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From the Dec. 29, 2001 issue of the People's Weekly
World
Best wishes for a peaceful New Year |
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Author: Sam Webb |
People's Weekly World Newspaper, Dec 29, 2001
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The following is an excerpt of greetings to the Communist Party USA’s
annual holiday party in New York Dec. 20. Sam Webb is CPUSA national
chairman.
This is a wonderful season for young and
old.
It is a season when families and friends renew their bonds of
kinship and friendship. It is a season of giving and lending a helping
hand.
It’s a season of social solidarity, fellowship and multiracial,
multinational unity. Indeed, we feel more keenly our common humanity with
peoples worldwide, especially Arab and Arab-American people.
It is a
season of renewal and resolution – the reaffirmation of our commitment to
struggle for a humane society free of capitalist profiteering, racist and gender
inequality, and mindless commercialization of practically every aspect of our
lives.
Above all, it is a season of peace on earth and goodwill to all
peoples – a theme that goes back to our pagan traditions and resonates in the
scripture and hymns of the great religions at this time of year.
This
year, however, the spirit of peace associated with this season is competing with
the drumbeats and shattering sounds of war. And at this moment the warmongers
have the upper hand.
On Sept. 11, a heinous crime was committed and a
tragic event occurred on our soil and in our city. But the Bush administration
has turned this tragic event and heinous crime into an increasingly perilous
moment for humankind.
To make matters worse, the seemingly successful
campaign in recent weeks to topple the Taliban government and destroy the Al
Qaeda terrorist network has strengthened the administration’s politically
adventuristic and militarist tendencies.
As NATO troops are being
transported to Afghanistan for mop up operations, Bush’s aides – who are, in
fact, hit men for the most reactionary sections of oil and other transnational
corporations – are busy this holiday season deciding which sovereign state to
strike next. Some of his aides say Iraq, others say Somalia.
Who knows?
It could be either country, or perhaps both, or some other country for that
matter.
What we can be certain about, however, is that a wider war is on
the agenda of the Bush administration – not because of the terrorist threat, but
because of the desire to aggressively exploit the present moment to construct a
“New World Order” under the guise of fighting terrorism.
To their way of
thinking, there are now no restraints on their ability to project American
military power around the world – especially given the atmosphere of fear and
uncertainty that is hourly stoked by the mass media and the destructiveness of
aerial warfare, which allowed, in the Afghan war anyway, for the minimal use of
ground troops and thus few American casualties.
This is a dangerous
illusion. Hundreds of millions of people could well pay a heavy price for Bush
and his aides’ disconnect from reality.
It doesn’t take much political
imagination to envision a sequence of events and retaliatory actions that could
engulf powerful states, now armed with incredibly deadly conventional weapons
and weapons of mass destruction, in a bloody war. In such a war, whole
populations, including the people of our country, would be
annihilated.
After all, war has logic of its own. Violence begets more
violence; events get out of control.
Does that mean that we bury our
heads in the sand to the new danger of terrorism? By no means. Terrorism in all
of its various forms is reprehensible and should be unequivocally condemned by
all of humanity.
It greatly weakens the cause of social justice while
strengthening the hand of the most reactionary groups in society. Its
perpetrators, whether they hide in caves in Afghanistan or comfortably meet in
decorous rooms in Tel Aviv or Washington, should be brought to justice in an
international court of law. The UN should lead such a campaign to politically
isolate and ultimately eradicate terrorism.
In the meantime, labor and
its allies, who are now regaining their stride after the shock of Sept. 11, have
to curb the war drive of the Bush administration as well as fight for their
immediate needs.
Some on the left, however, make the point that the
American people are more likely to join struggles in the economic arena,
particularly given the spreading nature of the economic crisis and the shameless
blocking of any stimulus legislation by Bush and Republican congressional
leaders.
Others argue that the struggle against the sweeping attack on
civil liberties and the rights of Arab and other immigrants is the main way that
broad sections of the American people are going to engage in struggle against
Bush and the far right.
Both arguments are true, and yet these struggles
have to be connected to the war drive and the overall militarist policy of the
administration.
Bush’s war against terrorism is not divisible into
disconnected parts – with the war drive here, the trampling on civil rights
there and the economic crisis somewhere else. It is an integrated policy with
each part intertwined with the other and with the overall policy of war and
aggression.
At the same time, not everything is equal in this mix. The
war drive and the underlying ideological and political assumptions that sustain
it is the organizing and legitimizing element of everything else and thus has to
challenged at every turn and in every arena of struggle.
Otherwise, the
struggles for economic justice and democratic rights will stop short of
fulfilling their potential to activate millions in struggle against the policies
of the Bush administration and the far right.
So we have our work cut out
for us in the year ahead, but we can win, as evidenced by the recent victories
of the Charleston Five and Mumia Abu-Jamal. We must move into the new year
confident that the American people will measure up to this new challenge that
life has presented. As before, the key to victory is unity – working-class
unity, multiracial unity, male-female unity and all-people’s unity.
Such
unity, when combined with the collective might of peoples worldwide, can stay
the hand of the Bush administration and, at the same time, bring into being a
world of sustainable development economic security, and peace and goodwill among
peoples and nations.
The author can be reached at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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