BERNIE SANDERS, the US Senator, issued a live video on Tuesday warning that a war by the US against Iran would be ‘many times worse than the Iraq War.’
Sanders, the front runner to win the Democratic Party nomination to stand against Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential elections, was responding to reports in the New York Times that the Trump administration was secretly preparing plans to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East, a plan the paper claims is being spearheaded by Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton.
Sanders said: ‘Sixteen years ago, the US committed one of the worst blunders in the history of our country by attacking Iraq. Now, based on that disaster that he helped bring about in Iraq, it appears that John Bolton wants a war in Iran.’
Bolton was a member of George Bush’s administration that bombed and invaded Iraq, and who remains an unapologetic cheerleader for a war that killed over a million Iraqi civilians.
Sanders said in the video that he was trying to build a coalition in Congress to force Trump to ask Congress for any authorisation to take military action against Iran or ‘anyplace else’ and that Congress ‘must do everything it can to prevent the Trump administration’s attempts to put us on the brink of a catastrophic and unconstitutional war with Iran.’
Sanders attack on Trump and Bolton’s drive to war in Iran and ‘anyplace else’, a reference to the moves to overthrow the legal government of Venezuela, reflects the rapidly developing class struggle of the working class in the US against Trump and the US ruling class and the way it is dumping the economic crisis of US capitalism onto the backs of US workers, and workers throughout the world.
In the past year America has experienced the biggest number of strikes and lock-outs since 1986 with official estimates that 485,000 workers had taken strike action.
Last year saw the highest number of work stoppages since 2007, with 20 major strikes and lockouts as the powerful American working class took action to defend its pay and public services from Trump’s policy of ‘Make America Great’ for the multi-billionaires and giant corporations by driving the working class into the gutter.
This situation will only immeasurably sharpen in the most revolutionary way as the full effects of Trump’s trade war with China and the rest of the world by imposing massive import duties, hits the US working class at home by driving up the cost of consumer goods.
Income inequality in the US, the highest in any country, has been accelerated by Trump’s billion dollar tax hand-outs to the rich, while about 13 million American children are living in homes with incomes below the poverty line.
The mass movement against Trump’s war on the working class is now being reflected in the growing opposition to the US war against Iran and Venezuela, a war intended to secure and dominate the vast oil reserves of these nations making them into the private property of American imperialism.
This opposition can be seen in the 37 day occupation of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington by anti-imperialist activists determined to prevent it being seized from the legitimate government of Maduro and handed over to the CIA stooge, Juan Guaido.
Despite having all amenities cut off and the embassy surrounded by police, the occupiers remain defiant in opposing the illegal coup attempt masterminded by the US, and they have massive public support.
The mass movement of workers and youth in the US has created fear in the ruling class, a fear expressed openly by Trump when he declared a ‘war against socialism’ singling out Sanders as the enemy who will ‘destroy’ American capitalism.
Sanders, who is an out and out reformist, is not the real threat. The real threat are the millions of US workers and youth who are propelling him forward as they become revolutionised by the world capitalist crisis and who will not support wars abroad by the same ruling class that is waging war against them and their families.
The US workers have a decisive role to play in putting an end to imperialist wars. They are becoming more and more aware that the enemy of the people of Iran and Venezuela is their enemy as well and that the only solution to US imperialist class wars at home and abroad is to put an end to the bankrupt capitalist system through a socialist revolution and a regime and systemic change at home!
