Bush took particular aim at north Korea, Iran, and Iraq as "the world's dangerous regimes." Washington's belligerent stance towards north Korea stands out in particular because it is a country in which the revolutionary struggles of the toilers led to the overturn of capitalism and the establishment of a workers state. Workers and farmers there stood up to the massive assault by Washington during the Korean War and have defended their country in the face of massive U.S. firepower ever since. For this, the U.S. imperialists have never forgiven them.

Despite the bipartisan plans about where to go in their war at home and abroad, the U.S. rulers face resistance from toilers around the world.

The employers and their government in Washington have already been running up against opposition to their escalating attacks on immigrants. Strikes, organizing drives, and protests of plant closings like the struggle being waged by meat packers at the American Meat Packing Corporation in Chicago highlight the willingness of the working class to put up a fight. The recent protests in New Jersey against detentions of Arab and South Asian immigrants, fights by Arabs who have been fired for expressing their views on September 11 and supporting Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation of their land, and mobilizations demanding drivers licenses in California are other examples.

The stakes are high in Bush's two-front war--a war that is ultimately aimed at workers and farmers throughout the United States. By singling out immigrants for sharp attacks the rulers hope to push back a section of the working-class vanguard, dividing working people and weakening our ability to fight.

The labor movement has an enormous interest in defending workers' rights that are under attack and taking a stand against the victimization of anyone by the capitalist rulers and those who serve them--whether native or foreign born, or with or without "proper" papers. By taking the moral high ground, working people can deepen the solidarity that is essential in standing up to the employers and their government and defending the basic interests of the working class and its allies.

All workers have an interest in demanding the release of all of Washington's detainees with no strings attached and opposing the drive by the Bush administration against the millions of workers and others who overstay their visas. We need to demand U.S. imperialism keep its hands off Korea, Iran, and Iraq, and to get every soldier, warplane, ship, and nuclear weapon out of the Korean peninsula.

Organizing to defend workers' rights at home and abroad prepares the working class for bigger battles, which build the kind of leadership capable of organizing the toilers to take power out of the hands of the warmakers, overturn capitalism, and open up the possibility for the first time to fight to end once and for all the wars, racism, discrimination, and other social evils endemic in the brutalities and dog-eat-dog society capitalism offers.
 
 
Related article:
Bipartisan 'two-front war' aimed at working people  
 
 
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