Crimes and US Responsibility
by W.T. WHITNEY

Argentinean political commentator Juan Gelman thinks the Iraq war has “entered into perfect forgetfulness,” at least in the United States. He implies U.S. leaders enjoy impunity, despite having lied to rationalize their invasion and despite civilian deaths from their war. Memory may indeed be at fault, but maybe what’s happening is that not all U.S. Americans know. Perhaps their politicians prefer not to know.

Media coverage of the Iraqi disaster has been sporadic and never comprehensive. Yet that may be changing. Recent initiatives promise easy access to basic information. The contention here is that knowing what has happened in Iraq is essential for awareness of crimes there and for establishing guilt.

A study released on October 15 shows, for example, that the Iraqi death rate between 2003 and 2011 was 4.55 per 1,000 person-years, a figure 50 percent higher than rates for two years immediately preceding the war. That means 405,000 excess wartime deaths.  As of 2005 – 2006, the risk of death had risen 70 percent for women, 290 percent for men. According to the study published by PLOSMedicine, violence accounted for 60% of excess deaths with the remainder caused by “the collapse of infrastructure and other indirect, but war-related, causes.”  PLOS, the online journal’s publisher, is an “organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.”

A typical display of unrepentant arrogant ignorance.

Having surveyed 2000 randomly selected households in 100 geographic areas, the researchers claim improved methodology over earlier studies of civilian deaths. Commentator Juan Cole linked their results to the 500,000 excess Iraqi deaths in the 1990’s, when U.S. economic sanctions prevailed. Victims were mostly children. “The US polished off about a million Iraqis from 1991 through 2011,” he charges.

In another development, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has streamlined access to mortality summaries and thereby eased the monitoring of data. An announcement explained that “AFP’s internal spreadsheet tracking daily casualties from attacks in Iraq” is open to the public. The news service expects the “incredibly time-consuming and opaque” process of verifying death reports will become obsolete. The spreadsheet for each month has links to “other sheets for violence tracking” beginning with August 2012. Government figures are available for comparison. To see the AFP spreadsheet, go to http://www.bit.ly/AFPIraqToll.

Knowing the extent of social disruption caused by the war is basic to understanding the U.S. role in the calamity.  Social and environmental chaos set the stage for civilian deaths and suffering.

By 2007 Iraqi orphans numbered 5 million. As of March, 2013, 2.7 million Iraqis were internally displaced, 83 percent of them women and children. Also, 33 percent of women received no humanitarian assistance after 2003, 76 percent of widows receive no pension, and 55 percent of women suffered violent abuse.  The U.S. invasion and occupation caused destruction of sewage treatment plants, factories, schools, hospitals and power plants. Public health infrastructure is minimal, 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to potable water, food is short for 4 million people, and sanitation is inadequate for 80 percent of Iraqis.

And sectarian civil war, fostered by a U.S. strategy of divide and rule, contributed mightily to social disintegration. Soldiers and paramilitaries killed civilians. U. S. troops and sectarian militias accounted for an equal number of violent deaths.

Evidence is strong that environmental contamination from left-over weapons and munitions endangered civilians. The debris contains depleted uranium (DU), which many think causes birth defects and cancers. Birth defects are concentrated in areas of heavy fighting, notably Fallujah and Basra. An epidemiological study released on September 11 has returned that epidemic to the news, but for perverse reasons.

Having conducted household interviews, the Iraqi Ministry of Health discovered that 21.7 infants per 1,000 births were born with congenital defects – normal findings, it was suggested. There was “no clear evidence to suggest an unusually high rate of congenital birth defects in Iraq,” according to the research. The epidemic never happened.

Protests from scientists and humanitarian specialists flooded left-leaning media outlets. Some 50,000 people signed a Change.org petition calling for expert review of the study data and methods. For Neel Mani, a former WHO program director in Iraq, the study “runs counter to the consistent reports of medical professionals across Iraq.” He suspects politicization of the research,”

Studies show that: from 2006 through 2009, Fallujah experienced a twelve fold rise in childhood cancer and a rise in infant mortality at least four times regional norms; in Fallujah, from 2003 through 2010, congenital malformations increased to  15% of all births;  and in Basra during 10 years following the 1991 Gulf War congenital defects affecting babies born in one maternity hospital increased 17 – fold.   That trend continued: physicians at that hospital recently described “a 60% rise in birth defects since 2003.”    Researchers cast blame on depleted uranium and other metallic residues.

