By Larry Everest, Revolution #96, July 22, 2007
The debate within the U.S. ruling class over how to deal with the war
in Iraq heated up this past week-without resolution. The Democrats introduced
measures in both the House and Senate calling for scaling back U.S. troop
levels, but neither passed with enough votes to override a veto by Bush.
Four more proposals are being considered in Congress. Even leading Republican
senators are calling for a re-evaluation of the U.S. Iraq strategy. In
response, Bush aggressively counter-attacked – demanding that Congress shut
up and fund the war. “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,”
he declared. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.”
This is an argument among imperialists over the strategy and tactics
of empire: how to deal with a deteriorating situation in Iraq, and still
be able to confront other enemies in the region and keep control of the
region as a whole. Bush argues that any retreat in Iraq would gravely
weaken the U.S. position in the region. The Democrats counter that Bush’s
Iraq strategy has failed and has instead weakened the U.S. grip on a region
that is home to over 60% of the world’s energy resources and crucial to
U.S. global hegemony. Their argument is that therefore, the U.S. must
scale back in Iraq in order to confront an even bigger enemy in Iran and
to preserve its grip on the region overall.
In short, both sides in this debate are reactionary, and neither represents
the interests of the people. This underscores how crucial it is that another
force emerges: a force from outside the halls of power fighting for humanity
and determined to halt the unjust and immoral aggression in Iraq, an aggression
that has already caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
and that threatens to continue without end and spread to other countries.
“Surging” Toward Catastrophe
This debate wasn’t expected to take place until September, when U.S.
Commander Gen. David Petraeus is due to report on the state of the U.S.
“surge.” But events in Iraq aren’t waiting for September. The U.S. has
been “surging” for months. Yet a new government report acknowledged that
the Iraqi regime (implanted and imposed by the U.S.) has met only 8 of
the 18 “benchmarks” demanded by the U.S., benchmarks aimed at creating
a stable, unified client regime which could suppress anti-U.S. resistance
and sectarian violence.
Sunni and Shiite factions remain deadlocked over how to share power.
And it recently came out that a full year ago, CIA chief Michael Hayden
warned that “the inability of the [Iraqi] government to govern seems irreversible.”
Hayden said he didn’t see “any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn
this thing around….The [Iraqi] government is unable to govern.” (Washington
Post, 7/12/07)
Partly as a result of these failures, other contradictions the U.S. faces
across the whole region are intensifying. For instance, another intelligence
report finds that Al Qaeda and anti-U.S. Islamism is gaining strength
across the Muslim world.
So a defeat of enormous, perhaps historic, proportions (a “geopolitical
calamity,” Henry Kissinger has called it) is looming larger and larger
for the U.S. rulers. This is what is driving the debate in Washington-not
concern for the peoples of Iraq and the Middle East. And what makes the
debate within the establishment so fractious and intense is that the stakes
for them are enormous, yet their options are very limited. The outcome
in Iraq will likely have major, possibly unprecedented, consequences for
their global power and the very functioning of the political and economic
system they rule over. Yet in terms of how the U.S. ruling class perceives
their imperialist interests, none of their choices are good,
and any could potentially boomerang even more resoundingly than what has
already happened with the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Decoding Bush’s Speech: Bald-Faced Lies and Imperialist Truth
Bush’s belligerent July 12 press conference was a mixture of bald-faced
lies and distortions mixed with revelations of the actual stakes for the
imperialists.
Yet Bush’s lies were largely ignored in the mainstream press. For instance,
when Bush was asked if he had regrets about launching the war in Iraq,
he said he had been “hoping to resolve the issue diplomatically” but Saddam
Hussein “chose the course” to war when he failed to disclose his weapons
and disarm. In fact, Saddam Hussein did let inspectors in. He had disarmed.
That’s why the U.S. didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction-after
having lied about the Iraqi “threat” for months leading up to the war.
Bush said that leaving Iraq could lead to “mass killings on a horrific
scale.” But he failed to mention that mass killings are already going
on in Iraq on a horrific scale-many of them carried out by the U.S. military.
Just days earlier, a damning exposure of atrocities by U.S. military forces
in Iraq was published in The Nation. Based on interviews with
dozens of Iraq combat vets, “The
Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness,” by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian
(http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges) paints a picture of widespread
abuse and murder of Iraqi men, women, and children by U.S. forces. Bush
said nothing of these mass killings-nor did the Democrats, nor
did the mainstream press.
