THESE ATTACKS will not bring justice to the victims of the World Trade Center atrocity - neither will they destroy terrorism or the conditions which breed support for terrorism.
The streets of New York and London cannot be made safer by responding to terrorist attacks with the launch of war.
Innocent Afghan civilians have already been killed and many more face death, starvation and injury. People remember the Gulf War, when US cruise missiles hit a civilian refuge in Iraq, burning to death 300 Iraqis, most of them women and children. They also remember the war in Kosova, when 'smart' missiles missed their targets, killing fleeing refugees.
Bush and Blair say this is a 'humanitarian war' because they're dropping food as well as bombs. But their bombs - at $1 million each - have killed four Afghan workers employed by the UN on land mine clearance operations.
Aid workers agree that this is a propaganda exercise to try and shore up support for the war. More than seven million Afghans are threatened with starvation. These food drops are only a fraction of what is really needed.
There's talk of these attacks contributing to the bringing down of the Taliban government. If that happens and the Northern Alliance take control that will not bring democracy to Afghanistan.
In their three years of running Afghanistan, from 1992, those who now are in the Northern Alliance outlawed all opposition and swept aside democratic rights. Both the Taliban and Northern Alliance were funded, armed and trained by America, Britain and other countries in the 1980s.
Socialists would welcome the fall of the Taliban government but that is the job of the ordinary people of Afghanistan, not for the West to re-install either a discredited former king or help the Northern Alliance back into power on the basis of "my enemy's enemy is my friend".
Socialists throughout the country will be working hard to build a broad and inclusive anti-war movement. But ending support for terrorism requires ending the conditions which breed the methods of terrorism - global poverty, inequality and repression.
We need to fight for socialism world-wide. Join us now.
FIVE DAYS after Blair declared that the Afghan people were not the enemy and that "[we] will do all we humanly can to avoid civilian casualties", the bombing of Afghanistan began.
The first targets were the cities of Kabul and Kandahar. Without question Afghan civilians, primarily those too poor to escape the cities, have died and been maimed as a result. Thousands more will have fled, adding to the mass starvation in the countryside.
We've heard talk of 'humanitarian' war before. In the Gulf war, a decade ago, it was claimed that missiles were so sophisticated that only military targets would be hit. Civilian deaths went virtually unmentioned in the British press throughout the war. In its aftermath, however, reality leaked out - around 100,000 Iraqis died.
Nor will the killing of more of the long-suffering Afghan people do anything to stop future terrorist attacks. Even the strategists of imperialism, when they talk about the war lasting months or years, have a hazy understanding that they are incapable of defeating terrorism.
It is likely that US imperialism will succeed in overthrowing the Taliban, which is extremely unpopular in Afghanistan, by using a combination of bombing, limited ground troops, funding the Northern Alliance, and attempting to split the Taliban itself.
But overthrowing the Taliban will not prevent future terrorist attacks. On the contrary, the current military action will massively increase instability in the region.
Within Afghanistan itself it is ruled out that the Taliban will be replaced by a stable, or genuinely democratic, regime. Imperialism appears to be looking to establish a government made up of an alliance of different forces, including the Northern Alliance and possibly with the ex-king (overthrown in 1973) as a figurehead. (The Northern Alliance is made up of minority ethnic groups and will therefore be unable to rule alone).
Initially Blair denied that imperialism were considering supporting the Northern Alliance coming to power. Now Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, has refused to rule out a Northern Alliance government, saying that "any administration that cut links with terrorism would be acceptable".
It is clear that the US are using the Northern Alliance to fight for them within Afghanistan.
The Northern Alliance is part of what was the Mujahidin. Robert Fisk, in The Independent, described their leaders accurately as, "a confederacy of warlords, patriots rapists and torturers". He goes on to describe how, when they took control of the capital in 1992, they "looted and raped their way through the suburbs of Kabul".
