Part 2, Stop the War

What Government Does the U.S. Want Impose On Afghanistan?
Today the U.S. is playing around with a few different ideas of what they want to replace the current Afghani government with. One force the U.S. has been supporting is the Northern Alliance. Human Rights Watch has implicated the Northern Alliance in "indiscriminate aerial bombardment and shelling, direct attacks on civilians, summary executions, rape, persecution on the basis of religion or ethnicity, the recruitment and use of children as soldiers, and the use of antipersonnel landmines."
In fact the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of conflicting brutal clerics who, like the Taliban were part of the CIA's counter revolutionary and misogynist Mujahideen army.
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) who's name for the Northern Alliance is the Jehadi stated on September 14th, "both the Taliban and the Jehadi have committed every possible type of heinous crime against our people." RAWA also states, "unfortunately we must say that it was the government of the U.S. who supported Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of the Taliban emerged. In the similar way, as is clear to all, Osama bin Laden has been the blue-eyed boy of the CIA. But what is more painful is that American politicians have not drawn a lesson from their pro-fundamentalist policies in our country and are still supporting this or that fundamentalist band or leader. In our opinion any kind of support to the fundamentalist Taliban and Jehadies is actually trampling democratic rights, women's rights, and human rights."
The RAWA statement also opposes U.S. bombing saying, "While we once again announce our solidarity and deep sorrow with the people of the U.S., we also believe that attacking Afghanistan and killing its most ruined and destitute people will not in any way decrease the grief of the American People."
U.S. officials are also considering imposing a king on Afghanistan, deposed King Muhammad Zahir Shah. He was overthrown in 1973 and is now living in Rome. The U.S. considers Shah a good potential puppet for U.S. interests in Afghanistan.
History has another Shah that the U.S. returned to power. It was the Shah of Iran who the CIA brought back into power with the removal of Premier Muhammad Mossadegh. The extremely repressive government of the Shah was supported by the U.S. while he kept oil under western control and labor cheap. Unions were banned and organizers, dissidents, and protesters were tortured and killed. In 1978 the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial saying the Shah is our man. The brutal regime installed by the CIA eventually helped fuel the rise of the radical Islamic reactionary movement that came to power in1979.
The people of Afghanistan have many scores to settle with the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Yet justice will never be dealt by the U.S. or British military. In fact the military defeat of the U.S. and British forces will be necessary for the Afghani people to gain a revolutionary secular government that represents the needs of women and the poor.
War and destruction in Afghanistan will not mean fewer suicide bombers from that part of the world. Nor will any U.S. imposed government. In fact there is little doubt that it will mean more.
The interests of America's multi-racial working-class are separate from our government. Working people make no profits off of the war industry or oil.
In fact the same capitalists who order war against the Afghani people through the Democrat and Republican Parties carry out lay-offs and strike breaking at home. It will be working class youth coming home in body bags and who suffer the other ailments of war.

Warning to GI's and workers, DU Ammunition and DU Shields are Highly Radioactive.
The U.S. military uses DU in various weapons such as armor-piercing bullets, casings for bombs, shielding on tanks, counter weights and ground penetrators on missiles, fragments that penetrate armor, and anti-personnel mines.
Depleted Uranium (DU) also called uranium 238 is not depleted of its radiation. In fact DU is a waste product of nuclear power and has to be stored as deadly radioactive waste if it's not used by the arms industry. DU has also been found to contain other more radioactive isotopes.
On impact DU has the pyrophoric ability to burn through the steel of tanks and blow up the tanks occupants. As DU burns, according to the U.S. military's own studies, 70% is vaporized. The vapor then turns to a radioactive dust which then settles into the soil, water, or lungs of anyone who breaths it in.
DU ammunition was used in the war against Iraq and in the wars against Yugoslavia (Kosovo and Bosnia). DU has also poisoned the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques and many other sights where the U.S. military used it in testing.
A commission of the UN has called the military use of DU a weapon of mass destruction and called for banning its use.
