Socialist Viewpoint

1. The devastating and catastrophic attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington is the result of a long series of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the governments of the USA against the peoples of the world. Beginning with the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 through numerous horrific acts during the war against the Vietnamese people, the genocidal operations by Israeli surrogates against the Palestinian people up to the most recent bombings in the Balkan Peninsula by “NATO” troops, the world has been witness to the arrogant, cynical and barbaric policies of an imperialist superpower which considers itself beyond all criticism.

2. We condemn and profoundly regret the misguided acts of those who hijacked commercial airplanes filled with unsuspecting civilians and who turned them into suicidal guided missiles, which led to the death of more than 6,000 people in two hours of televised inferno. We see in this insane act once again just how massively destructive the combination of fundamentalist ideology and modern technology can be. The men and women behind those acts, whatever they themselves might have thought, were – and are – not attacking the capitalist system, which is the real cause of the poverty, famine, disease and generalized oppression and exploitation of the workers of the world and of the urban and rural poor of the South. These deluded tactics directed at “the Great Satan” are used opportunistically by the capitalist warmongers and the military industrial complex to strengthen their arguments for continuing and intensifying nuclear and other armament, especially in the USA and in the European Union. This undermines the strength of the international working class and of the poor people of the world and, in the short term, lengthens the lease on life of the capitalist system.

3. There has been a predictable war psychosis fabricated by the capitalist media and the leaders of world imperialism in reaction to the deadly strike at the very heart of the sole remaining superpower when the suicide bombers hit the economic and military symbols of US imperialism. According to some reports, the political symbol of the White House appears to have been missed because Bush ordered the plane that “crashed” in Pennsylvania to be shot down. This situation is bound to lead to a period of militarism and aggression. Already Bush and his leadership corps are speaking of a “crusade” (against Islam?) thereby calling up all the images and facts associated with the first colonial wars of conquest and pillage. In other words, we are entering a period of general insecurity and misery for the poor and powerless of the world.

4. War, however, is the midwife of revolution. The US governing class and other warmongers will unleash forces beyond their control. On the one hand, there lurks the danger of the ultimate nuclear extinction of the planet. On the other hand, the probable eradication of the capitalist system by the united workers of the world acting in self-defense and for the perpetuation of civilisation and of life itself on planet earth.