Stopping terrorism 101

The imperialists have always used catchy phrases to sell their predatory wars. World War I was “the war to end all wars.” They’d rather we forgot about that concept.

The modern war for economic subjugation of oppressed nations by the small class of super-rich capitalists is labeled “the war on terrorism.” The world will not be a safe place, say the apologists for imperialism — starting with the military-political establishment and reflected in every major newspaper and broadcast — until the terrorists have been rooted out and destroyed, especially in that vast area of West Asia full of natural resources that is also known as the Middle East.

That is the interpretation put by the Obama administration and all the major news sources on the incident in which a Nigerian passenger on a flight to Detroit allegedly tried to blow himself up, and also on the attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan.

There is now a full-court press by the ruling establishment to browbeat the people of the United States into supporting the “surge” in Afghanistan, the drone-guided missile and Special Forces attacks in Pakistan, and the U.S.-engineered offensives in Yemen and Somalia. All this is supposedly necessary to protect the people here against terrorist attacks.

But who are the real terrorists? It is one of the biggest of the Big Lies saturating imperialist culture that those who have stockpiled the deadliest weapons, and frequently use them, must never be called terrorists.

Those who dropped atomic bombs on cities full of people and still have huge stockpiles of these doomsday weapons, those who have spent the people’s tax money on the world’s biggest fleets of warships and planes, who send high-altitude bombers to rain down death on the other side of the earth, who can unleash powerful missiles, “bunker-busting” bombs, napalm and white phosphorus on small villages — in a word, the U.S. imperialists — are supposed to be above criticism.

They present themselves as the “good guys” with the right to go anywhere and do anything they deem necessary. Those who fight back with home-made weapons, often knowingly sacrificing their lives, are the “bad guys.” But that’s not the view of most of the rest of the world.

In fact, the opposite is true. The massive death and destruction dealt every day by the Pentagon in many countries is what has enraged the peoples there and their co-religionists to the point that some are ready to die in attacks on U.S. targets.

It is not at all naïve to think that withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan will save lives, not just of the peoples there but here in the United States, too.

Here is a case in point: Back in March 2004, the train system in Madrid was bombed, with heavy loss of life, just three days before a general election and a year after the rightist Spanish government had, under U.S. pressure, agreed to join the invasion force in Iraq. The government attempted to use the bombings to strengthen its standing in the polls, but the electorate thought otherwise and voted the government out. Soon the new government withdrew its troops from Iraq. No one from the Middle East or Asia has carried out bombings there since.

There is only one way to end the carnage that the imperialists have unleashed. It is for the U.S. to get out of the Middle East and allow the people there to decide their own destiny.