Last year Italy pulled its troops out of Kosovo due to 8 cases of leukemia in their military, which they attributed to the U.S. use of DU ammunition during the war.
The London Guardian has sent reporters to southern Iraq who found radiation levels 30 times normal background radiation in the battlefields of the Gulf War. On tanks destroyed by tank busting A-10 ammunition the radiation level was 50 times higher than normal.
300 tons of DU were shot into Iraq and Kuwait, 3 tons into Bosnia, 10 tons into Kosovo.
There are reports of injuries in Afghanistan that are consistent with those caused by depleted uranium. Pravda has reported, "Deputy public health minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, said the government did not have testing facilities," and urged outside observers to view the injuries from the bombing attacks.
In both the Gulf War and in Yugoslavia the U.S. government did not inform U.S. soldiers of the deadly materials that they were being exposed to, nor did they supply them with the protective suits they needed. 250,000 of these soldiers came home reporting to veteran's hospitals with the symptoms of radiation poisoning. Those sets of conditions became known as the Persian Gulf War Syndrome.
The U.S. military brass knew what the soldiers had been exposed to but denied they knew anything. Their own studies pointed to dangerous levels of radiation from DU. Yet they pretended to know nothing about the radiation poisoning.
Just as the U.S. government knowingly exposed U.S. soldiers and the Vietnamese people to the extremely toxic effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam they now knowingly expose U.S. soldiers, U.S. arms industry workers, Iraqis, Yugoslavians, Puerto Ricans, and most likely Afghanis to deadly radiation from DU.
The DU that has poisoned Iraq has contaminated their water and food. Hospital cancer wards are filled with children dying from childhood leukemia. According to the British Guardian the number of extreme birth defects in one town in southern Iraq are so high that nobody dares to try to have children. A similar situation is unfolding in Yugoslavia where Kosovo women have been warned not to have children for the next ten years, but for all practical purposes the radiation will never go away.
It is now known, through new federal studies reported on AP Feb. 3, 2001, that the DU used in combat for shields and for ammunition contain much more deadly isotopes than just uranium-238, which would be bad enough. These other isotopes include highly radioactive materials such as plutonium 239 which is 200,000 times more radioactive than uranium-238.
According to former government scientist and health physicist Dr. Donald Geesaman, plutonium, "…is carcinogenic to animals in microgram quantities (a millionth of an ounce). The…lung cancer risk…is unknown to orders of magnitude. Present plutonium standards are certainly irrelevant."
The use of such a weapon of mass destruction gives lie to any concern the U.S. government claims to have for the American people or the victims of U.S. wars in other countries. The terrorists who killed innocent civilians in the U.S. are cut from the same cloth as the better financed terrorists now bombing Afghanistan and Iraq (the U.S. military). In fact Osama bin Laden was trained and financed by the U.S. government, and like the U.S. government he sees targeting innocent civilians for death as acceptable.
There is every reason to believe Afghanis will soon be dieing from radiation and the death will continue for generations to come.

Fight against Racism! Defend Civil Liberties!
As part of our movement we also must be vigilant in defending the civil liberties of political dissidents, people of color, and of the working class in general. The U.S. government is trying to use recent events to crack down on rights, but if we build the resistance in the long run we can do much to expand civil liberties. The Vietnam anti-war movement did a lot in this regard in terms of fighting for free speech and in creating spin off movements for women's rights, gay rights, and the environment, while also supporting anti-racist movements as well.
We should realize that it is murderous racism and national chauvinism that sees a difference between killing innocent Iraqis, Palestinians, and Afghanis and killing innocent Americans. That kind of hatred is also being directed against Mid-Eastern immigrants in the U.S.
People of Middle Eastern origin are coming under violent attack all across the nation.
On October 29th Justice Department officials announced that over 1,017 people of Middle Eastern origin have been detained in the U.S. in their investigation of September 11th. Most are still in custody. Some have been held as suspects and others as witnesses. Amnesty International has documented many violations of these people's rights from inhumane treatment to being denied access to lawyers, to being held without charges. The FBI is now speaking publicly about their desire to torture these same suspects.
