the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 6, 2008
Both Houses of Congress passed the 700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout, and rushed it on to Bush to sign, who did so immediately. After all, Wall Street was impatiently waiting for its money.
This did not come without a bit of problems for the politicians.
With a little over a month to go before the elections, and with every member of the House up for election, the politicians were under pressure coming from the voters. In the week before the first vote, they were deluged with letters, petitions, e-mail and phone calls from outraged and angry voters–running as high as 90% or more against the bailout.
The first time around, the House of Representatives voted against the bailout, 228 to 205. The majority of Democrats voted for it: 140 for and 95 against. But that wasn’t enough to make up for the massive Republican vote against: only 65 voted for, with 133 against.
Wall Street jumped into action–pushing stock indexes into free fall, warning Congress it had better reverse itself. The major business associations rushed into Congressional offices, as did all those lobbyists representing companies whose executives had contributed to election campaigns.
John McCain and Barack Obama, who had danced around the question in their first debate, now stepped up to the plate, declaring themselves strongly in favor of the bill.
It went back to the Senate, where it passed, with McCain and Obama both voting YES.
Back to the House, for a new vote–what many union members know as the “keep-voting-until-you-get-it-right” routine. This time it passed: 172 Democrats voted for, 63 voted against; 91 Republicans voted for, 108 voted against.
In other words, despite the popular discontent, the majority of Democrats both times voted for taxpayers’ money to be used to save the financial sharks, with all that will mean in terms of higher taxes, cuts in public services and social programs, as well as inflation and lowered purchasing power.
Obama even rushed to put people on notice that he won’t be able to implement all his programs immediately; they will have to be “phased in”–when “the situation” allows.
Some Republicans certainly used populist demagogy to justify their vote, denouncing those who would “throw good taxpayer money after Wall Street’s bad bets.”
But the working population obviously has nothing to hope for from the Republicans who voted against the plan. Just look at what they proposed. Standing for a renewal of “the free play of the market,” they wanted to relax accounting rules on financial businesses, to provide insurance against bad investments, and to grant state aid to business in the form of tax cuts and retroactive exemptions from earlier taxes.
The Republicans aimed their proposals essentially at small and medium size businessmen, who don’t want to pay more taxes and who strongly fear that small local banks where they deposit their savings won’t benefit from the same generous gifts as Wall Street’s big operators.
In order to win over Republican votes, the second bill included a whole series of tax cuts for small businesses and individual “entrepreneurs”–which worked to bring over enough votes to seal the deal.
In fact, the government didn’t wait on the vote to throw money into the grasping hands of one failing financial company after another. In the few months before the bailout, the government had already given away more than a trillion dollars to Wall Street.
But the fact the bail-out passed with both Democratic and Republican leaders, including Obama and McCain, pushing it through–despite the popular expression of strong opposition–shows fully that working people have no reason to hope for a change from the November elections.
We have to defend ourselves–and that will require more than phone calls, letters, faxes or e-mail. That will take a mobilization of our forces to fight for our interests.
Oct 6, 2008
Chicago’s Mayor Daley wants to lease Midway Airport to Citibank and its associated companies for 99 years, giving it the right to collect all revenue, while the city pays off all the airport debts.
The mayor said, “As the first privatization of a major American airport, this transaction will provide unprecedented benefits for the traveling public, the airlines and the taxpayers of Chicago.”
Benefits? The only benefits go to Citibank, which is in the midst of a giant crisis that it helped cause. This deal is not unprecedented. It’s just one more government bailout!
Oct 6, 2008
159,000 workers lost their jobs in September. This is double the rate of job losses during the last few months. More huge job losses are expected in the months ahead. And this is according to U.S. Labor Department statistics which severely understate the problem.
Last month’s job losses were spread throughout the economy. 51,000 workers in manufacturing plants lost their jobs, 35,000 more workers were laid off from their jobs in retail and another 35,000 in construction. 16,000 workers in transportation and warehousing were put out in the street, and another 17,000 who worked in financial services lost their jobs. And this was before the recent freeze-up of credit now causing big layoffs in this sector.
According to government figures, job losses so far this year come to 760,000, with a total of over 9.5 million people now unemployed. Despite the huge job losses in September, the official unemployment rate remained steady at just over 6%! This shows how rigged the government unemployment reports are.