US imperialism bears a huge responsibility for the creation of the Mujahidin and its descendants - the Northern Alliance and Taliban. Throughout the 1980s they funded the different mujahidin warlords to fight against the occupying Soviet army. At one point the mujahidin as a whole were receiving around $1 million a day from the US.
Once the Soviet army left, the different warlords turned to escalating the fight between themselves for loot and territory. In the last twenty years over two million Afghans have been killed in a series of bloody conflicts.
The current military attacks on Afghanistan will fundamentally just replace one band of warlords who have carried out these bloody conflicts with another that is equally culpable.
In order to achieve this 'goal' US imperialism has made deals with anyone they can. For example, they have made an agreement with Putin to turn a blind eye to his continuing bloody war against Chechnya.
The 'war on terrorism' will also massively increase instability far beyond the borders of Afghanistan.
US imperialism is already enormously unpopular amongst the masses of the neo-colonial world, both as a result of US foreign policy and the devastating economic exploitation of the predominately US-owned multinational companies and their tools, the IMF and World Bank.
The attacks on Afghanistan have already led to an outpouring of anger across the Muslim world. Any of the regimes that dare to back the US, risk being overthrown.
The Saudi regime, who in the past have openly supported US imperialism, are unable to do so, and are instead conducting a precarious balancing act.
In Palestine, Arafat, desperate to win the support of US imperialism leapt to support the attacks on Afghanistan. His police force have now shot and killed three anti-US demonstrators, including a 12 year old boy.
Arafat's rule is potentially facing its worse crisis ever. The US have are trying to broker a deal in Israel Palestine in order to make it easier for the Middle Eastern regimes to back their war. Instead their war is fuelling the bloody disintegration of the talks.
In Pakistan, demonstrations against Musharraf's support for the US are taking place across the country. In the medium term the possibility exists of him being overthrown and replaced by an extreme Islamist government.
Bush and Blair's war on terrorism is going to create incalculable turmoil and instability. It will be the mass of the population of the region who will bear the brunt of the resulting suffering.
Terrorism, far from being defeated, will increase. At the same time the working class in the West will be expected to foot the bill for the war.
The causes of terrorism lie in this unequal capitalist society; a society where the imperialist powers trample over the democratic, religious and national rights of billions.
It is only by fighting for a socialist society - a society based on the needs of all, not the obscene wealth and power of a few - that the terrorising and killing of humanity will be prevented.
"WHAT WILL happen now?" When Bush declared "all-out war" after 11 September many people asked themselves some frightening questions. Will it mean a world war? Could it mean nuclear war?
Behind the horrifying clouds that arose from the ruins of New York's twin towers, some could not help recalling the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The atrocious terrorist attack and impending US counter-measures will trigger an international chain reaction of conflict and upheaval. This coincides with what will probably be the worst economic slump since the great depression of the 1930s.
Armed conflicts and regional wars are now much more likely to flare up, whatever the strategy adopted by the US and its allies. When there are vast nuclear armouries and there is a proliferation of nuclear weapons, this inevitably arouses alarm and fear.
The USA and Russia, despite the end of the "cold war", still have nuclear armouries holding many thousands of warheads. Britain, France and China, the other members of the established "nuclear club", each have hundreds of nuclear weapons. Several other states, including Israel, have secretly developed nuclear weapons.
In contrast, both India and Pakistan in 1998 carried out five test-firings of nuclear warheads for short- to medium-range missiles. Each intended its tests as an ominous propaganda blow against the other. Now these two rivals, who already clashed in three wars are at the Asian epicentre of the coming conflict.
Would the rulers of either India or of Pakistan be mad enough to use tactical nuclear weapons? Any such action would be suicidal. The US department of health estimates that a nuclear conflict between the two states would result in the death of at least 50 million people, with many more casualties.
Large areas of the sub-continent would be devastated and permanently contaminated. The US put intense pressure on India and Pakistan to abandon their nuclear weapons programme: the big powers want to keep the nuclear club exclusive. For a time the US imposed economic sanctions on the two 'upstarts', but with little effect.
