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I. Militant Attacks against the 'Wall of Yankeedom' Wrapped in dense clouds of black smoke and engulfed in roaring flames, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the financial hub of the world economy, and a portion of the Pentagon building, the military pivot of world domination by the United States, have suddenly crumbled. Alas! This is neither a dream nor virtual reality. This is a fact! This is an art! This is an undeniable fact that occurred in actuality on September 11th, 2001. It must be seen as an epoch-making event, brought about by the self-martyrdom of those Muslims for their jihad. Even though grief, terror, and fury spread through the United States and other nations, we must face up to this irrefutable fact. We must see that this unexpected event has significance as an explosion of the long-standing resentment of Islamic people in the Arab world against American imperialism. The cause of this incident lies, directly, in the presence of imperialist America's troops in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites of Mecca and Medinah, and in the occupation of East Jerusalem and the control of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, by Israel. To those fundamentalist Muslims, their presence and occupation mean blasphemy on a holy land. America has got its deserts from the seeds it has sowed, as Saddam Hussein correctly said (1.5 million people were killed in Iraq due to the Persian Gulf War in 1991).* US imperialist rulers have been adopting double-standard policies for the Middle East, while styling themselves the 'military police of the world'. That is, they have been tolerating the Israeli Sharon government while it repeats genocidal acts against the Palestinian people; or rather, they have been inciting this right-wing Likud government to those atrocities. It is precisely this neocolonialist arrogance of American imperialism that has caused the frequent occurrence of self-sacrificing, suicidal attacks by Islamic radical or extremist groups, such as PFLP, HAMAS, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda, in various areas. Due to a lack of awareness of the points mentioned above, USA nationalism, decorated with the Stars and Stripes, is stirred up throughout the country of America in the name of 'retaliation' and 'eradication of terrorism'. The surge of American nationalism as such, however, will amount to nothing but an acquittal of the past crimes of this state. Regrettably, American workers have been swallowed up in this surge. This is because they have been interwoven in the existing ruling order, and moreover, because their leadership of the AFL-CIO has degenerated into an instrument of financial / industrial capital. Recollect what Diego Armando Maradona, a former soccer champion, said ? 'Who is it that has created Frankenstein?' The heaps of rubble indicate to us the end of American dream of dominating the world politically, economically, and militarily. The destruction of the World Trade Center and the fatal damage to the Pentagon building symbolically show the loss of authority and prestige of the imperialist state of America. In fact, President George W. Bush, who was knee-jerked into a frenzy by this incident, named it an 'act of war' at first (on September 12th), and three days later, defined it as a 'new type of war', i.e. an 'asymmetrical war'. The will of the state of America was thus consolidated: military sanctions and retaliations by its regular army against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization and its harbourer, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime. The dispatch of regular troops designed to assassinate what Bush calls the 'unseen enemy' means the invocation of state terrorism by Anglo-American imperialism, which is worse than Islam fundamentalists' acts of terrorism. On October 7th, in the name of 'defense of the free world and modern civilization', and on the pretext of 'eradicating the barbarity of terrorism', the US Air Force, together with the Royal Air Force, launched its air assaults on al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. Of course, prior to this commencement, Bush, whose military strategy for world domination was interrupted by the September 11 jihad attacks, had made frantic efforts for political negotiations with rulers of NATO states and moderates in Islamic countries. Moreover, the American government had resorted to a temporizing measure to mitigate its economic sanctions against several countries, including Pakistan, India, and even Iran. This means a gradual orbital adjustment of American imperialism in its policy of unilateralism, which shows how profound a shock it underwent when faced with the collapse of the wall of American imperialism. The Japanese government also announced the dispatch of its Self-Defense Forces to provide support in the area of logistics to US-led military forces in the campaign against terrorism, despite the specification in the Constitution of Japan pertaining to its renunciation of the right of collective self-defence. * In a video message addressed to the entire Islamic world, al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman abu Ghaith pledged on October 9th that a 'storm of airplanes' would continue to attack American targets until the United States ended its 'crusade' against Afghanistan and Islam. He also said, 'America must know that the battle will not leave its land until America leaves our land, until it stops supporting Israel, until it stops the blockage against Iraq.' (The Japan Times, October 11, 2001) II. Historical Significance Since he was inaugurated as President, George W. Bush has been pursuing, like a