Pro-War Hillary Clinton, What Are The Alternatives?
By Steven Argue
In New York pro-war incumbent Democrat Hillary Clinton has amassed more than 22 million dollars, making her the biggest campaign finance recipient in the country. Her money comes from such corporate interests as drug and hospital conglomerates, Wall Street finance interests, real estate developers, and rightwing corporate media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.
Hillary Clinton has voted for every war the United States has carried out since she came into office in 2000, including the Iraq war. She also voted to take away our civil liberties by supporting the “Patriot Act” and its renewal. Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, has also pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. In addition she voted for the anti-immigrant wall.
Running on a very similar corporate pro-war platform as Hillary Clinton is Republican Senate candidate John Spencer. While having the same basic positions as Hillary Clinton on the war, Spencer has denounced Clinton as a "traitor" who "aids and abets our enemies". This is all part of the Democrat-Republican circus designed to make us think that we have an actual choice with the “differences” between the mainstream corporate politicians.
Running against Hillary Clinton’s pro-war platform is Socialist Equality Party (SEP) candidate Bill Van Auken as well as Socialist Party (SP) member and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins.
Howie Hawkins was a founder of the anti-nuclear clamshell alliance and an activist on many other issues going all the way back to opposition to the Vietnam War through participation in Stop the Draft week in 1967, the San Francisco State strike of 1968-69, and the nationwide student strike of May 1970.
Bill Van Auken has been a longtime activist for the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and was their presidential candidate in 2004 opposing the capitalist pro-war platform of John Kerry. Like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry voted for the war in Iraq. Kerry did not call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq during his presidential bid. In contrast, the SEP demands the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Up against Hillary Clinton’s 22 million dollar war chest, Bill Van Auken and Howie Hawkins stand no chance of winning in the upcoming elections, but what is more important is the ideas they represent as part of a long term struggle against imperialist war and for democracy and socialism.
A truly democratic society would eliminate corporate control of the elections by nationalizing the corporate media and allowing all candidates equal access to the airwaves, cable, and print. Likewise a truly democratic society would carry out a sweeping “campaign finance reform” through the nationalization of the means of production (using that wealth for human and environmental needs rather than decadence and deception).
Up against the likes of Hillary Clinton, with her 22 million dollar war chest, a sympathetic corporate media, growing police state, and increasing electoral fraud, it will take a socialist revolution to bring democracy to the United States.
Liberation News sees the participation of socialists in the corrupted electoral politics of United States as a critical platform in explaining how we differ from the capitalist Democrat and Republican parties, but we have no illusions in that sytem.
Hilary Clinton: Supporter of Imperialist War
In a press conference on August 21, 2006 George Bush Jr. finally admitted what Liberation News has been pointing out since before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Yet Bush had used a supposed connection as a pretext for the U.S.’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq. In addition, Bush Jr. also admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Most of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Hillary Clinton included, supported going to war with Iraq. Today Hillary Clinton has no remorse for that murderous decision stating, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq Vote, CNN.Com
In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush “did not fairly represent intelligence”. Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren’t their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Clinton, however, is worse in not even distancing herself from this “justified invasion” and “weapons of mass destruction” lies.
While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they may not be in the mess they are now.
Yet for Bush Jr. and Hillary Clinton Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats and Republicans to try to rethink, or at least distance themselves from, the Bush policies they have supported.
Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade, partially due to the capitalist nature of the Iraqi economy under Saddam Hussein, cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.
Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered 655,000 people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq have the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980’s the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise the CIA helped Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba’athists subsequently rounded up and executed.
Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:
“In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein’s capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...
“While defending Iraq against imperialist attack and supporting their right to defend themselves socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal...”
“U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women’s liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.
“The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead.” -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq
What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women’s rights and women’s rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992.
With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn’t completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq’s resources being looted by U.S. corporations.
For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and billions in dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too have they left the people of New Orleans.
