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workers.org August 3, 201

BULLETIN:

On Sept. 3, Republican senators John Mc-Cain and Lindsay Graham, brokers or thePentagon hawks, met with President Obamaand came away saying that they now sup-port plans or missile strikes against Syria.Graham said the attacks were going to bea little more robust than he had thought.Tere was talk o attacks on Syrian aircra,artillery and rockets, and assurances romObama that the attacks would be aimed at

shiing the momentum on the battleeld.McCain called the meeting encouragingand said it would be catastrophic not tosupport the strikes.

Tis message signies a convergence be-tween the Obama administration and theaggressive militarists in the Pentagon andthe ruling class. It is another dangerous steptoward a military adventure.

F.G.

Faced with mass skepticism

Obama pushes war on Syria with new tactic

Another step to war

By Fred Goldstein

President Barack Obama and his administra-tion are demanding that Congress underwritea military adventure that will bring death anddestruction to the Syrian masses, despite all thesmooth, sanitizing phrases about so-called pre-cision cruise missile surgical strikes, limitedtargets, and deter and degrade.

Te intended attack on Syria holds the po-tential to trigger a much wider conict, whichwill bring suering and hardship not only tothe people o the Middle East but to the work-ers and the oppressed in the U.S.

Te whole world expected Obama to an-nounce missile strikes on Syria on Aug. 31. Butat the last minute he decided to opt or the tactico dragging Congress into an endorsement in-tended to legitimize an act o imperialist aggres-sion that has already been decided upon.

Te act that his move to take it to Congresshas become controversial is a measure o thedegree to which the Pentagon and previouspresidents have obliterated constitutional legal-ity, which says clearly that only Congress can de-clare war. But in his speech, Obama did not or-mally surrender the right to make war withoutcongressional authority, he only said it would

produce a stronger mandate i the Congressdoes what it is legally required to do and voteson the question.

Tis stratagem o pressuring Congress intobecoming an open accomplice to a militarystrike was made necessary when the attempt todrum up support or war with a battery o liesalleging Syrian government chemical warareatrocities opped.

Danger signals rom London

A powerul signal o impending U.S. isolationcame when the British Parliament voted againstparticipating in the attack. Te British capital-

ist government, which during the Iraq war wascalled a U.S. poodle by the British masses,backed away rom being drawn into the U.S.military adventure.

In addition, the German imperialists dis-tanced themselves rom the adventure. NAOwill not go along. Te normally docile ArabLeague did not endorse the strikes. Te U.N.Security Council would not endorse the strikes.And the ruling class in the U.S. is divided overwhat to do.

Only the French imperialists, the ormer co-lonial rulers o Syria with strong interests in thecountry, were willing to endorse the attack.

Tis time around, the imperialist allies arearaid o being dragged into a U.S. military ad-

venture at a time when the working classes o

the capitalist world are suering mass unem-ployment, declining wages, growing poverty andinequality. Te U.S. has engaged in at least threemajor wars in the last decade and the populationknows that trillions o dollars have been spenton these military adventures. Yet austerity orthe workers is deepening as the criminal bankersand bosses pile up record prots and incomes.

Still in the minds o the masses are imageso ormer U.S. Secretary o State Colin Powellstanding beore the United Nations on Feb. 5,2003, pointing to charts, reports and satellitephotos that allegedly proved the existence oweapons o mass destruction in Iraq. Tey also

haunt the minds o bourgeois politicians, likeormer British Prime Minister ony Blair, whosereputations and/or careers were ruined becausethey hitched themselves to the raudulent decep-tions o the U.S. imperialist establishment. enmore years o war ollowed the Powell speech.

Flash orward to today. Te allies all knowthat U.S. charges dey all logic and they ear u-ture exposure. Te Syrian government would notgas its own people right in the suburbs o thecapital, Damascus at the very moment that itwelcomed U.N. inspectors on to the site o the al-leged attack. Nor would it resort to such weaponsat the moment when it is making military prog-

ress against the counterrevolutionary orces.In the struggle or world support, it would

suicidal or the government in Damascus to rialienating world opinion by carrying out suan act. No one in the Middle East, except or tpuppet governments o the Arab League another allies o U.S. imperialism, even pretends believe it.

