-Caveat Lector- No war for empire War deeply rooted in profit system http://www.workers.org/ww/2003/regime0123.php By Fred Goldstein
Global political tensions are rising daily. Washington is relentlessly pushing forward with its military buildup for unprovoked aggression against Iraq despite growing opposition everywhere to U.S. war plans. The entire world feels the military and political pressure of the Pentagon's rapid timetable as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld orders 62,000 more troops to the Gulf, with the aim of reaching a force of 150,000 by February. Governments everywhere are being squeezed between the pressure from the U.S. military juggernaut above and popular opposition below. It is becoming absolutely clear that the anti-war movement will have to broaden and deepen its resistance to this military mobilization in order to tip the balance and keep the Pentagon from bringing death and destruction to the Iraqi people. As the Bush administration runs into more and more political opposition, the opportunity for decisive intervention to stop the war increases. The anti-war movement in the U.S. is growing faster than anyone can count. Thirty thousand people turned out in Los Angeles to protest the war on Jan. 11. Countless local demonstrations are taking place around the country. Two hundred thousand people demonstrated in Wash ington, D.C., and San Francisco on Oct. 26. And a massive turnout is expected in both cities for the international day of protest on Jan. 18. At least 19 cities in Europe, Asia and Latin America are scheduled to demonstrate on that day. In the wake of the half-a-million-strong demonstration in Florence last fall and with the European movement gearing up for a massive anti- war turnout on Feb. 15, even Tony Blair, Washington's staunchest ally, backtracked on his unequivocal support for an early invasion--but only momentarily. The Bush administration has been warning that Jan. 27, the date for the United Nations weapons inspectors to give their so-called "progress report" to the Security Council, is going to be the moment for Washington to declare Iraq in "material breach" and set the stage for war. Mass pressure shakes imperialist allies The first sign of a rift in the Anglo-U.S. imperialist alliance was directly caused by the heat from below. Mass opposition pushed close to 100 members of the Labor Party to declare their opposition. Even a member of Blair's cabinet, International Development Secretary Clare Short, publicly said it was the prime minister's "duty" to stop Bush from carrying out the war. Blair, after blinking and calling for more time for the weapons inspectors, quickly jumped back on board and ordered the call-up of 1,500 reservists. He also put the Royal Navy, including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, on notice to prepare for pre-war training in the Mediterranean. In France, a poll taken for Le Figaro showed 77 percent of those interviewed opposed to military intervention against Iraq. Yet President Jacques Chirac, in order to protect the interests of French imperialism and not be left completely out of a division of Iraqi oil, "told his armed forces to be prepared for deployment, the clearest suggestion so far that France would participate in a military move against Saddam." (Canadian Press dispatch, Jan.7) Washington desperately needs to use Turkey as a major staging ground for an attack on Baghdad from the north. It has been working on the government for permission to put up to 80,000 troops in Turkey. Yet 80 percent of the population in this Muslim country opposes the war, the country is in the worst depression it has seen in decades, and any war will only intensify the economic and social crisis. (Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 14) The repressive Turkish government has given the Pentagon permission to send surveying teams to assess the basing situation for U.S. troops, despite the prospect of disaster brought about by the war. All over the Middle East, Washington's client regimes are trembling at the prospect of social explosions in the wake of a U.S. invasion. The Saudi Arabian oil monarchy has been compelled to privately assure its master that it can use Saudi bases, but is terrified to admit that in public. And the Saudi government is desperately trying to find some peaceful way out of the crisis. All this twisting and bending by powerful imperialist governments as well as dependent but endangered regimes under the pressure of the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, as well as the complete disregard by Washington for mass anti-war sentiment, contains important lessons for the anti-war movement. Above all, the movement should not count on the UN Security Coun cil, weapons inspectors' reports or public opinion to stop the war. Only mass resistance will have an impact. Who really make the decisions? The driving motivation behind the war is to conquer Iraq and seize its oil fields, with 112 billion barrels of reserves, in order to establish U.S. military and corporate dominance in the Middle East. It is the class interests of the rich ruling class--led by ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil, Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, the military-industrial complex and the financial oligarchy on Wall Street--that dominate and dictate the Bush administration's foreign policy. These profit interests override any concern about public opinion or even the most basic democratic forms. In a recent major article in the Jan. 12 Washington Post, Glenn Kessler wrote about the "murky process" behind the decision to go to war against Iraq. He said that "often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism." He concluded that "the decision to confront Iraq was in many ways a victory for a small group of conservatives" who outmaneuvered the so- called moderates after Sept. 11. But Kessler and all those who complain about foreign policy being hijacked by the right wing fail to explain this: Just how does a "small group of conservatives," i.e., Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and hawks like Richard Perle, who is on the Defense Policy