Yet for the ruling class their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.
The words of Hillary Clinton, an icon of Democratic Party liberalism, makes abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:
“Let us not confuse the leadership’s failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks.” Hilary Clinton
As a result of imperialism’s failure in Iraq some Democrats that voted for the war like John Kerry have called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Yet the Kerry-Feingold plan actually calls for keeping troops in Iraq that are "critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces." The Kerry-Feingold plan also calls for "an over-the-horizon" troop presence in the region that could come to the aid of a failing puppet government in Iraq as well as intervene elsewhere in the so-called war on terror. (Lawmakers begin Bitter Debate on U.S. Troop Withdrawal Plan for Iraq, FOXNews, online report, June 2, 2006)
Hillary Clinton even opposed the Kerry-Feingold plan and voted against it arguing against any withdrawal timeline.
Unlike Hillary Clinton and the leading Democrats, Liberation News sees nothing good the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now! On these issues we agree with the campaigns of Bill Van Auken of the Socialist Equality Party and Howie Hawkins of the Green Party:
“End the US commitment to decades of war trying to impose a military and corporate occupation of the Middle East and its oil. Stop all illegal US-led wars and covert action to overthrow governments (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Venezuela, etc.).” Howie Hawkins, “Peace in the Middle East”
“Not a single serious step can be taken to end the war in Iraq and oppose the eruption of global US militarism outside of a decisive break with the Democratic Party. A real struggle against war requires a new political strategy based upon the independent mobilization of working people on a socialist and internationalist program.” Bill Van Auken, campaign flier at a New York march against the war.
Like the Bill Van Auken campaign Liberation News is also vocal in calling for the labor-movement and all other movements to break from the Democrat Party of war and exploitation.
Liberation News calls for ending the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for building the socialist movement to end imperialism through socialist revolution.
The Role of Peace Action (Formerly Sane / Freeze)
Hillary Clinton’s record is clearly pro-imperialist war. Yet the group “Peace Action” gives Hillary Clinton the passing grade of voting for peace 89% of the time.
“Peace Action” is deceiving the anti-war vote. Why? Because Peace Action is a pillar of the status quo that sees no alternative to delivering votes to what they see as the “lesser evil” Democrat Party, even when the Democrats are equally pro-war. This strategy has made “Peace Action” an obstacle to peace and a pillar of the status quo of war.
Every few years the ruling class of the United States parades its selected representatives in front of the American people to give us the chance to vote for their so-called “lesser” and “greater evil” representatives in the Democrat and Republican Parties. The corporate media and liberal pro-war groups like “Peace Action” ignore the anti-war candidates and back pro-war Democrats by misrepresenting their records to the people.
Liberation News urges all of the super-exploited workers that go door to door raising money for the Peace Action bureaucracy to quit your meaningless jobs and look for better work while looking for ways to hook up with the real anti-war/anti-imperialist movement that is marching in the streets. Likewise we urge all of the liberal and leftist minded people that give money to Peace Action to stop doing so and instead participate in the mass anti-war movement in the streets with your bodies, minds, and your money if you can afford it.
No to the twin parties of war and oppression! Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people!
Hillary Clinton, Supporter of Racist Israel
Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, has pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. The U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid every year and Senator Clinton’s vote backs that money for death. Israel is a racist settler state established in 1949 that has denied the original inhabitants, the Palestinians, all basic rights. Besides denying Palestinians the same rights to travel, jobs, housing, and education as allowed Jews, the racist Zionist State has used massacres and other forms of terror, wars, and torture to drive out the original Palestinian inhabitants.
Likewise Israel is always at war with its Arab neighbors. Israel’s recent attack against Lebanon where their aerial bombardment of the civilian population murdered 1,150 people and destroyed vital infrastructure is only the latest such terrorism by Israel. Yet Hillary Clinton recently told a pro-Israel rally “We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing up for American values as well as Israeli ones.”