cowboy, unilateralist policies in many fields, taking pride in America's position as the 'sole superpower in the world'. It is natural that his posture has aroused antipathy among power holders in other capitalist countries, as well as ill feeling, resentment and anger among many nations in the world, particularly among Muslims. For instance, in spite of Russian President Vladimir Putin's protest, Bush was intending to promote the construction of a 'missile defense (MD) system' to replace the development of NMD and TMD. He was also expressing his intention to secede from the Treaty on the Limitation of Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Systems, and furthermore, from the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). On March 28th, the US government announced that it would withdraw from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, on the pretext that this climate pact exempts developing countries and would harm the US economy, or, in short, that the pact is not scientifically grounded. Moreover, China, whose relations with America were described by former US President Bill Clinton as a 'constructive and strategic partnership', has come to be regarded by Bush as a 'strategic competitor' of the United States. The Bush administration threw a wet blanket over the appeasement policy of the Kim Dae Jung government in South Korea towards North Korea (the so-called sunshine policy), naming the latter state a 'rogue state' again. Thus, incurring the ill feelings of other nations around the world, the US lost the elections in the UN Human Rights Commission and the International Narcotic Control Board in May. It also boycotted the UN World Conference against Racism in September. As for its domestic policies, this administration has changed, among others, its policy on nuclear power generation for the first time in twenty years. All these policies show the arrogance and insolence of the American imperialist government. After the September 11 attacks on the US, however, President Bush, who turned pale at the news, was obliged to make some revision in his policy of unilateralism representing state-interest supremacism. But it was too late. The bold attacks of self-martyrdom against the wall of Yankeedom by those Muslims, whose tenet is anti-American imperialism / anti-Zionism and who believe in the divine protection of Allah, have shaken the whole country of the USA and the world. These attacks stem of necessity from the strategy of Islamic extremist groups (e.g. al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and HAMAS), which aim for the liberation of Mecca and Medinah from the American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Certainly this form of anti-American struggle is, without doubt, terrorism. But it differs from classical, individual terror conducted by anarchists, or terror aimed at the assassination of specific statesmen. Anarchists in general employed terror to achieve their ends, by fair means or foul. This was wrong. That is why the current of anarchical terror vanished at the beginning of the 20th century. And here lies the reason why the Lenin-type construction of a vanguard party was started. It is for this reason that we negate both anarchist-style terrorism and jihad terrorism. We only permit the revolutionary use of force in the period of revolutionary struggle, and that only in a specific phase, and moreover, that based on workers' soviets. Still, the bold attacks that slammed into the wall of Yankeedom are considered to have historical significance. This is because these attacks have destroyed the military / financial centres of world domination by the United States. They have thrown the world economy, which was already tending towards recession, along with imperialist political powers and social minds, into a cauldron of confusion. This is an undeniable fact. In other words, denunciation of this incident as mere terrorism shows a lack of awareness that these attacks against US imperialism can be seen as an abortive flower that has grown as a result of the abandonment of workers' class struggles in advanced countries. Those who deny this are tantamount to disgracing the soul of the Muslims who are fighting against American imperialism / Zionism, and what is more, are aiming to overthrow the governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What is lacking in their fight is, among other things, the very strategy for organizing oil workers and others as a class and thus overthrowing their own governments (military Bonapartist states or monarchies of emirs connected with various imperialist powers, respectively). They lack this perspective because their objective is the realization of Islamic umma (commune or community), like fundamentalists who condemn the desecration of Islamic principles by members of royalty or emirs. In addition to the issue of strategy, they are mistaken in that they narrow struggle forms down to attacks of self-martyrdom. In fact, some characterized this event as a 'watershed' in modern history. To that extent, the Muslims' jihad attacks are taken as an epochal event. The opening of the new age, however, has already been heralded by the merciless bombing of Yugoslavia enforced by NATO without a resolution of the United Nations. In 1999 we wrote: 'The year 1999, marking the 50th anniversary of NATO, will surely go down in world history as an epochal turning point. As long as the bloody NATO bombing is continued with undisguised imperialist state-egoism, the Yugoslavian war will get stuck and turn into another Vietnam War.' (JRCL's appeal to the world, dated on April 10th, 1999; included in Kuroda's Thought on Revolution, pp.300-01)If we define the state of affairs in Yugoslavia as the