People's Democracy

FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM

US Hegemony Drive Can’t Succeed

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE world was never so shocked as it was on September 11 when some terrorists attacked their chosen targets in New York and Washington. International community condemned these attacks in unequivocal terms and expressed heartfelt sympathy with those who had lost their near and dear ones in these attacks.

SINISTER GAME

But now it appears that a new game has begun. Nobody holds any brief for terrorism that is posing a big menace to world peace and human civilisation. But it is now certain that, from George W Bush downward, what the US leaders are trying for is not to wage a sincere battle against terrorism but to make the whole world fall in line behind them.

The latest developments make the point clear. Not very long ago, without clearly identifying the perpetrators of the Lockerbie bomb case, the US launched an aerial attack on the Libyan leader Muammar Qazzafi’s palace, killing his minor daughter among many others. The US launched missiles against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan after the bombing of its embassies in Tanzania and Kenya; the bogus logic given was that this factory was making bomb-related chemicals. And then one of the most interesting cases was that of Oklahama bombing. Certain Arab youth were accused of it, but finally it turned out that it was the handiwork of a few mentally deranged Americans. The same game is being played once again. The US has started its war preparations without even bothering to identify the perpetrators of the September 11 crime and collecting enough evidence about it.

At the same time, the US is not bothered about involving the UN, the supreme forum of the world peoples, in a fight against terrorism. One may recall that the UN was bypassed during the NATO attacks on Yugoslavia as well. The US says it is at war now. The question is: War against whom? Against a country, say, Afghanistan? Or against an international threat like terrorism? It is apparent that the US should have approached the UN in either case, which it has not done. Is it afraid that it will not be able to achieve through the UN what it wants to achieve by force?

But this very thing poses a grave threat to humanity as a whole. One can well recall that this was the way the League of Nations was made ineffective about six decades ago, and that the League’s inability to restrain the Hitlerite Germany and its British and French backers was one of the important causes of the second world war. Will the world peoples allow that history to be repeated again? And that too on a higher plane, with the weapons of mass annihilation?

USA’S STATE TERRORISM

The sinister game of the US is also clear from the way it is trying to widen the ambit of the attacks it is planning. Stories are being planted in western media about the supposed involvement of Iraq (which the rogue superpower counts among the "rogue" states) in the September 11 attacks. Does it want the world peoples to forget that about 1.5 million out of 25 million Iraqis --- mostly children, the aged and the infirm --- have perished in the last one decade due to the lack of food and medicines? Iraq had one of the lowest child mortality rates in the world till 1990, but several hundred children are now dying there every day. And who is responsible for all this if not the criminal blockade the US-UK imposed on Iraq through the UN that they had hijacked at that time? If it is not the USA’s state-sponsored terrorism, what else it is?

It was the USA’s same state terrorism that was seen in operation on a number of occasions and in several countries from Vietnam to Yugoslavia. The US did not hesitate from invading even a tiny country like Grenada in 1983. As has been a well-known truth, the US had been instrumental in masterminding the assassination of a number of political figures around the world. Moreover, while US leaders have always been lenient toward the homegrown Ku Klux Klan murderers, they have been propping up a number of terrorist groups from the UNITA in Angola to KLA in Kosovo.

GLOBAL FRONT: FOR WHAT?

And it is such a power, whom Noam Chomsky correctly called the rogue superpower, that is today self-righteously fulminating against terrorism. Has it forgotten that those who sow the wind cannot but have to reap the whirlwind? As we said earlier, it is the US that has to first prove its own sincerity about fighting terrorism.

To date, however, the US has not given any indication that it has learnt any lessons from its past follies. President Bush has now given a call for a worldwide front against terrorism and Colin Powell swears that the US war against terrorism will not be confined to Osama bin Laden or the Taliban; he even assured that the US war will even rid Kashmir of terrorism. What a gesture of ‘magnanimity’! Vajpayee, Advani & Co have no reason not to cheer up and sing paeans for the US administration.

As Fidel Castro correctly pointed out, all this is nothing but to pose as if there is the US on the one hand and terrorism on the other, with nothing else in the world! The September 11 attacks are being treated by the US leaders as a god-sent opportunity to make the whole world line behind the US in the name of a fight against terrorism. The US has thus got an alibi that it lacked hitherto and was desperately seeking. In plain words, the attacks are being utilised to hegemonise the world, if they can.