She’s got it wrong, the mass murder and racism of Israel are in league with the values of American ruling class, as has been seen in Iraq, but these are not the values of the American people.
Claims of Israel being the victim, bombing and invading Lebanon on the pretext of two Israeli soldiers taken prisoner do not hold water in light of the fact that Israel is holding 2,000 Lebanese prisoners in their torture chamber dungeons from their previous invasion of Lebanon. In addition numerous reports say those two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon, not in Israel. Those reports are from such sources as AP, Hindustan Times, and AFP.
In contrast to Hilary Clinton and her pro-war Democrat colleagues, here is what the candidates to the left of her have to say:
“In running against Hillary Clinton for Senate, I categorically reject her support for Israeli militarism and expansionism. I call for the immediate cut-off of all US aid to the Israeli military machine, which today receives some $3 billion annually—one fifth of Washington’s total foreign aid spending…” Bill Van Auken, “Hillary Clinton Celebrates Israeli War Crimes”
“Green party recognized right of both Israelis and Palestinians to self-determination. But the US is anything but even-handed. We give more aid ($3 billion per year) to Israel than any other nation. I oppose extending US financial and military support to Israel while it continues to occupy Palestinian lands in violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions.” Howie Hawkins, Peace in The Middle East
Both candidates of the left take the correct and most important position of ending U.S. aid to Israel, but there are important differences in building an international movement.
While Howie Hawkins holds a good position in opposing U.S. military aid to Israel, the Israeli Green Party is a Zionist capitalist party that holds the position of deputy mayor of Tel Aviv. In a recent letter to the Green Party of the United States by Green Party chairman and deputy mayor, Pe’er Visner, the closest he got to recognizing any crimes by the Israeli government was saying, “We are “sorry” that the Israeli army prevents Palestinian suicide bombers from “expressing” their “human rights” to bomb themselves among Israeli citizens.” This racist response to the suffering of the Palestinian people should serve as a warning to Green Party members in the United States of what happens to parties that fail to put forward a revolutionary program for the overthrow of capitalism as well as fail to be a tribune for all of the most oppressed and exploited in society.
And unlike Howie Hawkins of the Green Party in the United States, Liberation News does not call for a withdrawal of Israel to its conquered borders of 1967. We instead call for pushing Israel back to its 1948 borders for a democratic, secular, and socialist Palestine within the 1948 borders with a separation of religion and state and equal rights for Palestinians and Jews including the Palestinian right to return, a society to be formed by the multi-ethnic working class through socialist revolution.
This is our context of demanding an end to U.S. military aid to racist Israel as well as to the repressive capitalist governments of Egypt and Jordan. Such a cut off is not intended to pressure Israel into a better two state “solution” as Howie Hawkins asks the U.S. government to do, but to allow the people of the Near East self-determination and revolution without the interference of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to murderous regimes.
The Role of the Green Party in The United States
While Howie Hawkins of the Green Party has good immediate positions on the war and a number of other social issues, Liberation News does not support Green Party candidates because the Green Party is a capitalist party. In Santa Cruz, where the Green Party has elected their party member Tim Fitzemaurice to office, Tim Fitzemaurice has backed the fears of local shop owners by voting for anti-homeless laws such as the law that makes it illegal for the homeless to sleep at night. While criminalizing those who cannot pay the high rent Fitzemaurice refuses to take a stand for rent control. Likewise Tim Fitzemaurice has refused to take any stand against police violence used against anti-war protesters in 1999 and other repressive measures against activists including my arrest and beating for distributing literature and the police murder of homeless activist John Dine. Recently Fitzemaurice did take a stand against police infiltration of the organizers of a Santa Cruz anti-war parade, but his stated reason for doing so was an attempt to maintain the credibility of the Santa Cruz police.
Tim Fitzemaurice is not a leader for change in Santa Cruz. He is instead a pillar of the status quo. This is the future of all political parties and politicians that do not have a clear program for the overthrow of the capitalist system.