The politicians and bosses present this soaring unemployment as if nothing can be done about it–as though it were out of human control. Not true!
Look what 700 billion dollars could do: 180 billion dollars could put hundreds of thousands of people to work repairing or replacing all the 77,000 deteriorated bridges in the U.S.; 36 billion dollars could finance rebuilding all the substandard schools in the country. Just seven billion would double all the federal money spent so far on rebuilding New Orleans.
This would still leave over two-thirds of the 700 billion, not to mention all the other money the government has forked over in the last few months–totaling over two trillion dollars. With this money, all the roughly 50 million people in the U.S. without any health insurance could be given full coverage for two years; 500,000 additional public school teachers could be hired to teach in the rebuilt schools for four years. And so on...
Instead the Democrats and Republicans both decided to bail out the Wall Street speculators–the very criminals who created the mess we are in!
Oct 6, 2008
As bad as the unemployment news is, the truth is much worse. For more than 40 years, the government has been “massaging” its statistics. In plain language, the federal government–under Democratic administration and Republican administration–has found numerous ways to lie in order to disappear the unemployed from government statistics.
In 1961, in the midst of a severe downturn in the economy, the Kennedy administration decreed that unemployed workers who had not looked for work in the previous week would no longer be counted as unemployed. Labeling them as “discouraged workers,” the government left them out of the unemployment report.
For decades, the government has not counted disabled people as unemployed even when they are able to work and want to work.
In 1983, after a stretch of bad years, the Reagan administration decided to count U.S. military forces as employed. Putting them in the statistics made it seem that more people were employed.
The Clinton administration in the late 1990s dropped from its economic sampling one-sixth of the households from which unemployment data was collected. It just so happened that most of these households were in big cities, where poverty and unemployment were worse. It also eliminated most of the long-term unemployed from the records.
Finally, those who want a full-time job, but can find only a few hours of work a week, are counted as employed. All of these things have produced an official unemployment figure that is increasingly out of touch with reality.
If government statistics on unemployment were calculated the way they were in 1960, the real unemployment rate would be about 15% today, not 6%. That won’t surprise workers who know from experience how many people can’t find jobs.
Oct 6, 2008
In 1897, American humorist Mark Twain said: “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
Oct 6, 2008
Michigan’s unemployment fund is out of money, with the state owing 225 million dollars to the federal government at the end of August. And unemployment insurance funds in California, New York and Ohio are running low and could run out of money before this year is over.
These states are not alone. According to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for the unemployed, 32 states’ unemployment funds have fallen below one year’s worth of benefits.
This news comes at a time when the economic crisis is deepening, with unemployment rising in the whole country. And everybody knows we haven’t seen the worst of it yet!
Politicians and government officials can’t claim they didn’t see it coming. In 2001, for example, California Labor Department officials testified that the state’s unemployment fund would go broke because the amount employers were taxed had not kept up with inflation for 25 years. But the California legislature, controlled by the Democratic Party, has done nothing about it. Nor has Republican Governor Schwarzenegger since he took office in 2003.
It’s not an accident that the states’ unemployment funds are running out of money just when they are most needed. Politicians–both Republican and Democrat, including those who claim to be “friends of labor”–have deliberately undertaxed companies, letting them avoid their responsibility for unemployment. When it comes to a choice between the bosses’ profits and the unemployed, both parties took the bosses’ side.
Oct 6, 2008
A jury acquitted a white South Carolina state cop of violating the civil rights of a black man he deliberately struck with his police cruiser.
The whole incident was caught on video by the cruiser’s dashboard camera. The cop, Steven Garren, is shown running down the man, Marvin Grant, who was fleeing on foot. Grant was knocked so hard by the car that he flew up in the air. Garren then brags to another cop arriving seconds later, “I knocked the f*** out of him!” and “Yeah, I hit him. I was trying to hit him!”
Evidence in the trial also showed that Garren’s supervisor, Corporal James Grant, tried to cover up the whole thing. The supervisor was caught on tape in his own car, telling Greenwood County sheriff’s deputies, that if “we ain’t got (the suspect), (the collision) didn’t happen.”
Despite clear evidence of his guilt, Garren got off scot-free–just like any old smiling Jim Crow sheriff with his thumbs stuck in his belt, laughing about getting away with a lynching.
Oct 6, 2008
The big companies and union bureaucrats pretend there are programs for retraining workers in Michigan who lose their jobs.
