From: "John Thomson" 

Subject: [marxist] WHY WAS THE ATTACK SO LATE IN COMING?
                   - socparty text


WHY  WAS THE  ATTACK  SO  LATE  IN  COMING?

The question should perhaps not be who bombed the US, but
why was such an attack so late in coming. This question does
not suggest we condone the attack, but hints at the number
US-created Frankensteins walking the world prepared to
destroy the life of their master. It hints at the number of
enemies the US has created in pursuit of global domination,
all with a score to settle - and they are legion, and it
hints at the misery and deprivation inflicted on hundreds of
millions of workers as the US carves out ever larger chunks
of the world on behalf of its corporate elite.

If we set this terrorist attack in a wider context, however,
then the loss of life in New York and Washington are not
that alarming. Is it not an atrocity that 40,000 children
die of starvation each day? Do we consider it a most heinous
crime when 1,000 children die each hour of preventable
disease (these are UNICEF statistics) and do we not find
sickening the thought that twice that number of women die or
suffer disability during pregnancy because of a lack of
simple remedies or medical attention? We are speaking here
of an Hiroshima a day which never gets reported, which is
taken as accepted because it is so much a part of our way of
life in capitalist society. Where is the 25-page pull out
that accompanies the recent WHO revelation that more people
died of starvation in the last two years than were killed in
two world wars?

The attacks on the US will perhaps serve to show republican
hawks the futility of a national missile defence
system. These hijacked planes could well have flown into
nuclear power stations or bases containing US stockpiles of
biological weapons (the US is the world's biggest stockpile
of such weapons). The most sophisticated missile defence
system imaginable simply cannot be programmed to read the
mind of a religious fanatic incensed with the notion that
his death (and those of 10,000 infidels with him) is a
passport to heaven.

Whilst we gasp in disbelief at the deaths of perhaps 25,000
workers in the biggest terrorist attack in history, it is
worth pausing and remembering that the US, Britain, France,
China and the Soviet Union have between them thousands of
nuclear weapons capable of destroying the planet a hundred
times over. Any one of these war heads is indeed capable of
creating death and destruction on a scale that would make
the attack in question look like a playground firecracker.

All of this may sound churlish, bit is in no way is intended
to diminish the fact that there has been an enormous loss of
life in the USA. Those lying dead beneath the rubble are our
fellow workers, members of the working class. Whilst we are
revolted, we do not seek the comfort of revenge, for the eye
for an eye philosophy can only make the whole world blind,
as Ghandi observed.

Western leaders have claimed the attack to be an assault on
civilisation.  When Ghandi was asked what he thought of
western civilisation he replied, "it sounds like a good
idea." What is this civilisation that has been attacked,
where 600 million have no home, where 800 million are
chronically malnourished, where 1 billion have no access to
clean water? What is this civilisation where 3 individuals
have more wealth than the combined income of the word's 48
poorest nations? How can we condemn attacks on our
'civilisation' when we destroy food to keep prices high and
employ scientists on weapons programmes whilst children die
of preventable disease?  What questions we can ask of those
who destroy the lives of millions, then run for the moral
high ground when disaster hits their own backyard


The entire episode serves to show the insanity of the system
we live in, and the desperate need to wrest control of our
planet away from the madmen before it is indeed to late. In
the 20th century, some 220 million lost their lives in wars,
in conflicts over trade routes, areas of influence, foreign
markets, mineral wealth and the strategic points from which
the same can be defended or in other words, in the name of
profit. The globalisation process, which the US pursued
obsessively, only served to make political Islam more
reactionary in defence of its own culture and strategic
interests.

The solution remains the same. There is one world and we
exist as one people in need of each other and with the same
basic needs. There is far more that unites us than can ever
divide us along cultural, nationalistic or religious
lines. Together we can create a civilisation worth living
in, but before that happens we need the conscious
cooperation of ordinary people across the world, united in
one common cause - to create a world in which each person
has fee access to the benefits of civilisation, a world
without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders and
a world in which production is at last freed from the
artificial constraints of profit and used for the good of
humanity - socialism.

John
Check: www.worldsocialism.org