Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century

by Milan Rai

source: http://ww3.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue46/Rai46.htm

REAL UTOPIA is a wide-ranging book that can deliver for the open-minded reader. It relates ideas and actions that develop naturally out of commonly held values, but that can still bring surprise, the shock of revelation, the rearrangement of familiar territory, and a different framework for us to see ourselves within.
Who is the "us"? People who subscribe to the cry of the World Social Forum: "Another World Is Possible!"

The questions many of us urgently want answers to are: What is this "other world"? What does it look like? And: How will we get there? Real Utopia doesn't pretend to have all the answers to these questions, but it has many more of the answers, and more satisfying answers, than any other single book I know of.

I'm not convinced by every single claim or argument put forward in Real Utopia, but I am convinced that everyone who seriously wants "another world" in the spirit of the World Social
Forum should engage with this readable, remarkable book.

The point of Real Utopia is to counter despair, and to present a credible vision of the future that
can meet the growing desire for a humane social order that eliminates centralized power and oppression. According to the "complementary holistic" theory underlying the book, such a vision should address simultaneously gender, power, race, and class, without giving any one sphere primacy over the others. There are therefore thoughtful and attractive contributions from Cynthia Peters, on a vision for "family, sexuality, and caregiving in a better world"; Stephen Shalom on possible new political structures in such a world; and Justin Podur on race and culture.

The heart of the book, however, and the overwhelming bulk of its 400-odd pages, lies in a proposal as to how our economic lives could be transformed by a new set of structures known as "participatory economics" -- "parecon"-- for short. Even within "complementary holism" (previously known as "totalism"), class is still the central concern.

One possible justification for the greater emphasis on economics is that undoing capitalism would help to undermine other forms of oppression. Cynthia Peters observes: "The principles that guide a pareconish society would do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to addressing gender imbalances outside the home." The elimination of sexist income inequality and women's economic dependence on men, and the creation of workplaces that "ensure equal access to decision-making, so women and men would be equally experienced at taking on empowered roles," would all create systematic pressures towards gender equality (though not guaranteeing it), in her view.

For people sickened by patriarchy and capitalism, this should be very attractive. Similar remarks could be made in relation to other forms of oppression. However, parecon has met with a great deal of hostility in just the circles one would expect it to be welcomed.
There are two strands to Real Utopia: experience and theory. My advice to someone new to parecon would be to first turn to the brief chapters dealing with experience of parecon enterprises, such as Jessica Azulay's essay on The NewStandard, a trail-blazing radical online hard news paper that lit up the U.S. scene for four years. The editors and journalists of The New Standard collective divided the work of the business into four categories: managerial, content, administrative, and a mixed category they called "conmin." (There would have been a janitorial category, if they hadn't all been working in separate physical spaces.)

"Managerial" work included participating in collective meetings and other policy-related decision-making. "Content" work included reporting, editing, and website development. "Administrative" tasks were bookkeeping, answering email, providing technical support for users, taking minutes, and so on. The point of labeling tasks in this way was to ensure that each person in the collective experienced as much empowering work, or as much tedious rote work as everyone else. The "conmin" category was invented to account for the fact that there were tasks which were less desirable than most content work, but more empowering than most administrative work.
Azulay writes: "When we divided up the work, we tried to make sure that each staffer was assigned roughly the same number of hours of each kind of work." In parecon, this is known as a "balanced job complex."

In a parecon society, job complexes should be balanced not just inside a workplace, but across the economy, a point made forcefully by Paul Burrows in his valuable reflections on his five years working in Winnipeg's Mondragòn Bookstore and Coffee House collective.
Together with Lydia Sargent's typically brisk and bold account of the creation of South End Press and Z Magazine (heroic endeavors both), these are inspiring and enriching examples of radical cooperative enterprises surviving -- and upholding anti-capitalist values -- under highly stressful conditions.

On the wider scene, parecon is a proposal for a new way of organizing the economy as a whole, with a new pay system (remunerating for effort and sacrifice rather than the economic contribution made) and a set of structures for collective, participatory economic planning.
LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM IS BASED ON THE claim that a future society can be constructed in which working people directly control their own destinies -- in their own workplaces and neighborhoods -- without the need for any form of external control by state, corporation, party, or other managerial elite. Different proposals have been made over the last 150 years or so as to how these networks of workers' cooperatives and neighborhood assemblies could work.
Parecon contains a rigorous, theoretically consistent, and economically valid model that has been developed for workers' and consumers' councils to engage in participatory planning. This model is not spelled out in Real Utopia, but an intriguing relevant example is sketched out: the development of participatory, bottom-up (upside-down) planning in the Indian state of Kerala between 1996 and 2001, involving over 3 million households in local associations. Other inspiring and fascinating large-scale efforts touched on in Real Utopia include the factory takeovers in Argentina and the extraordinary participatory democratic initiatives in Venezuela.

There is much to learn from these initiatives, from the history of the Russian factory committees in 1917 (discussed by Tom Wetzel), and from the anarchist transformation of much of agricultural and industrial life in Spain during the Civil War (examined by Dave Markland). I personally learned a great deal from these essays -- and even more from Robin Hahnel's extraordinarily rich discussion of social democratic reformism and anarchist purism.

These analytical and historical contributions are worth the price of Real Utopia by themselves. However, the real value of Real Utopia, and of parecon, comes from a rather sharper challenge.
The central value of anti-capitalism is that class is wrong. It is wrong that a small minority who hold power by reason of ownership, by reason of wealth, should dictate the lives of society as a whole, forcing people to rent themselves out as tools used for purposes they do not choose.
Anti-capitalism, if it means anything, means a commitment to classlessness. Yet it is clear from 150 years of revolution that working class people have more to fear than the investing/owning class. As Bakunin foresaw long ago, the educated, intellectual classes can also seize hold of the reins of power, often in the name of the people, so that the people will be beaten with "the people's stick." There are actually three classes at work in industrial societies -- capitalist owners, workers, and an intermediate stratum, which Bakunin called "the new class" and in parecon is known as the "coordinator class."
When I first became aware of parecon, I was fully aware of, and subscribed to, Bakuninist critiques of Leninism and "the new class." Still, I had a number of questions and concerns about parecon (some of which are expressed by Barbara Ehrenreich in her semi-debate with Michael Albert in Real Utopia).

One thing I was not convinced about was the idea of "balanced job complexes," and the suggestion that we should try to implement these now, in our current progressive organizations. I'm a writer, an editor, a speaker, a facilitator. I have specialized skills. It seemed irrational, if not bizarre, to expect me to do a lot of other forms of (disempowering, rote) work as part of my radical "job complex," when this would reduce the amount of time I spent doing the things which I am good at, and which are badly needed.