The main program, called “No Worker Left Behind,” is run by the state. Back in January, when unemployment was lower, the waiting lists for the program were already months long.
It’s a program–on paper.
Oct 6, 2008
According to a report released by a health care advocacy group, Families USA, health insurance premiums for Michigan families have risen 17 times more than their earnings between 2000 and 2007.
Seventeen times! Even if a worker in Michigan was making minimum wage in 2000, if their wages had increased seventeen times, they would be making nearly $90 an hour. But they are not.
But medical costs have spiraled out of control.
What kind of system is it where people in the richest country in the world find themselves having to choose between the basics–do we eat and put gas in our cars, or see a doctor and get our prescriptions filled?
A system that can’t even be fixed if it’s put in the intensive care unit.
Oct 6, 2008
To entice more legislators to pass the bailout bill, leaders of Congress filled it with all sorts of pork in the form of corporate tax breaks.
But “just in case” that wasn’t enough for them to go against what they were hearing from 90% of people they supposedly represent, they also had a “backup plan”: an option to add an extension for unemployment benefits.
That’s right: they held out something that would have actually helped ordinary people, “just in case” it was needed.
But the bill passed easily with just the corporate pork–so the unemployment extension wasn’t added!
Truly, this shows who they really represent.
Oct 6, 2008
On September 12, a horrific train crash near Los Angeles killed 25 passengers and injured 135. Among the dead was the Metrolink commuter train’s engineer. Within hours, Metrolink blamed the train engineer for running a red light. Later they blamed him for not paying attention because of sending text messages on his cell phone.
Even the head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation said that the NTSB tests showed that the engineer had run a red light.
But news reporters located three different witnesses who said the light that was supposed to be red was actually green.
And the NTSB tests were not ones that could positively say yes or no about the light! They relied on computer data and on the functioning of other lights.
In this day and age, satellites watch every inch of the globe, and anyone can buy a GPS unit accurate within ten feet. Yet no investment in this technology is made to protect train riders’ lives–except for one light connected to a computer!
Instead the bosses and the government invest in nothing but a campaign to blame a worker–preferably one who, like the engineer, is no longer alive to defend himself.
Because lies are cheaper than safety precautions.
Oct 6, 2008
The CEO of failed Washington Mutual, on the job only a few weeks, is entitled to more than 13 million dollars in severance and bonus pay.
One more proof that this is a crazy system.
Oct 6, 2008
In 2004, five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) met with representatives of the five biggest investment banks–Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. In this meeting, ignored at the time by both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, the SEC agreed to reduce the amount of assets the big investment banks would be required to hold in reserve to guarantee their debts. They did so with no further examination of the banks’ financial condition.
The investment companies were quick to take advantage of the decision, borrowing heavily to speculate on ventures like mortgage-backed securities. Bear Stearns, for example, sharply increased its debt to asset ratio to 33 to 1. The others were not far behind.
The head of Goldman Sachs at the time of the meeting was none other than Henry Paulson, the man George Bush appointed Secretary of the Treasury in 2006. Paulson recently engineered the 700 billion dollar bailout bill–simply another way to allow the Wall Street companies to expand their debt!
So why did the big banks roll up so much debt so fast? One of the commissioners, Harvey J. Goldschmid, recently said, “We foolishly believed that the firms had a strong culture of self-preservation and responsibility and would have the discipline not to be excessively borrowing. Letting the firms police themselves made sense to me because I didn’t think the SEC had the staff and the wherewithal to impose its own standards and I foolishly thought the market would impose its own self-discipline. We’ve all learned a terrible lesson.”
It’s true, and it always has been, that the capitalists have an interest in not creating a global economic crisis. Unfortunately, they compete with each other for profits every day, and with or without regulations, they take any risk necessary in an attempt to surpass their competitors. And that trumps capitalist “self-discipline” any day.
Of course, they know they can count on the government to step in with hundreds of billions in dollars of taxpayer’s money to bail them out when their risky ventures go to hell in a handbasket! No matter who’s running the government, Democrat or Republican.
Oct 6, 2008
Even as the financial collapse swept the world news, multi-billionaires lined up in record numbers at the Monaco Yacht Show.
