| From the archives of The Memory Hole |
From a UAW Local President: "Workers Should Not Support This War"
Dear Brother Yokich and members of the International Executive Board:
The war against Afghanistan holds great dangers to workers, our families and our unions. The politicians and mass media promote the war, declaring it will "end terrorism." But the labor movement should know better than to support this war.
Remember how on Sept. 10 most people in this country saw George Bush and his appointees as labor haters, racists, anti-women, anti-gay bigots, pro-big business and a vote-stealing gang? UAW's Solidarity magazine was filled with articles exposing Bush & Co. Did Sept. 11 change their character?
No one can seriously argue that Bush cares anything for the working people of this nation. He has hijacked the horror of Sept. 11 to ram through his anti-labor, anti-people program. No wonder UAW President Stephen Yokich noted that, "even before the dust had settled in lower Manhattan, some conservatives and corporate executives were trying to exploit this national crisis" (Solidarity, November 2001, p.4).
With almost no opposition Congress voted to let Bush raid Social Security for military spending. Fast Track for the Free Trade Area of the Americas bill is being pushed in Congress even though it has nothing to do with domestic security, and will hurt workers in the U.S. and Latin America. The "Patriot Act" was rammed through curtailing long cherished civil liberties.
Attorney General Ashcroft (the guy who admires the slave-driving Confederacy) is in charge of our civil rights! That should make us all nervous. Racist murders have occurred; places of worship have been attacked; racial profiling is being defended; over 1,000 people have disappeared into jail with no charges. Strikers have been vilified as unpatriotic. Ashcroft intends to intensify surveillance of peaceful, legal organizations committed to peace and social justice.
The Bush Gang is giving billions in bailouts to the airline industry and the stock-jobbers on Wall Street. But when it came to helping the airline and aircraft workers who have lost their jobs, Bush & Co. said "NO!"
So what is the war really about? A top oil executive testified before Congress back in 1998 that the oil industry wanted to put a pipeline through Afghanistan and needed a more pliable regime in Kabul. The big oil companies and Bush, who serves them, are out to grab the vast oil wealth of the former Soviet Central Asia. This is a war for OIL PROFITS and profits for the military-industrial complex.
The war has nothing at all to do with terrorism. The U.S. government trained, financed and armed bin Laden and the Taliban to overthrow a progressive, secular government. Anti-union death squad regimes around the world keep getting U.S. support. September 11 hasn't changed U.S. sponsorship of terrorist training at the Army School of the Americas ("School of the Assassins") at Fort Benning. It hasn't changed the U.S. plans to send $7 billion to Colombia where death squads have murdered 4,000 union leaders in the past 15 years! It hasn't changed U.S. policy to starve the civilian population of Iraq even though the UN has shown that nearly 1 million children have died as a result of U.S. sanctions.
It is a sad commentary that most U.S. labor leaders were slow to oppose the Vietnam War. We must not be silent now. Labor must join the youth, church leaders and community leaders who are demanding an end to the bombing and an end to this war. Calls to patriotism cannot mask the real intentof Bush & Co. to crush civil rights, fill the pockets of the super-rich and destroy the labor movement. We should not help them. We need money for jobs, education and health care. We need a foreign policy based on justice for all people and nations. Only this can remove the roots of international violence.
I urge the International Executive Board to take a stand against Bush's war.
Sincerely,
David Sole
President, UAW Local 2334