October 1998 Editorial

The U.S.'s 'war of the future'

The pornographic tidal wave unloosed on us by the Republican Right, in an unprecedented attempt to drive from office a president they have been targeting for six years, has buried the ever-deepening crises confronting this country today. This new version of McCarthyism, aided and abetted by a frenzied media and fed by the sex scandals around Bill Clinton, cannot, however, erase the monumental real problems facing us-from growing signs of impending economic crisis to rampant racism, sexism, homophobia and police abuse which the freedom forces have been fighting in a multitude of ways every day.

What the rabid attacks by the far Right have most of all succeeded in hiding is that it was these crises at home that the Clinton administration had itself been aiming to divert attention from with its "war of the future." This alleged "war on terrorism" arrived when the U.S. bombed Afghanistan and Sudan without warning on Aug. 20. It is nothing less than the beginning of a frightening new permanent stage of militarism.

Clinton's bombs could not help but bring to mind the sudden attack Ronald Reagan launched on Libyan targets in the Gulf of Sidra in March 1986 which helped give birth to so deep a new stage of retrogression that it could only be called a "Changed World" (see "Marx's new moments and those of our age," page 4). The new permanent stage of militarism Clinton has declared represents the apex of 12 full years of this retrogressionism, taking it to a frightening new dimension. Clinton's was a declaration that the U.S. can attack any country, whenever it desires, on whatever grievance it chooses.

A NEW STAGE OF STATE TERRORISM?

Marxist-Humanism's deep opposition to terrorism demands BOTH our condemnation of those who showed total contempt for human lives, primarily African, in planting the bombs in Kenya and Tanzania, AND our condemnation of the chilling new stage launched at home in the guise of a war against "terrorism." That the U.S. is no stranger to state terrorism is refreshed in our minds by the 25th anniversary of the coup that brought down Chile's democratically elected Socialist government and led to the death of its leader Salvador Allende-and by the recently released evidence of direct involvement by the CIA and the Nixon administration (see page 12).

Public outrage over the revelation of a long list of assassination attempts through the 1960s led to Congressional hearings and an executive order to end them. That senators like Dianne Feinstein and Joseph Biden are now asking for clarification of whether that order makes a distinction between killing heads of state and permission to assassinate others signals how little we have moved from the barbarism we are supposedly declaring war on.

The truth is that the "terrorist training camps" the cruise missiles were sent to destroy on Aug. 20 had been set up by the CIA in the 1980s for the fundamentalist anti-Soviet mujahedeen when they and Osama bin Laden were called "freedom fighters" by the U.S. The truth also is that the evidence is heavy that the alleged "nerve gas plant" bombed in Sudan was not owned by bin Laden and was manufacturing medicines for human and animal use.

The number killed by the bombs has not been released. What is known is that the bombing has increased the starvation in Sudan because relief agencies will no longer fly planes in for fear they will be shot down in retaliation for the bombing. The bombing has succeeded only in giving the unpopular and oppressive regime in Khartoum a new lease on life as anti-government rallies begun at Khartoum University during the summer, which spread to other cities and towns, came to a halt with the U.S. strike.

At home in the U.S. we were immediately warned by no one less than former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger that the new "war of the future" means rethinking "our whole concept of civil liberties." The Black community lives every day knowing that they are subject to the tactics of a police state any time the authorities consider it necessary. We have now been forewarned that this is what may be in store for all the forces that get in the way-Blacks, women, and labor. The last of these has begun to flex its muscles in the many significant labor actions in recent months from headline-grabbing strikes at General Motors and Northwest Airlines to the scores of small local actions few ever read about.

THE WARS AT HOME

Of all the deep crises that are now being buried by the putrid flood from Washington, the deepest continues to be the racism that pervades the land. It is more than a fitting metaphor to say that even the report of the President's year-long panel on race relations, released Sept. 19-the same day the Republicans won release of the videotaped testimony given to Grand Inquisitor Kenneth Starr's grand jury-was totally drowned out. While clearly inadequate to the kind of measures needed to end racism, the board did support affirmative action.

The dire need for action to prevent the Right from totally dismantling affirmative action can be seen in the effects California Regent Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action movement is exerting in Washington State. Passage of Initiative 200 there could give momentum to more than 10 other states where such initiatives have up to now been stalled at the ballot boxes. The recent and under-publicized OVERTURNING of a Houston vote last year supporting affirmative action raises a foreboding trend by reactionary judges simply canceling elections where affirmative action proponents have won.

While the forms America's deep racism takes are countless, we have to confront the fact that even the horror committed earlier this year by three white supremacists who lynched James Byrd Jr., a Black man in Jasper, Texas, was no isolated incident. That was confirmed by the march and rally in Las Vegas, Nev., at the end of August, to protest the murder there of two anti-racist skinhead youth, one Black and one white, evidently because they were best friends in the cause against neo-fascist racism.

All of the attempts to smother these real issues come at a time when the "booming economy" we were supposedly enjoying in this country has not inspired confidence in our immunity from the contagion of the economic collapse of half the world economy. A better measure of our "booming" economy instead is its increasing two-tier nature.

Another measure of that is that two years after so-called welfare "reform," federal figures released in August show that 1.7 million recipients found jobs between l996 and 1997, but many more than that number were dropped from the rolls. Nobody has been able to answer how they are surviving, but it has been suggested that they may account for the ever-increasing rise in people showing up at homeless shelters. Add to that the brim-full prisons across the land. In Mississippi where fewer than 2,000 were behind bars in 1972, that number is expected to reach 20,000 by 2002.

TO THIS BARBARISM WE POSE THE NEW SOCIETY

In their vain effort to try to solve the intractable crises of capitalism all rulers resort to militarism, as witness the history of World Wars I and II. This trend offers frightening illumination of today's events, from Russia to our own land, discussed in the lead article of this month's NEWS & LETTERS. The rapid move to the far Right in this country is a clear warning of what may lie ahead.

There is no question that the Christian Coalition has every intention of using and aiding the current sexual McCarthyite frenzy in Washington to shape our future in their image. Their agenda is clear in everything from their well-funded newspaper ad campaign attacking gays and lesbians, to their drive to make the midterm elections in November a "referendum on values," to their scathing denunciation of the "immorality" of the majority of Americans who, the polls show, do not share their conviction that Clinton should resign or be impeached.

At a time when a permanent "war of the future" has been declared on alleged foreign "terrorists" while the bombings of abortion clinics continue unabate d, as in North Carolina this month-at a time when the "values" we are asked to defend include the perpetuation of the vilest racism, homelessness, and imprisonment of vast numbers of our population-we stand on the principle we established at our birth: TO THE BARBARISM OF WAR, WE POSE THE NEW SOCIETY.

To give voice to that new society trying to be born we established NEWS & LETTERS in the midst of McCarthyism, and spelled out in our Constitution: "NEWS & LETTERS was created so that the voices of revolt from below could be heard not separated from the articulation of a philosophy of liberation."

It is why we ask you to help us increase our circulation of this only Marxist-Humanist journal in the land to help us help that new world come to be.

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