Who’s guilty of terror? The U.S. war machine.
On Jan. 1, there were two incidents in the United States that might have been interpreted as terrorist attacks: A truck plowed into a crowd of ordinary people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans celebrating the New Year’s holiday, killing 14 and injuring 35 others. A Tesla Cybertruck exploded near a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, and the truck’s driver apparently committed suicide.
Any incident of this character, especially one with many casualties, will be manipulated by ruling-class forces in U.S. society. These forces dominate the state apparatus and corporate media, which controls the narrative at the beginning.
Most often, powerful forces in U.S. society try to use these events against workers and oppressed people, sometimes against entire nations, always against their enemies. They never let the truth get in their way. They tell outrageous lies.
It is the task of revolutionary Marxist organizations to counter these lies and prepare for a struggle. We need to do this whether or not we are in a position to discover what actually happened.
This New Year’s first and biggest lie came from the MAGA forces. Upon learning that the alleged perpetrator of the NOLA attack had an Arabic name and was Muslim, Fox News reported that he was an immigrant. President-elect Donald Trump immediately tweeted on X on Jan. 1 repeating his slanders against migrants and attacking the Democrats.
Then other media outlets reported that the NOLA perpetrator, who was killed by police, was a U.S. citizen born in Texas. He served in the U.S. Army from 2007 to 2015 and was deployed to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010. In civilian life, he promoted himself online as an effective real estate salesperson. According to some sources, he claimed he was a member of the Islamic State or ISIS.
Trump’s Big Lie comes as no surprise, since he and his cronies have repeated similar untruths attacking migrants at least since the 2016 presidential election. This particular lie is a cornerstone of his racist program. His campaign throughout 2024 blamed migrants for everything wrong with U.S. society. As of Jan. 5, there is no sign Trump has apologized for this lie.
Regarding Las Vegas, the Special Forces soldier reported as committing suicide was still on active duty, although on leave from his posting in Germany. He had served two deployments to Afghanistan. Investigators published his alleged posts, one with MAGA-like rhetoric against “woke” policies, one regretting the deaths of civilians in Afghanistan.
The two soldiers were both trained at what was until recently called Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. According to federal investigators, they were trained at different times, and there is no evidence the two men met there, or that their actions were coordinated.
No coordination, but no accident
But that doesn’t mean that the two events had nothing in common. The two were professional soldiers, trained to kill and rewarded for doing it well. Consider the following:
The United States is the center of an empire whose ruling class maintains power by force, applied through more than 800 bases around the world and a large fleet of warships. These numbers don’t include over 450 military bases inside the U.S., according to the Military Analysis Network. It has been at almost continuous war since 1950 and especially since 1990.
U.S. rulers created a professional military using quasi-mercenary soldiers trained to be part of a mass murder machine. It sent these two soldiers to Afghanistan, where every civilian was viewed as a “potential threat.” Their role included killing anyone — and this includes non-combatants, even children — who might be seen as a danger. That really means anyone who threatened to diminish the profits of a relative handful of billionaires.
Fort Bragg is now called Fort Liberty. Bragg was the name of a Confederate general who fought for the slavocracy. Unfortunately, this progressive name change caused no change in Fort Liberty’s reactionary task: It trains killers for Wall Street’s international organized crimes.
Texas-born veteran Specialist Shamsud-Din Jabbar and active duty Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger brought this training home. We name them now, to underline that they too can be considered victims of the imperialist ruling class. Combat soldiers come back with brain injuries, often with PTSD, both of which can make socialization and relationships excruciating and alienation likely.
We learned that New Orleans police authorities have used the truck assault as a pretext to increase repression of popular organizations. We protest this other Big Lie.
We offer condolences for the deaths, injuries and trauma caused by these tragic incidents. But we need no further investigation to point to the guilty party: Down with U.S. imperialism! Down with the Pentagon killing machine!