Britain’s Lancet medical journal questioned the report’s methodology and peer review.”    For Finnish environmentalist Keith Baverstock, a specialist on DU health effects, “This document is not of scientific quality. It wouldn’t pass peer review in one of the worst journals.” “Existing medical records in Iraqi hospitals” were ignored and “interviews with mothers [were used] as a basis for diagnosis.”

Former UN assistant secretary general Hans von Sponeck, formerly UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, indicated evidence for the “alarming rise in birth defects, leukemia, cancer and other carcinogenic diseases in Iraq [was] definitive.” He suggested “someone, somewhere clumsily decided that they would not release these damning findings, but instead obscure them.” Baverstock questions “the role of the US and UK, who have a conflict of interest in this sort of study due to compensation issues that might arise from findings determining a link between higher birth defects and DU.”

The conclusion here is that crimes were committed and cover-up continues. After all, the Geneva Conventions require combatants to protect civilians during wars. And, U.S. guilt is clear. The U.S. military, its contractors, and other U.S agents created an environment dangerous to civilians. And, U.S. officials lied to start the war.

Agencies for judgment and enforcement are in short supply.  The United States denies obligations under the International Criminal Court. Any action by the United Nations Security Council requires U.S. approval. But there is a remedy, one based on dual assumptions: U.S. involvement in Iraq joins a long series of military interventions abroad, and that’s what empires do. So obtaining justice requires joining the anti-imperialist cause and the people’s movement that is its substance. Easy to say, yes, and early victories are unlikely, but what else is there?

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

MEDIA LENS

By David Edwards

par for the course in Libya, as described here by the excellent Interventions Watch.  In similar vein, late last month, thirteen bombs were detonated on a single day in Baghdad killing at least 47 people. More than 5,000 people have been killed so far this year, according to the UN.

Despite all of this – after years of unmissable, terrible carnage in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – the Pew Research Journalism Project finds that ‘the No. 1 message’ on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, and Al Jazeera, was ‘that the U.S. should get involved in the conflict’ in Syria.

It seems that no level of suffering and chaos are sufficient to impede the structural ‘mainstream’ inclination to support state violence.  No surprise, then, that much of UK journalism had decided that the current Official Enemy was responsible for the August 21 attacks in Damascus long before the UN published the evidence in its report on ‘the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Ghouta area’ on September 16.

Just one day after the attacks, a Guardian leader claimed there was not ‘much doubt’ who was to blame, as it simultaneously assailed its readers with commentary on the West’s ‘responsibility to protect’. An Independent front page headline one week later read like a sigh of relief: ‘Syria: air attacks loom as West finally acts’ (Independent, August 26, 2013).

This was a close copy of the media response to the May 2012 massacre in Houla, which was also instantly and personally blamed on Syrian president Assad.

Fog Of War

The rapid media conclusion on Ghouta was particularly striking because the issues are complex – literally, rocket science – and evidence has again been gathered under live fire in the middle of a notoriously ferocious civil, proxy and propaganda war. Earlier claims relating to use of chemical weapons had been adjudged ‘a load of old cobblers’ by veteran journalist Robert Fisk. It was also clear that instantly declaring Assad’s guilt a ‘slam-dunk’ fed directly into a rapidly escalating US-UK propaganda blitz intended to justify a massive, illegal attack on Syria without UN approval.

With Qatar reportedly supplying ‘rebels’ to the tune of $3 billion and Saudi Arabia $1 billion, and with Russia supplying the Syrian government with $1 billion in weapons, the stakes are high indeed. The fog of both the propaganda and conventional war obstructs and falsifies the facts at every turn. Who to trust? How can we know the lengths to which different agencies might be willing to go to secure outcomes of vast geopolitical significance?