essential conversion of the contemporary world, the recent events can be called the beginning of this conversion in reality. The world in the 21st century will enter an age of intensification of asymmetrical warfare, i.e. warfare between regular armies and guerrillas. American imperialism has responded to the Muslims' attacks with air strikes against Afghanistan, which will cause guerrilla warfare, or rather battles between warlords in Afghanistan as well as in Pakistan. Even if peacekeeping operations are undertaken by the UN, this is inevitable. And this will bring about the same situation as that of the protracted war in Vietnam. The retaliatory air raids by the US, Britain and other imperialist states will generate a new form of Muslims' terror for the jihad, and the latter renewed anti-terror warfare by imperialist countries. This is a vicious circle of terrorism and retaliation against it, which can be seen as a new aspect of the world in the 21st century. What, then, led those Muslims' attacks to success? In short, it is the arrogance of the imperialist state power, along with its self-contentment with morbid dependence on cyber-space, Americanization (which is equal to the globalization of the economy), and the borderless trend of the economy / politics. As a matter of fact, those Muslim radicals, who are suffering from starvation and poverty as a result of the rampancy of the market economy on a global scale, are wandering freely in the world, taking advantage of the borderless situation. They have constructed many cells of the al-Qaeda network in more than 60 countries, and have accumulated immense wealth. They have easily slipped through the cyber-net of Echelon and other global eavesdropping networks. In other words, they have pinpointed the blind spot of imperialist states, thus victoriously carrying out their militant attacks for jihad, by means of civilian airliners. This event has forced the power holders of America to re-examine their military strategy for world domination, together with their unilateralist foreign policies and domestic / foreign economic policies. Both the FBI and the CIA have long since fallen into morbid dependence on cyber-space. They have been under the illusion that it would be possible to catch human minds with high-tech instruments. Thus, when they were met with the September 11 attacks, they were obliged to bring a way of assembling information, Humint, into their method of investigation. At this very moment, a rash of anthrax scares flared up in the home country of America. These bioterrorist attacks, seemingly intended for the bombing of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, showed an unexpected development. Close examination revealed that the white powder was the variety of anthrax dubbed the 'Ames strain', which originated in the United States in 1951. Despite desperate investigation by the FBI, the federal authorities still cannot figure out where it comes from, nor who is sending it. It is likely that, when arrested by the FBI, it will turn out to be a member of the CIA. It is also likely that, when America's stalemate in the war in Afghanistan becomes clear to any eye, the bacteria of the deadly disease anthrax will attack the very nose of President George W. Bush or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. III. The Darkness over the Contemporary World The war of aggression against Afghanistan, started by Anglo-American imperialism (and supported by multinational forces), along with the anthrax scares, has produced various reactions in many spheres of society in the world. For example, a drastic decrease in the number of air travelers, a decrease in industrial production, a marked reduction in mass consumption, a sharp increase in the number of the unemployed (resulting from bankruptcies or restructuring of many enterprises), and so forth. In every capitalist country, there is an increasing tendency towards recession, deflation or depression. Only the munitions industry is experiencing prosperity with the production of many types of bombs, including as many as 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles. This is similar to the situation in the latter 1930s onwards, when the munitions boom brought about by the Second World War helped the American economy climb out of the Great Depression that had lasted since 1929. This is why the militarization of the economy is counted as the first characteristic of state monopoly capitalism (according to Ouchi Tsutomu's theory). Workers and toiling masses all over the world, who are accused, by the Muslims' self-sacrificing, suicidal attacks against the wall of American imperialism, of abandoning class struggles against their own governments, have risen in action to oppose the Anglo-American aggression against Afghanistan, mounted on the pretext of 'retaliation and military sanctions against terrorists', and besides, in the name of the defense of 'freedom, human rights and democracy'. Antiwar struggles now being waged by these workers and the masses are still weak, partly because both Russia and China have joined the American side in the 'antiterrorist campaign'. Thick-headed intellectuals, who have failed to grasp the meaning of the event, are merely muttering about the imperialist response to the attacks and do not intend to rouse themselves to protest. Under this situation, the Anglo-American imperialist air raids on Afghanistan have been increasingly intensified, along with an escalation in the use of weapons, including Tomahawks, banker busters, cluster bombs, BLU-82s (fuel-air explosive bombs called 'Daisycutters') and depleted uranium munitions. Imperialist invaders are scattering MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) on Afghanistan from the air, intending to mitigate the hatred of Afghan people for the Americans. 