Against the war, against the State

Insubordination
Against the war, against the State
Alternatives or refusal?

The United States government is now demanding support for a war that it has been carrying out on and off for over a decade. It is making broad claims of the threat presented by a second-rate renegade colony, a former puppet that tried to cut a few strings and was transformed into the devil by the American government’s propaganda machine. This war has nothing to do with terrorism (beyond the everyday terrorism carried on by all States, and particularly the American State). Saddam Hussein has made no threats against the United States. There is no evidence that Iraq has the weapon capabilities Bush and crew claim and according to Unscom (the UN investigation committee) reports a great deal of evidence that it does not. The US government’s claims that such weapons – if they existed – would be offered to terrorists for their use is absolutely baseless. Thus, it is absurd to speak of “more just ways to challenge terrorism” or of “exploring alternatives” with regards to this current attempt by the US to garner international support for a war that is already in act. Instead, what we need to speak about and act upon is an absolute refusal of the American government’s crass exploitation of the events of September 11, 2001 to gain support for its blatant acts of aggression and terror against the people of Iraq, and absolute insubordination to every call for submission to the necessities of war.
We are currently living in an era when, for all practical intents and purposes, there is a single power ruling throughout the world, the power of Capital. The few enclaves that still exist against this power have little chance of survival as long as we, who live in the heart of the beast, continue to be blind to its real nature and believe that it can be reformed, that it can be made “more just” (as if justice were anything more than the edicts of judges who serve those who rule this world.) And the United States is the greatest representative of this power, militarily and economically. The end of the duality of superpowers at the end of the 1980’s changed the nature of war, at least as carried out by the great powers. (Of course, this change was already in act decades earlier – after all, weren’t the Korean War and the War in Viet Nam “police actions”?) We no longer see the real contention of nations for power, territory and resources. The great powers like the United States and the European Union already have practical control over all of these. Instead the great powers go to war to police recalcitrant subjects. This is why the US is attacking Iraq (and still patrolling Afghanistan and “aiding” the Philippines) and threatening Iran, North Korea, etc. Looked at this way, it also becomes clear that the USAPATRIOT act, the searches at airports and bus stations, the fear-inducing propaganda efforts, the increased security everywhere are acts of war. And not of a “war against terrorism”, which would have had to start with the dismantling of the CIA and a half a century of US foreign policy, but rather against the possibility of revolt by the exploited and excluded people here and world-wide as well as against all who dare to refuse control, who dare to refuse “life” as compliant sheep.
If we talk to the representatives of this war-mongering social order, we are still granting them the final say. Such participation is simply participation in our continued slavery. Instead, those of us exploited, excluded or simply disgusted by this social order need to talk with each other about how we can actively refuse the State’s war, encouraging non-compliance, disobedience and revolt, in short, total insubordination to the efforts of the masters of this world to once more send us out to shed each others blood in their interests.
As long as the State exists and Capital rules the world, war will continue killing us. Only insubordination and total revolt can bring this to an end, and open the possibility of a world where no one can order anyone else to go out and kill. Desertion, refusal, sabotage, attack, destruction against every constituted authority, all power, every State ntwntp@yahoo.com. against the war, against the State.
In general, Americans are cowards. This has become quite clear since September 11, 2001. Not only are most people willing to put up with every humiliation at airports, bus stations and other places considered “at risk” in the name of security, ready to jump at every wolf-cry of “terrorism” from Bush’s pack of liars and prepared to prostrate themselves before Big Daddy State so that He will keep them safe. They are also ready to support a war that they know will be easy, a bully’s war for which there is no real reason other than to keep the hysteria of the “war on terrorism” raging. If this were likely to be another Vietnam War, this cowardice might be worthy. It might cause more people to oppose this war out of sheer chauvinistic fear for “American lives”. After all, we don’t want “our boys” getting killed.
But war has changed. Thanks to the technological developments of the past twenty years, it is becoming easier and easier for the great powers who have access to it to carry out their acts of destruction from a distance, without a care. For the most part, mistakes will only kill foreign civilians, those residing in the territory under attack. American casualties would be few, almost entirely the result of “friendly fire”. So it is easy for Americans to thoughtlessly accept further American aggression against Iraq or anywhere else the government desires it. It requires no courage whatsoever, simply continued submission to the will of our rulers. Courage now lies precisely in the refusal of this war. But we must be clear about what this war is in order to understand what refusal means. In the same way that the current social order tries to make each new disaster brought on by the economic-technological devastation of the earth appear to be a separate incident easy to repair, the rulers of this world try to make the current American war-cry appear as a distinct event. This is not the case. War has been the normal state of life throughout most of the world for decades. Not just in places like Rwanda, Palestine, Yugoslavia or Somalia, but in the hearts of American cities as well, where if you are neither black nor poor nor undocumented, then the police won’t shoot at you. Otherwise, there is no guarantee.
The real war, the one behind all the others that fuels them is the war of the rulers against all those they rule, the war to maintain their power in the face of all actual or potential revolt. Pacifist requests to the rulers to find “peaceful resolutions” to their conflicts can only help to maintain this ongoing war because it is the very function of the State and of all forms of rule. Thus, appealing to “our representatives” (and are we really so willing to give up our own capacity to decide, to allow someone else to “represent “ us?) can at best change one minor scene in the global theater of pain, while leaving the state of universal war intact.
The illusion that capitalism and the democratic State could offer abundance and freedom for all has proven to be the most blatant lie, and unrest is a worldwide reality. But the potential for revolution is perpetually recuperated into ethnic and religious conflicts worldwide and into gang war and racial hatred here. And all of this plays into the hands of those who rule us allowing them to advance their war against us – now through the so-called “war on terrorism” with its new laws and “security” measures – criminalizing more and more expressions of dissent, resistance and revolt.
Thus, real refusal of the current war effort must take the form of insubordination, not of petition. Disobedience on all fronts, the refusal to negotiate in any way with the State, the refusal in the full sense to fight their war.
But the refusal of their war must also be the refusal of their peace, because the two are one. Thus, the refusal of their war must also be the active struggle to destroy the State and capital everywhere.
Desertion, refusal, sabotage, attack, destruction against every constituted authority, all power, every State, total insubordination to the efforts of the masters of this world to once more send us out to shed each others blood in their interests.