Demand for the largest super-yachts has never been higher, and it has set records each of the past several years. These huge ships stretch almost the length of two football fields and have up to 10 stories on them. They are outfitted with “standard” items like helicopters; leather-lined submarines; fleets of jet-skis and other small boats; indoor swimming pools; marble bathrooms with platinum sinks; multiple huge plasma TV screens; and, of course, hot tubs and exercise rooms. The price can reach over 400 million dollars.
One yacht designer said it best: “It’s as if they want to take possession of the entire environment around them–the sky, the water, and depths of the sea.”
But of course, the super-rich get tired of their yachts, so every few years they spend millions more on redecorating–trading out their walnut and platinum for ebony and gold, and hand-woven silk carpets.
Not everyone is hurting today. Some people have made out–like bandits!
Oct 6, 2008
As the financial crisis has worsened, three of the biggest financial companies in the world, Citigroup, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase, have emerged much, much bigger and more dominant.
The Big Three banks, as they are now called, have gobbled up other enormous financial companies weakened or bankrupted by the crisis. Bank of America snapped up First Countrywide, the largest independent mortgage company and then within a matter of a few months, gorged itself on Merrill Lynch, the largest brokerage company in the country. Not to be outdone, J.P. Morgan Chase took over the bankrupt giant investment bank, Bear Stearns, and then, for its main course a few months later, swallowed up Washington Mutual (WaMu), the largest savings and loan already sunk in bankruptcy. Finally, Citigroup, which itself has been plagued by record losses and debts, tried to buy up Wachovia Bank, the nation’s fourth largest commercial bank. But since Citigroup would have paid almost nothing for Wachovia, Wells Fargo jumped into the bidding, hoping to snare its share.
These were the ultimate back room deals. Massive government intervention helped these financial giants gobble up their weaker cousins.
Many of these takeovers took place in only a couple of weeks of financial panic at the end of September. Thus, not all these deals have yet been completed. But if all the deals do go through, three enormous bank companies will control almost one-third of all deposits held in U.S. commercial banks and thrifts, up by almost 50% in just a few months. Other aspects of financial and banking services in the country–home mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, brokerage services, corporate services–will come under near monopoly control. No doubt, they will also dominate even more the international financial machinery, especially since the U.S. economy remains by far the largest in the world, with their investments and sales overseas greater than the entire economies of most nations.
This sharply rising concentration of wealth and control by a tiny handful of banking companies puts the lie to all the fairy tales about “rescuing the whole economy” and all of us with it.
On the contrary, the growing monopoly control by a handful of financial companies can only mean that the vast theft from the population will get much worse. These companies will try to use their very immensity to make consumers pay in every way possible–to make already outrageous loans and fees even more expensive, to squeeze depositors with even less interest on their savings.
These companies already dictate their own terms to the government. And the dead hand of monopoly control can only lead to more stagnation, decline and crisis.
Oct 6, 2008
This spring marked the 75th anniversary of the introduction of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. In the depths of the Depression, the Democrats swept into the White House, took control of Congress, and in 100 days pushed through 15 massive bills. Ever since, the Democrats have taken credit for rescuing the economy, carrying out massive public works that put the jobless to work, starting up new social programs for the aged and poor, and–last but not least–granting new rights to workers and their unions.
The history of the Roosevelt New Deal shows something else entirely.
The “New Deal” did not spell an end to the attacks against the working class and its militants. On the contrary, it continued.
The government moved to break strikes. In 1941, Roosevelt’s government actually sent in federal troops to put down a strike of aircraft workers at North American Aviation in Los Angeles. Later that year, the government prosecuted and imprisoned leaders from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and those allied with them in the Teamsters Union, who had led the 1934 Minneapolis strikes and had just successfully organized long haul drivers in the northern Plains states.
Nor did Roosevelt’s New Deal programs end the Depression. Certainly, there was a partial economic recovery, between 1933 and early 1937. But above all, it was a recovery in corporate profits, which went from a net loss in 1933 to a net profit of seven billion dollars in 1937. Despite these profits, businesses invested almost nothing and hired even less, leaving the unemployment rate stuck at over 14%.
Against this backdrop, Roosevelt reduced government outlays in June 1937, especially on public works. He cut the WPA rolls drastically, claiming “fiscal responsibility,” and additionally cut hundreds of thousands of government jobs. The economy plunged. In October 1937 a new panic cracked the stock market, and it fell much faster than after the October 1929 crash. Steel production in the last quarter of the year fell to one-fourth the level of the previous year, pacing a 40% decline in industrial output. By the end of that winter, more than two million workers had received layoff notices, raising the unemployment rate to 20%. In Detroit, the relief rolls ballooned to four times their 1937 size. The worst conditions from the earlier part of the decade reared their head.
