Drait! Is Carter Plunging World into War?

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Desperate people can be dangerous people. And American President Jimmy Carter is certainly desperate.

The world over, things are falling apart for him, for the profit-hungry American bosses he represents, and for their whole system of exploitation, which keeps two-thirds of the earth's population below the poverty line.

Defeated in Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975; defeated in Angola in 1976; defeated by the fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979; defeated by the fall of General Somoza in Nicaragua in 1979; humiliated by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, and made a laughing stock by his own military fiasco in Iran in April 1980, Carter and the US military leaders are nearing the end of their tether.

All round the world, vicious US-backed gov ernments are facing the anger of workers and peasants struggling to defend and improve their meagre living standards, to win the most elementary democratic rights, and to break the bonds of exploitation and national and sexual oppression.

The huge explosion of anger by the workers and students of South Korea is simply the latest challenge to an American puppet dictatorship.

LOBBY

As things go from bad to worse, a growing lobby of generals and strategists stand at Carter's shoulder, pressing him to use the huge armoury at his disposal for punitive military action against those that dare to defy the might of US imperialism.

At home in the USA, too, things are just as desperate. In a last-ditch attempt to control runaway 20% inflation, Carter has been forced in election year to unleash a massive slump that h already sent unemployment rocketing slashed welfare Hoping to divert attention from these problem's and to create a climate for a cold-war witchhunt of militant workers at home, Carter has already exploited to the tull the patriotic fervour whipped up by the press around the holding of the US embassy hostages in Iran.

The American press has been filled with antiIranian and anti-Arab propaganda, as petrol and oil prices soar, slashing the value of workers! pay packets.

All this has been supplemented by outright anti-communist hysteria in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Yet Carter's main target is not the USSR: nor is he really interested in Afghanistan.

His objective is to restore US control over the Middle East, and if possible over Iran, a vital strategic base with vast oilfields.

It is not possible for US imperialism alone to invade Iran. The country is too large, and too far from Us bases. It borders on the-Soviet Union, and elements in the Iranian regime could well call for Russian assistance to ward off a US invasion.

But this does not mean that there is no danger of a war over Iran.

On the one hand, Carter is being pressed by his more extreme generals to let them use nuclear weapons to "turn Iran into a parking lot" -slaughtering Iranian men women and children by the tens of thousand in order to restore US military prestige. Such an attack would dwarf even the carnage of the Vietnam war.

On the other hand, Carter has been straining every muscle in his efforts to drag his European and Japanese allies into the US-Iran confrontation - so far only at the level of imposing. economic sanctions.

But there is no doubt that these sanctions will fail to bring the Iranian regime to heel. Every Week SeES massive anti-American marches in the The central government is not some form of action against Iran.

Thatcher has been at the forefront of the NATO leaders cheering on Carter's cold war offensive against the Soviet Union, and applauding his actions against Iran.

There is no doubt that a Tory government in Britain could easily find itself dragged alongside US imperialism into a military adventure in Iran that could rapidly get out of hand and lead to a Third World War.

As a party of bankers and employers, the Tories, like Carter and the American bosses, are forced to seek out ways of crushing and defeating the struggles of workers throughout the world -if necessary by military force. At this very moment British troops are engaged in the brutal repression of the Irish people in the six counties of Northern Ireland.

That is why the only guarantee that there will be no World War 3 lies in the struggle that we wage for action to bring down the Thatcher government, to remove the right wing Labour leaders who support imperialist policies, and establish a workers' government that will pull out of NATO, the EEC, and every other imperialist and anti-working class alliance.

Already in the USA Carter is registering young people - men and women - preparatory to conscription. The war threat looms over us all.

Women workers in Britain must join with the struggle of socialists and internationalists in every country to halt these moves.

* Hands off Iran! No sanctions; no intervention!

* Not one person, not one penny to the imperialist war effort!

* No to the Cold War! Defend the Soviet Union and deformed workers' states against imperialist attack!

* Prepare to bring down For