The thunder of war will get louder as summer turns to autumn. Over recent weeks media speculation over Bush's attack plans has intensified, helped along by carefully planted dollops of disinformation and propaganda. A fortnight ago Blair, good poodle that he is, explicitly linked returning "UN weapons inspectors" to Iraq, Saddam Hussein's inevitable refusal to admit them and the beginning of a US-led military campaign against him.

Since September 11th, there's been no doubt a renewed war on Iraq will follow. The only question until recently has been when. Just how close we've come is shown by the fact that this question is being replaced. The discussion in the mainstream media now focuses on the military options. The storm is about to break.

All this puts liberals in a quandary. "The US must persuade the security council to invoke chapter VII, article 42, of the UN charter, having first made the case that Iraq currently presents a 'threat to the peace', under article 39, that cannot be countered in any other way", drones the *Guardian (30th July), a mouthpiece for one section of liberal opinion.

Others, from liberalism's fluffy wing, just wish none of the world's bosses would be beastly to any of the world's people, ever. But whichever wing they're from, fluffy or spiky, the liberals are confounded by their utopian ideology.

They're utopian because they identify their interests with those of the state. The last issue of this newspaper contained an excellent example.

In a published letter, notorious liberal Peter Cadogan (who opposes war in this instance) insisted on identifying three factors - the state, him and us - as "we". Well, we've got some news for him. The state isn't us. It's our mortal enemy.

Why are Bush and Blair set on war? More than ever, the American government can't bear to be mocked. Power, we know, is based on the perceptions of those over whom it's exercised.

After the so-called Indian Mutiny of 1857, British officers forced captured rebels at Cawnpore to lick up the blood of massacred (British) civilians before they were executed. September 11th exposed the modern leviathan's soft underbelly, and the American state has used exemplary cruelty and ruthlessness to expunge its defeat.

Saddam's continued existence remains a symbol of US weakness and a potent symbol for the people America oppresses. Blair is merely continuing the British policy of the last 50 years, currying favour by arselicking the president of the day.

We, the anarchists, oppose the coming slaughter. Some of us do so on humanitarian grounds much more substantial than those conjured up by the *Guardian ("no, no, we won't go, unless the UN tell us so"). All of us do so because opposition is the inevitable result of our political principles. We oppose it because our only enemy is the state itself.

We know it will try to conscript us into its ranks if the war needs fodder. We know the inevitable revolt of the oppressed will be turned on us because the particular state we live in claims us as its possessions.

We know, as modern history demonstrates, that war isn't just the mother of invention. It's the pretext for repression here as well. The state seizes the chance to tighten its grip around our necks. Guantanamo Bay, HMP Belmarsh - US and British "citizens" are next in line.

There's no neutral ground in this struggle between working class and the state. This struggle is a war of sorts itself, a different kind of war. Sometimes hidden, sometimes overt, it's a war nevertheless. This is why the liberals are part of the problem, whether they're from Cadogan's tendency or the *Guardian's.

For us or against us, quisling or comrade, whose side are you on - the testing time is fast approaching.