For example, it is not clear how many people were killed in the August 21 attacks. A preliminary US government estimate, commonly cited by the media, claimed that 1,429 people had been killed, including 426 children. But as investigative journalist Gareth Porter noted:

‘That figure, for which no source was indicated, was several times larger than the estimates given by British and French intelligence.’ (Our emphasis)

The day before the US estimate was released, British intelligence reported just 350 dead. A couple of days later, a French report concluded that at least 281 people had died. These discrepancies, particularly when contrasted with the precision of the US figures, naturally raise suspicions.

On September 13, three days before the UN report on the Ghouta attacks was published, an incredulous David Aaronovitch of The Times, asked Mehdi Hasan, Huffington Post UK’s political director:

‘I ask again. Do you seriously doubt Syrian government used chemical weapons two weeks ago?’

Hasan replied:

‘Gun to my head, I think he probably did. But… I want to wait & see what inspectors say & hear more about our “intel”.’  A few days earlier, Hasan had written:

‘I want Assad gone and I believe him to be a brutal and corrupt dictator. I wouldn’t be surprised either if it turns out that his troops did use sarin against civilians in Ghouta.’

On August 29, one week after the attacks, the Guardian’s George Monbiot commented:

‘Where we are: 1. Strong evidence that Assad used CWs [chemical weapons] on civilians. 2. But v hard to see airstrikes producing any improvement. Agree?’

We certainly agreed with Monbiot’s second point, but we simply had not seen the evidence justifying his first. We wrote to him quoting chemical weapons expert Jean Pascal Zanders, who worked for the European Union Institute for Security Studies from 2008 to 2013:

‘No, where’s the “strong evidence”? CW expert Zanders: “In fact, we – the public – know very little”. http://tinyurl.com/q4np9qn’

Monbiot replied:

‘Perhaps I shd’ve said strong balance of prob. Rebels wld need a lot of hardware to have done it. Either way, case 4 interv v weak’

In a Guardian article two weeks later, Monbiot wrote:

‘None of this is to exonerate Bashar al-Assad’s government – or its opponents – of a long series of hideous crimes, including the use of chemical weapons.’

Thus, ‘strong evidence’, walked back to a ‘strong balance of prob’, had become an assertion that the Syrian government had committed hideous crimes with chemical weapons.

The comments above pretty much sum up the ‘mainstream’ view on Syrian government guilt, perceived as ranging from certain to probable. We cite Hasan and Monbiot because they are two of the most vocal and respected anti-war voices working in the corporate media.

The point is not that Aaronovitch, Hasan and Monbiot are wrong – the Assad dictatorship has committed many horrific war crimes, and may have again in Ghouta. But these and numerous similar media claims were not rooted in any evidence we had seen at the time they were made. In other words, UK journalists appeared yet again to be succumbing to the influence of state propaganda demonising an Official Enemy, exactly as happened with Iraq and Libya.

Predicting The UN Report

On September 7, Reuters reported a key point rarely even mentioned by journalists considering the merits of a Western attack on Syria:

‘No direct link to President Bashar al-Assad or his inner circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some U.S. sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward.

‘While U.S. officials say Assad is responsible for the chemical weapons strike even if he did not directly order it, they have not been able to fully describe a chain of command for the August 21 attack in the Ghouta area east of the Syrian capital.’

On August 30, the Independent reported:

‘The report by Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) on the Syrian attacks… failed to make a case for war. There was no evidence directly linking President Assad and his coterie to the attack, the blame attached to the regime was by default, inasmuch it was held the opposition did not have the wherewithal to mount such an operation.’

Gareth Porter exposed how the initial US government response to the attacks, released prior to the UN report, was based on ‘intelligence that is either obviously ambiguous at best or is of doubtful authenticity, or both, as firm evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack’.

Porter added, disturbingly, that ‘the Obama administration’s presentation of the intelligence supporting war’ was arguably ‘far more politicized than the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate that the George W. Bush administration cited as part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq’.

