Socialist candidates say:

Protest U.S. bombings of Sudan, Afghanistan!

Washington is world's number one terrorist!

Sam Manuel for Mayor; Mary Martin for Delegate to the House;
Olympia Newton for Council at-large; Brian Williams for Council Chairman

Visible public protests — picket lines, demonstrations, speakouts — are needed now to condemn Washington's brutal, imperial acts of war against Sudan and Afghanistan and demand the bombings stop now.

If this attack goes unchallenged, the U.S. rulers will launch further attacks on sovereign nations. They will attempt more kidnappings and arbitrary arrests of individuals around the world. They will seek to widen police spying, harassment, and the flouting of the Bill of Rights at home — all under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

"Today we have struck back," declared president Clinton. But who is "we"? Clinton is not speaking for working people — in the United States or anywhere else in the world. Clinton and all other Democratic and Republican politicians speak for a tiny handful of super-wealthy families who own the industry, land and banks in this country and whose profit interests reach around the world.

Strikers at US West, farmworkers fighting for a union in California, and other toilers here have everything in common with fellow workers and farmers in Sudan — such as the chemical workers whose factory was bombed in Khartoum — and in other nations targeted by Washington's barbaric acts. We are part of the same class and have the same enemy Washington and Wall Street.

Washington says its military assaults on Afghanistan and Sudan were targeting "terrorist-related facilities" somehow linked to those responsible for the bombs that exploded in the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But U.S. officials don't even bother to offer any evidence to back their claims. Their message is "We don't need to prove any facts." This is like the cops who break down your door and tell you: "We don't need an arrest warrant — we are the law."

Why does Washington launch these assaults? It is part of the U.S. rulers' increasing reliance on military force to further the interests of the declining U.S. empire. These attacks are of a piece with Washington's recent aggression against Iraq and its moves to deploy troops against the workers state in Yugoslavia. The U.S. rulers continue to threaten the Korean people with nuclear bombs.

While the bombing of the U.S. embassies does not advance the interests of working people anywhere, one must ask: Why is it that U.S. embassies are the ones targeted? Why is the U.S. government hated so much around the world, including in Africa? It is because the U.S. empire, sinking its tentacles increasingly in all corners of the globe, is identified by millions as a plunderer of resources and the wealth produced by the sweat and blood of workers and peasants. The bombings of the U.S. embassies are simply a case of chickens coming home to roost.

Washington is the biggest threat to the world. They have more chemical weapons than anyone. It was the CIA that ordered the 1961 assassination of anticolonial hero and Congolese president Patrice Lumumba, as U.S. officials recently admitted. It's Washington that supported the apartheid regime in South Africa for years. It's the U.S. government that bombed Libya in 1986, intervened in Somalia several years ago, and has supported successive military regimes in Kenya itself. They are the ones who have locked up 15 Puerto Rican political prisoners in U.S. jails, some for 18 years. All those who oppose Washington's criminal actions against Sudan and Afghanistan should speak out loud and clear!

Paid for by the Socialist Workers 1998 Campaign; 1930 18th St. NW #3; Washington, D.C. 20009
Phone 202-387-2185 Fax 202-387-2178 e-mail: 75407,3345@compuserve