Grenada

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The U.S. invasion of Grenada has sparked a flurry of left and right-wing protests on campus. Right-wing yahoos are jubilant that the U.S. finally found a country small enough for Reagan's supercommandos to cream. Yuk it up, guys... if you think Cuba or Nicaragua is next, your CIA and Army buddies will find themselves stuck in a roach motel ("they'll check in but they won't check out"). To be sure, the spectacle of "rescued" U.S. medical students kissing American soil made better press for Reagan than the nightly newscasts of mangled bodies of over 200 dead Marines in Beirut. But after all the flag-waving has died down, not even the unprecedented press censorship and disinformation can turn the Grenada invasion into a great U.S. victory in its anti-Soviet war drive. U.S. Troops Out of Grenada!

Reagan's rush to invade Grenada was designed to divert attention from his disaster in Lebanon. "We need a win," said Reagan's advisors, so the Yankee shark swallowed the Caribbean sardine, a ploy to whip the population into line behind the red hot Cold War. Meanwhile, Reagan vows that those responsible for the Beirut bombing "will pay." This means more U.S. troops to Lebanon to serve as Israel's cat's pew and shore up the rule of the Phalangist gangsters. The SYL's call for "Marines out of Lebanon now and alive!" evokes the wide-spread anti-government outrage at Reagan's squandering of life in Lebanon which revives memories of the Vietnam war. However, unlike the reformist left which cries "No more Vietnam!" because they don't want another losing war for U.S. imperialism, the SYL says Vietnam was a victory! For Marines, "our boys" were the Vietnamese who defeated U.S. imperialism on the battlefield and overthrew capitalist rule. This is act the case in Lebanon whose no side is fighting imperialism. On the contrary, she PLO. Jumblait and Germayel are all jockeying for sponsorship from one imperialist power or another.

To a degree, even the left-wing protests of the Grenada invasion served Reagan's diversionary aims because the rally organizers ducked the real issues at hand. There are several reasons for this. First, a lot of self-proclaimed leftists supported sending U.S. troops to Lebanon last fall. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) went even further, supporting U.S. arms shipments to Israel for Zionist slaughter of the Palestinian people. Secondly, the reformists want to harp on Reagan's violation of "international law" and ignore or cheerlead his "war on communism." The Reaganites glory in "illegal" "covert" actions like the raids on Nicaragua so long as they are successful. The bellicose Democratic Party "doves" raise a stink over "illegalities" only so they can wield their constitutional right to declare war as they recently did, authorizing the Marines to remain in Lebanon for at least another 18 months. International law is manifestly subordinate to U.S. imperialism's class interests. Students who have other illusions should recall the words spoken a century ago by the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck: "The great questions of our time will not be settled by resolutions and majority votes...but by blood and iron." Reagan's invasion of Grenada only underscores the fundamental truth of that statement.

Reagan justifies the invasion of Grenada as a confrontation with the Soviet Union and Cuba in order to mobilize American society for an actual war with the Soviet bloc. Behind every-moment for social justice anywhere in the world the U.S. sees the hand of "Soviet aggression." Despite the political degeneration led by Stalin, the gains of the Russian Revolutions (a planned economy and collectivized property) remain and must be defeated. Without the aid of the USSR. Cuba would have been reduced to irradiated rubble over 20 years ago; without Soviet arms and Cuban troops the Black nationalist regime in Angola would have been overrun by South Africa's racist army: and today the Red Army in Afghanistan is the one hope Afghan women have for emancipation from illiteracy, the bride price and enslavement to feudal tribesmen. It is unfortunately not true that Cuba and the USSR are supplying Salvadoran leftists and Nicaraguan Sandinistas with arms. Here you have an example of the Stalinist bureaucracies betraying revolution in Central America in order to "appease" U.S. imperialism. As Trotskyists, we want to see a change in the Soviet Union and the other deformed workers' states, but not with Reagan's nuclear warheads, but through a workers' political revolution which ousts the bureaucrats and restores workers' democracy.

As Errol Louis aptly noted (What is to be Done?. October 27-November 2). U.S.-inspired counter revolution is once again "being directed by a Harvard Man..." In a very real way, the main enemy is at home! But not everyone who passes through Harvard's gates goes on to be a Kissinger or a Weinberger. The SYL is looking for a few John Reeds (Class of '10) who fight imperialist war by fighting the capitalist system that breeds war. John us in the fight for a socialist future--now--before the Harvard-trained war criminals in power engulf all of our futures in a nuclear holocaust. Tom Crean '86   Spartacus Youth League