Human rights advocates have pointed out that the government's refusal to disclose the names of those being held raises the possibility of secret detentions. "The secret detention of more than 800 people over the past few weeks is frighteningly close to the practice of `disappearing' people in Latin America," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn are investigating charges that Mohammad Maddy was beaten by a guard at the Metropolitan Detention Center. There have been many beatings, shootings, and other incidents against Arabs and Sikhs by civilian racists as well.
We can not allow these violations of human rights or allow them to escalate as happened with the U.S. imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War 2.
On November 2nd Green Party Coordinator Nancy Oden was arrested by the military when she tried to fly from Bangor Maine to Chicago. "An official told me that my name had been flagged in the computer," a shaken Oden said. "I was targeted because the Green Party USA opposes the bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan."
"I was told that the airport was closed to me until further notice and that my ticket would not be refunded," Oden said. She was scheduled to speak on the Green Party's anti-war efforts. "Not only did
they stop me at the airport, but some mysterious party had called the hotel and cancelled my reservation,"
Nancy Oden has not only come under attack from armed government agents, she has come under attack from people in the Green Party, who calling her a member of a splinter faction and not the Green Party have called her a liar. They have called her a liar not based on any evidence of their own but on the faulty logic that if she was targeted the entire Green Party would be. They also call her a liar based on the reporting of a corporate newspaper. They state, "While who said what is not clear, it appears that her name was not flagged by a computer search of potential terrorists or their supporters, according to a news report in the Bangor Daily News on Nov. 3."
It shows the extremely low political consciousness of someone in the Green Party to believe the corporate media and call a comrade a liar without evidence based on the say so of the corporate media and their own touching faith in the system. If this attitude is widespread in the Green Party it would help explain why the Green Party is almost completely devoid of people of color who regularly face police repression in America backed up by the lies of the corporate media.
The Green Party has even administered over police repression against anti-war protesters. Back in May 1999 the Santa Cruz police violently attacked a peaceful protest against the bombing of Yugoslavia. Despite clear film footage showing the police brutality that had occurred, and despite having power over the police, Green Party City Council member Tim Fitzemaurice did not take one step of action to publicly support those victims of the police.
Fitzemaurice is also a supporter of the city law that makes it illegal for the homeless to sleep at night. The Green Party has joined the ranks of the Democrats and Republicans who unjustly rule in favor of the rich. It will take a socialist party to mobilize the strength of the oppressed to take power and build a just egalitarian society. Still socialists demand government hands off all Green Party members even if the Green Party doesn't make the same demand.
On October 26th president Bush signed into law the "Patriot Act". The bill dismantles many privacy protections for communications and personal data. The Center for Democracy and Technology states the bill:
"Allows government agents to collect undefined new information about Web browsing and e-mail without meaningful judicial review;
"Allows Internet Service Providers, universities, network administrators to authorize surveillance of "computer trespassers" without a judicial order;
"Overrides existing state and federal privacy laws, allowing FBI to compel disclosure of any kind of records, including sensitive medical, educational and library borrowing records, upon the mere claim that they are connected with an intelligence investigation;
"Allows law enforcement agencies to search homes and offices without notifying the owner for days or weeks after, not only in terrorism cases, but in all cases - the so-called "sneak and peek" authority;
"Allows FBI to share with the CIA information collected in the name of a grand jury, thereby giving the CIA the domestic subpoena powers it was never supposed to have;
"Allows FBI to conduct wiretaps and secret searches in criminal cases using the lower standards previously used only for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence."
While the real terrorists sit in the White House, the anti-war movement, people of Middle Eastern origin, and the people in general are being treated like terrorists. Now is not the time to hide. The Anti-war and the labor movement can play an important role in exposing these attacks on democratic rights and beating them back.

Defend Our Unions! Defend Social Security!
Meanwhile the capitalist economy appears to be entering an economic crisis of massive proportions. The capitalists who have built their wealth on our stolen labor power always put the burden of bad economic times on the backs of the workers. Massive lay-offs are already hitting the working class hard.