Only when the Roosevelt administration began to pour record amounts of money into production for war did the economy begin to recover. In other words, all the New Deal programs, all the public works projects did not pull the capitalist economy out of its crisis. Economic recovery was a product of war. What came out of that new investment and production, of course, was the slaughter of tens of millions of people, the destruction of numerous cities, towns and villages, mass starvation and homelessness, along with the death camps.
Humanity had to pay an unbelievable price twice, once for the break-down of the capitalist system, the Great Depression, and an even bigger price for the supposed “cure” from the Depression, the mass slaughter of World War II.
Oct 6, 2008
The following is translated from the October 3 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), published by the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.
As in the United States, the financial crisis has now taken a catastrophic turn in Europe. The national states and the European Central Bank (ECB) are intervening daily to save financial businesses from bankruptcy.
How could it be otherwise, when the international financial system forms a whole, when the great banks of the entire world every day buy, sell and lend to each other colossal amounts of securities, stocks, currency and "derivatives," all while partially owning one another. These institutions, collectively and in competition with each other, dominate the economy of the whole planet.
In just two days–September 29th and 30th–Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg nationalized Fortis Bank for 16 billion dollars; Germany decided to guarantee 50 billion dollars for the Hypo Real Estate Bank; Great Britain, Denmark and Iceland each nationalized a failing financial company; Spain supported the stock of its national savings bank; France poured four billion dollars into saving Dexia; and the European Central Bank injected 275 billion dollars into the financial market, lending this enormous sum to bankers "in difficulty."
It’s impossible to know how much money the European Central Bank and the European states advanced over the past year trying to save bankers near collapse and attempting to avoid a general panic. But it is certain that hundreds of billions of dollars have already disappeared from their vaults and that bankers and governments will try to make the workers pay the price for it.
These banks devote all available resources, beginning with that of the working population, to save what can’t be saved–the capitalist system.
Oct 6, 2008
Chrysler showed off four new hybrid-electric vehicles like they did something new.
Under President Clinton, all three auto companies built this kind of demo car. They used 1.5 billion taxpayer dollars to develop them. Chrysler’s got 72 MPG and Ford’s and GM’s got 80 MPG.
Then they quit the program and locked the demo cars away. The Free Press reported this at the time.
These could have been on the road years ago!
Oct 6, 2008
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has notified the Treasury Department that the “golden state” may need a seven-billion-dollar emergency federal loan before the end of the month.
That’s because California is running out of the cash it needs to run its day-to-day operations, including the paychecks of state workers.
California certainly is wealthy. If it is in financial dire straits like this, in what kind of shape are other states and cities? Not good, of course. The media has already reported that New Mexico, Massachusetts and Maine are in serious trouble. It’s more than likely that they are not the only ones.
The serious financial trouble that states and municipalities are in is a result of the ongoing financial crisis. All state, county and local governments rely on loans to make their daily cash payments, until tax money kicks in in the spring. But, right now, banks have stopped issuing loans.
So, after the ongoing pay cuts, layoffs and foreclosures, now we see another big wave of the financial storm approaching the population. How soon will it be before state and municipal workers get “IOU”s–that is, worthless pieces of paper–instead of paychecks? And workers of private companies may be next–for companies also, especially big ones, rely on loans to write paychecks.
And that’s just the beginning. In California, the cuts in public services and social programs that the state government just announced in its new budget may easily be overtaken by an avalanche of austerity measures, starving education, public services, social programs and health care.
This is how the financial crisis is hitting us, while Congress just passed a 700-billion-dollar handout to the very Wall Street thieves whose greed caused the crisis in the first place!
Oct 6, 2008
A “VEBA” retiree health-care fund was set up as part of the UAW’s 2007 contracts with GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The fund is to be run by the UAW and is supposed to take over responsibility for retiree healthcare. In return, the auto companies were supposed to contribute funds in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
This risky deal was sold to UAW workers as a smart move in case the auto companies ran into financial trouble.
Well the companies are in financial trouble and what happened? In July, GM said it would not make the payments it had promised for 2008 and 2009. UAW leaders put lipstick on this pig, saying they considered it a “loan” to GM at 9% interest.
