This idea was raised by Socialist Workers Party candidate Martín Koppel in a statement on September 11. Koppel said, "Half a century ago the revolutionary workers movement and other opponents of colonial outrages, racism, and anti-Semitism in all its forms warned that by waging a war of terror to drive the Palestinians from their farms, towns, and cities, the founders of the Israeli state and their imperialist backers in North America and Europe were pitting the Jewish people against those fighting for national liberation in the Middle East and worldwide; they were creating a death trap for the Jews, which Israel remains to this day. By its systematic superexploitation of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; by its never-ending insults to their national and cultural dignity; by its ceaseless murderous violence in countless forms--U.S. imperialism is turning North America into a death trap for working people and all who live here."

José Ramon Balaguer, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, spoke at the São Paulo Forum held in Havana on December 4–7. He noted that the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon demonstrated that "a handful of major powers could not monopolize all the world's wealth, development, technology, culture, education and public health, and at the same time remain immune to the consequences of the political, economic, and social polarization this process would provoke on a global scale."

These two statements get at the heart of what I was addressing in my talk. When Washington carries out ceaseless, murderous violence against the peoples of the world, it does this in the name of all who live in the United States. For example, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright showed no remorse over the tens of thousands of children who die every year because of the U.S.-inspired embargo of that country, coldly saying "that is the difficult choice we have to make." But working people--the vast majority--had nothing to do with making this "difficult choice."  
 
Death trap for Jews in the Middle East
Koppel's statement about the Zionist state of Israel had been put forward some 30 years ago in the Pathfinder pamphlet How Can the Jews Survive? A Socialist Answer to Zionism, by George Novack. His conclusion is as true today as it was then: "Every expedient short of the struggle for socialism, any substitute for that, will end in calamity for the Jews. They cannot achieve security for themselves or anyone else so long as the root causes of discrimination, racism and reactionary nationalism continue to exist.... The Jews have to link themselves with those forces in their own country and on a world scale that are fighting to overthrow imperialism and striving to build the new society. The solution of the Jewish question is indissolubly bound up with the complete emancipation of humanity that can be brought about only along the road of international socialism."  
 
Workers' struggles in the United States
A successful example of a fight to begin to break out of this trap was the development of an antiwar movement in the United States during the U.S. assault against the people of Vietnam. I encourage readers to study the chapter, "The Crumbling of U.S. Military Morale" in Out Now! A Participant's Account of the American Movement Against the Vietnam War, by Fred Halstead, published by Pathfinder Press.

At first working people in the United States largely supported or were neutral toward the imperialist war in Vietnam. But as the U.S. death toll mounted, and the brutality of Washington's war became a daily fact of life, a massive movement arose in solidarity with the struggle of the Vietnamese people and demanded the U.S. rulers bring the troops home. Through their experience many workers and farmers in uniform came to the conclusion that the war was a death trap as well, and rejected the lie that they had to make a "patriotic sacrifice."

Today the fight to oppose imperialism's assault on working people--both its military aggression against other countries and its attacks on workers' rights at home--is again a central question. The warmakers try to convince us that we should give up the rights we have won because "all Americans" must sacrifice against a common enemy. But the enemy of workers and farmers in the United States is the rulers in Washington who try to pit us against our brothers and sisters from the Middle East to Latin America. Our response must be to build solidarity with these fellow fighters. The solution to the economic and social crisis today, as George Novack stated over 30 years ago, "is indissolubly bound up with the complete emancipation of humanity that can be brought about only along the road of international socialism."  
 
 
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