Workers League - Behind the US invasion of Somalia - Mehring Books

20
suffering. How is it to be explained that these same forces are involved
in the deliberate starvation of other peoples? In Iraq, children
continue to die by the thousands as a result of the US war and UN
sanctions. Meanwhile, Washington has tightened its economic blockade
of Cuba, threatening the people there with the cutoff of food and
medicine.
Workers cannot allow their political judgement to be guided
simply by an immediate emotional response to the suffering in
Somalia. The ruling class and its media apparatus are experts in the
cynical exploitation of images of this suffering to further the interests
of American imperialism.
Moreover, it is necessary to bear in mind that when you give
political support, you have to take responsibility for the consequences.
If you support the intervention of US Marines in Somalia,
you then share responsibility if those same marines shoot down
Somali civilians. You have to take responsibility for what they do, not
only in the next few months, but over the course of years.
As in every other major question, the working class must assume
its own independent class standpoint. To cede to imperialism the task
of rescuing its own victims is to accept the rationale for the
recolonization of not only Somalia, but all of the oppressed countries,
and for US military interventions around the world.
Even as US forces are consolidating their grip over Somalia, it was
announced on Wednesday that thousands of imperialist troops are
being dispatched to Mozambique and the US is pressing for "preemptive"
air strikes against Serbia.
If American military intervention is justified by the starvation in
Somalia, why not send US troops into other countries where capitalism
has created starvation, civil war and mass suffering? India, the
former Soviet Union, parts of Latin America and many other lands
are all likely targets.
Leading spokesmen for US imperialism have been making a case
precisely for such interventions. In a television interview earlier this
month, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew
Young said, "We've got to find ways to stem the tide of chaos in the
world ... in places like Liberia, to some extent in Haiti... we're going
to have to find a way under the auspices of the United Nations to deal
with internal questions.... It's appropriate that we learn what is
possible and what is necessary in Somalia and then we see how that
lesson can be applied with others."
In an editorial published on December 17 entitled "Choosing