Now in September, a UAW vice-president told reporters that they would “do the right thing” and work with GM if GM didn’t want to pay the money it owes for 2010!
The UAW told workers that the VEBA would be “good for 80 years.” Evidently even 80 weeks was too much to ask!
Oct 6, 2008
Workers at Detroit Axle were told that since Chrysler was leasing the Marysville axle plant to ZF, only 400 workers not 900 could go there when Detroit Axle closes.
Workers were hot! They were told that if they voted Yes on last year’s contract, then 900 could go. Now they find out they voted based on lies.
They gave UAW V-P Holiefield an earful!
Oct 6, 2008
The following article is translated from the September 26, 2008 issue of Lutte Ouvrière [Workers Struggle], edited by the group of the same name active in France.
In the last few months the number of hungry people in the world grew by 75 million people, almost the same amount as the entire population of Germany. According to the director of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the numbers grew from 850 million to 925 million.
This increase in the number of men, women and children who go to bed hungry has been caused by the explosion in the price of basic necessities. From 2007 to 2008, the price of food jumped 24%. For the first seven months of 2008, the price of food was up another 50%.
Speculation in raw materials caused this run-up in prices: when the housing market collapsed, speculators turned to raw materials and agricultural products. It’s the U.S. financial crisis that has aggravated the situation of millions of the world’s poorest people, and it has led to food riots in about 40 countries, according to the FAO.
The director of the FAO said, “We must invest 30 billion dollars to double food production and eliminate hunger.” It’s ridiculous. Compare that to the hundreds of billions of dollars the principal capitalist states have already injected into the funds that have crashed. And it’s nothing compared to the trillions they propose to hand over to their financial system and the speculators who benefit from it.
Oct 6, 2008
“The current situation [in Afghanistan] is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust. ... Foreign forces are the lifeline of a regime that would rapidly collapse without them.”
These words came from the British ambassador in Afghanistan, according to a French newspaper.
This only confirms reports filtering out of Afghanistan that the government of Hamid Karzai, installed by the U.S., controls little more than its own head-quarters–and that only thanks to the presence of over 70,000 foreign troops, 30,000 of them American. Kabul, the capital, is virtually besieged by the Taliban, who were ousted from power by the U.S. military in 2001 but are back. Reportedly, the Taliban now control large parts of the country, either directly or through alliances with local officials.
Lately, the U.S. military has stepped up its air and ground attacks near the Afghan-Pakistani border, where Taliban forces are based. The U.S. media has reported that in July President Bush signed a secret order allowing U.S. troops to cross the border into Pakistan, spilling the war into that country.
Both U.S. presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, openly say they will continue Bush’s policy. During the primaries last July, Obama publicly suggested extending the war into Pakistan: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and [Pakistani] President Musharraf won’t act, we will.” McCain, who in the first months of the campaign denounced this suggestion, has since come over to Obama’s position: send more troops to Afghanistan.
But this war has created problems for the U.S. government. The “accidental” civilian casualties resulting from U.S. attacks have embarrassed the Afghan and Pakistani governments, forcing them to publicly criticize the U.S. And the high number of civilian casualties of war have only increased and strengthened anti-U.S. sentiments in the population, not only in Afghanistan but also Pakistan. “If those people in those areas were not part of the Taliban forces before these strikes, they will be now,” said a Pakistani general.
The border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan poses a special problem for imperialist powers, because there is no regional government that has effective control in that area. That always leaves open the possibility of destabilization throughout the Middle East, with its oil reserves and pipelines.
The same chatty British ambassador is said to have suggested that the best solution would be installing an “acceptable dictator.” And a high-ranked British general was also quoted in the media, saying: “If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this. That shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.” At least not the U.S. and British governments, which continue to look for a dictatorial regime to impose their will on the region.
These quotes have virtually the same weight as if they came from top U.S. officials, because the U.S. and Britain have been close allies on the international scene for almost a century now.
Of course, all this doesn’t mean the U.S. will end fighting soon, nor its military presence, in the area. The U.S. has established at least one big military base in Afghanistan and, by all indications, intends to keep it.
One way or another, what the U.S. has planned for the region is another dictatorship–one that can help the U.S. control that part of the world. But that means only more poverty, suffering–and also more war–for the Afghan population, who already have suffered so much during decades of war.