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Re: Question re the "indispensable" nation



> Madeleine Albright is quoted as saying the U.S.was the " 'indispensable
> nation' and explained the short shrift sometimes given by Washington to the
> views of its partners by claiming that 'We stand tall and we see further than
> other countries into the future.' " in article recently sent out and also is
> also so quoted in Pat Buchanan's article.
>
> Can anyone provide time and place of this incredible statement and where it
> is recorded?  It would also be interesting to see what else she was saying at
> the time and what other people present were saying.
>
> Thanks,
> Carolyn Scarr <epicalc@aol.com>

The New York-published newsweekly the Militant <www.themilitant.com> began a
December 1998 editorial with a longer quote from Madam Death:

Stop The Imperialist Slaughter In Iraq
{front page editorial}
*********************************************************************
from the Militant, vol.62/no.8                          March 2, 1998


   "We are the greatest country in the world. and what we are
doing is serving the role of the indispensable nation to see
what we can do to make the world safer for our children and
grandchildren and for those people around the world who follow
the rules."
    - U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, Feb. 18,
1998


   With her trademark coarseness, Albright, addressing a
meeting at Ohio State University in Columbus, put her finger
on the true course of the propertied U.S. rulers not only
toward Iraq, but the rest of the world. She was simply
repeating her commander-in-chief, William Jefferson Clinton,
who in his second inaugural speech in January 1997 proclaimed
the United States "the world's indispensable nation." The
message is that Washington - acting unilaterally and relying
more and more on military force - will target for brutal
punishment "those people" who don't "follow the rules" it
sets.
   To Albright's stunned surprise, a substantial number of
people in the Columbus audience of 6,000 loudly challenged
U.S. government plans to launch a military assault on Iraq.
These protests by youth helped turn the "town meeting,"
designed to drum up public support for the bombing of Iraq,
into a fiasco for Albright and company.
      But such antiwar sentiment will not stay Washington's
hand. The U.S. capitalist rulers are hell-bent on unleashing a
slaughter against the Iraqi people. In so doing, their goal,
which they failed to achieve in the 1990 - 91 Gulf War, is not
only to overthrow the Iraqi government and install one more
subservient to their interests. The ultimate target of the
U.S. billionaires' war machine is the workers state in the
former Soviet Union, whose workers and farmers they have yet
to crush some eight years after proclaiming a U.S. "triumph"
in the Cold War. The conflicts with Russia have sharpened over
the past several years, particularly with the drive by
Washington to expand NATO into Central and Eastern Europe.
   New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman highlighted what
he called "the NATO-Iraq connection" in a February 17 column.
The aim of the U.S.-led assault on Iraq is to limit "weapons
proliferation," Friedman claims, but to do so it must "work
with" Moscow. Washington's drive to expand NATO is thus
counterproductive, Friedman says, since it will provoke Moscow
to expand, not shrink, its nuclear arsenal.
   The opposite is the truth, however. The purpose of NATO
has never been to "defend Europe" against attack, but to
prepare an attack on the workers states in Central and Eastern
Europe, and above all the Soviet Union. This has been
graphically demonstrated in Yugoslavia, where following years
of feeding the flames of slaughter, Washington pushed through
the Dayton "peace" accord and spearheaded the occupation of
Bosnia by U.S. and other imperialist troops. The aim of that
military intervention is to overthrow the Yugoslav workers
state over time and reimpose capitalist rule there.
   In fact, Friedman provides a fig leaf for the U.S. course
of military aggression that has been carried out over the
bodies of thousands of workers and farmers in Bosnia and is
now setting its sights on the Iraqi people once again. Far
from being a case of "Madeleine's Folly," as the Times column
is titled, Clinton picked Albright precisely to voice and
personify this aggressive bipartisan course.
   When Albright issues warnings to those who "break the
rules," she's talking about cracking down on struggles - at
home, and the world over - of striking workers, farmers
fighting the loss of land, defenders of women's right to
abortion, Black rights fighters, and others.
   That's why a campaign within the working class to tell the
truth about the employers' war drive must focus on explaining
and opposing imperialism - the worldwide system of capitalist
exploitation and oppression whose workings inexorably lead to
bloody wars.
   The world imperialist system is today weaker and more
vulnerable than at any time since the end of World War II.
>From Southeast Asia to the heart of Western Europe,
international capital faces a protracted deflationary economic
crisis - one that heightens conflicts among the imperialist
powers and between them and the peoples of the Third World and
workers states.
   Right now, working people and youth must keep our fire on
the actual slaughter that Washington is on the verge of
unleashing. Many liberal pacifists and middle-class radicals
instead focus on the brutal economic sanctions, which they say
are starving "the poor, suffering Iraqi children" instead of
hurting the Saddam Hussein government. But that argument lends
credence to the reactionary idea that Washington has a right
to overthrow the Iraqi government - in a less "painful" way.
   Likewise, at protests against U.S. policy in the Middle
East, slogans such as "Diplomacy, not war" play into the hands
of the ruling war makers. Imperialist diplomacy is part of
their war drive. Liberal political forces that push such
demands will join the war effort when the "diplomacy fails"
and the U.S. and British governments start dropping their
bombs.
   In face of the patriotic war propaganda, working people
must unconditionally defend Iraq's sovereignty. Working people
have absolutely no interests in common with the imperialist
ruling families, whose war plans against the people of Iraq
are simply an extension of their war against the rights and
livings standards of labor and its allies at home. We must
instead point to the real threat to humanity: Washington. We
should defend the common class interests of working people the
world over and speak out to demand:
   Stop the imperialist slaughter!
   U.S. hands off Iraq!
   Get all U.S., British, and other invading troops out of
Mideast now!





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