As I write this column, it is day one and two of what threatens to be a new “forever war, ” an enterprise both evil and stupid, launched by the US and Israel against Iran.
American bombs are falling on Teheran, and Iran’s rockets have been launched toward American linked targets across the region, with strikes reported on the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and of course Israel. The 200 casualties reported in the early stages of attack on Teheran will only be a down payment on the butcher’s bill that will be paid before this hideous business is resolved. Already reports are emerging from Iran that the joint US/Israeli bombing has hit a girl’s school, killing around a hundred children. This will not be the last “collateral damage” we’ll see during this nightmare.
While hailed by Trump as yet another of his unique achievements, this war threatens to be at least as destructive as the spasms of imperial over- reach that occurred during America’s attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. (Gee, I wonder why Trump didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize this winter- maybe now the world and the Nobel committee will be ready to praise his brilliant strategies of blood and iron peacemaking. If not, I imagine that His Orangeness will be bombing Stockholm soon. There is, after all, a limit to how much unfairness he should have to endure.)
While Trump’s rank and unchecked immorality may well spark a regional if not a world war, it will be good news for the “masters of war” referenced in the Dylan song quoted above. And the masters have had a good year already, with NATO members like Canada being bullied into radically increasing their “investments” in weapon production, and with American investment in weapons, already the largest in the world, increasing and what threatens to be a new spasm of global arms race leaving bloody footprints on the bodies of fallen innocents.
Even if the current outbreak is swiftly resolved, which seems unlikely, the war will draw down significant stockpiles of weapons and create more business for the corporate vampires who fatten on the blood of the innocent. The ‘60s rock classic asks and answers this key question: “War, what is it good for? absolutely nothing,” and while it is a fine song, it does ignore the elite minority for whom war is not a tragedy but a huge business opportunity. The masters of war are the ones who really know how to make a killing in business.
None of this is good for workers, and we should resist it at all costs. The latest imperial spasm is likely to grind on for a long time and flood the region in blood; it is likely to expand into the homelands of the Empire and its military industrial complex around the world, creating the American and Western casualties that it purports to prevent.
Workers will bear the brunt of all this, whether we watch our sons and daughters sent off to fight and die for the Empire overseas or see the social safety nets and programs we rely upon here at home wither, as tax funds flow into the war makers’ whirlpool of blood and profit instead. It is an old and vile story- powerful old men sending our daughters and sons into battle, pitting workers in one country against those in another, and we are in for another murderous retelling.
And yet Canada’s PM rushed to offer his endorsement of the attack,once more extending the dire national habit of “holding the bully’s coat,” in Linda McQuaig’s telling phrase.
Canadian workers and their allies should join the global chorus of condemnation against this immoral and dangerous adventurism.
While some enemies of the current admittedly noxious Iranian regime, particularly émigré’s who have fled the country and outside observers who rightly condemn the attacks on women and others who stand up against the regime’s theocratic misogyny will be tempted to celebrate Trump’s big adventure, workers should be united in opposing it.
There are precedents in the recent past. As recently as January 5, the Canadian Labour Congress responded to Trump’s kidnapping of the Venezuelan head of state by saying:
“The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) joins the international labour movement, including the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), in condemning the recent U.S. military aggression and violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty. Canada’s unions firmly reject any attempt at regime change through force, coercion, or foreign interference.” (emphasis added.)
We can only hope for a similarly principled statement about the illegally launched attack on Iran.
In the meantime, we need to tell the PM ([email protected] )that his craven support for Trump’s latest war is immoral and that it will hurt his party’s political standing. Carney campaigned on the slogan “Elbow’s s Up” and garnered international praise for a recent speech calling on middle powers to unite to resist “the hegemon”: now it would appear he meant to say “Hands Up, We Surrender.”
