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 Stop the war
WHEN, IN EARLY January, Hans Blix and the UN weapons
inspectors reported that there was no ‘smoking gun’, conclusive evidence of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, the prospect of an immediate war
against Iraq by the Bush regime appeared to have receded. Just a few days later,
however, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced the deployment of a
further 65,000 troops which, with further mobilisations since, has put into
place a powerful war machine in the Gulf region.
A number of experts, including previous Iraqi weapons
inspectors such as Scott Ritter, had argued in advance that the new
investigations would show that Iraq was stripped of any WMDs in the 1990s, or
the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. They have
been vindicated, while the legitimacy of Bush’s war plans has received a
shattering blow in the eyes of world public opinion.
This has been reinforced by the entirely different approach
to the greater threat posed by North Korea in its latest stance. It has
repudiated its nuclear agreements with the US, withdrawn from the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, and warns it will make a nuclear bomb every year. The
response of the Bush administration is to declare that this is ‘a diplomatic
issue’. Iraq, on the other hand, as Robert Fisk in The Independent wrote,
"hands over a 12,000 page account of its weapons production and allows UN
inspectors to roam all over the country, and – after they have found not a jam
jar of dangerous chemicals in 230 raids – President Bush announces that Iraq is
a threat to America, has not disarmed and may have to be invaded".
Mass pressure, a huge worldwide anti-war movement, had
appeared, earlier in the new year, to have introduced an uncharacteristic air of
uncertainty, vacillation and seeming doubt into the US administration, expressed
by Bush himself. In his New Year walk with reporters on his ranch in Texas, in
answer to a question on the prospects of war, he testily declared: ‘Against
which country?... If we do have to go to war, I decide not you’. Early in
January Colin Powell, no doubt anticipating that the weapons inspectors were
about to report that they had drawn a blank, stated that 27 January was ‘not a
D-Day for decision making’.
In the previous period, however, this had been precisely
pencilled in as a likely ‘trigger’ for the start of a war. US imperialism
believed that the post-September 11 mood, and particularly the victory in
Afghanistan, would allow them to go virtually unchallenged in asserting their
overwhelming military prowess on a world scale. Now, believed the Republican
Party right, was the time to implement their long-cherished plans. Priority was
given to completing the ‘unfinished business’ left over from the Gulf War. In
1996, an Israeli-US study headed by Bush’s present ‘security’ adviser Richard
Perle, in a project called ‘A Clean Break’, advocated the removal of Saddam
Hussein. In an open letter to Bill Clinton at the time, Perle demanded a
full-scale drive for regime change in Baghdad. No time was lost following US
imperialism’s victory in Afghanistan to begin to implement this programme of the
Republican right and the oil and gas capitalists who backed them and lusted for
control of Iraq’s oil.
They will not easily abandon these long-term plans. However,
as Socialism Today argued, US imperialism will in time also discover the
limits of this military power. Before even the onset of war they have come up
against the political limits of mass resistance from the working class and the
poor, as well as bourgeois governments in Europe and elsewhere, subjected to the
ferocious pressure of their own populations to stand up to the world’s ‘bully’,
US imperialism. Even more than was the case in the first Gulf war, Kosova and
Afghanistan, the ideological legitimacy of the actions of the US, given the mass
communications that now exist, are closely scrutinised and, if found wanting,
are rejected.
Mass pressure against war
THE HAWKS IN the US administration believe that, despite the
anti-war protests, all that is required is a short military campaign to
overthrow Saddam, and the majority of the world’s population, as in the previous
wars of the 1990s, would accommodate themselves to this accomplished fact. Iraq,
in the eyes of the peoples of the world, does not constitute a ‘present and
immediate danger’ to either the US or other countries in the Middle East.
North Korea is now such a threat, given the stupidity of the
Bush regime in breaking the previous policy of Clinton of ‘engagement’ with Kim
Jong-Il’s Stalinist outfit in the North. The condemnation of North Korea as part
of an ‘axis of evil’, the cutting off of food and oil supplies, and the brutal
rupturing of the previous South Korean regime’s ‘sunshine policy’, has directly
led to the current conflict. This in turn could lead to North Korea selling
‘nuclear secrets’, as it has done in the past, to other countries and potential
terrorist organisations. How has Bush responded to this? By implementing the new
military doctrine of ‘pre-emptive strikes’ against North Korea, which in this
context would have to be a nuclear attack? Even the Bush regime would not take
such a step, which would lead to world outrage and also its own overthrow.
Therefore, Colin Powell has declared that the previously discredited policies of
Clinton of ‘diplomacy’ and ‘engagement’ have had to be resorted to.
