International Socialism Project

The sort of anti-authoritarian politics that mainstream liberals embrace is long on bellicosity and short on policies or activism to address the erosion of working-class living standards and democratic rights.

Revelations of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay persisted as the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan continued, while the U.S. sent “suspects” to secret prisons in foreign countries to be tortured, a procedure it sanitized with the label “rendition”.

Here, we reprint an editorial from the International Socialist Review examining NATO’s sustained bombing of the former Yugoslavia for more than two months in 1999, when civilians again paid the price.

The ISP reprints this article with the reminder of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who, in 1967, called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Earlier this year an investigative report from Yahoo! News revealed that leading figures in the US government had discussed the possibility of kidnapping or assassinating Assange during the seven years he was taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Successive US presidents vowed to learn from the Vietnam war, relying on technology, ‘smart’ weapons and local proxies instead of US troops on the ground. Yet still they embark on unwinnable conflicts.

The antiwar movement should be under no illusion that the era of US imperialist warfare has come to an end with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.