ntwntp@yahoo.com

INSUBORDINATION NOW

WE MUST DESERT THE ARMY to unmask its true nature, questioning the State's legitimacy and refusing to become accomplices and instruments of repression and the choice of death.
The army is one of the clearest manifestations of what is known as the State, instrument of coercion and social violence which represses in the name of the social order desired and supported by the bosses.
The Italian army is an example of this reality. It served for the forced unification of the peninsula under the Savoy monarchy and to control popular insurrections (elimination of banditry, the Milan massacre of 1898). From the beginning it unleashed its repressive nature, forgetting its claimed duty as "defender of the sacred frontiers" and beginning its colonial invasions (Eritrea, Libya) and the interventionist politics of the first world war. After the second world war, the greatest and most atrocious legalized genocide, armies have been used to enforce coups d'etats (Greece 1967), to restore "order" (Czekoslovakia, 1968; Poland 1970/81), or as arm of political blackmail (Italy, 1964; France 1968). Today therefore the existence of obligatory military service does
not have the aim, as they try to make us believe, of an efficient defense of the "Nation" but maintains a purely political direction. This direction was clarified in the Atlantic Pact, signed in '49 as the NATO, through which the Americans had occasion to concentrate their strength in Italy and the rest of Europe in defence of the capitalist structures of the member countries of the alliance, leaving the Italian army with the legalised task of repression within the country of any form of class struggle, any revolutionary action by the exploited and any ideology which denies authority as a social system.
The State also imposes consensus of the army and its structure as instrument of repression on the young through the obligation of military service.
Before being called to military service I already had fairly clear ideas as to what the army and its real function within society is, conception which I developed through my anarchist militance Then, finding myself like thous-ands of young people every year faced with the hostile reality of life in the barracks, I have chosen to refuse the role of proletarian in uniform, to refuse the obligation of military service.
My act is directed towards underlining my critical attitude to-wards power and its repressive organisations, by denouncing the homicidal and destructive logic of the military structure and contributing to generalising the practice of desertion as struggle against the army, authoritarian appendix of the State.
In fact, the carabinieri, as branch ! of the army and the police, as armed structure of the State, are invested in first person with repressive action and used to strike every initiative put into act by the exploited in their attempt to reappropriate what has been taken from them, to heavily dissuade any rebellion against constituted order and to convince the rebels to return to their posts of exploitation in the factories, country and schools. These forces which defend exploitation and render it possible, often do not hesitate to assassinate the exploited in the streets and to terrorise with institutional
i violence: Modena 1950-demonstration against lockout-6 workers killed by the forces of order. Mussomelo 1954-demonstration because of lack of drinking water -police shoot and kill three women and a man. Reggio Emilia 1960-mass demonstration against
the Tombroni government-5 dead
At the same time 4 dead in Pal-ermo and one in Catania. Avola 1968-farm workers demonstrate -police kill two trade unionists. Battipaglia 1969-demonstration for work-police kill two workers. Milan 1970--demoristration one year after the State massacre and the murder of Pinelli-police kill Saverio Santarelli with a tear gas canister.
No less heavy is the use of the military in situations which are difficult to control: Orgosolo 1969 --shepherds are chased from the fields by firing maneouvres; parachutists and carabinieri intervene, the village is encircled and "mopped up". Rome 1969-demonstration of 100,000 engineering wor-kers, the Confindustria headquar-terstaken over by the military and surrounded by tanks.
I think these few examples will be enough to explain the true func-tion of the Armed Forces
If I am here today it is to underline the repressive function of the State exercised against all those, who-like myself and many other comrades-desert the army and are struggling for a society without exploitation and without privilege.
So long as the State exists laws will exist which defend the dominant classes and their interests.

by anarchist deserter Orazio Valastro