Board outside the official government, corral the entire ruling class to get behind their policy? Indeed, this small group did go too far for its own class base in its disregard of diplomacy and its failure to put enough effort into lining up the imperialist allies and U.S. clients. But as to the substance of the policy--conquering Iraq--the entire ruling class is for it. This comes through as a solid wall of pro-war propaganda. Whether it's ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, News week, Business Week or any other major instrument of U.S. ruling-class propaganda, they all have been spouting anti-Iraq lies ever since the Bush administration began its campaign in earnest. And not one significant capitalist politician in either party came out against a war on Iraq. Every so-called "opponent" supported the war but conditioned it on the U.S. achieving a broad coalition or on getting UN Security Council support. And these politicians answer to the billionaires and millionaires who put them in office. This is because the right wing of the Bush administration, methods aside, appealed to the exploiting, looting class interests of the giant monopolies that rule the U.S. Politics and method may separate many of them from Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Co., but the lust for oil booty, military profits and world domination brings them together in practice for war. It was the "moderate" Colin Powell who engineered the 15-0 vote in the UN Security Council, which gave the U.S. a war resolution it could live with. And it is Colin Powell who is now preparing public opinion for war regardless of what the weapons inspectors say. Of course, this wide support for the war in the ruling class may grow shaky as the combat approaches. War, which suddenly poses the prospect of destabilization of U.S. political and corporate interests abroad, will inevitably produce fear and nervousness in the establishment. But this fear and nervousness will have nothing to do with concern for the Iraqi people, who will have to face death and destruction. The UN is estimating 500,000 casualties in the war. It is of no concern to the ruling class here that their military forces will bring Iraqis the terrorism of U.S. bombing raids followed by the prospect of a full- scale invasion and a possible military occupation. Getting rid of Bush not enough It is Bush's war. But not Bush's war alone. A big segment of the bosses and bankers who might have been wary at first have now been swung firmly behind the Bush administration's initiative. It has become a war of, by and for the entire ruling class and its political leadership in both parties, supported by its entire propaganda apparatus. This speaks to an issue that has been raised in the anti-war movement in this country. Many have called for "regime change" in Washington. It would certainly be in the immediate interests of the Iraqi people and the world in general if the Bush administration were set back and ousted precisely because it was waging a criminal war. But in the long run, without Bush, there would still be ExxonMobil, Chevron Tex aco, Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, Gen eral Electric, General Motors, Chase Morgan, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, AT&T and all the other profiteers that need worldwide Pentagon enforcement and expansion to sustain their worldwide empire. For over a century, these monopolistic forces of aggression have prevailed in the decisive areas of both foreign and domestic policy. They are responsible for John Ashcroft and his racist roundups of peoples from the Middle East and South Asia. But they were also behind the Palmer Raids and mass deportations of radical immigrants after World War I and the internment of the Japanese-Americans in World War II. Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson sent U.S. troops into the war in Vietnam, and Republican Richard Nixon kept the war going until the bitter end. Democrat Jimmy Carter began the revived U.S. military buildup after the Vietnam War, which was then escalated by Republican Ronald Reagan. Reagan also invaded Grenada and Lebanon. George Bush senior waged the Gulf War. Clinton went to war to dismember Yugoslavia and carried out the bombing of Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities. So "regime change," as a popular slogan, should not be limited to its political aspect alone. In order to deal with the fundamental problem of war, the social and economic regime of capitalism must be rooted out. The war in Iraq is for profit. The military buildup is for profit. Fifty thousand corporate lobbyists occupy Washington, D.C. They come and go from corporate offices to government offices to be sure the will of the ruling class is implemented on a daily basis. The working class and the oppressed peoples of this country are completely shut out of the real policy-making process of the capitalist government. That is why the richest country in the world has 43 million people without healthcare--and rising. Why millions are homeless. Why states and cities are in growing debt while the Pentagon thrives. Why unemployment grows steadily and workers have to live in fear of layoffs. Why tens of millions live in poverty while financiers and corporate moguls live in unfathomable luxury. What is needed in this country is not "regime change" but system change. We need a mass struggle to stop the war. But that struggle, to be ultimately successful, must be a struggle to get rid of a system that runs for profit. It must replace it with a social and economic system where the economy is owned, not by a tiny group of billionaires, but by society as a whole and is run for human need. The billionaires don't like it, but that system has a name: socialism. - END - Reprinted from the Jan. 23, 2003, issue of Workers World newspaper (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support independent news http://www.workers.org/ orders/donate.php) Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article have to stand on their own merits. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. 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