That same day, US Trade Ambassador Robert Zoellick called for an economic "counteroffensive" to "advance American leadership" and complement military action. Item number one on the political agenda? "The promotion of our values through granting U.S. Trade Promotion Authority to the President", the so-called "fast track" which would enable the president to implement far-reaching treaties like that establishing the Free Trade Area of the Americas without submitting the project to full debate and review by elected representatives.

In his September 24 presentation to the Institute for International Economics in Washington DC, Zoellick urged "a serious look at economic and political history" in the course of which he informed his audience that, among other things, the "crashing (sic) debates in the Socialist International" were linked to nationalist terrorism and the assassination of the Austrian archduke which triggered the First World War.

As examples of the "compassion and fairness" underlying US trade policy, Zoellick cited U.S. "flexibilities in the rules for intellectual property to help promote a comprehensive response to the pandemic of HIV/AIDS" and the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), described as �an incredible opportunity to draw African nations into the trading system"). These outrageous assertions have as little basis in the real world as Zoellick's slanderous attacks on labour's historical record. The pharmaceutical transnationals beat a partial, tactical retreat on the pricing and production of AIDS/HIV treatments only in response to a worldwide campaign of popular protest, with the active participation of the labour movement. And the AGOA cited by Zoellick gives African apparel manufacturers duty-free access to the US market on the strict condition that they use US-made yarn and cloth.

Zoellick�s casual treatment of a complex history and his fanciful characterizations of U.S. trade policy contain a poorly disguised threat to democratic debate: you're either for "fast track", "free trade" and a new round of WTO negotiations or you're unpatriotic. Endorse the corporate blueprint or appease terrorism. There is no other choice.

This cynical ideological manipulation has been correctly � and courageously, in the present context � criticized by US AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who called Zoellick�s arguments "ludicrous and offensive, implying that those who don�t support this overwhelmingly partisan fast track proposal now are somehow protectionist, isolationist, or worse yet, unwilling to fight against terrorism. We strongly support stimulating the U.S. economy and responding to the tragedies of September 11, but fast track does nothing to achieve either of these aims." Resemblance to the intellectual bullying of the Cold War, which was marked by the constant injunction to subordinate all activity to the interests of one or another of the two "camps", is not hard to spot � the Bush administration itself has likened the coming period to the Cold War decades.

In this situation, the labour movement must mobilize to defend the space for democratic debate and dissent and safeguard its independence of thought and action. The need for a coordinated international effort to eliminate terrorist networks is self-evident. It is precisely the enormous threat to democracy and human rights posed by such groups that obliges us to insist on raising fundamental questions concerning the aims, methods, and long-term goals of the anti-terrorism campaign. Maximum public debate and participation, rather than the settling of accounts sought by Zoellick, the corporations and their media allies are required.

Serious strategies for peace and security require long-term, strategic thinking � and appropriate resources to implement them. The people of Pakistan certainly need relief from the crushing burden of debt incurred by decades of corrupt rulers. So too do hundreds of millions of other people around the globe. The call for a significant reduction in developing county debt � long a component part of international labour�s demands for a fundamental reorientation of international priorities � cannot be subordinated to shifting diplomatic requirements. It must be at the center of our program for international social reconstruction. And it must be allied to ongoing campaigns to strengthen democracy internationally and to restrain corporate power.

Faced with an anthrax threat, the US government is now scrambling to override the very international patent laws it has previously fought to defend. The price of patented antibiotics makes widespread distribution prohibitively expensive, a situation all-too familiar to the millions of victims of the AIDS/HIV pandemic ravaging the globe. There could be no more compelling argument for placing human needs before the "intellectual property rights" of the transnationals.

Having proclaimed a public health emergency - in which postal, government and media workers are in the front line of exposure - U.S. authorities now find that they have only a hollow shell of a public health system. Yet it is precisely this blueprint which is being promoted as a universal model. The Free Trade Area of the Americas and the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services would place all public services, including medical care, on the corporate auction block.

The Bush administration, which recently derailed negotiations for an international protocol to eliminate biological weapons on the spurious grounds that it was inimical to US industry "interests", has now come out in favor of international control measures. Must we wait for a nuclear weapon to be detonated to press for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction? Must we wait for another massive terrorist attack to demand the immediate ratification of the treaty for an International Criminal Court to deal with crimes against humanity of this magnitude?

Anyone seeking to comprehend the concentrated violence of groups like Al Qaida need look no further than the Rwandan terror squads who systematically killed everyone with glasses, on the assumption that they might read and therefore think. Or the Serbian fascists who methodically set about the destruction of Bosnia's libraries and urban civilization with as much alacrity as the murder of their Muslim victims. Must we wait for more Rwandas and more Bosnias before we seriously set about endowing the United Nations with the judicial, financial, and military capability to take credible action? Must the tortured people of Afghanistan endure another decade of war, crisis, repression and dislocation before their needs � and the needs of the growing international army of hungry refugees - are considered deserving of international support?

Labour has every right � indeed, it has every obligation � to submit the current military campaign to critical scrutiny, to insist that military targets be limited and precisely defined, and to press for active involvement in the long-overdue work of addressing the underlying sources of conflict in the world. Real security will only come through democratic development, the elimination of poverty and the universal defense of human rights and human dignity, which are the foundations of the international labour movement.