Brushing these reservations aside, many media predicted that the UN report would go beyond its remit and blame the Syrian government, and even Assad personally. Thus, the Observer: ‘some officials [are] claiming it will point the finger at the Assad regime’. (Peter Beaumont, ‘US and Russia seal deal over end to Syria chemical arms,’ Observer, September 15, 2013)

The Telegraph headlined the same prediction:

‘UN report will point to Syrian regime’s responsibility for sarin attack’ (Ruth Sherlock, Telegraph, September 12, 2013)

And the Daily Mail:

‘UN report will point the finger at Assad regime for huge chemical attack… but insiders admit there is only circumstantial evidence’ (Simon Tomlinson, Daily Mail, September 12, 2013)

The fiercely pro-war Times headline for September 13, 2013 went further still:

‘Assad is to blame for chemical strike — UN’

After publication of the report, the Independent claimed that ‘UN weapons inspectors find “clear and convincing” evidence of regime gas attack.’ (David Usborne and Kim Sengupta, i-Independent, September 17, 2013)

Despite these numerous predictions and affirmations of blame, the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall wrote that the report had been ‘shamefacedly cautious’. Why?

‘It also seems clear that those responsible for the Ghouta attack, from Assad downwards, are unlikely to face justice soon, or at all. The UN report declined to blame the regime, let alone to name those behind the atrocity.’ (Our emphasis)

Commentators, indeed, were wrong to suggest that the UN report had blamed Assad.

If the UN was disgracefully cautious on September 16, Human Rights Watch (HRW) had been bold in blaming the Syrian government one week earlier:

‘”Rocket debris and symptoms of the victims from the August 21 attacks on Ghouta provide telltale evidence about the weapon systems used,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “This evidence strongly suggests that Syrian government troops launched rockets carrying chemical warheads into the Damascus suburbs that terrible morning.”‘

HRW presents itself as a neutral, dispassionate observer of events in Syria. But HRW director Ken Roth has openly supported, not just a US attack on Syrian government forces, but one that is more than symbolic:

‘If Obama decides to strike #Syria, will he settle for symbolism or do something that will help protect civilians?’  John Tirman, Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies, replied to Roth on Twitter that this was:

‘Possibly the most ignorant & irresponsible statement ever by a major human-rights advocate. #Syria Escalating war ≠ civ protect’

by BARRY LANDO

Lando

Paris.

In his address to the UN a few days ago, President Obama came the closest any American leaders has come to acknowledging America’s shameful legacy with Iran: overthrowing a democratically- elected government, installing a corrupt, repressive dictatorship in its place. It was something of an apology-almost. In fact more than 30 years ago, during the hostage crisis, another American President, Jimmy Carter attempted to block a 60 Minutes broadcast that also suggested the U.S. owed Iran something of an apology.

At the time, I had already made several reporting trips to Iran for 60 Minutes; had met its young revolutionaries; knew of the past relations between Iran and the U.S.– of the close ties between the Shah’s secret police–the Savak–and the CIA. It was not difficult to understand the volatile anti-American emotions that had exploded with the revolution. They were being stoked by Khomeini’s more extremist followers. They had organized the taking of 54 American Embassy hostages to undermine the moderates in the new chaotic regime, and advance their own radical cause.

Indeed, the anti-Iranian outrage provoked by the hostage-taking was boiling in the United States. In Washington, I was shocked to see stickers on every door up and down the corridors of the State Department hallways backing “The 54”, and a huge billboard on in New York, right up the block from CBS, with the most diabolical image of Khomeini, glowering over 57th street. Americans I spoke with seemed to lack any understanding of the history and emotion driving the Iranians. I suggested we do a crash report on the subject for 60 Minutes. Mike Wallace and our executive producer, Don Hewitt, agreed.

Over the next four days, we stitched together a very strong segment based on a series of interviews in New York and Washington.  Former officials from the State Department and the CIA gave vivid first hand accounts of the extremely close cooperation between the U.S. and the regime of the Shah, despite the mounting evidence of torture and corruption under his rule.

Jesse Leaf, for instance, a former CIA analyst, said that early on in the 70′s he had wanted to write a report on torture in Iran but was ordered not to. “You’d have to be blind deaf and dumb and a presidential candidate not to know there was torture going on in Iran, “  Leaf said. “We knew what was happening and we did nothing about it, and I was told not to do anything about it. By definition, an enemy of the Shah was an enemy of the CIA.  We were friends. This was a very close relationship between the United States and Iran.”