The Green Party is clear in their program. They state that they are for a system of small capitalism. Yet the small capitalists commonly have a smaller profit margin and often exploit workers worse than the big capitalists. In opposition to such a vision of small and inefficient capitalist exploiters, Liberation News looks to labor struggle and the nationalization of industry under workers’ control as the way to fight and neutralize the corporate exploiters and bring justice for the working class.
On a national level the Green Party generally is not even seeking power, but pressure and reform of the Democrat Party. Yet the policy of many Greens in promoting votes for Democrats when the vote between the Democrat and Republican is close only promotes further illusions in the Democrats. Likewise promising votes to Democrats when it looks close does nothing to pressure the Democrats and their super rich backers to move to the left.
It was a massive and fighting labor movement led to large extent by socialists that forced the American ruling class and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to carry out the New Deal reforms in the 1930’s. This was out of fear of further unrest and potential revolution. It is the position of Liberation News that the most meaningful reforms do not come from reformism, such as that of the Green Party, but from revolutionary and working class struggle.
If Howie Hawkins was also speaking out for the Green Party to adopt a socialist program we could possibly give him support, but a look at his website suggests he is not. By running as a candidate and being a spokesperson for a party with a capitalist program Howie Hawkins is helping build that capitalist party and program, so we must respectfully withhold our support.
Critical Support To The Socialist Candidate
Liberation News is giving critical support to Bill Van Auken of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) because he is running on an openly socialist program. Yet we differ from the SEP in their international program, most specifically in their characterization of the Cuban revolution as a bourgeois nationalist revolution.
It is the position of Liberation News that a profound workers’ and peasants revolution has occurred in Cuba that overthrew the murderous U.S. backed Batista dictatorship and carried out sweeping nationalizations and land reform as the basis of a socialist economy. That socialist economy has done much by making the needs Cuban people the priority in terms of food, housing, education, healthcare, and culture. Despite the differences Liberation News has with the undemocratic nature of one party rule, we understand that what has taken power in Cuba is not merely a bourgeois nationalist government. Such characterizations by the SEP are ludicrous in the face of the fact that the Cuban revolution has liquidated the bourgeoisie as a class through nationalizations. The true nature of the Cuban regime is a deformed workers’ state with massive popular support from the working class and peasantry.
Yet while the SEP has a bad position on Cuba they have good positions on many other issues, especially on the most important of fighting against capitalism in the United States:
“[T]he Socialist Equality Party is confident that a mass movement of the American working class will emerge against the war and against social inequality. Our party will use its intervention in the 2006 midterm election to prepare for this coming movement, fighting for a political break not only from the Democrats, but from all parties which—like the Greens—defend capitalism. Only such a struggle can open the way to the emergence of a new mass party of the working class capable of fighting for political power and ending militarism and social inequality by means of the socialist transformation of society.” Bill Van Auken, “The International Socialist Organization and the 2006 election”
It will take a massive working class movement for good socialist candidates to actually win elections. An important element of this will be breaking the labor movement from the Democrat Party. By backing the candidates worth voting for today we at Liberation News feel that we are helping build the foundations of that movement today and into the future as people get more and more fed up with capitalist exploitation and wars. Ultimately the ruling class will use ever more violence to try to maintain their grip on power and a revolution will be necessary for the working class to actually seize power and transform society.
In the United States the nationalization of industry including oil (and other energy), “defense”, auto, the banks, the railroads, chemical, healthcare, and the agricultural monopolies will be a key component of stripping the capitalist war mongers of their power and making available the resources will make putting human and environmental needs before profits possible.
Vote Bill Van Auken for Senate!