Yet in every major armed conflict since the second world war - Korea, Vietnam, the 1990-91 Gulf war - some US generals called for the use of the ultimate weapon - tactical nuclear missiles - to be considered. Fortunately, they were always over-ruled by the leaders of the US ruling class.
The representatives of big business realised that the wider consequences of a nuclear strike would far outweigh any imagined advantage on the battlefield. There would be world-wide mass protests against the use of such barbaric weapons, including within the US, which could bring down any government implicated in the nuclear crime.
THE US was, at the same time, held back by the threat of nuclear retaliation. If they used nuclear weapons in a region of super-power rivalry, such as Vietnam, there was the prospect of the Soviet Union hitting back. Strike and counter-strike could lead to global destruction long before the whole arsenal was used. In reality, there was a MAD situation - one of mutually assured destruction.
So, from 1945 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-90, there was a relatively stable balance between two rival nuclear camps. The Western bloc was dominated by US capitalism, the Eastern by the Soviet Union, a non-capitalist, planned economy ruled by a totalitarian bureaucracy. Leaders on both sides understood that the use of nuclear weapons would be suicidal: they were effectively unusable.
This did not stop both camps developing ever more sophisticated - and grotesquely destructive - weapons: bombs, shells, warheads, and increasingly fiendish "delivery systems" - that is, missiles.
The profit-hungry arms-makers have their own interest in pursuing the arms race.
The waste of resources has been phenomenal: money, technology, and above all the cream of scientists, engineers and skilled workers. If only they had been used to eliminate poverty and sickness, and to provide a good education to people everywhere. The drain imposed by nuclear competition was a factor in the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.
Why produce weapons that are effectively unusable? Ever since the invention of nuclear weapons, their possession has been the ultimate measure of a state's power - or potential power.
The capitalist ruling class, through its state machine (financed by taxing the people), has always armed itself to defend its interests. That does not mean the security and well-being of the population, but the wealth and power of the ruling class, their territory and sphere of influence.
Nukes are the ultimate weapon, so the capitalist powers accumulate nukes. Any one of the major powers has enough to wipe out humanity several times over, but the stockpiling goes on and on.
If Bush goes ahead with the National Missile Defense system (son of Reagan's 'star wars'), it will give another twist to the nuclear race. Russia, China and others will deploy new missiles aimed at penetrating the US's protective shield.
Some decommissioning of older weapons has taken place. But this creates new problems. The US and Russia between them have over 100 tons of weapons-grade plutonium now surplus to requirements. Most will be converted into plutonium-oxide (MOX) fuel for power-generating reactors, perpetuating the hazardous 'plutonium economy'.
The rest will be sealed into glass for burial, using as yet unproven techniques. The cost will be enormous, at least $6 billion over the next 25 years.
Surplus stocks in Russia and in the Ukraine raise another horrifying threat: nuclear terrorism. Years of lax accounting means that exact quantities and locations of discarded plutonium are uncertain.
Could mafia gangsters trade the radioactive material required to make a "suitcase bomb"? It is not certain that such a portable weapon is technically feasible, but it may become so - a terrifying prospect.
When the big powers rely on their nuclear potential, lesser powers, striving for regional supremacy, will inevitably strive to acquire their own nuclear weapons. Some have done so secretly, like Israel and possibly Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea.
Others, like India and Pakistan, have blatantly beaten the nuclear drum, despite the mass poverty and hunger afflicting millions of their people. Their political regimes are unstable.
Both the Hindu nationalist BJP government of India and the Muslim League government of Pakistan (now replaced by Musharraf's military dictatorship), staged nuclear demonstrations to boost their prestige abroad and shore up their shaky electoral support at home. They are already countries of crisis, and US intervention in Afghanistan can only makes things worse.