A socialist America would guarantee full employment for all workers, but the most immediate demands are for a reduction in the work week with no reduction in pay to spread the existing work around coupled with the demand for meaningful public works projects in areas such as the environment and building housing.
Also coming under attack is Social Security as the Bush administration and Congress uses the September 11th tragedy to pilfer money from the Social Security Administration.
Alan Benjamin of the Organizer Newspaper explains the meaning of their theft, "The meaning is clear: That portion of every working person's paycheck that was deducted month after month to help pay for retirement may not be there after all when the time to retire comes. The "day of reckoning" may be painful -- meaning that retirement benefits may be reduced, or the retirement age may be increased (another form of theft), or the funds simply may have disappeared into all sorts of speculative ventures. Whatever the form, it's highway robbery, pure and simple."
Bush and Congress get your bloody hands off Social Security!
In addition, the Sept. 11th attack has been used as an excuse by Minnesota Governor Ventura as to why 28,000 striking government workers should accept a lousy contract. These workers did not accept Ventura's argument that they should "bite the bullet" because of the war and won a better proposal than Ventura's "final offer." Yet it is still a questionable offer where workers will be paying more for health care. The bosses and their politicians always want workers to suffer the consequences of their wars while they sit back in their mansions of luxury.
Now that Ventura wasn't able to force workers to "bite the bullet" he is saying he is going to use the strike and the war as an excuse to cut needed government programs and government jobs. On October 22 he went further in his attacks saying government workers should not have the right to strike.
It is a law of capitalist politics that the closer the American people feel aligned with this government the more the government feels it can take away from us. Now more than ever the working class needs to unite and fight against the attacks of the government.

Build the Anti-War Movement.
Recent events should verify the fact that we should not be trying to appeal to the conscience of our rulers, because we should know they have none. The high stakes involved should make it clear that we will not easily pressure the U.S. rulers to stop the war either.
The main purpose of our events is to educate the public and build a growing movement in the streets against the war to educate the people. In the future our movement has the potential to stop the war in four ways. (1) By educating the soldiers fighting the war to the point that they refuse to fight. (The Vietnam anti-war movement accomplished this goal.) (2) By educating the working class to the point where we refuse to build or move the munitions, or even shut down the economy in a general strike against the war. (3) Through socialist revolution, which may not be very far off if we accomplish any of the first two goals. (4) Through the strength of the internationalist revolutionary and anti-imperialist movement.
While these goals may seem far off given the present state of consciousness of the American people we should remember that the movement against the Vietnam War started out small as well.
A mass anti-war movement is already building in the streets opposing the war-mongers of the Democrat and Republican Parties who voted, with only one dissenting vote, nearly unanimously for war. On September 29th 20,000 people marched against the war in Washington D. C. and 10,000 in San Francisco. Protests have occurred across the country and in many other cities as well. College campuses have had many successful protests. The San Francisco Central Labor Council, the International Longshore and Warehouseman's Union Local 6 and other unions have taken positions against the war as well. These are good beginnings in the U.S., the movement against the Vietnam War started small as well.
In Britain polls showed at the end of October that the majority is already opposed to the war. On the weekend of Oct.12-13 50,000 people came out in London to oppose the war. Britain's role is one of junior partner to U.S. imperialism, and they have been taking part in the bombing.
The German Social Democrat/Green government is also feeling the heat for its role in the war. On the same weekend as the London protests 50,000 marched against the war in Berlin and 25,000 in Stuttgart. The Christian Democratic Party also voted for German participation in the war. The only party in office to vote against the war was the Party of Democratic Socialism.
Behind the participation of these countries in the war along with other junior partners of imperialism is the desire of their capitalist classes to get their hands on the spoils of Central Asian oil and gas.
Massive protests have occurred in many other countries as well.
Oil companies and arms suppliers are the only ones who stand to gain from this catastrophic human tragedy of death by bombing, cancer, and starvation, but we are not helpless in the face of the horrors being committed by our government. We can resist! We must resist! We are resisting!