'This is a cosmetic exercise that will have little impact on the humanitarian crisis on the ground.' 'Frankly, it's a joke.' 'It's a drop in the ocean.' - These are the words of international aid workers deriding US air drops of food rations. Brutal air bombing with one hand while offering aid with the other is nothing but a transparently deceptive act of imperialists. The Northern Alliance troops launched an offensive against Taliban forces in Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat, and other northern areas of Afghanistan, backed by the bombing campaign, but failed to make advances against the Taliban forces for a time. On November 9th, they managed to capture Mazar-i-Sharif with the support of barbarous carpet bombing by the US Air Force. On October 26th, Abdul Haq and his men, who infiltrated the southern area of Kabul on a mission of winning moderates within the Taliban militia over to their side with the aim of post-Taliban nation building, were arrested and executed in public by the Taliban forces. On November 1st, Hamid Karzai, who was also sent to Afghanistan on the same mission but was guarded by a US special squad, fled to Pakistan for his life, leaving 25 of his men, who were also executed by the Taliban. These incidents suggest the failure of the US imperialists' design for a post-Taliban regime. The imperialists have been forced to change this design; they are now scheming to build a nation based on a national united front made up of four ethnic groups, excluding the Taliban. What is more complicated, these four ethnic groups are each backed by different foreign countries: Hazaras are backed by Iran, Tajiks by Tajikistan, Uzbeks by Uzbekistan, and Pashtuns by Pakistan. Moreover, the Northern Alliance, which is itself a scratch alliance and is far from being based on monolithic unity, is supported by India and Russia. Pakistan, the majority of whose population are Pashtuns, is connected with China. Furthermore, Hazaras are Shiites, while the others are Sunnis. This is not all. With the intensification of the Afghan War, there is a tendency growing among Islamic countries in the Middle East towards anti-American, anti-imperialist nationalism or Islamic inter-nationalism. Particularly, the decision of American imperialism to continue its bombing during the period of Ramadan has not only increased this tendency, but also highlighted a split between Islamic radicals and moderates. As for the people in European states which have participated in the war on the American side, there is now a trend of war-weariness or antiwar consciousness spreading among them. Things in the Afghan War have thus come to assume an aspect quite similar to the deadlock in the Vietnam War. The US Army will undergo the same defeat as that of the Soviet army in the 1980s. This is a tragicomedy. American imperialism will plunge into the beginning of its downfall. Both Russia and China are colluding with the United States on the sole point of anti-terrorism, for Russia is suffering from the civil war in Chechnya, a constituent republic of the Russian Federation, while China is threatened by Muslim guerrillas in the Sinkiang Uighur autonomous region. Therefore, the relationship between the NATO states and the US differs from that between Russia / China and this state. In the post-Taliban nation building, too, the national interests of all these states will conflict with each other and produce antagonism among them. Or rather, this new form of domestic warfare between warlords in Afghanistan will be protracted, as in the case after the withdrawal of the Soviet army in February 1989. The dark perspective of Afghanistan is inevitable unless progress is made in the struggle of workers in capitalist countries, and unless Islamic inter-nationalism against USA nationalism, along with Islam fundamentalism, ceases to exist. Or rather, it is quite probable that the war in Afghanistan will ignite a Fifth Middle East War, or a Third World War. The above-mentioned situation in the contemporary world in the toposical present is determined by, and is the inevitable result of, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the ensuing process of history. Despite the fact that the downfall of the USSR and its camp (symbolized by the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989) was nothing but the fall of Stalinism, it was generally regarded as the 'end of communism' or the 'death of Marxism'. Thus the decade of the 1990s has been called the age of de-ideologization. It has produced a globalizing tendency in the market economy and various modern bourgeois values (such as freedom, justice, human rights and fairness). Along with this tendency, religious conflicts have jumped to the stage of contemporary history, and ethno-nationalism connected with religious differences has surged up in various regions of the world, including Nagorno-Karabakh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Palestine. We call this state of affairs 'religious = national warfare', i.e. warfare between nations (or ethnic groups) connected with religious antagonism (between Islam, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism / Protestantism, and Judaism). At the same time, a new form of Cold War has come to the fore. That is to say, victorious imperialist America has been placed in opposition to Russia and China, both of which were instructed in introducing market economy policies by American scholars. This opposition between these two states and American imperialism, the sole superpower in the world, has been developing a new economic battle and political Cold War. It has been accelerated by