I carried on feeling this way until the summer of 2006 when, as part of a special ZNet conference, I watched Michael Albert ably and patiently fending off disbelief and fairly hostile criticisms of parecon from radical intellectuals just like me. Unbidden, two ideas rose up inside me. Firstly, I thought: "Michael Albert is a great man." (Now why did I think that?) Secondly, it came upon me that the real reason I was resistant to the idea of the "balanced job complex" was I have a class interest as an intellectual in expecting other people (less educated, confident, articulate, word- skilled people) to do the boring work that has to be done in any movement for social change. I was ashamed of myself.
The value of parecon at this point is, in my view, two-fold. It provides a rigorous model for a future society that "works" theoretically, giving credence to the idea that there is no worked out non- authoritarian alternative to capitalism that is worth pursuing. Much more important, in my view, is that it sharply confronts the class interest of intellectuals working in progressive movements. Such as myself.

Lydia Sargent writes that when she helped to set up South End Press, one (invaluable) radical publishing house was run by three white men; well-educated white women did most of the editing; a black woman was the receptionist; and Latinos packaged and shipped material from the warehouse. It seems safe to assume that class differences aligned with gender and race inequalities.

In the essay I have already referred to, and which I cannot praise too highly, Paul Burrows writes: "We should not tell people anything, unless our movements, our own alternatives, our own institutions embody the values we profess to hold." We need to build the future now, in what we do now.
I believe in classlessness. I've had a revelation about the balanced job complex. I'm a committed activist -- I've been to prison four times (admittedly for the briefest of sentences) for political action. On the British scene, many people who know me see me as near the radical extreme. And yet.

Have I tried to create balanced job complexes at Peace News, where I am a co-editor? At the peace group Justice Not Vengeance, where I am one of three organizers? In Rootstock, the radical social investors' co-operative, or Walden Pond, the radical housing co-operative, I am part of? Have I even raised the subject for discussion?

If we are going to replace capitalism with a decent society, we are going to have to deal with the new class as well as the owning class. I've met the class enemy. It's me. And probably you.
I can't think of a better place to start the new class struggle than by studying Real Utopia .

Heavy rain drenches Valley

By Troy Anderson

A powerful storm slammed Southern California this weekend, bringing high winds, rain and snow and triggering traffic collisions, mudslides and flooding, authorities said.
The storm, which dropped heavy rain on the San Fernando Valley and snow on the mountains above 6,000 feet, was expected to continue bringing showers and thunderstorms throughout this afternoon, National Weather Service meteorologist David Sweet said.

Forecasters issued a flash flood warning for the Station Fire area Saturday afternoon, expressing fears about hills that were denuded in the recent wildfires, making them more vulnerable to mudslides.


"We're asking people to monitor the weather closely and if a warning is issued for their area to immediately get away from the hillside and evacuate the area," Sweet said. "Most of all, people need to listen to the authorities and follow their instructions."
Throughout Los Angeles County, the storm brought strong winds and heavy rain that caused flooding, mudslides and rockslides.


Near Mount Wilson, at least 60 people were stuck in vehicles between landslides on Angeles Crest Highway, according to county fire officials. Multiple landslides were reported on state Route 2 between La Ca ada Flintridge and Mount Wilson, particularly near the Mount Lukens Truck Trail turnoff, said Capt. Frank Reynoso of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The road was deemed "impassable," Reynoso said.


In Sylmar, Los Angeles firefighters went to a home next to a construction site for Mission College where mud and water were ponding because of earthmovers parked in its path, threatening to flood the property in the 13000 block of Cranston Avenue. They smashed a hole in a brick wall to allow the mud to drain to the street. In the Hollywood Hills, a house on a steep hillside was endangered.

Meanwhile, a rockslide and mudslide forced the California Highway Patrol to briefly close Topanga Canyon Boulevard five miles north of the Pacific Coast Highway. Several cars had their tires flattened by sharp rocks.

Nearly 5,000 utility customers in the Los Angeles area went without power at different times Saturday because of tree branches falling on power lines.

The storm contributed to numerous crashes, including several fatalities.

On the Antelope Valley Freeway, a truck went off the road, through a barrier and struck a bridge near the Golden State Freeway in the Santa Clarita area, California Highway Patrol Officer Krystal Carter said.


One person was knocked unconscious when a truck and a small Honda collided on the southbound San Diego Freeway near Nordhoff Street in North Hills, Carter said.
"There has definitely been an increase in weather-related traffic collisions," CHP Officer Monica Posada said. "So we are asking people to stay alert for vehicle hydroplaning, apply brakes more slowly, leave extra distance between your car and the next motorist and drive with your headlights on."


Besides more than an inch of rain that had already fallen since Thursday, Sweet said the storm was expected to bring an additional 1 to 3 inches of rain before it ends. Today, there is a 50 percent chance of showers. Highs in the San Fernando Valley will be near 60, with lows around 40 with light winds.

The rest of the week is expected to be mostly sunny with highs in the low 60s and lows around 40 degrees.

"We've been in a period since Thursday of having many small weather systems with a fairly good amount of rain from each one come through rapid fire one after another," Sweet said. "But the weather pattern is going to readjust (today) and Monday and direct the storm further north to give us a break."

For those who decide to go to the mountains to ski or play in the snow, Sweet advised them to call Caltrans to get the road conditions.

Sweet said he expected 8 to 18 inches of snow in the mountains above 6,000 feet.
"There will be concerns about driving on snow-covered roads," Sweet said. "And after Sunday's system passes through, I don't expect any more storms for the rest of the week."

Global Emergency: The Earth and Humanity Need Revolution!

source: www.revcom.us


World government leaders are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 7-18, 2009 to discuss global warming. This has raised the hopes of many throughout the world. But the dominant players in Copenhagen are more concerned with preserving the capitalist system and gaining competitive advantage—than saving the planet. And what’s not on the summit’s agenda are the real dimensions of the environmental crisis, the underlying causes, and what’s needed to actually solve this problem.

1
Planet Earth is facing an extreme and urgent emergency. An impending catastrophe looms. The very things life on this planet depend on—the ecosystems of plants, animals, water, soil, and air—are being destroyed, compromised and changed forever.

