Socialist candidate for mayor of NY statement on attack on Pentagon, World Trade Centre

[John Smith <johncsmith@DELETETHISbtinternet.com>]

Dear CASI,

Clearly the terrible events of 11 September will have far-reaching consequences
for us all. Like you all, I feel horror, and I feel rage at the terrorists
in the White House and Downing Street who would cynically use the deaths
of innocent civilians to step up their war against people resisting imperialism
around the world. This is why I can't join with Drew Hamre in his veneration
of Simon Jenkins, who says such crap as "America and its allies have "taken
up the white man's burden" with honest intent" or  "the bombing of the Serbs
and Iraqis was undertaken in the cause of peace. It was without self-interest
on Nato's part"

On the other hand, is there a single word of the following statement which is not true? 

Greetings,

John S



The following statement by Martín Koppel, candidate for mayor of New 

York, was released September 11 by the Socialist Workers Party.


Waving the banner that "America is under attack," that it has sustained 

"a second Pearl Harbor" in the wake of today's assault on New York's 

World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. government will seek to 

advance its "right" to launch military assaults on other countries, as 

it has done over the past few years against the peoples of Yugoslavia, 

Iraq, the Sudan, and Afghanistan. The U.S. rulers will become even more 

brazen in their backing for the Israeli regime's escalating war drive 

against the Palestinians.

Calls by capitalist politicians and apologists for stiffer measures to 

prevent future such "intelligence failures" are being played up nonstop 

by the big-business dailies, news agencies, and TV and radio networks. 

Anti-Arab and anti-Islamic bigotry is being cranked up to bolster this 

onslaught.

The Socialist Workers Party calls on workers, farmers, and all defenders 

of democratic rights to speak out against the U.S. rulers' demagogic 

efforts, in the name of preempting "terrorism," to rationalize 

restrictions on political rights. We must oppose the campaign by the 

U.S. government--Democrats and Republicans alike--to curb the 

constitutionally guaranteed space for political organization and 

activity and to legitimize the use of the U.S. armed forces at home and 

abroad.

During its final months in office, following several years of 

preparations, the Clinton administration established, for the first time 

in U.S. history, a North American command--that is, the command structure 

for deployment of U.S. armed forces at home, aimed first and foremost at 

working people in this country. The White House appointed a 

commander-in-chief of this new homeland command, and over the past two 

years this euphemistically called Joint Forces Command has carried out 

simulated "antiterrorist" military operations--together with city, state, 

and other federal police forces--in New Jersey, northern California, New 

York City, and elsewhere.

The Bush administration is now deploying these forces in their first 

actual domestic military operations. On September 11 the U.S. government 

placed U.S. armed forces worldwide on hair-trigger war alert. It called 

out an army regiment of light infantry onto the streets of Washington, 

D.C.; mobilized the New York National Guard under federal command; and 

deployed heavily armed FBI "counter-terrorism squads" and other special 

federal police units in Los Angeles, along the borders with Mexico and 

Canada, and elsewhere across the country.

In coming days, as the administration acts on Bush's vow "to hunt down 

and punish those responsible," the labor movement and all 

democratic-minded organizations and individuals must be on the alert to 

protest government frame-up trials and oppose its trampling on the 

presumption of innocence; the right to due process; Fourth Amendment 

protections against arbitrary search, seizure, and wiretaps; and freedom 

of association without spying and harassment by government informers and 

agents provocateurs. The last four years of the Clinton administration, 

and the opening months of the Bush White House, have been marked by 

stepped-up bipartisan efforts to strengthen the federal death penalty, 

erode the rights of the accused and convicted, and increase the room for 

commando-style operations by the U.S. Border Patrol and other 

Immigration and Naturalization Service cops, the FBI, and other federal 

assault agencies.

Whoever may have carried out the September 11 operations, the 

destruction of the two World Trade Center towers, and the air attack on 

the Pentagon--with the resulting deaths and injuries of thousands of men, 

women, and children--these actions have nothing to do with the fight 

against capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression. 

Revolutionists and other class-conscious workers, farmers, and youth the 

world over reject the use of such methods.

The U.S. government and its allies for more than a century have carried 

out systematic terror to defend their class privilege and interests at 

home and abroad--from the atomic incineration of hundreds of thousands at 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the 10-year-long slaughter in Indochina, to 

the war against the Iraqi people in 1990-91, to the burning to death of 

80 people at Waco on its home soil, to other examples too numerous to 

list. In recent weeks, the White House and Congress have stood behind 

Tel Aviv as it escalated its campaign of both random killings and 

outright murders in its historically failing effort to quell the 

struggle by the dispossessed Palestinian people for the return of their 

homeland.

Half a century ago the revolutionary workers movement and other 

opponents of colonial outrages, racism, and anti-Semitism in all its 

forms warned that by waging a war of terror to drive the Palestinians 

from their farms, towns, and cities, the founders of the Israeli state 

and their imperialist backers in North America and Europe were pitting 

the Jewish people against those fighting for national liberation in the 

Middle East and worldwide; they were creating a death trap for the Jews, 

which Israel remains to this day. By its systematic superexploitation of 

the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; by its never-ending 

insults to their national and cultural dignity; by its ceaseless 

murderous violence in countless forms--U.S. imperialism is turning North 

America into a death trap for working people and all who live there.

The U.S. rulers know that as they press their assault on the living and 

working conditions of workers and farmers in the United States, they 

will meet growing resistance, as working people organize to defend their 

livelihoods and their rights. That's why Washington is systematically 

strengthening its hand against the battles its knows are coming.

The Socialist Workers Party calls on workers and farmers in the United 

States and worldwide to speak out in defense of the struggle of the 

Palestinian people, the people of Western Sahara, the Puerto Rican 

people, the rights of the people of Cuba, and others the world over 

fighting for their national rights and against all the ways in which the 

world capitalist order presses humanity toward fascism and war. We must 

oppose U.S. military intervention anywhere in the world. We must oppose 

efforts by Washington to escalate an assault on the political rights of 

working people and the organizations of our class and its oppressed and 

exploited allies.

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