The US desire for unhindered hegemony was clear even before the country was itself attacked. Only five days before the attacks, the US House of Representatives passed a "Vietnam Human Rights Bill" and sent it to the Senate for endorsement. The bill is a blueprint for intervention in the internal affairs of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the name of human rights by propping up pro-US groups in Vietnam and letting loose a propaganda barrage against that country through the so-called Radio Asia. (See the details elsewhere in this issue.) The US has already propped up an Iraqi National Congress and similar organisations for several other nations.

Yet the fact remains that all this is part of an attempt to prolong the life of the decaying capitalist-imperialist system over which the US is presiding. The US is striving to achieve the same aim through the instrumentality of the IMF-World Bank-WTO combine on the trade, economic and financial fronts and is trying to supplement the same at the diplomatic and foreign policy front now, by cobbling up a US-led combination of countries in the name of fighting terrorism.

That is why the world public opinion cannot accept the way the issue of terrorism has been posed by US imperialists --- that those who are not with the US are with the terrorists. The poser is fundamentally wrong. There is no doubt that terrorism has to be fought, but one cannot be a party to the US move to create a unipolar world under its tutelage. Moreover, one cannot afford to forget that just as the capitalist-imperialist system breeds wars of occupation, in the same way it breeds terrorism.

Nor can one accept the US attempt to equate the national liberation movements with terrorism. While any democratic minded person cannot support terrorism, he or she cannot shy of extending support to a war of national independence in any part of the world.

MILESTONES OF PROGRESS

That the proposed front will eventually be used against the progressive and democratic forces around the globe is not a bit in doubt. Nor is there any doubt that it will be directed against the existing socialist countries, namely, China, Vietnam, Cuba, DPR Korea and Laos which still account for one fourth of the world population. The US, leader of the world imperialist camp, is thus trying to make the maximum out of the upper hand which this camp has got following the dismantling of the USSR.

There is no doubt that the USSR’s dismantling caused a big setback to the forces of socialism, democracy and peace the world over. However, the last one decade has definitely proved that these forces may have weakened a bit but they are not out. Even when the East European socialist regimes were getting dismantled, Namibia got its independence, and the Apartheid regime of South Africa was compelled to release Nelson Mandela and other freedom fighters from prison. Soon after, Nepal ushered into democracy. Along with others, communists played an unforgettable role in both South Africa and Nepal. A few years later, Apartheid was finally dismantled in South Africa and Mandela was elected president.

On the other hand, communists staged a comeback in Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia and some other countries, while there was a regrouping in others. The CPRF today is the biggest force in the Russian Federation.

It was in this very period that Suharto, a US puppet and the butcher of about six lakh Indonesian people, was forced to quit and Indonesia ushered into a democratic system. Papua New Guinea won its independence.

The existing countries of socialism are also making undoubted progress. China has fazed the whole world with its progress. Vietnam has overcome the ravages of war and is now at the threshold of a rapid progress. DPR Korea and Laos are of course facing some temporary problems but they are also confident about overcoming them sooner rather than later.

As far Cuba, it has successfully withstood the criminal US embargo for the last four decades and is currently posting some growth in all sectors. Though it is located at only 90 miles from the US coast and at the target of US missiles on the Florida coast, Cuba is unfazed and continues to serve as an inspiration for the revolutionary forces, particularly in Latin America. Only very recently, a progressive government was installed in Venezuela. In Chile, the democratic forces compelled the government to try Pinochet, the murderer of Allende and butcher of thousands of Chileans, though attempts are still being made to somehow save his skin.

It is thus clear that despite the temporary balance of forces in favour of world imperialism, the USA will not be able to run its writ unhindered in the world. As the episodes of Seattle, Prague, Copenhagen and Genoa show, resistance to the imperialist hegemonistic drive is growing. Big struggles are taking place in many countries against the pro-imperialist globalisation and sooner or later they are bound to take a more organised and coordinated shape. In the same way, voices are today being raised against the US attempt to hegemonise the world in the name of fight against terrorism. It is also not ruled out that both these currents, economic and political, may merge into one stream. It is on the basis of such developments that the new century is being expected to be the century of new victories for the forces of democracy and socialism the world over.