Barack Obama and the U.S. capitalists he serves care nothing about the working-class children murdered in Syria or anywhere else. The war in Syria is two years old and has already killed 100,000 people, with nothing but useless rhetoric from Obama along the way. Now he is ready to slaughter thousands more in a racist attack on yet another Middle Eastern country.
In its imperialist assault on Iraq, the U.S. ruling class had no qualms about dropping bombs with depleted uranium, which causes widespread birth defects and cancer in children. It is now using drones to terrorize thousands in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. The U.S. military used Agent Orange and napalm to spread death and destruction among millions in Vietnam. Later, in the 1980s, the U.S. supplied sarin, the lethal nerve agent that may have been used in Syria, to one-time ally Saddam Hussein. He used it to kill thousands of Kurds in Iraq and untold civilians in his war with Iran.
Profit, not morality, drives Obama to bomb Syria, which houses a Russian naval base. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, by allegedly gassing his own citizens, crossed Obama’s “redline.” But rather than safeguard civilians, Obama’s ultimatum is one of several tripwires meant to assure U.S. global dominance in weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Obama’s real targets are potential nuclear powers Iran and North Korea, allies of rising U.S. rivals China and Russia.
Assad, with arms supplied by Russia’s Putin, has scored a tactical coup in the civil war. Sapped by a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. rulers had hoped to avoid fighting in Syria as they prepare for broader, global combat [see CHALLENGE, 7/31/13]. But with their need to control world oil supplies, Syria is sucking them even deeper into the Middle East quagmire.
The hypocrisy of Obama & Co. knows no bounds. U.S. imperialists, both conservatives and liberals, have far surpassed Hitler’s death toll of innocents. Supposedly “outraged” at Assad’s alleged killing of 426 children, Secretary of State John Kerry seems to have forgotten the orders he gave as a naval officer in Vietnam in 1968, in an encounter with Vietnamese civilians: “Open fire; let’s take ‘em” (Boston Globe 6/16/03).
Obama’s war machine also ignores the “collateral damage” its drones indiscriminately inflict from Pakistan to the Philippines. Kerry’s predecessor, Madeleine Albright, declared it was “worth it” when President Bill Clinton’s sanctions wiped out half a million children in Iraq (“60 Minutes,” CBS, 6/12/96). Nor is poison gas “morally obscene” to the White House when Middle East crude oil supplies are at stake:
In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent. The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence (Foreign Policy magazine, 8/25/13).
As U.S. bosses chastise or condone others’ use of WMD’s, they keep the lion’s share for themselves. The Pentagon maintains the most destructive nuclear, chemical and biological capabilities on earth. U.S.-sponsored arms “reduction,” “non-proliferation” and “elimination” treaties invariably seek to maintain a U.S. advantage.
When Britain, “the staunchest U.S. ally,” opted out of the Syria strike plan, and Obama was forced to seek Congressional approval, the disarray of U.S. imperialism was exposed for all to see. While every member of Britain’s Parliament and the U.S. Congress advances capitalist interests, they also reflect the rulers’ divisions. Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron represent Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and the big banks behind them. But the UK Labor Party, which torpedoed a resolution to shell Syria, is allied with Lakshmi Mittal, the billionaire owner of Arcelor Steel and the party’s biggest donor. Since Mittal does huge business with Iran, Labor urges “engagement” with Teheran rather than the bombardment of Syria, an Iranian satellite.
In any case, the effectiveness of Obama’s proposed air-war foray seems doubtful. If Assad survives to maintain his rule, it will embolden Iran and North Korea and their backers in Moscow and Beijing. If the strike somehow weakens Assad, then what? Will anti-U.S. al Qaeda militants gain the upper hand among the Assad opposition? Or will the U.S., already stretched thin by its failed adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, escalate the war by using ground troops to occupy Syrian soil?
Much more than Syria lies at stake here. Saudi Arabia, with its unsurpassed oil reserves, remains the lynchpin of the Middle East crusade U.S. rulers launched in World War II, when President Franklin Roosevelt vowed to defend the Saudis against any attack. Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden represented a non-royal faction of Saudi capitalists who were excluded from the nation’s oil wealth — and hell-bent on seizing it. Meanwhile, ascending imperialist China — which must have oil in quantities only the Middle East can furnish — would benefit from any anti-U.S. regime in the region. This explains Obama’s  refusal to aid Islamist anti-military forces in Egypt.
The only useful action against U.S. imperialism can come from the international working class, the class that fights and dies in the bosses’ wars. According to U.S. polls, a majority disapproves of Obama’s Syria scheme, despite nationalist appeals by Obama and the ruling-class media to “support America.” In fact, the interests of the U.S. capitalist class and the U.S. working class are diametrically opposed. Class struggle is a collision of the exploiters and the exploited.
At the moment, the widespread working-class disgust with U.S. rulers has yet to find organized political expression. This is the task of Progressive Labor Party. We must organize and influence demonstrations against the Obama war machine. From our base in mass organizations, we must expose capitalism’s attacks on the working class — including its wars, its racist cop-killers, its mass racist unemployment and poverty, from Bangladesh to Cairo, from Greece to Mexico to the U.S. Only the overthrow of capitalism, and the creation of a communist society run by and for the international working class, led by a mass revolutionary PLP, can free workers from the ravages of a profit-driven ruling class. Build PLP. Join us!