What if their leaders, desperate to divert attention from unbearable domestic problems, provoke another regional war? Might they resort to nuclear strikes, despite the self-defeating, genocidal consequences?
The US and other major nuclear powers certainly fear such a scenario, and will use all their influence to avert disastrous, maverick action. Even for the most unbalanced regimes, nuclear weapons would be a last resort. Nevertheless, unless the rotten social system that produces militaristic leaders is completely changed, the possibility of nuclear conflict cannot be completely ruled out.
WE ARE for the abolition of all nuclear weapons, and oppose more states acquiring nuclear arms. Appeals to reason or humanity, however, will have no effect on ruling elites.
The only thing that will check the growth and spread of nuclear arms is the pressure of mass movements of workers, young people, small farmers and the dispossessed - those who bear the cost of the nuclear nightmare.
The volcanic events of the next few years will provoke such movements. Their aim must be to abolish the class exploitation that ultimately drives the struggle for power and profit - and time and again leads to war. When we free ourselves from big-business bosses and feudal exploiters, we will get rid of their military enforcers, not before.
With the resources of a democratically planned, socialist economy, we will be able to tackle the problem of safely disposing of unwanted plutonium, the poisonous legacy of the nuclear arms race.
EVEN US President Bush has to admit that his "war against terrorism" could be a long affair. US imperialism lost the last extended war it faced - in Vietnam from 1964 to 1973.
For decades after, the American people's fear and hatred of war and governments' panic about getting involved in bloody conflicts paralysed US imperialism.
The US was defeated largely by the Vietnamese people's heroic determination and fighting spirit. At least two million Vietnamese died in wars against Japanese, French and US imperialisms between 1945 and 1975 when Americans evacuated their embassy in Saigon.
But the US was also beaten by a huge anti-war movement at home after American war aims lost their popular support.
US imperialism saw its Cold War mission as stopping the spread of 'communism'. Even the bureaucratically distorted planned economies of the Stalinist regimes that arose in many ex-colonial countries were seen as a threat to capitalism.
For years US planes - with the most sophisticated weaponry - flew over Vietnamese villages trying to make the people submit. They dropped eight million tons of bombs on Vietnam, more than in all world war two. Chemical warfare too - 20 million gallons of defoliant Agent Orange spread dioxin throughout the country's food chain.
US imperialism destroyed 70% of North Vietnam's villages and left huge areas barren. Northern capital Hanoi was totally destroyed. US governments spent $150 billion and sent 2.8 million troops to fight in Vietnam. 57,000 of them died there.
By 1972 a quarter of US world forces had mutinied or defied military orders; units refused combat, fragging (shooting of their own officers) was widespread and almost a quarter of US troops had become heroin addicts.
The peasant-based National Liberation Front prevailed against this technologically advanced but demoralised army, literally going underground at times to escape intensive bombing.
Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam's Stalinist leader, was seen as leading the people to independence against French imperialism in 1954. The Communists could only take over the north of a country partitioned under the 1954 Geneva agreements, but in the south the National Liberation Front (NLF) expropriated the landlords and give the land to the peasantry.
This policy won them considerable rural support when war came, although both Ho's regime and the NLF opposed a genuine Marxist policy of workers' democracy in the towns.
The US by contrast supported dictators in the third world who kept their population in semi-feudal subjugation. South Vietnam, under pro-American military regimes, backed the landlords in their rural class struggle. They took fright at communist land reform. So did US imperialism which also wanted to protect its regional interests including access to mineral rights and oil.
IN AUGUST 1964 the US entered the war against North Vietnam after manufacturing an attack on American patrol ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. The US started air strikes against the North.
At first patriotic indignation at the "attack" kept US public opinion quiet. Both Johnson's Democratic government and the Republican opposition backed the war.
The US anti-war movement started with sit-ins and demonstrations in the colleges but the war's social and economic effects triggered a far bigger, more effective opposition.