Subscribe to Liberation News:
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Howie Hawkins, New York Green Party Candidate for Senate:
http://hawkinsforsenate.net/issues.php
Bill Van Auken, New York Socialist Equality Party Candidate For Senate:
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/us-2006van.shtml
By Steven Argue
In New York pro-war incumbent Democrat Hillary Clinton has amassed more than 22 million dollars, making her the biggest campaign finance recipient in the country. Her money comes from such corporate interests as drug and hospital conglomerates, Wall Street finance interests, real estate developers, and rightwing corporate media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.
Hillary Clinton has voted for every war the United States has carried out since she came into office in 2000, including the Iraq war. She also voted to take away our civil liberties by supporting the “Patriot Act” and its renewal. Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, has also pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. In addition she voted for the anti-immigrant wall.
Running on a very similar corporate pro-war platform as Hillary Clinton is Republican Senate candidate John Spencer. While having the same basic positions as Hillary Clinton on the war, Spencer has denounced Clinton as a "traitor" who "aids and abets our enemies". This is all part of the Democrat-Republican circus designed to make us think that we have an actual choice with the “differences” between the mainstream corporate politicians.
Running against Hillary Clinton’s pro-war platform is Socialist Equality Party (SEP) candidate Bill Van Auken as well as Socialist Party (SP) member and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins.
Howie Hawkins was a founder of the anti-nuclear clamshell alliance and an activist on many other issues going all the way back to opposition to the Vietnam War through participation in Stop the Draft week in 1967, the San Francisco State strike of 1968-69, and the nationwide student strike of May 1970.
Bill Van Auken has been a longtime activist for the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and was their presidential candidate in 2004 opposing the capitalist pro-war platform of John Kerry. Like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry voted for the war in Iraq. Kerry did not call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq during his presidential bid. In contrast, the SEP demands the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Up against Hillary Clinton’s 22 million dollar war chest, Bill Van Auken and Howie Hawkins stand no chance of winning in the upcoming elections, but what is more important is the ideas they represent as part of a long term struggle against imperialist war and for democracy and socialism.
A truly democratic society would eliminate corporate control of the elections by nationalizing the corporate media and allowing all candidates equal access to the airwaves, cable, and print. Likewise a truly democratic society would carry out a sweeping “campaign finance reform” through the nationalization of the means of production (using that wealth for human and environmental needs rather than decadence and deception).
Up against the likes of Hillary Clinton, with her 22 million dollar war chest, a sympathetic corporate media, growing police state, and increasing electoral fraud, it will take a socialist revolution to bring democracy to the United States.
Liberation News sees the participation of socialists in the corrupted electoral politics of United States as a critical platform in explaining how we differ from the capitalist Democrat and Republican parties, but we have no illusions in that sytem.
Hilary Clinton: Supporter of Imperialist War
In a press conference on August 21, 2006 George Bush Jr. finally admitted what Liberation News has been pointing out since before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Yet Bush had used a supposed connection as a pretext for the U.S.’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq. In addition, Bush Jr. also admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Most of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Hillary Clinton included, supported going to war with Iraq. Today Hillary Clinton has no remorse for that murderous decision stating, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq Vote, CNN.Com
In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush “did not fairly represent intelligence”. Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren’t their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Clinton, however, is worse in not even distancing herself from this “justified invasion” and “weapons of mass destruction” lies.
While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they may not be in the mess they are now.
Yet for Bush Jr. and Hillary Clinton Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats and Republicans to try to rethink, or at least distance themselves from, the Bush policies they have supported.
Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade, partially due to the capitalist nature of the Iraqi economy under Saddam Hussein, cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.
Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered 655,000 people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq have the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980’s the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise the CIA helped Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba’athists subsequently rounded up and executed.
Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:
“In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein’s capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...
“While defending Iraq against imperialist attack and supporting their right to defend themselves socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal...”
“U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women’s liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.
“The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead.” -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq
What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women’s rights and women’s rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992.
With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn’t completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq’s resources being looted by U.S. corporations.
For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and billions in dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too have they left the people of New Orleans.
