Build the Broadest Opposition to the Bombing!
Build the Broadest Opposition to the Bombing!
Stop the War!
For two and one-half months the government of this country, acting under the cover of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has been engaged in a brutal, full scale bombing campaign against Serbia. Today’s demonstration is the largest protest against the war in the US so far and is a big step forward in building resistance to the bombing. It reflects the fact that broader sections of the population are being drawn into action, including a growing number of union locals.
Still, today’s demonstration pales next to the giant mobilizations, not so long ago, against US aggression in Central America and against the Gulf War, to say nothing of the struggle to end the Vietnam War.
Why has the movement been weak?
Why has the movement against this war been so terribly weak thus far? Two and a half months of deadly bombing should have produced a stronger reaction than this. Some would argue that the American people just don’t care, especially since no Americans are dying. It is true that many in the US don’t follow the war closely, that the shootings at Columbine High School drew far more interest. Just as there is surprisingly little opposition to the war, there are surprisingly few people who are gung ho for the bombing either.
But what of the hundreds of thousands who marched against US attacks on the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador, who tried to stop "Desert Storm" in its tracks? Why aren’t more of them, and others like them, here today?
Many progressives and activists feel like they are in a lose-lose situation. They ask themselves," Do I support murderous US imperialist bombing or do I support the Serb ethnic cleansing of three quarters of a million Kosova Albanians?" If we want to mobilize people against the war we have to address the contradiction that has left them feeling depressed and powerless.
Addressing both aspects
And we must address both aspects. To deny or to gloss over what has been happening in Kosova is to disrespect people’s intelligence and to alienate them.
How do we do it?
First, rip the humanitarian mask off the US-led NATO intervention. The US government has never been a moral force in world politics. Everything which has happened in the former Yugoslav federation pales before the genocidal assault on the Rwandan Tutsi earlier this decade. As many African American activists have pointed out, US imperialism, with no direct interests at stake, stood by and did nothing until the slaughter was over. Nor has the outpouring of aid to the Kosovar exiles been matched by similar aid to the victims of the Rwandan genocide or of the lethal civil wars currently battering several African states, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Angola and the Congo.
Second, hammer home the real reasons the rulers of the US have launched this war. These are a subject for a whole separate leaflet, but include fear of destabilization in Europe, rivalry with Germany for kingpin status in the area, the need for a forward base to monitor and intervene in Russia and especially in the oil-rich former Soviet Republics to the east of the Balkans, the opportunity to test weapons and military doctrine, and so on.
Third, show that imperialist military intervention cannot produce good results. Accept, for the sake of argument only, the NATO lie that the war is to prevent catastrophe in Kosova. So far the results include thousands dead, Kosova depopulated, the demonized Milosevic a Serbian hero, neighboring countries destabilized, and enormous misery to come as the destruction of the infrastructure of Serbia worsens.
Talk about the Kosovar Albanians too
Fourth, uphold the rights of the Albanian majority in Kosova to determine their own destiny. After over a decade of being denied the most basic rights by their government and now being driven as a people from their homeland into a desperate and uncertain exile, the Kosovar Albanians will surely demand their own state.
Fifth, don’t front for the Milosevic regime. Walk around this very rally and you will be handed leaflets and newspapers which make some bizarre claims:
• That Yugoslavia is under attack because it is somehow some kind of socialist country despite its corrupt and greedy ruling class, capitalist relations of production and the vicious ethnocentric ideology promoted by the state.
• That the hundreds of thousands of desperate Kosovar Albanians pouring into Albania and Macedonia are fleeing NATO bombs, not deadly systematic persecution by Yugoslav soldiers and paramilitary killers.
• That the fact Serbs suffered brutal ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Croatian army in Krajina earlier in the ’90s justifies the Serbian government's previous crimes like the massacre of 7000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and present effort to drive all the Albanians out of Kosova.
• That the only way to solve the problems in the region is to rebuild the Yugoslav federation, as if that could be done today by any other route than military conquest.
Unite everyone possible into the anti-war movement
Demonstrations are united fronts. People come to them with a variety of viewpoints. What unites us is opposition to the bombing. We should pull together all possible forces to fight the bombing and the threatened ground war. This certainly includes nationalist-minded Serbian-Americans and even conservative isolationists of the Pat Buchanan school, as well as pacifists and committed anti-imperialists and plain old decent minded people. A real obstacle to the broadest possible unity arises if the demonstrations have a formal principle of no criticisms of Milosevic’s government and no support of the rights of the Albanians in Kosova OR if the literature, speakers and slogans ("Kosovo is Serbia") make that a principle in practice.
We have to build a powerful anti-war movement capable of having an impact on the bombing campaign and of stopping the war criminals in the White House and the Pentagon from moving to a land war. We cannot do this without doubling and redoubling the forces in motion. And building such a movement can’t be done without facing the contradictions in the present situation and providing people with an analysis that reflects the real world and gives them a way to move.
National Executive Committee,
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
June 5, 1999
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