For instance, American blacks played a huge front-line role in the armed forces at a time when the black population was in ferment.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King drew parallels between black deprivation in the US and imperialist violence in Vietnam. He said that black people "are dying in disproportionate numbers in Vietnam. Twice as many Negroes as whites are in combat."
In 1970, 13% of the army was black, about the same percentage as in US society but 28% of those with combat assignments were black and 22% of the casualties.
The radical Black Panthers identified with the colonial revolution, their programme demanding that "all black men be exempt from military service."
President Johnson abandoned many of his "Great Society" anti-poverty plans to pay for the war. Opposition grew rapidly, most of all amongst students. By 1969 34,000 people refused to be inducted into the army - burning of draft cards became commonplace.
Protests grew throughout the world. In Britain - a slavish follower of US imperialism since world war two - 100,000 marched in London in 1967. Growing working-class opposition led a minority of US labour union officials to break from Johnson's 'coalition'.
When the NLF launched the Tet offensive in February 1968, the US's military policy - basically to wear down the enemy in a war of attrition - was exposed. Revolutionary NLF forces attacked all South Vietnam's major cities, including 36 of the 44 provincial capitals.
When units acting as suicide squads attacked the US embassy in Saigon, 40,000 NLF forces died but the mood in the USA changed. TV viewers saw US soldiers coming home in body bags, victims in a war they couldn't win against a people who wouldn't surrender.
IN NOVEMBER 1968, days before the Democrats lost the presidential election Johnson ordered a total halt to the bombings of North Vietnam.
Republican victor Richard Nixon had promised to scale down the war. But Nixon's administration more than doubled the number of reconnaissance flights and saturation bombing levelled North Vietnamese cities.
Anti-war feeling reached unprecedented intensity. In Washington half a million marched, led by 500 uniformed GIs. Opinion polls said that most people thought the war had been wrong from day one.
Then in 1970 Nixon decided to invade and flatten Vietnam's neighbour Cambodia, ostensibly to cut off NLF bases and supplies. In fact North Vietnamese troops had been driven into Cambodia by months of ferocious US bombing.
This attack did to Cambodia what US General Le May wanted to do to Vietnam in 1964 - bomb it back to the Stone Age. This unbelievable destruction prepared the way for Pol Pot's totalitarian horror later in the 1970s; it also destroyed any illusions in 'peacemaker' Nixon.
Students struck in over 400 US colleges. The Ohio National Guard shot dead four student protesters at Kent State university. Infuriated US students held thousands of demonstrations at universities nationwide.
Workers, whose sons and brothers were coming home in coffins, joined anti-war marches even though their union leaders opposed the demonstrations.
Incidents such as the My Lai massacre, where 500 civilians were murdered by US soldiers, helped reduce army morale further. Vietnam Veterans against the War was formed and told the US about atrocities they committed. Radical anti-war literature circulated.
The drug addictions and fraggings continued, as did the protests, By 1973, a shell-shocked, demoralised US Army withdrew and two years later the NLF entered Saigon. US imperialism's plans had been ruined on the home front as well as in revolutionary war.
Since the Stalinist states collapsed over a decade ago, US imperialism is now the world's only superpower. Before that, however, Stalinism could not develop the revolution even amongst the Vietnamese working class.
Eventually the 'Communist' Party's lack of workers' democracy internally and the lack of an internationalist socialist policy, which led to wars with Cambodia and China, derailed the revolution.
After Stalinist governments fell throughout eastern Europe, Vietnam submitted to another invasion - by US multinationals such as Nike eager to exploit its workers with low wages and long hours.
The US's present main enemy, the reactionary Taliban regime and Al-Qa'ida guerrilla leaders cannot build the social support which the NLF's land reforms managed amongst the peasants in Vietnam. It certainly can't provide any alternative for most people in the Western world.
But Vietnam should warn Bush and Blair that war's explosive mixture of death, destruction and political and economic havoc can rapidly undermine any feelings of support for their war aims. We should aim to give this opposition a socialist direction.