The hypocritical double dealing of Bush has not been lost on
the world’s population, not least on the US people themselves. It is this
political mass pressure, a kind of latent ‘people’s power’, which periodically
manifests itself in massive demonstrations, which has enormously complicated the
US administration’s drive towards a war with Iraq. In Europe, it has led to a
profound popular opposition to the idea of war, particularly for ‘regime
change’. Only a quarter of the population of Germany, for instance, supports
this, while in Britain, which in polls has seemingly the highest percentage in
favour of a war against Saddam, particularly if conducted through the UN,
support is still less than half the population.
Moreover, it has now entered the popular consciousness that
this is truly a ‘war for oil’. In an attempt to counter this widespread
perception, the Financial Times said that this was not a war over oil
because the International Monetary Fund has estimated that a $5 rise in the
price of oil, sustained for a year, would mean a drop in world gross domestic
product of 0.25%. Their conclusion, therefore, is that a war would damage the
capitalist system and is not in the economic interests of the US or world
capitalism as a whole. However Bush, as the Financial Times concedes,
calculates that the ‘disruption’ would be temporary (he may be mistaken on this)
and at the same time the US would have grabbed Iraq’s oil resources.
The US right-wing commentator Thomas Friedman, writing in
the New York Times, was more accurate when he argued that a war in Iraq
was ‘not just for oil’. In other words, the US has as its aim the seizure of
Iraq’s oil and in turn the enhancement of its already dominant position,
particularly militarily, throughout the world. If Iraq was crushed, reason Bush
and his advisers, potential opponents particularly in the neo-colonial world
would think twice before challenging US power. Nevertheless, the economic
importance of oil to US and world imperialism is transparent as even British
spokespersons have admitted: "Some ministers and officials in Whitehall say
privately that oil is more important in the calculation than weapons of mass
destruction" (The Guardian, 7 January 2003).
The complication for the US in seeking to accuse Saddam of
possessing WMD is, in the words of one commentator, like accusing somebody of
murder but being unable to discover the body! But the US has not given up hope
of discovering or manufacturing the ‘evidence’ which could justify military
action. Previously, the US government criticised the weapons inspectors and
stated that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had abundant evidence against
Saddam. When Blix challenged them to furnish the inspectors with the evidence,
they initially hesitated but in early January their files were turned over.
It is doubtful, though, whether there is anything really new
in this evidence (as with Blair’s dossier) but the tactics of the US are to
clearly find any nuclear scientist who could be spirited out of the country
together with their families who will then furnish the necessary ‘proof’ against
Saddam. The UN inspectors are unlikely to present any ‘smoking gun’ evidence
when they report to the Security Council on 27 January. For Bush, however, the
weapons inspection is a failure unless it comes up with evidence of the weapons
the US is convinced Saddam is hiding.
It is now increasingly likely that the US, with the slavish
support of Blair, is preparing to launch a military strike against Iraq without
the backing of the UN Security Council. When Chirac and Schroder announced that
they would not vote for military action at this stage, Rumsfeld contemptuously
dismissed them as ‘old powers’. They US, he asserted, would have the support of
Britain, Italy, Spain and some of the East European states. Opposition to war by
France and Germany also makes it less likely that Russia and China, who like
France have a veto on the Security Council, will support military action. For
the US to go ahead with a military attack under these circumstances will
enormously complicate its international position in the aftermath of a military
strike against Saddam and occupation of Iraq.
Once again, it is clear, the effects of mass pressure have
been felt, with particularly vivid expression in the case of France. Early in
the new year the French president Chirac, on television, seemed to promise 5,000
troops to an invasion force in Iraq. Yet such was the outcry that this provoked,
with 70% of the French people opposed to the war, he was forced to do a
somersault within 48 hours. Given the massive opposition in Germany also,
despite the sympathetic noises made by the chairperson of the Bundestag and
implied support towards US intentions in Iraq, support from the Schröder
government for Bush would pour oil on the already inflamed mood against war. In
Britain, Blair is virtually totally isolated, both within the Parliamentary
Labour Party, not a hotbed of radical anti-war protest, and even in his own
cabinet. The Guardian reported that he was the sole advocate in the
cabinet of backing the US in the event of US unilateral action. He has been
given a warning by the representatives of Labour MPs that he would face the
biggest revolt since he came to power in the event of his support for a
unilateral strike. Most of the opposition at this stage takes refuge behind
opposition to the war ‘unless it has the sanction of the UN’. But if the UN
voted for a war against Iraq, it would serve to undermine the already tarnished
image of the UN. It would be seen as a stooge and instrument of US imperialism.
‘Horror without end’
ALL OF THIS has to be balanced however, against the
continued mobilisation for war of the US and its allies. Huge resources are
still pouring into the region surrounding Iraq. To mobilise such a formidable
military machine, as with the First World War, increases the momentum for war.
