George Bush introduced the “Bush doctrine” to the world on September 11 2001. This meant that the United States would seek out both groups and states that it judged offered any sort of threat to its security and attack them first.

Five years on, this doctrine has been a disaster for millions of Palestinians, Afghans, Lebanese and Iraqis.

In Iraq, living conditions have deteriorated beyond imagination. Streets are empty at night; the fear of murder and kidnapping is an epidemic. Gangs, some of them motivated by ideology, others by drugs, make daily life unbearable.

Their primal barbarity allows the British and American press to discredit the resistance fighting the armies of occupation. The demand for Troops out of Iraq has never been more timely.

Even before the crash of the Nimrod in Afghanistan on September 2 and the death of the 14 servicemen on board, it had been clear that the war in that occupied country is far from over. 1600 Afghans have died in the last two months as a result of the occupation.

Lieutenant General David Richards, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan claims that British troops there face fighting which is more intense and prolonged than any other conflict in the past 50 years – since the Korean war.

The United States government armed the Israeli state’s killing machine and gave it permission to devastate much of Lebanon’s infrastructure.

Blair actively encouraged the Israelis, and his government allowed US planes to deliver weapons to the Israelis through British airports.

Many of the cluster bombs now littering the streets of Lebanese villages will have come through Britain. They are continuing to kill and maim today and will do so for years to come.

The language that Condoleezza Rice, John Bolton and Bush use when talking about Iran is the sort that diplomats only use when war is on their agenda.

As far back as 2002 pre-emptive military action was a central tenet of US security policy with regards to Iran. The talk of Iranian nuclear weapons development is nothing but a smokescreen. US allies Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons, to say nothing of those held by the imperialists themselves.

An indication that millions of people are beginning to see through the “war on terror” rhetoric is the public reaction to the alleged plot to detonate bombs on aircraft. While there may be some substance to some of the allegations, there was a lot of cynicism to the police and government response. It was understood as a clumsy effort to add to a climate of fear, to enhance the powers of the police and to restrict our civil liberties still further.

Racism is not far from the surface of this discourse. While police officers made tongue in cheek comments about introducing the crime “travelling while Asian” newspapers were carrying articles on the merits of checking passengers with Muslim names more stringently than everyone else.

American and British imperialism have reached the limits of the types of settlement they can impose by force on the Middle East. In Afghanistan they are replaying every previous bloody foreign invasion.

The same policies and alliances have brought only death and misery to Gaza, Iraq and Lebanon. Socialists now have to make them pay the political price at home.

This means that we have to vigorously defend civil liberties and continue building a political alternative. It is well past time for Blair, one of the key architects of this death and destruction, to go. The walls of the Labour Party conference in Manchester will echo to the sound of a huge demonstration as the anti-war movement in Britain makes its voice heard: will Blair’s supine MPs, and his backers in the trade union bureaucracy heed the call and force him out?