The atmosphere and oceans are heating up because of the burning of coal, oil and gas, and the destruction of rainforests. Glaciers and polar ice are melting at an accelerating rate. Increased global warming will mean more powerful hurricanes, and shifts in weather patterns. In Africa where huge sections of humanity already suffer from war, poverty, and lack of food—this will mean even more devastating droughts.
The very fate of the planet is at stake. It is a scientific fact: there will be even bigger, dramatic and irreversible destruction of the planet’s ecosystems, unless there are huge and global changes in the way humanity interacts with the environment.


2
Today 50% of the world’s forests are gone. The remaining rainforests contain the richest diversity of species on earth (related organisms that can interbreed). But they are being wiped out at an astonishing rate. The current loss of species is estimated to be 1,000 times the natural or normal rate that species go extinct. Water, air and soil all over the world are severely polluted. Virtually every person on the planet has detectable levels of toxic substances such as pesticides that are known to cause cancer, birth defects and other harmful health effects. In the world’s vast oceans, 75% of fisheries are being fished to capacity or over-fished. The oceans themselves are warming and becoming more acidic from absorbing increasing amounts of carbon dioxide being pumped into the air. This threatens coral reefs which are home to some of the earth’s richest ocean life. Dead zones where life no longer exists are expanding in the oceans.
The U.S. accounts for 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of global carbon emissions. The rich capitalist countries of the world are responsible for the great bulk of environmental destruction. But those who suffer the greatest consequences of this are poor people in the Third World.


3
The planet is being destroyed not because of some "natural process" or "greedy human nature," but because of the nature and workings of a capitalist-imperialist system that treats nature as just one more resource to be exploited and poured into production for profit.
Capitalism cannot deal with the environment in a sustainable or rational way and plan for future generations. Its logic is "profit above all," "expand or die." Its economy is driven by ruthless competition between capitalists constantly trying to gain advantage over other competitors. This is why the capitalist "answer" to the problem of 20% of humanity having no access to clean water is to privatize water and sell it for profit.
The very nature of capitalist production is private and the economy is made up of many competing "capitals," each only concerned with its own expansion. When capitalist interests cut down rainforests for timber and to make palm oil, neither the massive amounts of carbon released into the environment or the destruction of the habitat of the orangutan and Sumatran tiger (and many other species) are even part of the calculations.

4
Tremendous productive forces and technology already exist that could be used to address the environmental crisis. And most importantly, there are billions of people all over the world, with their vast knowledge and potential creativity, who could be mobilized, led and unleashed to figure out how to put a stop to the way the earth is being destroyed.
To save the very fate of the planet we need revolution—to bring into being socialist societies aimed at a communist world. Under socialism, humanity can interact with the environment in a rational and sustainable way, consciously regulate production, and reverse and transform environmental devastation. In a socialist society ownership and control of production is socialized and there is a planned economy aimed at serving the needs of the people, not profit. The preservation of ecosystems would be integrated as a central priority in economic planning and development. And people will be educated and imbued with a sense of appreciation and responsibility for the protection of the environment.

Under socialism, the masses of people are the single greatest resource. And with all of their creative energy, knowledge and concern, the people can be mobilized to struggle out, discuss, argue and debate, and work together to figure out how to build a society that truly safeguards humanity and the very life of the planet itself. In this way, human society can appreciate the wild, wondrous beauty and complexity of nature and consciously act as guardians of the planet.
Socialist societies have made advances in developing the economy in a rational and ecologically more sound way—but much more is needed and also possible. Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has been developing a re-envisioned socialism and communism—a more vibrant and scientific communism that provides a solid basis to go much further and do much better in building a truly emancipating society, including on the environmental front.

If you want a world where people live and flourish…where we act together as caretakers of the globe…where we preserve and enhance the wild and natural world…get with this revolution, and spread it right now. The very fate of the planet and humanity is at stake...and we have a whole world to win.

The environment and human destiny itself is being taken to the brink of disaster.
All this because of the dictates of this system—because of its stranglehold on humanity. All this while technology and wealth exist on a scale and in forms never before imagined—technology and wealth produced by millions, billions, throughout the world who are nameless and faceless to the powers that be—technology and wealth that could and should be a resource belonging to humanity as a whole and used to meet the needs of people everywhere for a decent and ever-enriched material, intellectual and cultural life.

One of the world’s leading climatologists has spoken out about the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit, saying it would be better for the planet and future generations if the summit collapsed.
James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the UK Guardian newspaper that the climate negotiations are so deeply flawed that it would be better to start over. Hansen said, “I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track." He also said, “We don’t have a leader who is able to grasp [the issue] and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual.” Hansen is highly critical of Barack Obama—and even Al Gore—who is promoted as a big savior of the environment.

Keep in mind that Hansen was one of the first scientists to sound the alarm about the danger of global warming in the late 1970s, and has done groundbreaking scientific research on the subject. He has been an outspoken voice, telling people the truth about what is happening to the Earth's climate and the dangers posed by the energy practices of the world's largest economies, not least the U.S. He has stood firm despite attacks from powerful forces. The Bush administration repeatedly tried to suppress Hansen’s views and to prevent his findings and recommendations from reaching the broader public.

Hansen’s characterization of the looming danger of global warming is very important for people to hear:
“This warming has brought us to the precipice of a great ‘tipping point.’ If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to a ‘different planet,’ an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet.” (James Hansen, “State of the Wild: Perspectives of a Climatologist,” 10 April, 2007. )
About the Copenhagen Summit's stated goal of reaching some kind of compromise agreement in dealing with global warming caused by the energy practices of the world's economies, Hansen said this:

"This is analogous to the issue of slavery...On these kinds of issues you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%."

References:
The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, James Gustave Speth, Yale University Press 2008
The End of the Wild, Stephen Meyer, the MIT Press 2006
The Empty Ocean, Richard Ellis, Island Press 2003
“G8 to Earth: Drop Dead,” Revolution #171, August 2, 2009
“Capitalism, the Environment and Ecology Under Socialism,” Raymond Lotta, Revolution #52, June 26, 2006
“How the Palm Oil Industry is Cooking the Climate,” Greenpeace (www.greenpeace.org), November 2007
Reflections, Sketches, and Provocations, Bob Avakian, page 46, Text 9, "The Land Question in the Final Analysis Is a Global Question, or What a Look at a World Map Is Good For"

Obama's War Speech: The Questions It Raises… And The Answer That Must Be Given

By Larry Everest
Source: www.revcom.com

On Tuesday, December 1, at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, President Barack Obama announced that he would send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. He also called for 10,000 more NATO troops, which pushes the total U.S.-led forces to nearly 150,000, and he announced plans to step up the war on a number of fronts including (without being specific) in Pakistan. Obama has now tripled the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan since he took office.
These military forces will not be going to Afghanistan to set up vaccination programs or conduct literacy classes for Afghan girls. They are going there as part of the most destructive military machine on the planet, to wreak violence. The military machine that has bombed wedding parties, that has held thousands of young Afghan men in Bagram prison without charges, that kicks down doors in the middle of the night—this machine is being strengthened and further unleashed.

