According to Labour's grand plan, the present war-fighting could last for a generation. Such was Blair's message, last weekend, in Plymouth, on board HMS Albion.
Of course, Blair's speech was partly aimed at the army's grumbling top brass, to spell out that the army will have not a lesser, but a bigger role to play in future - meaning that generals had better keep their mouths shut, if they want to benefit from this enhanced role.
Significantly, Blair had nothing to say about the present disaster in Iraq. Nor did he venture any comment about Bush's decision to send another 21,000 troops to Baghdad. That even more Iraqi blood is about to be shed is none of Blair's concern!
Defending the indefensible
His speech was merely another arrogant justification for his criminal policy, regardless of the fact that it is so widely rejected by the whole spectrum of public opinion. Once again, the "threat" of terrorism and Al Qaeda were presented as justifying the "need" for the British army to be "ready to intervene anywhere in the world". Never mind the fact that it is precisely the despair and anger caused by such interventions, which provides the most fertile recruiting ground for terrorism!
By now, however, Blair's terrorist scarecrow has paled into insignificance behind the daily catastrophic bloodshed caused by the invasion of Iraq. The level of casualties due to the military occupation itself had already exposed the imperialist powers and their military machines as the most dangerous terrorists of all.
...and defending the god of profit
This is no doubt why Blair felt it necessary to try to revive the Cold War spirit, by stating that the threat of Al Qaeda was "akin to that of revolutionary communism in its earliest and most militant phase". For a pro-business bigot like Blair, there is indeed nothing more terrifying than revolutionary communism and the threat which it represents for the god, Profit!
Significantly, however, unlike communism, which made profiteers wet their pants, terrorism is a godsend for big business. For a large number of British and US companies, the "security" and "reconstruction" budgets in Iraq have been a huge bounty. Western oil giants are queueing to take their share of Iraq's oil, something which was out of bounds for them before the invasion. As to arms manufacturers, they are bracing themselves for the largest increase in defence budgets for more than two decades. In short, thanks to the "terrorist threat", the stranglehold of Western big business over the world has never been so tight!
What "revolutionary communism" did
While Al Qaeda and their like never threaten the profit system itself, what Blair describes as "revolutionary communism in its earliest and most militant phase", certainly did.
This was a gigantic wave of enthusiasm, which spread across the world, following the horrific bloodshed of World War I. Starting from Russia, in 1917, with the overthrow of the czarist dictatorship by the Russian working class (and not by British and US bombs, since both were allied to the tyrant), it fed on the determination of millions of people across the world to build a new future, free from the capitalist profiteering which had caused so many deaths and so much suffering during the war.
"Revolutionary communism" was turned towards the future, not towards the past. Its aim was to rid the world of the very same capitalist parasitism which is championed today by the likes of Blair and Brown.
An end to profit and war!
90 years on, and over a decade after the reintroduction of private profit in Russia, the spectre of this revolution is still haunting the Blairs of this world.
And for good reason. Because unlike this rotten capitalist system which can offer nothing to mankind, except more exploitation and wars, communism has a whole new future to build, if only by curing the economy from the cancer of private profit.
Yes, the likes of Blair and his friends in the City should be afraid of revolutionary communism. Because, unlike the opportunist "radicalism" of Middle Eastern terrorist groups, communism is and will remain the future of mankind.
Every one of us, working women and men, are potential communists, simply because we are day in and day out, on the receiving end of capitalist exploitation. And yes, one of these days, the working class will rise again to free society from the dictatorship of the profit system and the bloody wars it generates!