No War!
No restrictions on civil liberties! No repression of dissent!
No attacks on Arab Americans and other immigrants!

The September 11 terrorist attacks that killed more than 6,000 people, most of them civilians, most of them workers, sent waves of shock, grief, and anger across the country. Millions of people had or feared they had family or friends among the victims.

The US government is exploiting the attacks to declare a "war on terrorism," really a war against countries, organizations, and people who defy it. Large majorities in nearly all sectors of the population say they support retaliation against whoever was behind the attacks. Most of them don't yet understand what the government intends.

The government is trying to tie the attacks to Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda ("Base") organization he leads. Bin Laden is an Islamic fundamentalist Saudi millionaire whom the CIA armed during the 1980s to help drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. He turned on the US during the Gulf war and now lives in Afghanistan, whose Taliban government has given him political asylum. He has made numerous threats against the US.

The Bush administration said that the attacks were an act of war. Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize Bush "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons."

No senator and only one House member, Barbara Lee, had the courage to vote "no." Congress also approved $40 billion as a first installment on repairing the damage from the attacks and funding the war.

The US has begun moving bombers and aircraft carriers into the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean and calling up reserves. At this point a US war against Afghanistan seems inevitable, even if bin Laden flees. In the Gulf war the US government wanted to make an example of Iraq to show the fate that awaited potentially rebellious states. Now it wants to make an example of Afghanistan.

The "war on terrorism" will also be a war on civil liberties and dissent at home, an excuse to shift funding from social to military programs, and an incitement of racist chauvinism. It won't make the US more secure, only more hated.

Workers, youth, and all progressive people need to take a stand against the war. We need to defend civil liberties and the right to dissent. We need to prevent attacks on Arab Americans and other immigrants. And we need to organize for social justice and an end to the capitalist system that breeds terror and war.

No justice, no peace

>From most standpoints, a US war against Afghanistan is absurd and evil. The US is the richest and most powerful country on earth, while Afghanistan is one of the poorest and most miserable countries.

Afghanistan has been at war since the Soviet Union invaded it in 1979 and the US, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia backed fundamentalists like bin Laden and the Taliban to drive them out. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, Russia and the other neighboring former Soviet republics, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia fomented civil war, which continues to this day.

Twenty-two years of war have reduced Afghanistan's cities, roads, and other infrastructure to rubble. War and four years of drought have spread famine throughout the country.

US bombing wouldn't much hurt the Afghan army, since it is decentralized and protected by rugged terrain. As in the Vietnam war, the Gulf war, and the Yugoslav war, the US would bomb civilian targets. Since Afghanistan no longer has major economic targets, this would mean bombing cities and villages.

Bombing would kill thousands of people, but it wouldn't destroy Al Qaeda or remove the Taliban. For that the US would need to send in ground troops. It wouldn't try to occupy Afghanistan, having learned the lessons of its own defeat in Vietnam and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. Rather, it would sweep the country with mobile forces, hoping to incapacitate the Taliban and Al Qaeda and capture bin Laden.

A ground war would be enormously expensive and might result in many US casualties. It would kill many thousands of Afghanis. Even if it succeeded militarily -- a big if -- it wouldn't protect the US from terrorism. On the contrary, it would make the US more hated and more a target.

The US killed 200,000 Iraqis in the Gulf war and more than a million through sanctions since then. The sanctions kill 5,000 children a month, almost as many as died on September 11. The US backs Israel in its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians, which has killed tens of thousands and driven millions from their land.

Dozens of other countries have been victims of US and US-sponsored state terrorism. The US-led "new world order" quietly dooms millions of people to poverty, disease, and death. Poor and working people around the world have good reason to hate US imperialism.

"No justice, no peace!" is a popular slogan in demonstrations. It also describes the reality the US faces. So long as US imperialism supports and inflicts injustice, US workers and youth will have no peace. This war will only make the situation worse.

Workers and youth will suffer

The US ruling class has decided to go to war. Unless they are stopped, they will send hundreds of thousands of working-class youth to kill and be killed. They will take money from social security, education, healthcare, and other domestic programs to fund the war.

The "peace dividend" from the ending of the Cold War, never very large, is over. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the National Security Agency will get whatever they ask for. Even the useless and exorbitant national missile defense system will slide through Congress.

Using "war on terrorism" as an excuse, the government will restrict civil liberties and repress dissent. The police will go after immigrants, strikers, and demonstrators. They will tap telephone lines, intercept email, and infiltrate organizations.

War hysteria will displace domestic and international concerns. No progress will be possible until the war ends. For the moment, the anti-globalization movement and all other progressive movements in the US are on hold.

Many incidents of racist, chauvinist attacks have been reported. Arab Americans and other immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia have been harassed and beaten. Cultural centers and mosques have been vandalized and shot at. So far four people have been murdered.

Oppressive regimes around the world will gain from the war. The US will ignore the human rights abuses of Turkey, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and other "allies" and provide them arms and military aid, which they will use to repress their populations.

Israel has already taken advantage of the war drive to step up its attacks on Palestinians. It has all but ended its pretense of negotiating with the Palestinian Authority and is imposing the system of Bantustans it has sought all along.

The war will cause great misery, but it won't bring peace.

The main enemy is at home

Revolutionary socialists feel shock and grief over the deaths and injuries from the September 11 attacks. We reject the hijackers' methods. They killed innocent people. But even if they had struck only military targets and avoided civilian casualties, even if they had had a more progressive ideology, they would not have advanced the struggle for liberation.

Imperialism's "new world order" oppresses people around the world. None of the existing leaderships of the oppressed has been able to provide a solution. The social democrats have accepted neoliberalism, the post-Stalinists have accepted capitalism, and the nationalists have accepted imperialism. The revolutionary socialists are too small to offer a practical solution.

In the absence of a working-class political alternative, sectors of the poor and the middle class are attracted to religious fundamentalism, fascism, and other reactionary ideologies that disguise the real problems, the real enemies, and the real solutions. Some become so desperate that they see terrorist acts as their only means to retaliate against the oppression they feel. Many others sympathize with their actions.

The working class is the only social force that can end exploitation and oppression. The working class is the vast majority in economically advanced countries and at least a large minority in every country. Its intelligence and labor create all social institutions, including economies, governments, and armies.

Conscious, organized, and with revolutionary leadership, it can emancipate itself and all the victims of capitalist society: peasants, the urban poor, sectors of the middle class, oppressed national and ethnic groups, women, lesbians and gay men, and youth.

The killing of innocent people repels workers. Even with legitimate targets, individual terrorism conveys the false message that political struggle is the task of elite groups of heroes and martyrs. It doesn't achieve liberation. It brings down repression.

Heroes are necessary, and martyrs are inevitable. But liberation can come only through the self-emancipation of the working class. Revolutionary socialists advocate methods that help the working class rise to its historic task.

Our most important duty in the US today is to resist the imperialist war drive. We can do this by explaining the role of US imperialism, the reasons for the September 11 attacks, and the crime and futility of the ruling class's war. First to the political vanguard of workers and youth and then to all.

Through demonstrations, meetings, teach-ins, discussions, and publications we can convey our message: To have justice and peace, we must oppose the policies and ultimately the existence of US and all imperialism.

September 21, 2001

Trotskyist League
P.O. Box 44317, Detroit, Michigan 48244
tlus@igc.org