Another former CIA officer, Richard Cottam, also condemned the U.S. for turning a blind eye to the excesses of the Shah, and refusing to deal with minority opposition groups.  Such were the policy guidelines, he said, laid down by Henry Kissinger.

Mike Wallace asked: “What you seem to be saying, Professor Cottam, is that when the question “Who lost Iran?” is finally asked, Henry Kissinger is at the top of your culprit’s list.”

Cottam: “I think Henry Kissinger’s idea of diplomacy in this sense is…is intolerable…And Kissinger to cut us off entirely from…from a major popular force. I think is, to a very extensive extent, responsible for a lot of what’s happened, yes.”.

In our report we also showed copies of classified documents, seized by the Iranians who had captured the Embassy, indicating that American diplomats based in Teheran had actually warned Washington months earlier that radical Iranians might attempt to take U.S. diplomats hostage, particularly if the U.S. allowed the Shah to come to the U.S. for medical treatment, as was then being talked about. Those warnings had been ignored.

[pullquote]“You’d have to be blind deaf and dumb and a presidential candidate not to know there was torture going on in Iran, “  —Jesse Leaf, former CIA analyst in the 1970s. [/pullquote]

Now Iran’s relatively moderate president Bani Sadr was attempting—unsuccessfully–to defuse the crisis that was daily undermining his own political position. In return for releasing the hostages, he was demanding that the U.S. return the Shah, who was currently undergoing medical treatment in the U.S. Bani Sadr had other demands: the return of the moneys that, he claimed, the Shah had embezzled; an American pledge not to interfere in the future affairs of Iran; and an admission of U.S. past wrongs towards Iran.

In light of America’s interventions in that country, was the demand for an apology so outrageous? That was the stark question we posed as the title of our 60 Minutes report:  “Should the U.S. Apologize.” The final cut of the report ran 25 minutes—an unusually long segment for the program.

But then the White House intervened. President Jimmy Carter called Bill Leonard, the president of CBS News to request that the network not broadcast the report. I was amazed. I knew of no other time that an American president had attempted to squelch one of our broadcasts.

Hewitt, Wallace, and myself were summoned to Leonard’s office to screen the segment for the CBS News president, and discuss what should be done.

Carter had insisted that our report would undermine the American position in the hostage negotiations. His argument made no sense. We were not revealing anything that harmed America’s national security. There was nothing we were reporting that was not common knowledge in Iran.  The ones who might be surprised by our revelations were American not Iranian viewers. In other words, the only way our report could possibly undermine the U.S.’s negotiating position with the Iranians was by simply letting American’s understand the emotions driving the other side.

Before the meeting in Leonard’s office, I had my editor make a copy of the report. I felt I had no other moral option, if CBS News refused to broadcast the segment, than to quit and give the copy to Public Television or anyone else who would agree to put it on the air.

To his everlasting credit, Bill Leonard refused to back down. He requested only that we change the title from “Should the U.S. Apologize” to the more neutral “The Iran File.”

And that’s what went out at 7 P.M. that Sunday night, more than thirty-three years ago.

BARRY LANDO is a former producer for 60 Minutes who now lives in Paris. He is the author of The Watchman’s File. He can be reached at: barrylando@gmail.com or through his website.

BILL VAN AUKEN, wsws.org

In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, US President Barack Obama elaborated a doctrine of aggressive war in pursuit of US interests in the Middle East that stands in direct opposition to the founding charter of the UN and the most fundamental tenets of international law.

The US, he said, “is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests” in the Middle East and North Africa. Paramount among these “core interests” was “the free flow of energy from the region.”

This doctrine has a long pedigree in US foreign policy. Enunciated in slightly varying forms by Eisenhower and Carter as well as Bush senior and junior, it has been carried into practice in military interventions in Lebanon, the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the US-NATO war on Libya, as well as numerous smaller covert interventions, bombing campaigns and cruise missile attacks.

In the immediate wake of having been forced to retreat from the use of US military force against Syria, Obama’s reiteration of this policy rang somewhat hollow. He found himself compelled to pull back from what had been an imminent military assault in the face of overwhelming popular opposition both at home and abroad.