Yet for the ruling class their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.
The words of Hillary Clinton, an icon of Democratic Party liberalism, makes abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:
“Let us not confuse the leadership’s failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks.” Hilary Clinton
As a result of imperialism’s failure in Iraq some Democrats that voted for the war like John Kerry have called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Yet the Kerry-Feingold plan actually calls for keeping troops in Iraq that are "critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces." The Kerry-Feingold plan also calls for "an over-the-horizon" troop presence in the region that could come to the aid of a failing puppet government in Iraq as well as intervene elsewhere in the so-called war on terror. (Lawmakers begin Bitter Debate on U.S. Troop Withdrawal Plan for Iraq, FOXNews, online report, June 2, 2006)
Hillary Clinton even opposed the Kerry-Feingold plan and voted against it arguing against any withdrawal timeline.
Unlike Hillary Clinton and the leading Democrats, Liberation News sees nothing good the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now! On these issues we agree with the campaigns of Bill Van Auken of the Socialist Equality Party and Howie Hawkins of the Green Party:
“End the US commitment to decades of war trying to impose a military and corporate occupation of the Middle East and its oil. Stop all illegal US-led wars and covert action to overthrow governments (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Venezuela, etc.).” Howie Hawkins, “Peace in the Middle East”
“Not a single serious step can be taken to end the war in Iraq and oppose the eruption of global US militarism outside of a decisive break with the Democratic Party. A real struggle against war requires a new political strategy based upon the independent mobilization of working people on a socialist and internationalist program.” Bill Van Auken, campaign flier at a New York march against the war.
Like the Bill Van Auken campaign Liberation News is also vocal in calling for the labor-movement and all other movements to break from the Democrat Party of war and exploitation.
Liberation News calls for ending the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for building the socialist movement to end imperialism through socialist revolution.
The Role of Peace Action (Formerly Sane / Freeze)
Hillary Clinton’s record is clearly pro-imperialist war. Yet the group “Peace Action” gives Hillary Clinton the passing grade of voting for peace 89% of the time.
“Peace Action” is deceiving the anti-war vote. Why? Because Peace Action is a pillar of the status quo that sees no alternative to delivering votes to what they see as the “lesser evil” Democrat Party, even when the Democrats are equally pro-war. This strategy has made “Peace Action” an obstacle to peace and a pillar of the status quo of war.
Every few years the ruling class of the United States parades its selected representatives in front of the American people to give us the chance to vote for their so-called “lesser” and “greater evil” representatives in the Democrat and Republican Parties. The corporate media and liberal pro-war groups like “Peace Action” ignore the anti-war candidates and back pro-war Democrats by misrepresenting their records to the people.
Liberation News urges all of the super-exploited workers that go door to door raising money for the Peace Action bureaucracy to quit your meaningless jobs and look for better work while looking for ways to hook up with the real anti-war/anti-imperialist movement that is marching in the streets. Likewise we urge all of the liberal and leftist minded people that give money to Peace Action to stop doing so and instead participate in the mass anti-war movement in the streets with your bodies, minds, and your money if you can afford it.
No to the twin parties of war and oppression! Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people!
Hillary Clinton, Supporter of Racist Israel
Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, has pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. The U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid every year and Senator Clinton’s vote backs that money for death. Israel is a racist settler state established in 1949 that has denied the original inhabitants, the Palestinians, all basic rights. Besides denying Palestinians the same rights to travel, jobs, housing, and education as allowed Jews, the racist Zionist State has used massacres and other forms of terror, wars, and torture to drive out the original Palestinian inhabitants.
Likewise Israel is always at war with its Arab neighbors. Israel’s recent attack against Lebanon where their aerial bombardment of the civilian population murdered 1,150 people and destroyed vital infrastructure is only the latest such terrorism by Israel. Yet Hillary Clinton recently told a pro-Israel rally “We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing up for American values as well as Israeli ones.”
