanistan, setting\nup a client regime and moving vast military forces into the region,\nthe US aims to establish a new political framework within which\nit will exert hegemonic control.<\/p>\n\n
These are the real considerations that motivate the present\nwar. The official version, that the entire American military has\nbeen mobilized because of one individual, Osama bin Laden, is\nludicrous. Bin Laden’s brand of ultra-nationalist and religious\nobscurantist politics is utterly reactionary, a fact that is underscored\nby his glorification of the destruction of the World Trade Center\nand murder of nearly 6,000 civilians. But the US government’s\ndepiction of bin Laden as an evil demiurge serves a cynical purpose—to\nconceal the actual aims and significance of the present war.<\/p>\n\n
The demonization of bin Laden is of a piece with the modus\noperandi of every war waged by the US over the past two decades,\nin each of which—whether against the Panamanian “drug\nlord” Manuel Noriega, the Somalian “war lord” Mohamed\nFarrah Aidid, or the modern-day “Hitlers” Saddam Hussein\nand Slobodan Milosevic—the American government and the media\nhave sought to manipulate public opinion by portraying the targeted\nleader as the personification of evil.<\/p>\n\n
In an October 8 op-ed column in the New York Times<\/i>,\nFawaz A. Gerges, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, pointed\nto the real aims that motivate the US war drive. Describing a\nconference of Arab and Muslim organizations held a week ago in\nBeirut, Gerges wrote:<\/p>\n\n
“Most participants claimed that the United States aims\nat far more than destroying Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization\nand toppling the Taliban regime. These representatives of the\nMuslim world were almost unanimously suspicious of America’s\nintentions, believing that the United States has an overarching\nstrategy which includes control of the oil and gas resources in\nCentral Asia, encroachment on Chinese and Russian spheres of influence,\ndestruction of the Iraqi regime, and consolidation of America’s\ngrip on the oil-producing Persian Gulf regimes.<\/p>\n\n
“Many Muslims suspected the Bush administration of hoping\nto exploit this tragedy to settle old scores and assert American\nhegemony in the world.”<\/p>\n\n
These suspicions are entirely legitimate. Were the US to oust\nthe Taliban, capture or kill bin Laden and wipe out what Washington\ncalls his terrorist training camps, the realization of these aims\nwould not be followed by the withdrawal of American forces. Rather,\nthe outcome would be the permanent placement of US military forces\nto establish the US as the exclusive arbiter of the region’s\nnatural resources. In these strategic aims lie the seeds of future\nand even more bloody conflicts.<\/p>\n\n
This warning is substantiated by a review of recent history.\nAmerica’s wars of the past two decades have invariably arisen\nfrom the consequences of previous US policies. There is a chain\nof continuity, in which yesterday’s US ally has become today’s\nenemy.<\/p>\n\n
The list includes the one-time CIA asset Noriega, the former\nPersian Gulf ally Saddam Hussein, and yesterday’s American\nprotégé Milosevic. Bin Laden and the Taliban are\nthe latest in the chain of US assets transformed into targets\nfor destruction.<\/p>\n\n
In the case of Iraq, the US supported Saddam Hussein in the\n1980s as an ally against the Khomeini regime in Iran. But when\nthe Iraqi regime threatened US oil interests in the Persian Gulf,\nSaddam Hussein was transformed into a demon and war was launched\nagainst Baghdad. The main purpose of the Gulf War was to establish\na permanent US military presence in the Persian Gulf, a presence\nthat remains in place more than a decade later.<\/p>\n\n
Even more tragic is the outcome of US sponsorship of bin Laden\nand the Taliban. They are products of the US policy, begun in\nthe late 1970s and continued throughout the 1980s, of inciting\nIslamic fundamentalism to weaken the Soviet Union and undermine\nits influence in Central Asia. Bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists\nwere recruited by the CIA to wage war against the USSR and destabilize\nCentral Asia.<\/p>\n\n
In the chaos and mass destruction that followed, the Taliban\nwas helped along and brought to power with the blessings of the\nAmerican government. Those who make US policy believed the Taliban\nwould be useful in stabilizing Afghanistan after nearly two decades\nof civil war.<\/p>\n\n
American policy-makers saw in this ultra-reactionary sect an\ninstrument for furthering US aims in the Caspian basin and Persian\nGulf, and placing increasing pressure on China and Russia. If,\nas the Bush administration claims, the hijack-bombing of the World\nTrade Center was the work of bin Laden and his Taliban protectors,\nthen, in the most profound and direct sense, the political responsibility\nfor this terrible loss of life rests with the American ruling\nelite itself.<\/p>\n\n
The rise of Islamic fundamentalist movements, infused with\nanti-American passions, can be traced not only to US support for\nthe Mujahedin in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also to American\nassaults on the Arab world. At the same time that the CIA was\narming the fundamentalists in Afghanistan, it was supporting the\nIsraeli invasion of Lebanon. This was followed in 1983 by the\nUS bombing of Beirut, in which the battleship New Jersey<\/i>\nlobbed 2,000-pound shells into civilian neighborhoods. This criminal\naction led directly to retribution in the form of the bombing\nof the US barracks in Beirut, which took the lives of 242 American\nsoldiers.<\/p>\n\n