Mixed in with such lies were revelations of how much the imperialists
have riding in Iraq, and the possible consequences for them and their
empire. Bush put the war in a regional context, and implicitly threatened
Iran, saying: “The fight in Iraq is part of a broader struggle that’s
unfolding across the region” the same regime in Iran that is pursuing
nuclear weapons and threatening to wipe Israel off the map is also providing
sophisticated IEDs [improvised explosive devices] to extremists in Iraq
who are using them to kill American soldiers. The same Hezbollah terrorists
who are waging war against the forces of democracy in Lebanon are training
extremists to do the same against coalition forces in Iraq. The same Syrian
regime that provides support and sanctuary for Islamic Jihad and Hamas
has refused to close its airport in Damascus to suicide bombers headed
to Iraq. All these extremist groups would be emboldened by a precipitous
American withdrawal, which would confuse and frighten friends and allies
in the region.”
All these are real concerns for the U.S. rulers. Dominance in the Middle
East, often enforced via Israel and reactionary Arab client regimes, has
been a pillar of their global power for decades. Now the debacle in Iraq
has fueled anti-U.S. Islamic fundamentalism, a force which is reactionary
and offers no hope for the peoples of the region, but which also threatens
to unravel the U.S. grip on the whole region. It was not without reason
that Iraq’s foreign minister, warned that if the U.S. withdraws, “The
dangers could be a civil war, dividing the country, regional wars and
the collapse of the state.” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius
worried: “The violence that is destroying Iraq could spread throughout
the region-an inferno stretching across Lebanon, the Palestinian territories,
Jordan, Syria, and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia-with devastating consequences
for global security.” (WP 7/12)
The U.S. rulers don’t oppose Islamic fundamentalism because it’s reactionary
or because it interferes with the U.S. “bringing democracy” to the Middle
East. The U.S. has never brought self-determination to the region or respected
the sovereignty of the countries there. It’s brought imperialism and domination,
which has in many ways reinforced Islamic fundamentalism. Now the U.S.
is violently attempting to impose its domination even more directly, and
this has, in turn, further fueled Islamic fundamentalism. What the people-in
the region and globally-need is not either of these outmoded forces, but
an entirely different alternative standing for liberation from all forms
of oppression-which millions yearn for.
What Are the Democrats” Concerns?
Those who cling to the hope that the Democrats stand for something better
than Bush really should listen to what the Democrats are actually saying
and watch what the Democrats are actually doing. The Democrats’ words
and actions make it clear that their problem with Bush isn’t that he’s
persisting in a criminal war-it’s that the war is failing at the goal
of defeating the forces threatening U.S. domination in the Middle East-and
in fact, in many ways is making things even worse in terms of the U.S.
imperialists” interests.
In a recent interview on the Charlie Rose show (6/14/07), former
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that Bush has “shot
America’s credibility to hell” and said: “He [Bush] has undermined America’s
legitimacy to the degree that today, for most people in the world, the
symbol of America is not the Statue of Liberty, but Guantánamo. And he
has destroyed respect, or even fear of our military power.”
If the U.S. juggernaut was rolling merrily along and Iraq was well on
its way to becoming a stable U.S. neo-colony with permanent military bases,
a government subservient to the U.S., with an economy wide open to U.S.
capital, the U.S. political establishment-Democrats and Republicans both-would
be raising champagne toasts to Bush and singing praises to his leadership,
while dividing their time between debating which country in the Middle
East to attack next and conniving to get in on the looting of Iraq.
But this hasn’t happened. In fact, as things have turned out, continuing
the war in Iraq now could seriously undermine strategic goals and interests
of U.S. imperialism. And this is what is fueling the current debate in
the U.S. ruling class.
Senator Ted Kennedy put it, “The American people have lost faith in the
president’s competence in managing the war”at every critical step, the
administration has promised calm, but there is no calm.” So now the Democrats
want to reconfigure the U.S.’s Iraq strategy in order to better confront
Islamic fundamentalism and other threats to the U.S. stranglehold on the
Middle East-Iran in particular.
First, the proposal by Democratic Senators Carl Levin and Jack Reed would
start withdrawing some U.S. combat forces within three months, and end
combat by April 2008, but would leave permanent military bases and thousands
of troops in Iraq indefinitely-supposedly to conduct counter-terrorism,
train the Iraqi security forces, and protect U.S. infrastructure.