The West Point speech is being called the "defining moment" of Obama's presidency. Thus far into his term, at least, that is true. So it is important to look deeply at the questions Obama posed and the answers he gave—and in doing so to get into the real underlying causes of the military escalation now being put into effect.

Why is the U.S. Army in Afghanistan?Obama began his speech this way: "It is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers.… As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda…. Al Qaeda's base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban—a ruthless, repressive and radical movement that seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere."
Obama later returned to his explanation of why the Taliban and al Qaeda had taken root in

Afghanistan: "Now, the people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades. They've been confronted with occupation by the Soviet Union, and then by foreign al Qaeda fighters who used Afghan land for their own purposes."

Obama implies that the U.S. had nothing to do with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and that it bears no responsibility for the growth of the Taliban and al Qaeda there, or the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the region. According to Obama, the U.S. itself therefore played no role in the events that lead to the attacks of 9/11.

The facts are different. The U.S. actually helped prompt the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In July 1979, some five months before the Soviet invasion, the U.S. had initiated a covert campaign to destabilize Afghanistan's pro-Soviet government by arming and funding the Islamist opposition. The goal, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, was "to induce a Soviet military intervention." When the Soviets did intervene in December, Brzezinski wrote Carter: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."

The Carter administration undertook this operation because at the time the U.S. was locked in a bitter struggle for global supremacy with what was then the Soviet Union.* After helping trigger the Afghanistan invasion, the U.S. worked behind the scenes with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia throughout the 1980s to make the war much longer, more violent, and more destructive. These forces organized, funded, and armed the Mujahideen ("warriors for Islam"). While many other Afghans took up arms against the Soviet invaders, the U.S. and its partners worked to build up the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist fighters. Over the next decade, the U.S. government funneled more than $3 billion in arms and aid to these fundamentalist forces, and in so doing helped fuel a global Islamist movement. This is where Osama bin Laden got his start. This is where the seeds of al Qaeda and the Taliban were first sown.

During the 1980s there were some Afghans fighting against the Soviet occupation who opposed religious fundamentalism and both U.S. and Soviet imperialism. They stood for an entirely different future—a future free of imperialist domination, free of capitalist exploitation, and free of the backward, traditional feudal social relations and ideology that keep most of the Afghan people in shackles—especially women. These forces were led by Afghanistan's revolutionary Maoists. Yet these forces were targeted—viciously and murderously—by all the reactionary forces involved in the Afghan conflict—the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet imperialists, the Islamic Mujahideen, and the U.S.-backed warlords.

When the Soviets finally pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, more than a million Afghans (along with 15,000 Soviet soldiers) had been killed and one-third of the population—that's over 7 million people—driven into refugee camps. Just two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed. Its defeat in Afghanistan had played a major role.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan was left in a state of civil war between the existing pro-Soviet regime and different groups of Islamist religious fanatics and reactionary warlords who fought each other while repressing the people. Yet the U.S. rulers considered their Afghan gambit a tremendous success. When asked by the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998 (January 15) whether he regretted inducing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and "having supported the Islamic [fighters], having given arms and advice to future terrorists," Brzezinski replied: "Regret what?... What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"

"What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these 'outmodeds,' you end up strengthening both." Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA From the talk, "Why We're in the Situation We’re in Today… And What to Do About It:A Thoroughly Rotten System and the Need for Revolution"
It is easy, of course, to start the movie on September 11, 2001. But if you press the rewind button you find out that the U.S. government had not been innocently minding its business all these years only to find itself the victim of an utterly unprovoked attack. There is a whole history here of arming and utilizing Islamic fundamentalists, and of being party to destroying a million lives. Indeed, it is hard to overstate the level of horror and needless suffering that was visited on the Afghan people through this superpower dance of death. All of this was done in the interests of preserving and defending U.S. imperial domination. None of that justifies what was done on 911—but if we are to understand the actual causes of what is going on, we had best understand the full dimensions of the story.

Is Obama's "Attention Deficit Disorder" Diagnosis True?Obama said that after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, "the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere."

So where was U.S. attention focused in the 1990s in this part of the world? Beginning with the first Bush administration (George H.W. Bush) and continuing through the Clinton administration, the U.S. moved on a number of fronts to consolidate the tremendous advantage it derived from the fall of the Soviet Union. It aimed in particular to deepen and extend its domination of the Middle East and Central Asia. This included the 1991 invasion and destruction of Iraq, which caused what a U.S. Census Bureau international analyst—Beth Osborne Daponte—estimated to be over 200,000 deaths (another 500,000 at least were killed by UN sanctions during the 1990s), and the basing of massive U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. It also included new overtures to, and increased working through, predominantly Hindu India, which aggravated the rivalry between India and Pakistan—a rivalry which the U.S. has attempted to manipulate and play for its own advantage. All this, along with the continued U.S. support for Israel in the face of the massive rebellion of the Palestinian people in the late '80s and early '90s, involved tremendous and often horrific levels of violence against Arab and Central Asian peoples and the assertion of open U.S. domination.

At the same time, deeper American economic and social penetration of the region modernized certain aspects of the societies there, while undercutting traditional relations. Taken together, all this led to the beginning of open conflict between the U.S. and Islamist forces. The same so-called "holy warriors" whom the U.S. had initially supported and often pulled together on the basis of reactionary opposition to "modernization" now began to oppose the U.S. and to carry out guerrilla operations against it in that region. Meanwhile, by 1996, the Pakistani government had helped install the Taliban in Afghanistan to both stabilize the country under extremely repressive Islamic rule, and to use it as a counterweight to Indian ambitions in Afghanistan and the region. All these developments led the U.S., by the late 1990s, to once again intensify its attention to Afghanistan, in the context of the region as a whole. During this period a consensus emerged (which was solidified by 9/11) among what would become the dominant political forces in the U.S. that Islamic fundamentalism was becoming a prime obstacle to U.S. objectives, that it would need to be defeated, and that a radical restructuring of the whole region was needed to undercut these forces and secure U.S. hegemony.