The entire phenomenon associated with the figure of Osama bin\nLaden has its roots, moreover, in Washington’s alliance with\nSaudi Arabia. The US has for decades propped up this feudalist\nautocracy, which has promoted its own brand of Islamic fundamentalism\nas a means of maintaining its grip on power.<\/p>\n\n
All of these twists and turns, with their disastrous repercussions,\narise from the nature of US foreign policy, which is not determined\non the basis of democratic principles or formulated in open discussion\nand public debate. Rather, it is drawn up in pursuit of economic\ninterests that are concealed from the American people.<\/p>\n\n
When the US government speaks of a war against terrorism, it\nis thoroughly hypocritical, not only because yesterday’s\nterrorist is today’s ally, and vice versa, but because American\npolicy has produced a social catastrophe that provides the breeding\nground for recruits to terrorist organizations. Nowhere are the\nresults of American imperialism’s predatory role more evident\nthan in the indescribable poverty and backwardness that afflict\nthe people of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n
What are the future prospects arising from the latest eruption\nof American militarism? Even if the US achieves its immediate\nobjectives, there is no reason to believe that the social and\npolitical tinderbox in Central Asia will be any less explosive.<\/p>\n\n
US talk of “nation-building” in Afghanistan is predicated\non its alliance with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, with\nwhom the Pentagon is coordinating its military strikes. Just as\nWashington used the Albanian terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army\nas its proxy in Kosovo, so now it utilizes the gang of war lords\ncentered in the northeast of Afghanistan as its cat’s paw\nin Central Asia.<\/p>\n\n
Since the Northern Alliance will now be portrayed as the champion\nof freedom and humanitarianism, it is instructive to note recent\narticles in the New York Times <\/i>and elsewhere reporting\nthat the vast bulk of the Afghan opium trade comes from the meager\nterritory controlled by the Alliance. The military satraps of\nthe Northern Alliance are, moreover, notorious for killing thousands\nof civilians by indiscriminately firing rockets into Kabul in\nthe early 1990s.<\/p>\n\n
The sordid and illusory basis upon which the US proposes to\n“rebuild” Afghanistan, once it is finished pummeling\nthe country, was suggested in a New York Times <\/i>article\non the onset of the war. “The Pentagon’s hope,”\nwrote the Times<\/i>, “is that the combination of the psychological\nshock of the air strike, bribes to anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan\ncovertly supported by Washington and sheer opportunism will lead\nmany of the Taliban’s fighters to put down their arms and\ndefect.”<\/p>\n\n
Given the nature of the region, with its vast stores of critical\nresources, it is, moreover, self-evident that none of the powers\nin Central Asia will long accept a settlement in which the US\nis the sole arbiter. Russia, Iran, China, Pakistan and India all\nhave their own interests, and they will seek to pursue them. Furthermore,\nthe US presence will inevitably conflict with the interests of\nthe emerging bourgeois regimes, in the lesser states in the region,\nthat have been carved out of the former Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n
At each stage in the eruption of American militarism, the scale\nof the resulting disasters becomes greater and greater. Now the\nUS has embarked on an adventure in a region that has long been\nthe focus of intrigue between the Great Powers, a part of the\nworld, moreover, that is bristling with nuclear weapons and riven\nby social, political, ethnic and religious tensions that are compounded\nby abject poverty.<\/p>\n\n
The New York Times<\/i>, in a rare moment of lucidity, described\nthe dangers implicit in the US war drive in an October 2 article\nheadlined “In Pakistan, a Shaky Ally.” The author wrote:\n“By drafting this fragile and fractious nation into a central\nrole in the ‘war on terrorism,’ America runs the danger\nof setting off a cataclysm in a place where civil violence is\na likely bet and nuclear weapons exist.”<\/p>\n\n
Neither in the proclamations of the US government, nor in the\nreportage of the media, is there any serious examination of the\nreal economic and geo-strategic aims motivating the military assault.\nNor is there any indication that the US political establishment\nhas seriously considered the far-reaching and potentially catastrophic\nconsequences of the course upon which it has embarked.<\/p>\n\n
Despite a relentless media campaign to whip up chauvinism and\nmilitarism, the mood of the American people is not one of gung-ho\nsupport for the war. At most, it is a passive acceptance that\nwar is the only means to fight terrorism, a mood that owes a great\ndeal to the efforts of a thoroughly dishonest media that serves\nas an arm of the state. Beneath the reluctant endorsement of military\naction is a profound sense of unease and skepticism. Tens of millions\nsense that nothing good can come of this latest eruption of American\nmilitarism.<\/p>\n\n
The United States stands at a turning point. The government\nadmits it has embarked on a war of indefinite scale and duration.\nWhat is taking place is the militarization of American society\nunder conditions of a deepening social crisis.<\/p>\n\n
The war will profoundly affect the conditions of the American\nand international working class. Imperialism threatens mankind\nat the beginning of the twenty-first century with a repetition\non a more horrific scale of the tragedies of the twentieth. More\nthan ever, imperialism and its depredations raise the necessity\nfor the international unity of the working class and the struggle\nfor socialism.<\/p>\n\n
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