Second, this proposal is part of a bill proposing a staggering $649 billion
for the U.S. military-and no one is opposing this huge sum being spent
on armed aggression and threats to maintain the U.S. global empire all
in the name of waging the “war on terror.” Democrat John Edwards-who is
portrayed as being an “anti-war” Democratic presidential candidate, said,
“We need a real strategy against terrorism, like the one I have offered.
We need to take Al Qaeda in Iraq as seriously as we take terrorism anywhere.
As president, I will apply the full extent of our security apparatus to
protect our vital interests, to take measures to root out terrorist cells,
and to strike swiftly and strongly against those who would do us harm.”
Third, like Bush, the Democrats are increasingly focusing their fire
on Iran, and laying the groundwork for a possible military attack. Pro-war
Democrat and columnist Thomas Friedman stated that a major reason for
wanting to withdraw troops from Iraq was so that the U.S. would be in
a better position to attack Iran! He said: “[W]e will restore our deterrence
with Iran. Tehran will no longer be able to bleed us through its proxies
in Iraq, and we will be much freer to hit Iran-should we ever need to-once
we”re out.” (New York Times, 7/11/07)
And while Congress was debating the war in Iraq, there was no debate
over threatening Iran. On July 12, the Senate voted 97-0 to censure Iran
for what it claimed was complicity in killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq. This
very ominous move comes after more than a year of preparations for a possible
war on Iran that has included military preparations, covert operations
aimed at destabilizing the Iranian government, a concerted campaign to
economically and politically isolate Iran’s Islamic Republic, and a propaganda
offensive blaming Iran for U.S. losses in Iraq and for supposedly pursuing
nuclear weapons. And “regime change” in Iran does seem to be a goal of
the Democratic presidential candidates and other major Democratic figures-even
those who think it would be a dangerous and disastrous move.
No Core Capable of Opposing Bush
For all the criticism, debate, votes, and complaining, no group has yet
emerged within the establishment capable of stopping the Bush regime-in
part because even Bush’s Democratic Party critics share many of his concerns
and objectives. And their “anti-war” rhetoric is aimed, in part, at mollifying
their base of support, which has turned against the war. They fear the
mass anger, upheaval, and resistance that could possibly burst through
any fissure. They do not want people in the streets. They fear this-and
this getting out of control-more than they fear the consequences of the
direction things are going.
A Washington Post analysis titled “As the War Debate Heats Up,
Stagnant Air Is in the Forecast” offers a sober reality check for those
who think (or wish) that Bush is “over,” and just a lame-duck president
without any power: “Yet no matter how battered he seems, no matter how
unpopular he may be in the polls, President Bush still holds the commanding
position in his showdown with Congress over Iraq. Even with Republican
defections, as votes in both houses made clear this week, opponents do
not have anywhere near the veto-proof majorities needed to wrest leadership
of the war. The almost-certain result, according to strategists in both
parties, will be at least two more months of anger and posturing but no
change in direction.” (7/13/07)
The Democrats rode a wave of disillusionment over the war into Congressional
power. Bush’s insistence on continuing the war in the face of last November’s
vote has deepened anti-Bush anger. Recent U.S. polls show that 45 percent
of the people want Bush impeached and 54 percent want Cheney impeached.
At the same time, the Democrats” failure to halt the war has also angered
and disillusioned millions who had supported them. One poll found that
only 13 percent approved of the actions of the Democratic-controlled Congress.
There is a great disconnect today between the desires of millions and
what the leaders in the government are doing. Millions badly want to see
this whole regime brought to a halt and the war ended. Yet the Democrats
they voted for not only refuse to impeach Bush and Cheney from office,
but “rule it off the table,” and meanwhile carry out what amount to worthless
charades around the war.
This poses both a huge challenge and a huge opportunity for those who
see how bad the situation is-in Iraq, in the torture chambers, and on
so many other fronts. How are we going to act on this “disconnect” and
turn dissatisfaction with both Bush and the Democrats into massive political
action and resistance that can force the rulers to alter their course?
The World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime provides such a vehicle,
including with their “Declare
Yourself: Wear Orange” campaign. On July 27 this campaign will be
launched for people across the country to wear orange-to declare themselves
against “unjust war, more lying, more spying and more torture” and the
whole Bush agenda. Those who want to see the Bush-Cheney cabal removed
from power, their nightmarish program repudiated, and the war ended should
“Declare Themselves” and take this campaign out broadly.