AS SOCIALISTS we are totally opposed to the methods of terrorism and the indiscriminate killing of innocent people. We immediately condemned the horrific attacks on the World Trade Centre (WTC) and Pentagon which resulted in the deaths of so many.
But at the same time we do not support Bush and Blair's war. Military action is not a solution. On the contrary it can only exacerbate an already unstable situation worldwide.
Ordinary, poverty-stricken Afghans will be the innocent victims of attacks on their country. Even before 11 September, as many as five million were dependent on food aid to fend off starvation.
Millions had already fled to squalid, disease-ridden refugee camps in neighbouring countries. Now thousands more are desperately trying to escape death from famine or US missile attacks. Bush talked about bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age but it is already there. A humanitarian disaster of epic proportions is now facing the Afghan people.
Workers internationally will also pay the price for Bush and Blair's war through job cuts, attacks on public spending and tax increases. The events of 11 September aren't the cause of the crisis in the US and world economy as some have tried to argue.
Both were slowing down before 11 September, but the fall-out has had an aggravating effect. Employers in many industries are taking advantage of the situation to push through mass redundancies. Thousands of jobs have been slashed in the airline industry alone and thousands more are threatened in other sectors.
The ruling class in the US and elsewhere are also using the attacks to justify a serious undermining of democratic rights. Repressive legislation is being passed to supposedly combat terrorism but will be completely ineffective in doing so.
The Prevention of Terrorism Act was introduced as a knee-jerk reaction to IRA bombings in England in the early 1970s. It did not defeat the IRA, but it was responsible for miscarriages of justice such as the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six.
Repressive laws will undoubtedly be used against legitimate anti-globalisation/anti-capitalist protesters and workers taking action to defend their interests.
The attacks have also fuelled racism against Arabs and Muslims around the world. In the US, people have been shot in racist attacks and in Britain an Afghan taxi-driver was paralysed.
Thousands of other incidents of threats and violence have been reported. The politicians have made speeches preaching tolerance, fearful that the situation could get out of control. But their racist policies, on asylum in particular, have contributed to the backlash which has taken place.
Asylum seekers will be targeted by Blunkett's new legislation. They could be denied asylum and deported under mere suspicion of being linked to terrorism.
Attacks on Afghanistan will have a destabilising effect throughout central Asia and the Middle East. The military regime in Pakistan, for example, has given backing to Bush's war aims for its own economic and strategic reasons. But in doing so, it risks a backlash from Islamic fundamentalists within the army and society in general. This in a country which possesses nuclear weapons.
If there is any attempt to broaden the war beyond Afghanistan, this could provoke mass unrest throughout the Arab and Muslim world and risk further retaliatory strikes.
BUSH AND Blair hypocritically wage 'war on terrorism'. But it's the bloody policies of the capitalist system, which they represent, that are responsible for creating the very conditions which allow terrorism to flourish.
George Bush senior helped arm, train and finance bin Laden and Islamist groups to wage a guerrilla war by proxy against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Now bin Laden is public enemy number one.
Whenever US imperialism's economic and strategic interests or prestige are threatened, it has readily wreaked its own terror on countries around the world.
Over a million civilians were killed in the Vietnam War. 100,000 Iraqis died in the Gulf War and the suffering continues.
6,000 Iraqi children die every month from hunger and disease - the same number as died in the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.
Global capitalism is based on obscene inequalities of power and wealth. The assets of the 200 richest people are more than the combined income of the poorest 2.4 billion. More than one fifth of the world's population live on less than one dollar a day.
And now the World Bank estimates that, as a result of the economic crisis, ten million more people will be pushed below this level worldwide and 40,000 more children will die.
The major imperialist powers, with the US at their head, use their economic dominance to exploit the poorer countries of the world, subjecting millions to poverty, starvation, disease and war.
The wealth ratio between the richest and the poorest countries in the world, which was three to one in 1820, was 74 to one in 1997.