Te only one to benet rom such an act,it took place, would be Washington, which hlong planned to overthrow the government Damascus and now eels it necessary to carout direct military aggression, aer all else aile

Masses sufering rom intervention atiguTe Wall Street Journal o Sept. 2 aptly quot

James Lindsay, a ormer Clinton administratioofcial: Te public has a clear case o intervetion atigue aer 12 years o engagement oveseas, the longest stretch in U.S. history.

In act, a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken the wethat all the horric reports o alleged Syriatrocities were headlined in the capitalist medsaid that only 9 percent o respondents were military intervention.

Rumors about a difcult upcoming vote the strikes in Congress are being attributed partisanship, actionalism, etc. But politics asidin spite o the pressure or war, the politicians stneed to get elected and many may not want be tied to another disastrous military adventur

For the anti-imperialist movement, the mosignicant political development to emerge rothis crisis is this: Te material basis o populsupport or imperialist war has been eroded previous wars and by the devastating global ecnomic crisis.

Tis greatly strengthens the long-term propects or mobilizing the masses against the Petagons adventures, in Syria or elsewhere. Thawks in the Pentagon are moving in the opp

site direction than the masses o people, andclash is inevitable.

Chemical weapons frame-up long in making

Tere is a tendency in the capitalist media call Obama inept or getting the U.S. into a binTe act is that the oundation o this crisis wlaid back in March 2011, when Washington dcided to oment an anti-government oppositioin Syria with the aim o overthrowing the soveeign government o Bashar al-Assad.

In August 2011, aer consultations at thighest level, with the hawkish secretary o staHillary Clinton, playing a leading role, Obam

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announced that President Assad had to go. Inquick succession, British Prime Minister DavidCameron, French President Nikolas Sarkozy andGerman President Angela Merkel ollowed suit,calling or Assad to step down.

Tis was a denitive signal that U.S. imperi-alism intended to go all the way with regimechange in Syria.

Washington and the Pentagon undoubtedlythought this was going to be easily achieved.But exactly one year aer saying Assad must go,the government in Damascus was still there andghting o the imperialist-sponsored counter-revolutionaries as well as the al-Nusra jihadists.

Tus, on Aug. 20, 2011, the Obama adminis-tration rolled out the chemical weapons rame-up plan. Obama, based on nothing, announcedout o the blue that i Damascus used chemicalweapons, it would have crossed a red line andchanged his calculus. Such warnings and sub-sequent lies about the use o chemical weaponswere repeated over and over by the adminis-

tration and in the capitalist media, laying thegroundwork or this latest rame-up.

What triggered this talk o chemical weaponswas the military progress that the Assad orceswere making against the reactionary orces, whowere also suering splits on the ground. Tisrame-up was prepared long in advance, and itis part o a larger goal o destroying the govern-ment o Syria.

War against Syria as preparation

or wider war

But the war against Syria and the prepara-tion or intervention must be seen as part o a

broader Pentagon strategy. Syria is the ront lineo a de acto alliance o the orces o resistance toimperialism in the Middle East, including Hez-bollah and Iran.

Many hawks in the Pentagon and in the capi-talist government have wanted to attack Iranever since it announced its nuclear program.Hezbollah delivered a deeat to the Israeli Zion-ist state and has played a key role in helping theSyrian government take back territory rom theso-called Free Syrian Army, which is an instru-ment o the Pentagon and the CIA.

Russia has supported Syria diplomatically and

militarily. Furthermore, Syria is Russias primaryally in the Middle East and, with Iran, one oonly two countries in the region where Russianwarships can dock. Tis relationship goes backto the days o the USSR and has been continuedby the present reactionary capitalist leaders oRussia on a pragmatic basis since the overthrowo the Soviet Union.

In addition to supporting Syria, Russia, indeance o Washington, has given reuge to Ed-ward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposedthe global spy network o the National SecurityAgency. In addition, President Vladimir Putinhas been persecuting pro-U.S. businessmen and

politicians in Russia. Tere has also been antago-nism over the U.S. anti-ballistic missile systemsand other issues.