Much of this history is well-known—certainly to anyone in public office or in the mainstream press. Yet following Obama's speech there was no comment on his "omission" from either.
What Was the U.S. Trying to Accomplish By Invading Afghanistan in 2001?Obama defends the decision to invade Afghanistan and says it brought good results. He notes that Congress "authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them, an authorization that continues to this day"—98-0 in the Senate, 420-1 in the House of Representatives—and that NATO supported the U.S. and that the UN Security Council "endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks. America, our allies, and the world were acting as one to destroy al Qaeda's terrorist network and to protect our common security."
"Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy—and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden—we sent our troops into Afghanistan."
Here we must go deeper into exactly what was done under "this banner of domestic unity and international legitimacy" and why.

The Bush regime had a number of objectives in invading Afghanistan in October 2001. First, to quickly and massively attack and conquer Afghanistan in order to demonstrate to the world that America's will had not been shaken by the September 11 attacks and that it was still willing and able to crush with overwhelming force any who dared challenge it. This is not just macho posturing, but essential to maintaining global "credibility"—i.e., fear—and dominance.
Second, the U.S. wanted to quickly overthrow the Taliban regime and install a loyal client state in Afghanistan as part of an overarching effort to deepen its military control of Central Asia (Afghanistan abuts two of the U.S.'s main potential rivals—Russia and China) and to gain greater access to and control of the region's energy. (During the 1990s the U.S. was attempting to build a pipeline across Afghanistan that would avoid going through Russia or Iran. The U.S. oil giant UNOCAL was the prime contractor—one of its consultants was Hamid Karzai, later installed by the U.S. as President of Afghanistan.) Doing so was also part of an effort to defeat anti-U.S. Islamist forces across the region.

Simply capturing or killing Osama bin Laden was never the central objective. (Obama's claim that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan "only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden" is at least open to serious question. According to the Guardian UK (10/14/01), "President George Bush rejected as ‘non-negotiable' an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.")
Obama praises the results of the U.S. invasion: "Within a matter of months, al Qaeda was scattered and many of its operatives were killed. The Taliban was driven from power and pushed back on its heels. A place that had known decades of fear now had reason to hope," and points to the formation of a U.S.-created regime with Karzai at the head as a positive development "to help bring a lasting peace to a war-torn country."

It was nothing of the kind. The Karzai regime was a regime of U.S. lackeys, warlords, drug-dealers and war criminals—many as hated as the Taliban they replaced. Warlord Gen. Abdul Dostom, who has served as Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Afghan National Army under Karzai, is responsible for the 2001 Dasht-e-Leili massacre when some 2,000 prisoners of war were forced into boxcars, suffocated to death, and dumped in the desert. And, among other viciously anti-woman policies and laws, the US-installed Afghan government passed a law in February, 2009, which applies to Afghanistan's Shia population (10-15 percent of the Afghan people) that explicitly legalizes rape in marriage by banning women from refusing to have sex with their husbands. That law also prevents women from working, going to school, getting access to health care or other services, or even leaving her home without husband's permission. This replacement of one set of oppressors with another—not surprisingly—did nothing to end oppression there. Rather it reinforced the sources of oppression in Afghanistan—foreign domination, capitalism and feudalism, religious fundamentalism, and patriarchy.
(It is also important to briefly take note of what else was done under "the banner of domestic unity and international legitimacy." In the days directly after 9/11, the Bush Administration introduced the USA-PATRIOT Act, which tremendously heightened the reach and scope of the repressive apparatus in the U.S. Immigrants were rounded up and held for months without charges and often deported in the dead of night. Massive surveillance programs were begun, beyond even what had been authorized by the PATRIOT Act and without the knowledge of most of Congress. "State secrets" was made an excuse to deny all kinds of information that showed the U.S. in a bad light, even when this meant preventing people who had been detained and tortured "by mistake" from having their day in court. The U.S. arrogated to itself the right to kill and capture people anywhere in the world, without trial, if the U.S. suspected these people of being "terrorists." Most dramatically, it instituted a widespread regimen of torture—beginning at Guantánamo (where people were detained indefinitely, in violation of international law and of the U.S. Constitution) and then spreading throughout the military, into Iraq and Afghanistan; and over 100 people were killed as a result of this torture. None of this was even mentioned in Obama's speech—in large part because he has actually continued the great majority of these repressive measures!)

Why is the Taliban Resurgent and the U.S. Occupation in Trouble? “It is a system of capitalism-imperialism…a system in which U.S. imperialism is the most monstrous, most oppressive superpower…a system driven by a relentless chase after profit, which brings horror upon horror, a nightmare seemingly without end, for the vast majority of humanity: poverty and squalor…torture and rape…the wholesale domination and degradation of women everywhere…wars, invasions and occupations…assassinations and massacres…planes, missiles, tanks and troops of the USA bombarding people in faraway lands while they sleep in their homes or go about their daily lives, blasting their little children to pieces, cutting down men and women in the prime of life, or in old age, kicking down their doors and dragging them away in the middle of the night…while here in the USA itself the police harass, brutalize and murder youth in the streets of the inner cities—over and over again—and then they spit out their maddening insults, insisting that this is ‘justified,’ as if these youth are not human beings, have no right to live, deserve no respect and no future.”

From “The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have: A Message, And A Call, From The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.” Revolution #170, revcom.us How did things get to the current point—with the Taliban resurgent and the U.S. occupiers in trouble and losing ground?
Obama claims that after starting out well things started going badly (i.e., for the U.S. occupiers) in Afghanistan for two reasons. First, "in early 2003, the decision was made to wage a second war in Iraq... for the next six years, the Iraq war drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national attention..." Second, while the Karzai regime is "a legitimate government ... elected by the Afghan people," according to Obama, "it's been hampered by corruption, the drug trade, an under-developed economy, and insufficient security forces."

What about this explanation? Yes, resources were diverted to the war in Iraq. But without getting into a full analysis of the trajectory of the Afghanistan war, it's important to note that this isn't the essential reason for the Taliban's resurgence and its ability to "control additional swaths of territory in Afghanistan" as Obama put it. There are deeper reasons which have to do with what U.S. capitalism-imperialism brings to the world and countries like Afghanistan.
The first is the brutality of the U.S. occupation. U.S. forces—hailed as heroes by Obama—have committed countless atrocities in Afghanistan—from bombing wedding parties, to murdering civilians, to humiliating Afghans with house-to-house searches, to locking people up in U.S.-controlled dungeons, where torture, illegal detention, and rendition have been in effect.