A handful of giant multinational companies control four-fifths of world output and more than two-thirds of world trade.
Through capitalist institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation, the imperialist countries impose cuts in social spending, privatisation, job losses etc. on already impoverished neo-colonial countries. The IMF is in fact running at least 75 of the poorest developing countries in the world.
To further their own interests, the imperialist countries have no qualms about propping up and fostering dictatorial and oppressive regimes worldwide. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Milosevic in Serbia and Pinochet in Chile were all at one time courted and backed by US imperialism.
In Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East imperialism rides rough-shod over national, ethnic and religious rights and aspirations. Over 700 have died in the year-long intifada, most of them Palestinians. Yet the US continues to back the Israeli ruling class financially and military.
US imperialism hopes to take advantage of the 11 September attacks and the 'war against terrorism' to assert itself around the globe in defence of its own interests.
Blair's belligerent speech to Labour Party conference raised the prospect of intervening in every international 'hot spot', regardless of the wishes of ordinary people in those countries.
Under capitalism, It is not possible to rid the world of terrorism and conflict. Even if the US succeeds in capturing bin Laden and destroying his bases in Afghanistan, the conditions which give rise to terrorism - poverty, corruption and oppression - will still remain.
War, poverty, violence and instability are rooted in the very nature of this class-ridden system, which is based on exploitation, inequality and the ruthless pursuit of profit. It's only by eradicating capitalism worldwide that these horrors can be ended.
US OPINION polls at first showed overwhelming support for military action. But there is also disquiet about the prospect of innocent Afghans being killed, of casualties amongst US soldiers and of action provoking further attacks, making a volatile situation even more unstable.
In Britain a majority say they would oppose military strikes if they harm civilians. Bush and Blair say they will do everything possible to avoid "collateral damage". But in the Gulf War, 40% of so-called 'smart' bombs were not so smart after all, missing their targets and killing and maiming civilians.
Past wars show that the popular mood can shift rapidly especially when the full consequences begin to hit home (see article on Vietnam War page eight). Anti-war movements have sprung up quite quickly in the US, Britain and elsewhere.
Many of those participating, especially students and young people, were also involved in the anti-globalisation/anti-capitalist protests. They have made the connection; that a system which leads to global poverty and environmental destruction is also responsible for violence, war and conflict internationally.
Members of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), to which the Socialist Party is affiliated, are campaigning in the US, Britain and elsewhere to build democratic, inclusive, broad-based anti-war coalitions. In particular we would look to involve workers organised in the workplaces so that they can add their collective, social strength to the anti-war movement.
Bush and the US administration have tried to build a broad 'pro-war' coalition to back any action they take against 'terrorism'. But this has proved far from straightforward. There have been divisions within the US administration, between the 'doves' who want to limit action to Afghanistan and the 'hawks' who want to go further and attack any country 'harbouring' or 'supporting' terrorists.
Top of the list would be Iraq, where they would like to 'finish off' the Gulf War. However any attempt to widen the conflict could inflame Arabs around the world. The reactionary regime in Saudi Arabia, for example, has had to state openly that, unlike in the Gulf War, it won't let its military bases be used to attack Afghanistan. This is because it fears unrest amongst Islamic groups within its own country.
Despite these divisions, Bush has acted against Afghanistan. However there are clearly worries about what could happen next. Capturing Osama bin Laden and destroying his bases would be virtually impossible without overthrowing the Taliban. But what to put in its place?
A coalition involving the Northern Alliance would be extremely unstable. Their record on human rights and women's rights is as bad if not worse than the Taliban's.
Ordinary Afghans have to decide their own future. Only a government of working people and the rural poor, as part of a socialist federation of Middle Eastern states could rebuild war-torn Afghanistan.
A serious weakness internationally at the moment is the absence of mass workers' parties which could play a role in transforming society.
