US and Israel war against Iran marks 100 days

The workers who load the munitions, who steer the ships, who dig the trenches, and who sweep the streets of the cities that burn have a single, undeniable interest: they wish to live. The decision being made does not include their voice. It should.

We are told that a war has lasted one hundred days. We are told that nations are at odds, that leaders are shifting their stances, that the geopolitical chessboard is being rearranged by men in high offices. But let us look past the maps and the titles. Let us look at the hands that hold the tools of destruction and the hands that are crushed by them. The premise before us contains errors of fact, yes - the Chancellor of Germany is not the man named in the report, and the nature of the conflict is more complex than a simple binary of aggressor and victim - but these are minor corrections to a major moral failure. The failure is not in the name of a politician; it is in the silence of the working class while the machinery of war grinds on.

I have spent my life on the railroads, watching the iron horses that carry the wealth of the nation. I know that a train does not move by the will of the conductor alone. It moves because the fireman shovels the coal, because the brakemen couple the cars, because the engineers pull the lever. If any one of them stops, the train stops. War is no different. It is a machine, vast and terrible, but it is powered by human labor. It is fueled by the sweat of the worker in the factory, the dock, and the field. And yet, we are asked to believe that this machine has a will of its own, that it operates independently of the hands that feed it. This is the great deception of our time.

The solidarity audit demands that we ask: who benefits from this conflict? The answer is never the worker. The worker in the United States does not profit from the bombing of Iran. The worker in Israel does not profit from the siege. The worker in Iran does not profit from the retaliation. The profit goes to the armaments manufacturers, to the oil companies, to the bankers who finance the destruction. They are the ones who count the days. One hundred days of war means one hundred days of contracts renewed, of profits secured, of power consolidated. For the worker, one hundred days means one hundred days of fear, of grief, of uncertainty. It means the price of bread rises while the wage stays fixed. It means the draft calls for the young men who have no voice in the councils of war.

We are told that we must choose sides. We are told that loyalty to our nation requires us to support its wars. But what is this nation? Is it the government that sends our sons to die? Or is it the people who raise them, who love them, who mourn them? I have always believed that the working class of America has no interest in the expansion of empire. Our interest is in the shortening of the workday, in the raising of the wage, in the safety of the workplace. When we are asked to fight for the interests of capital abroad, we are being asked to betray our interests at home.

The division moves are subtle but effective. We are divided by nationality, by religion, by race. The worker in New York is told to hate the worker in Tehran. The worker in Tel Aviv is told to fear the worker in Damascus. This division is not accidental. It is engineered. It is the strategy of the ruling class to keep the workers of the world from recognizing their common enemy. If the workers of the United States and the workers of Iran were to stand together, if they were to refuse to load the ships and to refuse to fire the guns, the war would end. Not because of a treaty signed in a palace, but because the machine would run out of fuel.

I do not speak this as a sentiment. I speak it as a matter of mechanics. Power resides in the collective action of the many. The state is not a neutral arbiter. It is the executive committee of the capitalist class. It will always use its force to protect property and to suppress labor. When the government speaks of national security, it means the security of the system that exploits us. When it speaks of freedom, it means the freedom of capital to move and to profit. We must see through this language. We must see the state for what it is: an instrument of class rule.

The changing stance of political leaders, whether in Berlin or Washington, is irrelevant to the worker. Their shifts are tactical, designed to manage public opinion and to maintain the flow of resources. They do not care about the human cost. They care about the balance of power. But we, the workers, we care about the human cost. We care about the mother who loses her son. We care about the father who loses his livelihood. We care about the community that is shattered by violence.

What would it look like if we acted together? It would look like a general strike against war. It would look like the refusal to participate in the machinery of death. It would look like the recognition that our enemy is not the worker across the border, but the system that pits us against each other. This is not a radical idea. It is the most natural idea in the world. It is the idea of solidarity.

We must not be fooled by the rhetoric of patriotism. Patriotism that demands our blood for the profit of others is not patriotism; it is treason against the working class. We must build a new loyalty, a loyalty to each other, to our fellow workers, to the human family. This loyalty is stronger than any flag, more enduring than any government. It is the only force that can stop the war.

The one hundred days are not a milestone of history. They are a measure of our failure to act. They are the power of division and the weakness of our solidarity. But it is not too late. The machine can be stopped. The hands that feed it can withdraw. The question is not whether we have the power. The question is whether we have the will. And I believe, with all my heart, that we do.