The complete postponement of war without the overthrow of Saddam would utterly
discredit Bush and, taken together with the colossal difficulties in the US
economy, would probably lead to regime change in Washington, through elections,
before such a development takes place in Baghdad.
Therefore, the preparations for war continue. Delegations
from the US and Britain in particular, have leaned on the new Turkish government
to allow the stationing of US troops there. Turkey has granted the US the right
to survey its ports and airbases, but not yet to station US troops, which would
have to be approved by the Turkish parliament against the background that 90% of
the Turkish population oppose such a step.
Such are the formidable obstacles at this stage, both in the
US and worldwide, that it is not excluded that the plans for the invasion could
be postponed until the autumn of this year. Despite the enormous difficulties
there would be in maintaining such a force on ‘standby’, in the 1991 Gulf war
troops were kept in the region for six months before the war actually broke out.
The complication for Bush is that mass opposition to war has
been added to with significant sections of the tops of the US and British
military expressing doubts. So unprepared are British forces, army chefs are
being deployed as makeshift leaders of soldiers going into battle. This problem
will be compounded by the fire-fighters’ strike. A war against even a weakened
Saddam regime would not be a ‘cakewalk’. US generals from the Marine Corps have
broken ranks to issue a warning that a war would be ‘bloody’. It is not possible
to say what the effect of a military intervention would be on the Iraqi people.
It is possible that, given the terror at the prospect of war and the hatred for
Saddam, there would be a collapse and a relatively easy victory for US forces.
But this is not at all guaranteed. The Saddam regime has in the past period
skilfully cultivated the tribes and clans, some involving one million people, in
order to re-establish a base in the population. This has taken the form of
financial bribes and even the partial arming, it seems, not just of the Ba’ath
party supporters but of other sections of the population in preparation for
military resistance, particularly in Baghdad.
It is assumed by US military planners that a war would take
the form of an invasion from the south together with a military intervention
through Kurdish-held territory in the north. It is expected that there would be
little ‘resistance’ in these areas. However, even this is not guaranteed,
particularly in the south, given the suspicions that the Shia population has
about the past and future intentions of the US towards Iraq. But even if they
were to ensure a relatively easy passage in these regions they would meet
military resistance from the Republican Guard and, probably, from sections at
least of the Baghdad population.
The mere declaration of war would probably be the trigger
for the beginning of a humanitarian and refugee catastrophe that would put in
the shade the terrible plight of the Kurds in 1991 who fled the cities of the
north to the mountains. A recent secret UN report has indicated that half a
million people could be killed, a mass exodus of 900,000 Iraqis would ensue, and
there could be mass hunger and starvation. The battle for Baghdad could take the
form of a ‘blitzkrieg’ and the corresponding resistance could be similar to that
of the Palestinians in Jenin against the Israeli bombardment or the Chechens in
Grozny.
Moreover, a military victory would be the ‘easy’ part of any
intervention. What would follow would be a nightmare for the region and the
world. The whole of the Middle East would be in uproar with the possibility of
continued and renewed confrontation between the Palestinians and Israel, and
even a war with neighbouring countries. The US has indicated that despite the
claims of the ‘democratic’ imperialists that an invasion of Iraq would usher in
for the first time a democratic phase for Iraq and the region, the US intends to
supplant Saddam with its own military dictatorship, with elections ruled out
‘for 18 months’ (in reality, a lot longer than that). The economic consequences
are incalculable and could enormously compound the deep economic crisis of US
capitalism in particular, far deeper than in 1991, which in turn had serious
ramifications for the world.
‘Horror without end’, Lenin forecast, was the fate of
humankind on the basis of a continuation of capitalism. The 1990s revealed this
forecast to be prescient indeed, with one war after another and the prospect of
an endless series of military conflicts, increased poverty, national and ethnic
strife, so long as capitalism continues. The Washington-based Worldwatch
Institute posed the issue in a stark fashion: "The human race has only one and
perhaps two generations to rescue itself". It declares: "The longer that no
remedial action is taken, the greater the degree of misery and biological
impoverishment that humankind must be prepared to accept". Added to this is the
recent devastating warning of Joseph Rotblatt, a noted nuclear physicist who
worked on the first atom bomb in the US in the 1940s, who believes that Bush’s
policy "is setting the world on a course towards nuclear disaster".
However, such a devastating scenario can and will be stopped
by the revolt of the working class, the poor and the working people of the
world, a manifestation of which is the powerful anti-war movement that is under
way. While tracing out the plans and conspiracies of imperialism for war in
Iraq, of analysing the different phases of this ongoing conflict, it is at the
same time absolutely necessary not to lessen for one moment the building of a
powerful anti-war, as well as an anti-capitalist and pronounced socialist
movement, in order to check Bush and Blair. It is necessary to create a world in
which these horrors will no longer exist. Such a world is a socialist world.
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