Bush's adoption of unilateralism. It was in this situation that the September 11 attacks took place. Bush involuntarily called the retaliatory attacks against al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden a 'Crusade'. This is a naked expression of the terrified Bush's hostility against those Muslims' jihad attacks, and besides, his jitters, anger and hatred towards al-Qaeda, above all towards Osama bin Laden. Even though he corrected this expression later, he intended to commence air assaults on Afghanistan as a war without a declaration of war, i.e. asymmetrical warfare. In actuality, he started the air raids with some secret operations by special squads. This new form of war is precisely the barbarity of the imperialist USA, the self-styled representative of civilization, intended to recover its lost prestige and authority. The expression 'Crusade' was replaced by a cry for the 'defense of Western civilization against the barbarism of Islamic extremists'. This word 'barbarism' shows his attitude of looking down on Muslims and the Middle Eastern world from the viewpoint of the supremacy of modern European values since the 17th century. And when considered in relation to what imperialists are doing in Afghanistan, the above-mentioned 'civilization' means precisely barbarism and genocide. At the same time, the fact that President Bush has entered into an asymmetrical war means that he has gradually and partially begun to change his unilateralist strategy. Not only this, but it also means the beginning of the downfall of the political as well as military domination of the world by US imperialism and that of the globalization of the market economy. This is not all. The new form of opposing structure between West and East (China and Russia), connected with the conflict between starvation / poverty / environmental destruction in developing or backward countries and the vanity of prosperity in advanced capitalist countries, will undoubtedly be thrown into the limelight on the stage of world history. For the war of aggression against Afghanistan and the bombing of Yugoslavia have broken down the fictitious peace of the contemporary world. In the 1970s to 1980s there had already appeared various conflicts between many forms of nationalism, such as Stalinist nationalism, imperialist state nationalism, economic nationalism aimed at the preservation of natural resources, and ethno-nationalism. In this period, the armaments race over INF (intermediate-range nuclear forces) between the US and the USSR intensified the Cold War as well as economic battles among capitalist states. Furthermore, the Shiite revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran (1979), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979 - 1989) and the proxy war in the Indochinese Peninsula (1978 - 1989) shook the world. In 1991 the Soviet Union finally collapsed because of its defeat in the Afghan War and Gorbachev's perestroika policy. China, which had attempted reform, was shaken by the Vietnam War and the Tiananmen Square Incident (1989), thus setting up the Jiang Zemin regime. Moreover, in 1980, a war started between Iran and Iraq (which was supported by American imperialism). Through eight years of this protracted war, these two countries were caught in a dilemma: the victory of Iran could not be realized without the assassination of Saddam Hussein, and that of Iraq without the death of Khomeini's revolution. Today's American imperialism will have to go through the same dilemma in its aggression against Afghanistan. In fact, America and Russia are now acutely opposing each other over the plan to construct a new government after the retreat of the Taliban forces. The latter (Russia) is attempting, together with India, to support Burhanuddin Rabani, the former President of Afghanistan and one of the dominant figures in the Northern Alliance, while the former (America) supports Mohammed Zahir Shah, the former Afghan King who fled to Rome, by coordinating the four ethnic groups. For this reason, the Bush government is impatient to stop the Northern Alliance troops from advancing in the southeastern direction. Moreover, it is reported that there were secret negotiations between Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (Shinni) and General Musharraf, the Pakistani President (Sunni), concerning their political collaboration over the issue of nation building in Afghanistan (on November 10th). The political situation is thus assuming an increasingly complicated aspect. Amidst all this confusion, above all, due to the genocidal bombing and starvation, several hundreds of thousands of refugees, who have barely escaped unexploded mines (scattered across the country since the 1979-89 Soviet occupation), have flooded to the borders with Pakistan or Iran. Because the borders are closed, the 'dam' of refugees is now expanding more and more. The dawn of the new-century world is taking on such a serious aspect. While saying that this is not a 'clash of civilizations', Bush condemns those Muslims' bold attacks as barbarism, a challenge to liberty, thus essentially making an enemy of the Islamic world. In this sense, the Afghan War, now being waged by multinational forces, has significance as a challenge of Christian imperialism against the Islamic world. But it cannot be said so from the vulgar viewpoint of 'the clash of civilizations'. In the first place, the concept of 'civilization' in Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations is extremely vague. It is not differentiated from the concept of 'culture', which has been developed in each region or country in the world while being connected with its tradition. Secondly, his 'civilization' does not refer only to technical / material civilization that has been developed since the 17th century, or modern civilization that is inseparably connected with bourgeois culture. Neither does it have any relationship with the capitalist economy or the character of classes. (In fact, Confucianism has nothing to do with warfare, to begin with, for it is a teaching of those who take charge of ceremonial occasions such as funerals.) Thus, the clash of civilizations in actuality is precisely the conflict between Christian modern civilization and Islamic culture/civilization. From this viewpoint of criticizing Huntington's thought, the aggression against Afghanistan by Anglo-American imperialism can be said to indicate 'clash of civilizations' in every sense. The so-called war of justice against barbarism (asymmetrical war) is precisely imperialist barbarism aimed at eradicating Islam fundamentalism. This asymmetrical war launched by US imperialism is a military form of the neocolonialist policies taken by this state, which abuses economic sanctions against defiant countries. What enables the US to behave so arrogantly towards other nations or countries is its position as the sole superpower in the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union, though under a new form of Cold War. The beginning of the asymmetrical war in Afghanistan, which has significance as a religious = national war and which is not a war between civilization and barbarity, will lead to the beginning of the downfall of American imperialism. What has brought about this tragicomical situation is the lack of political struggles by workers all over the world. This is a result of the defeat of working people around the world in their class struggle. They have been abandoning their political as well as economic struggles against each of their governments and capital, for they have been tightly interwoven into the existing political order. In the US, this abandonment of class struggle was brought about by the obedience of the AFL-CIO to financial / industrial capital. This allowed workers to be swallowed up in the wave of USA nationalism or patriotism, and has resulted in the weakness of workers' struggles against war. Today, the 'age of no ideology' has pushed various forms of nationalism forward, premised historically by the collapse of Stalinism. President Putin of ruinous Russia is instigating Russian/Slav nationalism instead of Gorbachev-style modern liberalism. Chinese President Jiang Zemin is also stirring up Chinese nationalism in opposition to the world domination by the sole superpower, imperialist America. Social-democratic governments in the EU have deployed their personnel and equipment in defense of US retaliatory strikes on Afghanistan for the first time in NATO history. However, they are sticking to their respective traditional cultures connected with contemporary technical civilization on the eve of the circulation of the single currency, the euro. The cry against the bombing of Afghanistan under slogans such as 'No to War' and 'Stop the War' is gradually spreading throughout Europe, with rallies and demonstrations led by various unions and non-Stalinist parties. In the Middle East, as barbarous, merciless air attacks on Afghanistan grow more intense, the wave of 'anti-American imperialism, anti-Zionism' is rising through the region. The condemnation of imperialist America's double-standard policy is spreading in the Arab world, along with guerrilla activities for the establishment of self-government in Palestine. In Japan, the Koizumi government, which was quick to pledge its allegiance to the Bush administration, has launched its dispatch of SDF troops abroad, violating Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan (renouncing the right of collective self-defense). For instance, on October 6th, one day before the start of the air-raid terror by the US and Britain, six Self-Defense Forces cargo planes (C-130H transport aircraft) departed from the Air Self-Defense Force base in Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, for Pakistan, loaded with Pakistan-made tents and blankets for Afghan refugees. On November 9th, three battleships (including the helicopter destroyer Kurama) set sail from Sasebo in Kyushu for Diego Garcia. With these military actions, the Japanese government has virtually entered the war in Afghanistan. Precisely for this reason, antiwar struggles by workers and militant students are surging to a certain degree, following a series of mass demonstrations that had already been staged against the Afghan War with a view to protesting and overcoming the tactics of 'anti-terrorism' set out by the official parties. Amidst this situation, the Koizumi government is not only attempting to have the SDF acknowledged by the Japanese people as a regular army, but is also trying to display the national aggrandizement of Japan and incite Japanese nationalism. We, workers in Japan, must rise in struggle to oppose the imperialist aggression against Afghanistan, in unity and solidarity with the toiling masses all over the world. We must make efforts to strengthen antiwar struggles, aiming to overthrow the Koizumi government. Deeply in our minds we must engrave the fact that the imperialist state of America has dug its own grave in this asymmetrical war in Afghanistan. We, as revolutionary Marxists, must break through the darkness covering the world in the 21st century. The end of American imperialism must be realized by means of our internationally united antiwar struggles. Workers all over the world! Rise in struggle under the banner of "anti-imperialism, anti-Stalinism"! This is our urgent task as revolutionary Marxists. November 11th, 2001
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