The massive, sustained bombing launched by the White House December 16 will be the deadliest the U.S. rulers have carried out since the Gulf war in early 1991. Like his Republican predecessor George Bush, President William Clinton has no qualms about sacrificing the lives of workers and farmers in Iraq for the interests of the billionaire families who rule the United States.

As in the 1991 war, and the other U.S. bombardments of Iraq since Clinton took office, the aim of the U.S. rulers is to strengthen Washington's dominance over the toilers in the Mideast, advance their military encirclement of the workers state in Russia, and deal a blow to the unquenchable struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination. At the same time, the American propertied families are seeking to strengthen their hand against their imperialist rivals in Europe and Japan.

The Clinton administration's professed concern over Baghdad's supposed "weapons of mass destruction" is pure hypocrisy. Not only is Washington the only power ever to use nuclear weapons against human beings, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S. rulers have repeatedly used chemical and biological weapons -against the peoples of Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries. And countless working people in Puerto Rico, the United States, and elsewhere have suffered from the testing of weapons of mass destruction.

On top of the blood of at least 150,000 Iraqis slaughtered in the Gulf war, Washington is responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million more, as a result of the unrelenting sanctions the U.S. government has spearheaded in the years since.

The U.S. rulers' latest assault on Iraq comes in the context of the spreading deflationary crisis of world capitalism and accelerating conflicts between Washington and its imperialist rivals in Paris, Bonn, Tokyo, Ottawa, and even London. The impending challenge of the euro to the U.S. dollar; moves by Paris and London to make certain military decisions through the European Union, instead of exclusively through the U.S.- dominated NATO alliance; and plans by Tokyo to initiate an Asian monetary fund counter to the IMF - all are signs that U.S. imperialism's relative strengthening vis-a-vis its competitors since the early 1980s has peaked.

The bombs raining down on Iraq today follow a year-long effort by Washington to carry out such an attack.

In November 1997, Clinton had to pull back from a military buildup in the Arab-Persian Gulf and accept a deal brokered by its ally and rival in Paris and by the Russian government. "The fact that the immediate threat of a military strike has been averted for the moment should not fool class-conscious workers and rebel-minded youth into letting their guard down," the Militant said at the time. The fuse for a U.S. assault on Iraq had gotten shorter, not longer.

Washington's next attempt, at the start of this year, continued to have a hard time winning backing from U.S. allies, except the British government. Clinton again had to accept a deal, this time brokered by United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan. " `Peace' deal sets hair trigger for war," read the front-page Militant headline. We explained that the attacks on Iraq were part of preparing for war against the workers state in Russia, as Washington pushed forward at the same time to expand NATO membership in Europe right up to the border of the former Soviet Union.

Just weeks ago, after the U.S. rulers said they came within hours of launching air strikes against Iraq, the Militant explained the provocative role of the so-called inspectors, and warned that nothing had been resolved, pointing to the inevitability of renewed U.S. aggression.

William Jefferson Clinton became president in the wake of the Bush administration's failure during the Gulf war to accomplish Washington's aim of establishing a stable client regime in Baghdad. The article "Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq" by Socialist Workers Party national secretary Jack Barnes explained that the 1990-91 war was the first "since the close of World War II that grew primarily out of the intensified competition and accelerating instability of the crises-ridden old imperialist world order. It is the increasing internal strains within the declining order that drove Washington to launch its murderous military adventure. The irremediable social and political conflicts, and consequent instability, that existed before the Gulf war and that underlay it have all been exacerbated." (See issue no. 7 of the Marxist magazine New International.)

Later, speaking days after the November 1992 elections, Barnes noted that the U.S. rulers expect Clinton "never again to make the error of beginning something he is politically unable to finish, as the Bush administration did in Iraq." But the world capitalist crisis has made it impossible for Clinton to do differently. The accelerated weakening of U.S. imperialism, not offensive behavior common to the class whose interests Clinton represents, is at the root of the scandalmongering that has already weakened the U.S. presidency.

Clinton took office as U.S. bombs were falling on Iraq in January 1993, air strikes begun by Bush with the incoming president's whole hearted agreement. Clinton ordered the bombing of Iraq once more in the midst of the 1996 election campaign. And now he is raining death and destruction on the Iraqi people once again.

The Socialist Workers Party National Committee has issued a call for action, urging workers, farmers, youth involved in social protests, and others to organize and build picket lines, speak outs, and other actions against Washington's deadly attack. Now is the time to take political tools like "The Opening Guns of World War III" and other issues of New International, as well as the Militant newspaper and revolutionary books and pamphlets, to workers at the plant gates, on picket lines, and side-by-side on the job - explaining the reasons for Washington's aggression and why all working people should oppose imperialism and its wars.

The SWP will hold a national leadership meeting January 1-3 to discuss the accelerating capitalist crisis and political polarization that underlies Washington's war moves, and the increased working-class resistance that points the way forward.

In his closing summary at the socialist conference held in conjunction with the December 4-6 Young Socialists National Convention, Jack Barnes pointed to the importance of bringing together those working people who are fighting the attacks of the employers and their government. This decaying capitalist world order, he said, will offer more executions, more brutality, more storm troopers used against strikes, more wars.

The U.S. rulers' bombardment of Iraq is an extension of their barbarity and assault on the rights of workers and farmers at home. Workers who are fighting the bosses, from the Illinois coal fields to the Kaiser Aluminum picket lines, are up against the same government, who deploys its cops and courts against labor. Farmers facing a mounting crisis that will force many off the land, especially a disproportionate number who are Black, are up against the same enemy. Young people protesting stepped-up executions, police brutality, deportations, attacks on women's rights, and attempts to gut affirmative action can recognize the same contempt for human beings and rights in the assault on the Iraqi people.

These fighters need to put at the center of their political activity today campaigning against the U.S. slaughter of the people of Iraq.  
 
 
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