Here's one example. On August 22, 2008, the people in Azizabad, a small village in western Afghanistan, were asleep when U.S. forces attacked—first with guns, then air strikes. By the next morning, according to UN investigators, over 90 people had been massacred, including 60 children and 15 women. There have been many such massacres during the course of the war—most recently on September 9 of this year when 100-200 were killed in one attack in Kunduz province. While there are no precise figures for the number of Afghan casualties (in part because the U.S. military refuses to release – and perhaps doesn't even count -- them), studies have been done that give a glimpse of the scope of the carnage. Prof. Marc Herold documented 3,000-3,400 civilian deaths, mainly as a result of U.S. bombing, during the first six months of the war alone. The Guardian UK (11/19/09) estimates that 6,584 civilians were killed (by both the U.S. coalition and the Taliban) between 2006-Oct. 2009. Womens' rights activist and former member of the Afghan Parliament Malalai Joya states that 8,000 civilians have been killed in the war. (Democracy Now!, 10/28/2009)

These crimes have strengthened the Taliban. The Taliban for its part has used a combination of strong-arming people combined with playing upon the nationalist sentiments of the masses (particularly the Pashtun nationality in Afghanistan), as well as the appeal of "traditional Islam" in a society that has been deeply shattered, to take advantage of this.
Second, the warlords, landlords, tribal chiefs and pro-U.S. power brokers in Afghanistan are widely hated for preying on, exploiting and brutalizing the Afghan people. A prime example is Karzai's own brother—Ahmad Wali Karzai, who was put in charge of Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city. He's a major warlord and drug trafficker—and also on the CIA payroll.
It was not until 2005 that the Taliban began to mount an offensive against the occupation in earnest; the U.S. occupation forces and their hand-picked lackeys had years to show they could improve life for the Afghan people. But they didn't do it. Why? Because the U.S. imperialists were not in Afghanistan to liberate the people or develop the country; they were in Afghanistan to achieve their global objectives: to defeat al Qaeda and to create a pro-U.S. regime that would not destabilize neighboring countries and would be amenable to U.S. regional objectives.
And there is a deeper reason here. You cannot "improve life" for the Afghan people without uprooting the traditional social relations, and the class forces that benefit from those relations, which have held the masses in subjugation and darkness for centuries. Imperialism introduces great instability into oppressed nations, driving peasants off land and into the cities, and often introducing education to a broader section of masses (in order to modernize some sectors of the society). This is a byproduct of, and a necessity for, the implantation of capitalist relations in predominantly feudal societies. In doing this, imperialism relies on the former ruling forces and new elites to keep a lid on the upheaval ("to manage the transition," in their words)—that is, to prevent masses from raising their heads and rebelling against the exploitation, the dispossession, and the backward relations and ideas that still hold the society and its people in their grip. Imperialism relies on, and must rely on, the very forces, in other words, that benefit from either the old traditional forms of oppression or the new "market-based" ones—and sometimes both.
The kind of revolution that would decisively move to uproot those relations—the kind of revolution that would rely on and unleash the masses to take destiny into their own hands -- would necessarily directly oppose structures of foreign (including U.S.) domination. That's why the U.S. must rely on and further entrench and reinforce very oppressive forces, which do in fact stand in the way of a better life for the people, as a bulwark against any such revolution. A force like the Taliban—which does not actually pose the possibility for a real rupture with those relations of domination and dependence and which represents, often very directly, some of the most backward feudal forces in the country—can "gain traction" in that situation; at least to the point where they win a following among a section of people, and can intimidate the rest into acquiescence.

Third, Obama mentioned that al Qaeda and the Taliban had been able to establish havens in Pakistan. What he did not mention is that the Pakistani state, long backed and funded by the U.S., has actively promoted Islamic fundamentalism as a pillar of its legitimacy, and funded, supported and probably helps direct Jihadist fighters in Afghanistan and in Kashmir as part of its rivalry with India. This has included tolerating, even supporting, the Taliban and al Qaeda. And many in Pakistan are turning to the fundamentalists out of hatred for the dictatorial rule of the military, and the domination of Pakistan by U.S. imperialism, in league with big landlords and capitalists—a domination that has left the vast majority of the population in deep poverty and deprivation.

(While Obama did not spell out his precise plans for Pakistan, a subject we'll be covering in future issues of Revolution, there are widespread reports that he will be escalating the war there too, including through stepped up attacks by drone or unmanned aircraft. The stability of the Pakistani state is of major concern to the imperialists and one of their main reasons for escalating in Afghanistan.)

Again, these are the kinds of relations and regimes the U.S. promotes around the world. And Obama is not breaking from this practice—he's escalating it, as we'll discuss below.
How Can Obama Label One Million Deaths a "Success"?While Obama spoke out against the war in Iraq in 2002, and rode to the White House based in large part on the credibility among the disaffected with which that endowed him, at West Point he hailed this war as a success and job well done: "Today, after extraordinary costs, we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end ... we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are successfully leaving Iraq to its people." And his "surge" in Afghanistan is being justified by, and modeled in important ways on, Bush's "successful" surge in Iraq.

Let's take a closer look at what Obama calls "success." The war in Iraq—a war based on lies—cost the lives of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqis; over 4 million have been driven from their homes; the Sunni population—some 20 percent of Iraq's population—has been decimated by the U.S. occupation and a sectarian war of ethnic cleansing unleashed by the reactionary Shi'a forces the U.S. helped empower—an ethnic cleansing with tacit U.S. support. That slaughter, along with cash payments to the defeated Sunni fighters, is at the heart of the "successful" surge in Iraq. Yet Obama did not utter a word about the Iraqi victims of this U.S. aggression. Apparently the only civilians worth talking about in his view are the 3,000 killed on September 11.

Obama's treatment of Iraq is typical of his approach throughout his speech. He repeatedly refers to Americans who have lost their lives, but not to those America has killed in its "war on terror," whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or other countries. By doing this, he is rendering totally invisible the enormous toll of people killed by the U.S. In sheer numbers, the U.S. has so far killed something like 200 to 300 people for every American killed in the attacks of 9/11! By rendering these victims invisible and not even worth mentioning, he is training people in this country to see the world as if only American lives count. He is training them, in other words, in the mindset of imperialism.

