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

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markets, raw materials and sources of cheap labor at the expense of
its capitalist rivals. This road leads inevitably to a bloody catastrophe
for American capitalism and ultimately to a new imperialist war.
There are vital political lessons for the American working class in
the turn of events in Mogadishu. The criminal intervention in
Somalia was carried out under the cover of a full-scale propaganda
barrage in the capitalist media, promoting a colonial occupation as a
humanitarian rescue operation. Like all US military interventions, it
enjoyed the unqualified backing of the big business stooges in the
trade union bureaucracy.
These methods are not reserved solely for foreign interventions.
The same elements are being brought into play in promoting the
Clinton administration's deficit reduction plan, which is being sold
by the media and the labor bureaucracy as a program to create jobs
and improve the living standards of American workers. This is just as
big a lie as the claim that US troops were sent to Somalia to feed the
hungry. Both at home and abroad, it is the interests of profit, not of
people, which determine the policy of the capitalist ruling class and
its government.
It is impossible to defend jobs, living standards and basic rights at
home without rejecting the perspective of defending the "national
interest" of American imperialism abroad.
American workers must join with their class brothers and sisters in
Somalia in demanding the immediate withdrawal of all US and other
imperialist troops from that country.
The only answer to the worldwide eruption of militarism and the
attacks on the working class at home lies in forging the international
unity of workers in every country in the struggle for socialism. This
is the revolutionary program and perspective fought for by the
Workers League and our co-thinkers in the International Committee
of the Fourth International.