Workers' Liberty
For a rational, labour-movement-based, anti-war movement!

So far as anyone can make a plausible estimate, Osama bin Laden attacked the USA on 11 September not as an act of "desperation" but with a clear calculation in mind.
He wanted to provoke large-scale retaliation by the USA which would, in turn, fuel an Islamic-fundamentalist backlash sufficient to overthrow some of what bin Laden sees as the "fake Muslim" regimes.
The US government, with the help of Britain, has retaliated by sending the airforce of the richest land on earth to drop masses of bombs on an already wrecked and ruined country, one of the poorest countries on earth. Whether the rest of bin Laden's calculations work out, we have yet to see.
If they do, then it will be no sort of victory for national liberation against imperialism. Horrible though the present regimes of countries like Pakistan are, their overthrow by fascistic Taliban-type fundamentalists will be an appalling defeat for the workers, the women, the democrats and the dissenters of any sort in those countries.
There are four clear arguments against this war.
1. As many, or more, innocent civilians will be killed by the US and British in Afghanistan as were killed by bin Laden on 11 September. In addition to the direct military casualties, unknowable numbers will die because of the economic disruption and chaos which the war is causing.
The people of Afghanistan need food, relief, and help in reconstructing the country, not bombs.
2. Even if the US captures or kills bin Laden – and they themselves say they may well not – this war will not end terrorist-fundamentalism. On the contrary, as bin Laden calculated, it is more likely to boost and spread it.
3. The US and UK are anyway not even trying to fight an across-the-board war against terrorist-fundamentalism. This is primarily a war of revenge designed to placate understandable American outrage over 11 September. The "target", Afghanistan, is selected for that purpose and no other. The USA retains its alliance with fundamentalist Saudi Arabia and seeks to mend relations with fundamentalist Iran.
4. The "coalition against terrorism" which Blair and Bush have put together includes some of the worse state-licensed terrorists alive today. This is a "war against terrorism" conducted by big, wholesale terrorists against the littler terrorists.
These arguments can be won in the broad labour movement.
But we should not want to – and anyway, we cannot – win arguments in the broad labour movement such as:
 The 11 September attacks should not be condemned because they were supposedly attacks on "imperialism", if ill-chosen ones.
 Every evil in the world is the fault of "imperialism" (by which those who argue this view seem to mean, essentially, the USA).
 Islamic fundamentalists, even those who have been funded and boosted by the USA in the past, become progressive anti-imperialists as soon as they clash with the USA.
 Although the first and most numerous victims of the terrorist-fundamentalists are the people, mostly Muslim, of the countries where their movements are powerful, we should not explicitly denounce the fundamentalists because that might offend Muslims.
 The fundamentalists' demand for Israel to be destroyed and Jews to be driven off "Muslim land" represents a progressive, anti-imperialist opposition to US policy.
Any extra "broadness" the anti-war movement gains by reaching out on such bases to Islamic fundamentalists, or hyped-up USA-haters and Israel-haters, is illusory. The only solid political basis for an anti-war movement is consistent democracy and internationalism, against both the US/UK war and terrorist-fundamentalism. The only solid social basis is the labour movement.

Workers' Liberty, P O Box 823, London SE15 4NA. 28 October 2001.
Web: www.workersliberty.org. Email: office@workersliberty.org. Phone: 020 7207 3997.