This was expressed first in the vote against a resolution for war in the British House of Commons, depriving Washington of its key international ally in the assault on Syria, and then in the massive outpouring of antiwar sentiment in the US itself, presenting the US president with the politically untenable prospect of having his request for an authorization for the use of military force resolution rejected by the US Congress.

It was under these conditions that Russia threw Obama a lifeline in the form of a proposal for Syria’s chemical weapons disarmament, and the US administration seized it in order to extricate itself from a serious crisis.

Within this context, Obama’s speech signaled a significant tactical recalibration on the part of US imperialism. It advocated a “diplomatic resolution” of the dispute over Syria’s chemical weapons and a “political settlement” of the two-year-old civil war that Washington has fomented, funding and arming Islamist-led militias seeking to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad.

With respect to Iran, which has been the principal target of US intervention in the region, including in Syria, Obama declared that Washington is “not seeking regime change.” Saying, “I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested. He announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would meet his Iranian counterpart in an attempt to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

It is doubtful that the administration itself has a clear understanding of where it will end up with this approach. Given the political obstacles to military action, it may well amount to playing for time—going through the motions of diplomatic efforts in order to make the case that they proved fruitless because of Syrian and Iranian intransigence, leaving no option but war. Implicit in the statement about “testing” the diplomatic path is the threat that should it fail, military measures will follow.

On the other hand, Iran long served as a pillar of US policy in the Middle East and it is not excluded that the leaders of the Islamic Republic, a right-wing bourgeois regime, might cut a deal with the “Great Satan.” When the Iranians see what Washington is demanding in return for an easing of punishing sanctions, however, they may well, in the words of one US official, experience “sticker shock.”

Whatever the short-term shifts, the predatory strategic aims of US imperialism remain unchanged. While immediate military action has been postponed, the danger of war remains, driven by the deep-rooted contradictions and the crisis of American capitalism.

For the past two decades, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, it has been the policy of successive US administrations to utilize American imperialism’s military preeminence as a means of offsetting the erosion of its economic dominance. This has been expressed principally through a succession of wars and interventions in the strategically vital and energy-rich regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

It is far from clear, however, that Washington’s use of its military assets has served to advance these aims. Each of its wars has ended in debacle. While Obama bragged in his speech about ending the war in Iraq, the reality is that over 1,000 people are being killed every month in sectarian political violence, while the government is more closely aligned with Iran than with the US. Afghanistan, where Obama claimed that the US occupation forces had “achieved their mission,” the results threaten to be as bad or worse. And Libya remains crippled by violent clashes between rival militias, even as China appears poised to make the greatest gains in oil contracts.

Given this record, there was not only overwhelming popular opposition, but significant trepidation within the US ruling establishment over an intervention in Syria. This military action threatened to become not the “unbelievably small” strike promised by Secretary of State Kerry, but a war with incalculable consequences that might spill over into a confrontation with Iran and even Russia, which has built up its own naval fleet in the eastern Mediterranean.

It also became increasingly evident that the campaign for regime change in Damascus involved a significant element of adventurism, with the US relying on Al Qaeda-led forces and an opposition that has disintegrated into mutually warring criminal gangs.

The US establishment must work through the deep-going contradictions in its policy as well as the political implications of the evaporation of popular support for military action and the military implications of an attack on Syria turning into a broader war.

Obama’s reiteration of the Middle East war doctrine at the UN—as well as his rhetorical defense of “American exceptionalism”—was no doubt aimed at a domestic audience, including powerful forces within the state apparatus and its military and intelligence arms that are absolutely committed to military intervention and see any wavering as a betrayal. This is augmented by significant political forces within both bourgeois parties, not least among them the Israel lobby, which sees any negotiations with Iran as capitulation.

Under these conditions, the threat of war has not ended. And the longer US aggression is postponed, the greater the scale of the next inevitable eruption of American imperialism.

To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, we must follow not the map of imperialist diplomacy, but the map of the class struggle. The cataclysm of a new outbreak of global war can be prevented only by means of the independent mobilization of the international working class in the struggle to put an end to world capitalism.

_{Bill Van Auken is a senior political analyst with wsws.org}