On dierent levels, the war against Syriais both a war and an opener or a wider war, aproxy war against Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.Te aim is to overthrow the Syrian government,break up the nexus o resistance which centers

on Damascus, set up a regime that would threat-en Hezbollah, close down Russias naval acilityand port privileges, and drive the Russians out othe country. And this could set the stage or U.S.aggression against Iran.

Tis is the broader geopolitics o the struggleagainst Syria.

Syria and post-Soviet era o reconquest

Tis broader struggle must be understood interms o the nature o imperialism. It is a per-manently aggressive, war-like and expansion-ary system, as Vladimir Lenin described in hisclassic work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage o

Capitalism, written in 1916.Syria is one o a number o countries that

achieved independence and were able to par-tially or ully break with imperialism during theSoviet era. With all its contradictions, the SovietUnion was an alternative socialist system thatwas antagonistic to imperialism and gave vary-ing degrees o economic, political and militarysupport and protection to oppressed countriesstruggling or independence. Te very existenceo the USSR made it possible or hundreds omillions o people to break with imperialism.

Te collapse o the USSR set the stage or theimperialists to try to take back all the territory

and inuence that they had lost during the three-quarters o a century marking the Soviet era.

Te post-Soviet era has been the era o recon-quest. Tis is what has driven imperialist warand intervention since the collapse o the USSRand Eastern Europe just as the Cold War andthe struggle between the two antagonistic socialsystems drove imperialist war and militarism a-ter World II. And it was the struggle among theimperialist powers or domination o the globethat drove the two world wars in the rst hal othe 20th century.

Tis is what accounts or the wars against Yu-

goslavia, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, the permanentthreats to Iran and the Democratic Peoples Re-public o Korea, and now the war against Syria.

Capitalist politics as the art o deception

Capitalist politics is the art o deception and,above all, deceiving the masses. When the deci-sion to go to war approaches, the level o decep-tion reaches staggering heights.

No one should be deceived or a moment bythe lies told by Obama, Secretary o State JohnKerry and the entire capitalist media, which arebeginning to march in lockstep towards war.

Every word uttered by the administration is

Continued from page 1workers.org August 3, 201

designed to conceal its predatory aims. Te clathat cruise missile strikes launching powerwarheads that can cause massive destruction not aimed at regime change is a complete alhood. Tat is the undamental U.S. governmegoal and has been since March 2011, when tcounterrevolutionary campaign began.

Minimally, the strikes are aimed at helping t

U.S.-supported orces on the ground regain tmilitary initiative they have lost to governmeorces. Strikes would also be aimed at pushiback al-Nusra. But the main aim o regaining tmilitary initiative is the overthrow o the Assgovernment, pure and simple i.e., regimchange. Washington has to deny this.

A time-tested part o capitalist pre-war decetion is the attempt to create war ever by raming up the intended target o aggression as taggressor. Tis aggressor invariably then caries out atrocities, possesses weapons o madestruction or commits other acts that requimperialism to wage war.

Beore or during every war since the invsion o Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippinin 1898, down to the Gul o onkin rame-o the Vietnamese in 1964 that resulted in tdeployment o 500,000 troops to Vietnam, the wars against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, t

victims o U.S. aggression have been put in tdock by the politicians and propagandists o twar machine.

But they havent succeeded this time arounTe attempt to drum up international and dmestic war ever to get approval or an attack oSyria has allen at. Washington has been gro

ing more and more isolated.Whatever the immediate outcome o the voin Congress, and whether the strikes are carriout as planned, Washington and the Pentagwill not give up their designs on ruling the entMiddle East.

Nor will the system change its nature. Undimperialism, periods o peace are only interludbetween wars. And the last two decades, sinthe collapse o the USSR, have been a periodperpetual war and intervention.

Te only way to stop war is to destroy imprialism root and branch and the monopoly captalist system on which it rests.

Fred Goldstein is the author of Low-WageCapitalism and Capitalism at a Dead End,which has been translated into Spanish as Elcapitalismo en un callejn sin salida. For moreinformation on his books go tolowwagecapittalism.org

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