The editorial commented on news reports that Point Blank Body Armor, a company with plants in Florida and elsewhere that make bulletproof vests and related equipment, had sold substandard gear to the Marines. The column condemned “the production and sale by the bosses of defective bulletproof vests used by U.S. soldiers,” which it said was “increasing the dangers facing the GIs stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Similar statements appeared in a front-page article the following week.

The call to “oppose faulty vests for GIs” can only be read as backing “our GIs.” But the U.S. imperialist army and its troops are not “ours.” The U.S. military does not defend the interests of working people. It is the army of the tiny handful of capitalist families who maintain their power and privilege off the wealth produced by the labor of our class and its allies.

Along with federal, state, and local cops, the army is the body of armed men and women used by the propertied rulers to defend their exploitation and oppression of workers and farmers, from Boston to Baghdad. Washington’s bloody wars abroad are an extension of the bosses’ offensive at home to push down wages, extend hours, throw safety to the winds, and cut pensions and medical coverage.

That is why class-conscious workers do not join in calls for “better quality” bulletproof vests or other military equipment. So-called protective gear produced by Point Blank is no different from other weapons that allow units of the Army, Marines, and Special Operations forces to carry out urban warfare with greater brutality.

Workers’ interests are harmed by anything that strengthens the army of our exploiters. That includes anything aimed at reducing the dangers the U.S. Army confronts as Washington carries out military operations against our brothers and sisters around the world.

The earlier editorial stands in contrast to the working-class internationalism that is and remains the hallmark of the Militant since our first issue more than 75 years ago. It was a political adaptation to what communists have called social patriotism. It echoed one of the rationalizations used by “our own” capitalist class to mislead working people into backing U.S. government war policies.

From our origins, the Militant has responded to U.S. wars and military interventions—from World War II to Korea, from Vietnam to the Gulf wars of 1991 and today—by opposing any appeal by the employers for “national unity” and “equality of sacrifice.” We’ve urged labor and the oppressed to reject calls to subordinate or let up struggles for better wages and conditions, for Black rights, for women’s equality, and for other demands.

Above all, we have explained that working people must organize a revolutionary movement to take power out of the hands of the war makers and establish a workers and farmers government—the only way to put an end to imperialist war and brutality once and for all.

War profiteering, whether by Point Blank or Boeing, is endemic to capitalist war. As the bosses whip up patriotic sentiment to rationalize using young workers and farmers as cannon fodder, they also squeeze every penny they can from war production—from their own government, other governments, and often from both sides.

The response by class-conscious workers is to demand immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and other imperialist troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Korea, Haiti, Colombia, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and anywhere else they are deployed. That is in the interests of working people—both at home and abroad.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home