She’s got it wrong, the mass murder and racism of Israel are in league with the values of American ruling class, as has been seen in Iraq, but these are not the values of the American people.
Claims of Israel being the victim, bombing and invading Lebanon on the pretext of two Israeli soldiers taken prisoner do not hold water in light of the fact that Israel is holding 2,000 Lebanese prisoners in their torture chamber dungeons from their previous invasion of Lebanon. In addition numerous reports say those two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon, not in Israel. Those reports are from such sources as AP, Hindustan Times, and AFP.
In contrast to Hilary Clinton and her pro-war Democrat colleagues, here is what the candidates to the left of her have to say:
“In running against Hillary Clinton for Senate, I categorically reject her support for Israeli militarism and expansionism. I call for the immediate cut-off of all US aid to the Israeli military machine, which today receives some $3 billion annually—one fifth of Washington’s total foreign aid spending…” Bill Van Auken, “Hillary Clinton Celebrates Israeli War Crimes”
“Green party recognized right of both Israelis and Palestinians to self-determination. But the US is anything but even-handed. We give more aid ($3 billion per year) to Israel than any other nation. I oppose extending US financial and military support to Israel while it continues to occupy Palestinian lands in violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions.” Howie Hawkins, Peace in The Middle East
Both candidates of the left take the correct and most important position of ending U.S. aid to Israel, but there are important differences in building an international movement.
While Howie Hawkins holds a good position in opposing U.S. military aid to Israel, the Israeli Green Party is a Zionist capitalist party that holds the position of deputy mayor of Tel Aviv. In a recent letter to the Green Party of the United States by Green Party chairman and deputy mayor, Pe’er Visner, the closest he got to recognizing any crimes by the Israeli government was saying, “We are “sorry” that the Israeli army prevents Palestinian suicide bombers from “expressing” their “human rights” to bomb themselves among Israeli citizens.” This racist response to the suffering of the Palestinian people should serve as a warning to Green Party members in the United States of what happens to parties that fail to put forward a revolutionary program for the overthrow of capitalism as well as fail to be a tribune for all of the most oppressed and exploited in society.
And unlike Howie Hawkins of the Green Party in the United States, Liberation News does not call for a withdrawal of Israel to its conquered borders of 1967. We instead call for pushing Israel back to its 1948 borders for a democratic, secular, and socialist Palestine within the 1948 borders with a separation of religion and state and equal rights for Palestinians and Jews including the Palestinian right to return, a society to be formed by the multi-ethnic working class through socialist revolution.
This is our context of demanding an end to U.S. military aid to racist Israel as well as to the repressive capitalist governments of Egypt and Jordan. Such a cut off is not intended to pressure Israel into a better two state “solution” as Howie Hawkins asks the U.S. government to do, but to allow the people of the Near East self-determination and revolution without the interference of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to murderous regimes.
The Role of the Green Party in The United States
While Howie Hawkins of the Green Party has good immediate positions on the war and a number of other social issues, Liberation News does not support Green Party candidates because the Green Party is a capitalist party. In Santa Cruz, where the Green Party has elected their party member Tim Fitzemaurice to office, Tim Fitzemaurice has backed the fears of local shop owners by voting for anti-homeless laws such as the law that makes it illegal for the homeless to sleep at night. While criminalizing those who cannot pay the high rent Fitzemaurice refuses to take a stand for rent control. Likewise Tim Fitzemaurice has refused to take any stand against police violence used against anti-war protesters in 1999 and other repressive measures against activists including my arrest and beating for distributing literature and the police murder of homeless activist John Dine. Recently Fitzemaurice did take a stand against police infiltration of the organizers of a Santa Cruz anti-war parade, but his stated reason for doing so was an attempt to maintain the credibility of the Santa Cruz police.
Tim Fitzemaurice is not a leader for change in Santa Cruz. He is instead a pillar of the status quo. This is the future of all political parties and politicians that do not have a clear program for the overthrow of the capitalist system.
