When the capitalist class in a country sends that country into war, they always whip up a war fever,  jingoist hysteria, mass hatred and blood thirsty attitudes. That blood lust only dies down when the real cost hits home, as the body bags start returning. That was the case in the Vietnam War, for example.

The US has been at war for 15 years now, but it’s been a low-key war, one in which the body bags have not been coming home in any great number. So that allows the jingoism to continue. That’s what allows Trump to get wild applause for his call to reintroduce water boarding, “and a whole lot worse”, and for Ted Cruz to get similar applause for his comment, “We will carpet-bomb them (Islamic State) into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!”

It’s what allows Hillary Clinton to cackle with glee over the torture and death of Moammar Gadaffi. (See video below.) And while Sanders doesn’t use the same blood-thirsty rhetoric, he too supports the same deadly policies.

That’s the context for the recent announcement by the Obama administration that they bombed and killed 150 people in Somalia. Who were they? Were they all terrorist “militants” preparing to attack US troops in the region? Were women and children in their number? Was it another wedding ceremony, such as the one bombed in Iraq some time ago?

Does anybody (aside from the Somalis) know? Does anybody care? And does the US military killing more and more “militants” (many of whom are just teen agers) really make for a better world? Does it make workers anywhere – in the US or Somalia – safer?

Al Shabaab fighters. Is this who was killed?

Somali family. Or was this who was killed?

Glen Greenwald has written a column pointing all this out. But the kept US media just continues on its way, parroting what the US government says without a doubt in the world. (Remember “weapons of mass destruction”?)

The lives of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and who knows where else have been wrecked by US terrorist drone attacks. (Yes, the US is the one engaging in terrorism through these attacks!) And at home, the blood lust continues to be whipped up. Any real working class people’s movement here at home – any movement against “income inequality”, against environmental destruction, against racism and police murders – any such movement will never get very far if it doesn’t directly confront this murderous foreign policy and the hatred and blood lust that it must live off of here at home. It must be based on solidarity with the most oppressed, both at home and abroad. That also means it must oppose all political candidates who help feed into that blood lust by supporting US military aggression. Sorry, Sanders supporters, that includes “the Bern”.