U.S. rulers are seizing on the failed May 1st Times Square car bombing to widen their overseas energy wars and wield harsher police powers at home. On May 9, Obama ordered a drone missile strike that killed at least 10 “suspected militants” in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, where bungling bomber Faisal Shahzad said he had received training from the Pakistani Taliban. Just before the raid, Hillary Clinton warned Pakistan’s leaders of “severe consequences” if a successful terrorist attack on the U.S. should originate from their country (CBS 60 Minutes, 5/9/10).
Consequences would include U.S. occupation of Taliban-dominated provinces beyond Special Operations troops already there. “[The Times Square attempt] comes amid increasing debate within the administration about how to expand the American military’s influence — and even a boots-on-the-ground presence — on Pakistani soil.” (NY Times, 5/9/10) Back in Washington, proposals from Senators McCain and Lieberman to strip all legal protection from anybody linked to U.S. rulers’ foes would enable liberals to push a “middle-ground” tough stance.
Terror A Sideshow; Oil Riches Grand Prize For U.S. and
Islamist Capitalists
Obama & Co.’s deadly reprisal forms part of a broader U.S. ruling-class effort to shore up its threatened dominance over world oil and gas supplies in the phony guise of “combating terrorists.” Shahzad’s crude contraption in fact injured no one. U.S. media and think-tanks, however, condemned the deed as an expanding global terrorist network:
• “There is a growing danger of attacks on U.S. soil by groups affiliated with, but not formally part of, al-Qaeda.” (Brookings Institution, 5/6/10) These groups and their Al Qaeda beacon, under the pretext of Islamic holy war, aim at capturing key pieces of the U.S. oil and gas empire for the benefit of local capitalists.
• Bin Laden’s original Al Qaeda seeks the vast profits reaped by Exxon Mobil and allies in Saudi Arabia.
• The group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia eyes Iraq’s oilfields — currently under U.S. occupation — that could rival Saudi Arabia’s.
• Afghan and Pakistani Taliban franchises want control of gas shipments from Turkmenistan to energy-starved India and China.
Meanwhile, the U.S. war machine is gearing up for a major June offensive to take Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, which lies along the U.S.-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline route.
Short of Military Draft, Neo-Nazi Drones Are Obama’s Weapon of Choice in Pakistan
U.S. rulers need to restore the military draft in order to mount a force capable of invading the entire war zone, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Until then, they will continue to rely heavily on Obama’s favorite terror weapon, the Predator drone. It kills about one civilian for every two militants (over 700 slain non-combatants so far), sowing hatred of the U.S. among survivors.
The liberal, imperialist New America Foundation, bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation, released a study in February blessing Obama’s “murder-from-the-skies” program:
“Despite the controversy, drone strikes are likely to remain a critical tool for the United States to disrupt al Qaeda and Taliban operations and leadership structures. Though these strikes consistently kill Pakistani civilians, which angers the population, and prompt revenge attacks from the militants, Pakistani and U.S. strategic interests have never been more closely aligned against the militants than they are today....The drone attacks in the tribal regions seem to remain the only viable option for the United States....”
Indiscriminate drones resemble the V-2 rockets Hitler used in his terror raids against Britain in World War II.
However, many Pakistani bosses have their own class interests — controlling Afghanistan and fighting rival India’s control of Kashmir. Key Pakistani intelligence (ISI) and military officials have bankrolled Islamic “jihadist” movements (with CIA money) to expand Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan and Kashmir. This was fine by U.S. bosses as long as these religious fanatics were attacking the Soviets. Now, the tables have turned. Jihadist forces today represent aspiring bosses in many areas of the Middle East and South Asia. Kicking the U.S. out of those areas would secure all the oil and gas wealth for these wannabe rulers.
Obama, Liberals Use Fear to
Dismantle Vaunted U.S. Civil
‘Rights,’ Expand Racist Profiling
on the Home Front
The fascist “Terrorist Expatriation Act,” introduced by Senators Joe Lieberman (CT.) and Scott Brown (MA.), and supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and a number of other Democrats (NY Times 5/7/10), would allow the U.S. State Department to strip citizenship from U.S. citizens suspected of providing support to terrorist groups. This would retroactively make them non-citizens at the time they allegedly committed their crimes, allowing them to be tried by a military commission. This is the latest development in a seamless web of legal fascism, from Clinton to Bush to Obama: secret evidence, secret courts, state secrets, massive wiretapping and surveillance, Guantanamo, indefinite detention.
Following the Times Square event, the Senate’s most popular conservatives, John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, introduced a bill to relegate terrorism suspects, citizen and non-citizen, to indefinite imprisonment at the whim of military kangaroo courts, which act as judge, jury and executioner. Liberals complained but agreed to dump Miranda “rights” (to remain silent and have legal representation).
Look out for a surge in jailings of Arabs in the U.S. With few exceptions, U.S. press coverage of the Times Square bombing ranges from tabloid speculation about the “degeneration of a suburban father” to racist hysteria about “Islamic bombers.” The hypocrisy of the liberal press knows no bounds: they pose as “protectors” of civil rights while saying absolutely nothing about the racist anti-Muslim garbage that saturates “letters to the editor” of major newspapers and internet comment sections. This racism will justify more repressive measures by the rulers.
The liberal establishment’s leading policy foundry, Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations, said (5/7/10), in the case of “terrorists,” authorities should “postpone the reading of Miranda rights under what’s termed the ‘public safety exception,’ as a rule.” This move follows the Obama regime’s abolition of lawyer-client confidentiality by reaffirming the conviction of attorney Lynne Stewart for communication with a terror suspect she represented in court.
Communists Fight for International Working-Class Unity
Racism, fascism and imperialist war are all products of capitalism. Racism is both profitable and divisive. Anti-Muslim racism is used to create fear of Muslim workers amongst the rest of the population, and to spread terror in Muslim communities. Expanding U.S. fascism will be used to intimidate workers from fighting back against the unemployment and financial disaster that is all capitalism has to offer us and to mobilize our class for wars that are fought only for the bosses’ interests.
Supporting either the liberals’ or conservatives’ racist response to the hyped-up scare would be a grave political error. Our class must identify and combat our main class enemy, U.S. imperialists. They have killed more than a million Iraqis and maimed and made homeless millions more, all for oil.
Communists fight for the international unity of all workers, because workers have really only one class interest worldwide. Racism, fascism and bosses’ wars secure the class interests of the capitalists. Only a movement which unites all workers and fights for communist revolution can rid our class of these ills of the profit system.
We need to build a mass communist party that will ultimately destroy the billionaires’ profit system and the wars it endlessly generates. J
Obama Embraces Clinton-Bush Repressive Policies
Starting with the “Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,” enacted in 1996 by a Republican Congress and Bill Clinton, U.S. rulers have been moving away from their façade of “individual freedoms.” This law allowed the government to deport immigrants using secret evidence. This push towards fascist methods of rule accelerated after 9/11 with the USA Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress.
That law vastly increased spying (much of it approved by courts meeting secretly) and allowed criminal and intelligence agencies to share information. When the Bush-led government jailed U.S. citizen Jose Padilla (after falsely charging him with a “dirty-bomb” plot) and threw away the key, it took another step along this road. Obama’s promises to “restore the rights of Americans” lost during the Bush era has become an open embrace of all of the repressive policies of that administration.