And what of this new Iraq? The U.S. has brought to power an alliance of reactionary, pro-U.S. Kurdish warlords with reactionary Shi'ite religious parties. Iraq's military and police are dominated by sectarian death squads. Religious fundamentalism has been strengthened and the abuse and subjugation of women—including enforced veiling and legal discrimination -- has intensified and is actually worse than it was under Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, Iraq is being gradually opened up to foreign exploitation– including its vast oil sector. And Iraq's ethnic and religious faultlines have not been healed—and remain volatile and potentially explosive.
Whose Interests—and What "Way of Life"—Are Really Served by Obama's New Strategy?The strategy Obama laid out at West Point is not less violent or imperial, nor is it more truthful or humane than Bush's strategy.

The core of Obama's argument for why people should support an escalating and ongoing war in Afghanistan is the same as Bush's: I'm doing it to protect you and your loved ones:
"If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow.... I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here we were attacked on 9/11 and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak."

"This is no idle danger, no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. And this danger will only grow if the region slides backwards and al Qaeda can operate with impunity."

Here's the truth. The system Barack Obama is leading cares nothing for human life—whether those living within its borders or those living outside. It has demonstrated this for the 200-plus years of its existence by its actions in every corner of the globe. Its workings have savaged millions upon millions of lives, whether through outright killing or condemning people to lives of exploitation and destitution. The rulers care about people's safety only to the degree that it impacts on their power, legitimacy, and grip on the population.

"Our security" and "way of life" is based on global exploitation and plunder in the interests of a relative handful of imperialists. Crumbs from this plunder are used to pacify and/or retain the loyalty of a large section of the "home" population. The privileges accorded to a large section of Americans are based on the parasitical exploitation of billions. And this parasitical exploitation, in turn, rests on highly repressive, and widely hated, political structures in oppressed or Third World countries—like the Karzai regime in Afghanistan—imposed by the U.S. to enforce its
strategic interests and meet the needs of global capital.

Our "security" and "way of life" also rests on the grinding exploitation of tens of millions of people within the U.S. itself, with millions of immigrants denied any rights whatsoever and declared outlaws and millions of others living in desperate circumstances, seeking jobs and a way to live and often consigned to a life of crime and punishment. This too is reinforced by both raw force carried out by the repressive institutions of the police, prisons and army—the instruments of dictatorship, to be scientific—and by the ideas promoted through the schools, media, religious institutions, etc. So Obama's talk of "we"—as if everyone living within the borders of the U.S. shares common interests and a common cause, as if "we're all in this together"—covers over the real divisions in the world and within the U.S. It's a framework and way of looking at the world that hides the most fundamental facts about society and how it operates, and instead aims to win people to go against their own most basic interests—which actually consist of a world without one nation dominating another, a world without exploitation, and a world without all the relations and poisonous ideas that flow out of and reinforce those relations-- in short, a communist world.
This "we-have-to-protect-our-way-of-life" outlook is poison—and promoting this outlook among both the most oppressed and more enlightened sectors of society—is Obama's special role, and special talent, for the rulers. If this speech does nothing else, it must serve as a way for those who do know better to break those who should know better out of this outlook.

So people shouldn't join the imperialists in "threat assessments" to their system, much less rally to its defense. But even if you take this selfish and ultimately complicitous standard—the "safety of the American people"—as your own, Obama's strategy—which will greatly increase the violence brought to bear against the people of Afghanistan—will further stoke hatred of the U.S. and support for Islamic fundamentalism.

How Is U.S. Imperial Domination Different From All Other Imperial Domination?Toward the end of his speech, summing things up, Obama said: "We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours." This is double-talk aimed at obscuring how the system operates. First of all, when it suits their needs and interests, the imperialists will massively occupy countries for years, even decades—as they're doing right now with 100,000 troops in Iraq and perhaps even more in Afghanistan! At the same time, modern empires have many other tools for shaping the destinies of countries and entire regions without direct occupations.

And though the U.S. doesn't try to "claim resources" due to differences in "faith and ethnicity"—it does seek to control key resources (and indeed whole economies!) to further its strategic contention with other rivals and to maintain the functioning of U.S. capitalism—no matter the faith or ethnicity of its victims. And imperialism does enforce national oppression—against oppressed peoples (what Obama refers to as "ethnic" groups) right within its borders, and overall by forcibly perpetuating the national oppression and subordination of most countries in the world to imperialism. The history of the U.S. empire—from its genocide against the native peoples, the use of Africa as a hunting ground for the slaves who built its wealth, the theft of huge sections of Mexico, and its numerous invasions of other countries, clearly illustrates this—and clearly contradicts Obama's assertion. And a key element of the entire "war on terror" has been to seize greater access to crucial energy resources: in Afghanistan to further U.S. contention with Russia in particular over oil and gas pipelines; in Iraq to open up the country's vast oil resources to international capital.

Do We Need 9/11-Style "Unity" Again?Obama ended his speech with a stark assessment of the difficulties confronting the empire, and a call for the kind of support the rulers had following 9/11: "[W]e as a country cannot sustain our leadership nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse. It's easy to forget that, when this war began, we were united, bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again."

Unity like we had after 9/11? If you recall, that was a time of a lynch-mob atmosphere of chauvinist hysteria, fear-mongering, and the suppression of any critical thinking about why the 9/11 attacks happened and what should be done about them, and any critical resistance to the crimes the U.S. empire was preparing before our eyes. Wars were launched on the basis of lies. Basic freedoms were severely truncated, and in some cases eliminated. Now, eight years later, after the horrors of what that "unity" and support for America brought to the world—over a million dead in Iraq, legalized torture, and the devastation of Afghanistan—why would anyone with a shred of concern for humanity want to repeat THAT chapter in U.S. history?
But that's precisely what Obama has called on people to do—to blindly get behind the empire as it violently forges ahead in Afghanistan and globally. Obama's course is a criminal course; to fall blindly behind this, or to merely express trepidation or opposition and then impotently shrug your shoulders… especially for those who knew better when Bush did the same… is nothing less than complicity.

The Answer That Must Be GivenPeople need to do just the opposite. We have pointed to the fundamentally antagonistic interests, worldwide and within this country, concealed and obscured by talk of "we the people," and by the chauvinist notion that American lives are more valuable than those of other people. The imperialists are pursuing their interests, and we've had eight years to see where that all leads—whoever the President is. It is time and past time to see that these interests are directly opposed to those of humanity as a whole … and to take up and fight for those larger interests.

Obama spoke the truth when he said America was "passing through a time of great trial," and in the midst of "storms." These storms are due to the workings of imperialism and the whole cauldron of contradictions the U.S. "war on terror" has set roiling in the Middle East and Central Asia in particular, as well as to the most profound financial crisis since the 1930s.
If anything positive for humanity is going to come out of this "time of trial" it will happen because millions of people refuse to heed Obama's call and refuse to choose between supporting either imperialism or Islamic fundamentalism. It will happen—and it will only happen—if people instead can be led to break out of the entire framework set by this current clash. Humanity does need another way, in the interests of the people. This means revolution and it requires the broadest and most determined possible resistance to this criminal escalation.

