The war against us all

The following commentary was played at March 19 anti-war rallies in the United States:

Mumia Abu-Jamal

The war against us all. This war in Iraq isn’t the end; it’s the beginning of wars to come all around the world at the whim of the neo-cons in the White House.

This is the Bush Doctrine come to life: war, war, and more war. War brought to you by the big corporate masters who run the show.

This isn’t just a war on Iraqis or Afghanis or even Arabs or Muslims. It is ultimately a war on us all. That’s because the billions and billions of dollars that are being spent on this war—the cost of tanks, rocketry, bullets, and yes, even salaries for the 125,000-plus troops—is money that will never be spent on education, on health care, on the reconstruction of crumbling public housing, or to train and place the millions of workers who have lost manufacturing jobs in the past three years alone.

The war in Iraq is, in reality, a war against the nation’s workers and the poor who are getting less and less while the big defense industries are making a killing—literally. What’s next? Iran? Syria? North Korea? Venezuela? We’ve already seen the corporate media play megaphone to the White House to build and promote a war based on lies.

It’s been a long time ago, but that great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, said, “War is utilized by the imperialists, first and foremost, to crush internal enemies.” We’re seeing the truth of his insight when we see the sad state of American education, the rush of seniors to buy affordable medication from the Canadians because American drugs are just too expensive, the threatened privatization of Social Security, and the wave of repression that comes with an increasingly militarized police. Does the Homeland Security Department make you feel any safer?

In Black America things get grimmer every day as resources that are already scarce begin to shrink even further. Young people feel that prisons are a rite of passage, an inevitable place to visit. And a decent job seems like a distant dream.

This is a war on all of us, and the struggle against war is really a struggle for a better life for the millions of folks who are in need here in this country. The fight against the war is really to fight for your own interests, not the false interests of the defense industries, or the corporate media, or the White House.

Down with the wars for empire!