The Green Party is clear in their program. They state that they are for a system of small capitalism. Yet the small capitalists commonly have a smaller profit margin and often exploit workers worse than the big capitalists. In opposition to such a vision of small and inefficient capitalist exploiters, Liberation News looks to labor struggle and the nationalization of industry under workers’ control as the way to fight and neutralize the corporate exploiters and bring justice for the working class.
On a national level the Green Party generally is not even seeking power, but pressure and reform of the Democrat Party. Yet the policy of many Greens in promoting votes for Democrats when the vote between the Democrat and Republican is close only promotes further illusions in the Democrats. Likewise promising votes to Democrats when it looks close does nothing to pressure the Democrats and their super rich backers to move to the left.
It was a massive and fighting labor movement led to large extent by socialists that forced the American ruling class and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to carry out the New Deal reforms in the 1930’s. This was out of fear of further unrest and potential revolution. It is the position of Liberation News that the most meaningful reforms do not come from reformism, such as that of the Green Party, but from revolutionary and working class struggle.
If Howie Hawkins was also speaking out for the Green Party to adopt a socialist program we could possibly give him support, but a look at his website suggests he is not. By running as a candidate and being a spokesperson for a party with a capitalist program Howie Hawkins is helping build that capitalist party and program, so we must respectfully withhold our support.
Critical Support To The Socialist Candidate
Liberation News is giving critical support to Bill Van Auken of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) because he is running on an openly socialist program. Yet we differ from the SEP in their international program, most specifically in their characterization of the Cuban revolution as a bourgeois nationalist revolution.
It is the position of Liberation News that a profound workers’ and peasants revolution has occurred in Cuba that overthrew the murderous U.S. backed Batista dictatorship and carried out sweeping nationalizations and land reform as the basis of a socialist economy. That socialist economy has done much by making the needs Cuban people the priority in terms of food, housing, education, healthcare, and culture. Despite the differences Liberation News has with the undemocratic nature of one party rule, we understand that what has taken power in Cuba is not merely a bourgeois nationalist government. Such characterizations by the SEP are ludicrous in the face of the fact that the Cuban revolution has liquidated the bourgeoisie as a class through nationalizations. The true nature of the Cuban regime is a deformed workers’ state with massive popular support from the working class and peasantry.
Yet while the SEP has a bad position on Cuba they have good positions on many other issues, especially on the most important of fighting against capitalism in the United States:
“[T]he Socialist Equality Party is confident that a mass movement of the American working class will emerge against the war and against social inequality. Our party will use its intervention in the 2006 midterm election to prepare for this coming movement, fighting for a political break not only from the Democrats, but from all parties which—like the Greens—defend capitalism. Only such a struggle can open the way to the emergence of a new mass party of the working class capable of fighting for political power and ending militarism and social inequality by means of the socialist transformation of society.” Bill Van Auken, “The International Socialist Organization and the 2006 election”
It will take a massive working class movement for good socialist candidates to actually win elections. An important element of this will be breaking the labor movement from the Democrat Party. By backing the candidates worth voting for today we at Liberation News feel that we are helping build the foundations of that movement today and into the future as people get more and more fed up with capitalist exploitation and wars. Ultimately the ruling class will use ever more violence to try to maintain their grip on power and a revolution will be necessary for the working class to actually seize power and transform society.
In the United States the nationalization of industry including oil (and other energy), “defense”, auto, the banks, the railroads, chemical, healthcare, and the agricultural monopolies will be a key component of stripping the capitalist war mongers of their power and making available the resources will make putting human and environmental needs before profits possible.
Vote Bill Van Auken for Senate!
Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news Howie Hawkins, New York Green Party Candidate for Senate:
http://hawkinsforsenate.net/issues.php Bill Van Auken, New York Socialist Equality Party Candidate For Senate:
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/us-2006van.shtml
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