There have been recent examples internationally, where mass movements involving the organised working class, removed unpopular regimes. In Serbia, for instance, ordinary people succeeded where imperialist bombs failed in removing Milosevic.
But because no party existed with a clear idea of how to build an alternative society, merely switching government has solved none of the problems which ordinary Serbs face.
Because mass parties have not provided an alternative to the poverty, corruption and oppression of capitalism, sections of youth in the Middle East and other regions have turned to the blind alley of terrorism as a way out of the crisis.
In the 'developed' countries, parties like New Labour have gone completely over to supporting big business and global capitalism. Blair in particular has flown round the world, doing Bush's dirty work, at times sounding even more war-like than Bush himself.
The Socialist Party and the CWI have been campaigning for the building of new mass parties to represent the interests of workers, young people and oppressed groups in Britain and internationally. Building an effective anti-war movement and building new working class parties are interlinked.
And mass workers' parties will play an important part in the task of eliminating war in general, which can only be done by ending the unequal, exploitative and oppressive capitalist system internationally.
BASED ON production for profit for the privileged few, capitalism is incapable of meeting the needs of the majority of the population worldwide.
Socialism is about planning production for need not profit. This would eliminate the contradictions of the current system which lead to global economic crisis and conflict. Socialism is about working-class people, the majority of society, owning and controlling the economy and democratically deciding how resources should be produced and allocated for the benefit of all, in an environmentally sustainable way.
This would be very different from the top-down, undemocratic planning which existed in the bureaucratic, Stalinist regimes of the ex-Soviet Union and Eastern Europe until just over a decade ago. Genuine socialism would mean ordinary people having maximum control over every aspect of their lives.
Globalisation has meant that capitalism is economically more integrated than at any time in history. This means that the struggle to change society has to be an international one if it is to end poverty, disease and environmental destruction and transform ordinary people's lives.
Based on co-operation rather than ruthless competition for profit, privilege and prestige, socialism is the only system capable of bringing about an end to violence and war on a global scale.
"RAILTRACK IS finished", said transport secretary Stephen Byers, announcing a huge government climbdown.
Just two months ago, New Labour were saying they couldn't possibly take back control of Railtrack because it would be "too expensive" and contravene the Human Rights Act. Now they've called in the administrators and are taking the company out of private hands! .
At last New Labour have had to admit what everyone else already knew; privatisation on the railways has been a total disaster.
Since privatisation Railtrack has received billions in public money. Fat-cat shareholders have been raking in the profits - yet still they've come back begging for more.
"Profit before safety' seems to have been Railtrack's slogan. Seven people died in the Southall train crash, 31 at Paddington and four at Hatfield. Cost-cutting and mismanagement linked to privatisation were implicated in all three disasters.
New Labour have backed off on Railtrack because it's the most hated of all privatisations. They don't want it threatening the rest of their privatisation agenda, which they're determined to push ahead with to please their big business friends.
It's no accident that they've climbed down now, while all eyes are on the war in Afghanistan.
They don't want workers in other privatised industries to demand that they should be nationalised too!
But as rail worker Bill Johnson explained to The Socialist: "How can New Labour possibly justify the Public Private Partnership (PPP) in London Underground when it's been forced to admit that the private sector can't run Railtrack?"
"It's the same contractors employed by Railtrack - Balfour Beatty, Jarvis etc. - that are leading members of the consortium , taking over the tube."
"We need to organise now to defeat privatisation. The anti-privatisation conference, called by union broad left activists for 24 November, will be an important step in that direction".
To hear an audio version of this document click here.
What the Socialist Party stands for
The Socialist Party fights for socialism – a democratic society run for the needs of all and not the profits of a few. We also oppose every cut, fighting in our day-to-day campaigning for every possible improvement for working class people.
The organised working class has the potential power to stop the cuts and transform society.
As capitalism dominates the globe, the struggle for genuine socialism must be international.
The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), a socialist international that organises in many countries.
To hear an audio version of this document click here.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/9203