The truth is that, like Vietnam, the explosion of American militarism over the past decade has an absolutely criminal character. The US ruling elite is no less brutal and ruthless than in the 1960s. If its methods have become more technologically sophisticated -- smart bombs and drone-guided missiles instead of B-52s and napalm -- the fundamental imperialist contempt and arrogance toward the people being targeted is the same, inevitably finding expression in the type of savagery meted out on Sunday morning.
In Afghanistan, in particular, Obama has played the main role in the escalation of violence, tripling the US troop presence and extending the war into every corner of that country, as well as across the border into Pakistan. He installed General Stanley McChrystal, who headed the assassination campaign against insurgents in Iraq, to lead a similar effort in Afghanistan, then fired him when he expressed reluctance to use air-power indiscriminately against civilians.
Under McChrystal's successor, Gen. David Petraeus, US special operations forces greatly increased the night raids that have devastated many Afghan villages. This has been accompanied by mounting outrages, a few of them well-publicized, like the urination on corpses, taking fingers and other body parts of murdered Afghans as "trophies," and the burning of Korans at Bagram Air Base.
The Panjwai massacre also exposes the reactionary role of the pseudo-left groups that helped channel mass sentiment against the war in Iraq behind the Democratic Party and the Obama election campaign. Many of these organizations originated in the protest movements of the 1960s sparked by the Vietnam War, but they have crossed over into the camp of American imperialism and abandoned any semblance of opposition to its crimes. Last year they served as cheerleaders for the US-NATO bombing of Libya; today they clamor for outside intervention against the Syrian regime of Assad; tomorrow they are prepared to endorse a US-Israeli war against Iran.
The Socialist Equality Party fights to mobilize the working class, in the United States and internationally, against American militarism and aggression. The first principle of the SEP campaign in the 2012 elections is internationalism: uniting the working class of the entire world in a common struggle against the capitalist system. We demand the immediate withdrawal of all US and NATO troops from Afghanistan, monetary reparations for the Afghan people, and holding accountable the war criminals responsible for this war.
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