With the whole world watching, Obama and the U.S. rulers have been openly debating just how much force and violence they should bring to bear against the people of Afghanistan. Now the whole world is going to be watching what the people in the U.S. do when it's decided to escalate and continue this war of conquest and empire. Will they resist? Or will they passively go along? Will they shed their delusions about Obama—or will they face reality and judge him by what he's actually doing, not his false narratives, his empty promises, and his double-talk?
* The Soviet Union had actually been born through a revolution in 1917, and had embarked on building a socialist society and working toward a communist world. But, through a complex series of struggles, new bourgeois forces within the communist party there seized power and capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union by the mid-1950s. By the time we are referring to, it had become a capitalist-imperialist power and leader of its own bloc, which was clashing very sharply with the U.S. for global predominance during the 1960s, '70s and '80s. For more on this see Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, February 2009, available online at revcom.us. [back]
From Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda on the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (documentation and endnotes can be found in the book)
Chapter 4: Double-Dealing Death in the Gulf, pp. 88, 89-90
The Soviet invasion, in turn, was motivated by a combination of Moscow's own imperial ambitions and its concern over stepped-up U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan and possible military action in Iran. In his book Iran Under the Ayatollahs, author Dilip Hiro argues that Moscow feared that following the embassy seizure, Washington was preparing a military assault on Iran, which in turn would "have encouraged President Hafizollah Amin of Afghanistan to loosen his ties with Moscow. Forestalling such a move was one of the main considerations which led Soviet officials to order their troops into Afghanistan."

The Soviet invasion came in the wake of stepped up "competition for influence with the United States throughout the Middle East, Indian Ocean, Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia regions," as the former Reagan NSC staffer Howard Teicher and his wife put it in their book on U.S. policy in the Gulf. Taking over Afghanistan rescued a pro-Soviet government in Kabul, gave Moscow control of a key buffer state between Iran and Pakistan, and put its forces closer to the Persian Gulf. For the U.S., the fertile crescent had become, as Brzezinski labeled it, an "arc of crisis" stretching from Afghanistan through Iran to Saudi Arabia—a label that is once again being applied to this region in the wake of the U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Empire Strikes Back
Intervention in the Iran-Iraq War was one facet of a multi-dimensioned and aggressive U.S. response to the shocking turn of events in 1979. Washington's overarching goals were protecting the Gulf's pro-U.S. oil sheikdoms while preventing the Soviet Union from turning regional turmoil into geopolitical gain.
In July 1979, some five months before the Soviet invasion, the U.S. had initiated a covert campaign to destabilize Afghanistan's pro-Soviet government by arming and funding the Islamist opposition. The goal, according to Brzezinski, was "to induce a Soviet military intervention." When the Soviets did intervene in December, Brzezinski wrote Carter: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."
Over the next decade, the U.S. government funneled more than $3 billion in arms and aid to the Islamic Mujahideen, helping create a global network of Islamist fighters, some of whom would form the core of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda. When the Soviets finally pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, more than a million Afghans (along with 15,000 Soviet soldiers) had been killed and one-third of the population driven into refugee camps.
*****
On U.S. National Security Strategy
Chapter 1: "Go Massive, Sweep It All Up", pp. 19-21
One World, One Empire

Neither mystical links with al Qaeda, invisible weapons of mass destruction, reflexive posturing, electoral politicking, nor diverting attention from corporate scandals and a weak economy explained why the U.S. government was hell-bent on attacking Iraq. But the sweep and enormity of its global agenda did.
"They have ambitions of essentially reshuffling the whole deck, reordering the whole situation—beginning with the strategic areas of Central and South Asia and the Middle East that are more immediately involved now—but, even beyond that, on a world scale," Bob Avakian of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA wrote shortly after Sept. 11. "They've set themselves a very far-reaching agenda with gigantic implications."

This momentous shift in U.S. global strategy was crystalized in a new National Security Strategy (NSS) published on September 20, 2002. This new NSS echoed and codified previous strategy papers, including the 1992 Pentagon Defense Guidance and the Project for a New American Century's 2000 paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," discussed above. Then it went further.
Taking off from the hegemonic vision developed by Reagan and Bush I officials during the 1990s, the NSS argued that the 1991 Soviet collapse had left the U.S. the world's only superpower—with "unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence"—and that U.S. policy should be to "work to translate this moment of influence into decades of peace, prosperity, and liberty."

What does this really mean? The document's mantra is creating "a balance of power that favors freedom." Like terrorism, "freedom" hasn't been defined by the Bush regime, but the substance of the NSS, as well as the voluminous writings of the imperial strategists who have shaped it, make clear that it means the freedom of America's dominant corporate-political elite to impose its values, interests, and economic system on all others. As the NSS baldly put it, "These values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society."

The new National Security Strategy claims that the U.S. will not seek "unilateral advantage," yet it is a doctrine for just that—militarily, politically and economically. It amounts to an audacious declaration that the U.S. aims to remain the world's sole superpower for decades to come. The practical implementation of this new Bush doctrine will no doubt be shaped by internal debates and external events, including the growing unrest and resistance in now-occupied Iraq. Nonetheless, its implications are clearly enormous.

A core thesis, which has been a central theme in neo-conservative theorizing for over a decade, is preventing the rise of rival powers which could challenge the U.S. regionally or globally. The NSS envisions accomplishing this objective by first maintaining overwhelming military superiority over all other countries and combinations of countries, and second by no longer containing possible opponents, but eliminating them before they can emerge: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld elaborates that the U.S. would deter "potential adversaries not only from using existing weapons but also from building dangerous new ones in the first place," and the U.S. would no longer judge states by their actions or intentions, but by their potential "capabilities."

To achieve this staggering goal, the U.S. power structure envisions staggering methods, including disarming various countries, toppling defiant regimes, occupying strategic regions, and waging counter-insurgency wars against a variety of political forces standing in the way of U.S. control.
Marine General Peter Pace, the Joint Chiefs vice chairman, has stated that "the scope for potential anti-terrorist action included—at a minimum—Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Georgia, Colombia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and North Korea." Pace knew of what he spoke: The New York Times reported that by January 2003, the Pentagon had drafted a "National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism" which called for 20 to 30 years of war on a variety of states and anti-U.S. groups.