News and Letters Lead-Editorial March 1998

Stop ongoing U.S. war on the Iraqi people

By Gerard Emmett and Peter Wermuth

The decision of the Clinton administration to hold off its planned military attack on Iraq, following a last minute agreement between Iraq and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Feb. 23, is no reason to relax our vigilance in opposing the irrational and deadly U.S.-led sanctions against the Iraqi people. Though Annan's diplomatic coup has, for now, created a hiatus in the outbreak of military hostilities, the key is to use this hiatus to generate renewed opposition to the entirety of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf.

The latest threat of military action was at least temporarily forestalled when Annan obtained a promise from Saddam Hussein to provide UN agencies with "unconditional and unrestricted access" to inspect all sites suspected of making weapons of mass destruction. The agreement applies to the eight presidential palaces to which Hussein had earlier refused to allow UN inspectors access.

But this does not mean the crisis is resolved. First, the build-up of U.S. forces in the region continues, with over 20 warships, two aircraft carriers, 400 warplanes and 35,000 troops now stationed there for the foreseeable future. Second, Clinton has made it clear that he will make "rapid and full use" of these forces if he claims any aspect of the agreement is violated. And third, since the agreement allows Clinton to pretend that he went the "extra mile" in agreeing to a negotiated settlement, it may make it easier for him to get away with launching a massive strike against Iraq in the not-so-distant future.

The biggest reason Annan's diplomacy does nothing to fundamentally change the situation, however, is that it fails to lift the sanctions which the U.S. has imposed upon the Iraqi people. Though the agreement states that "the lifting of sanctions is obviously of paramount importance to the people of Iraq," it makes no mention of any timetable or mechanism for doing so.

GENOCIDE BY SANCTION
The sanctions are the critical issue, for they mean that the Gulf War of 1991 never really ended-at least insofar as the Iraqi people are concerned. The eight years of sanctions have reduced a nation which was one of the most technologically developed in the Middle East to a state of preindustrial backwardness. Hundreds of men, women and especially children are dying every month because of lack of access to food, medicine, and decent clothing.

It is therefore not necessary to wait for the outbreak of military hostilities before initiating new protests against U.S. policy in the Gulf. With the sanctions, the U.S. is effectively at war with Iraq already. The sanctions imposed after 1991 simply continued the war in a new form. This was recognized by a young supporter of Voices in the Wilderness, a humanitarian aid group, who said at a recent demonstration in Chicago, "The sanctions haven't done anything to hurt Saddam, they only hurt the civilian population of Iraq."

THIS IS TRUE, BUT EVEN THIS IS NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH. FOR THE SANCTIONS HAVE ACTUALLY _STRENGTHENED_ HUSSEIN'S REPRESSIVE REGIME. ALONG WITH EMBARGOES ON FOOD AND MEDICINE WHICH HAVE WEAKENED THE POPULACE PHYSICALLY, THE EMBARGO ON SUCH THINGS AS BOOKS AND PAPERS IS A BLOW AT THE INTELLECTUAL OPPOSITION FAR MORE THAN AT THE REGIME ITSELF.

In early February, the UN raised the ceiling on the amount of crude oil Iraq could sell each year for purchasing such items as powdered milk, chicken and eggs, from $4 billion to $10.4 billion. Yet this still does not come close to meeting the needs of Iraq's 22 million people. Moreover, the devastation of Iraq's industrial base has been so severe that it is doubtful whether Iraq can produce much more than $4 billion worth of crude oil in the immediate future.

Clearly, the sanctions have done nothing to hurt Saddam or his inner circle, who continue to live in opulence. Nor have they stopped Iraq's ability to create weapons of mass destruction, some of which-like the deadly biological agent anthrax-can be produced relatively cheaply and easily. Yet Clinton, as well as his right-wing critics, continue to illogically assert the need to continue the sanctions!

A SPLINTERING ALLIANCE
What is new today, as against both 1991 and the various armed attacks launched by Bush and Clinton against Iraq between then and now, is that the seeming unanimity which bolstered U.S. policy on the Persian Gulf is coming apart.

This is reflected in new tensions within the U.S. ruling class, as seen in right-wing critics of Clinton accusing him of "caving in" to UN pressure for a negotiated settlement. Yet such accusations are off the mark. The UN today remains what it has always been-a tool of U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright laid out to Annan what he could and could not offer to Hussein prior to his departure to Baghdad, and he acted accordingly. Clinton decided to make use of Annan's diplomacy because he realized he lacks for now the domestic and international support to launch a full-scale war.

The emergence of new anti-war sentiment has been striking, especially on the part of student protesters filmed on national news chanting "We don't want your racist war!" For millions of Americans the legacy of the Gulf War and U.S. intervention since then has shown up the futility of Clinton's policy. The 100,000 victims of Gulf War syndrome constitute an insurmountable legacy of mistrust in itself. Added to this is the memory of the U.S. debacle in Somalia, in which thousands of Somali citizens were massacred in a failed military operation to capture Somali clan leader Mohammed Farah Aided. The U.S. military casualties became a huge embarrassment.

The "liberal" Clinton is himself a dupe, in a sense, of the same kind of arrogance as his role models in the Kennedy administration, "the best and the brightest," who were architects of the Vietnam War. The growing popular disgust with the "arrogance of power" displayed by the likes of Albright and Secretary of Defense William Cohen was clearly evident in those who shouted them down at a nationally televised "town hall" meeting on the Gulf Crisis in Columbus, Ohio last month. The event shocked the administration, which had deluded itself that such strident anti-war sentiment was a thing of the past.

Growing popular dissatisfaction with U.S. policy toward Iraq, not only in the U.S. but worldwide, is to some extent reflected in the growing divisions between the rulers, though they come from a very different ground. These divisions are most sharply seen with Russia, which opposed any U.S. military action and has become increasingly cozy with Hussein's regime. France took a position half-way between that of Russia and the U.S. in decrying military action but demanding that Hussein agree to the UN inspections. As a whole, there is less support for U.S. military action in the Gulf than ever before, with the exception of Kuwait, Israel, and Britain.

The most important shifts in alliances are occurring in the Middle East. Syria's Hafez al-Assad, a longtime bitter enemy of Hussein, has opened its border with Iraq for the first time since 1991. As one commentator put it, "In 1991, after the collapse of its Soviet superpower supporter, Syria sought rapprochement with the U.S. and saw Iraq as a threat. Now it's the other way around."

In another first since 1991, the foreign minister of Qatar, a small emirate in the Persian Gulf, visited Baghdad in February to express his sympathy for Iraq's position. Even Saudi Arabia and Turkey, firm U.S. allies, refrained from granting permission for the U.S. to use their soil to launch air strikes.

WHAT THE GULF RULERS FEAR MOST FROM ANY UPHEAVAL IN IRAQ IS THE EFFECT IT WOULD HAVE ON THEIR OWN RESTIVE MASSES. THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL FACT ABOUT U.S. POLICY IN THE REGION IS THAT IT IS DIRECTED AGAINST THE REVOLUTIONARY TRADITION OF THE MIDDLE EAST, WHICH HAS COME TO LIFE OVER AND OVER, IN IRAQ, IRAN, LEBANON AND ELSEWHERE.

Fear of new revolts explains why the Middle East regimes increasingly indicate that they would like Hussein to remain in power. As Alistair Lyon of Reuters put it, "Countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain don't want any weakening of central authority in Iraq." As for Iran, "It seems keen on settling its differences with Baghdad rather than trying to foment a militant Shi'ite revolt in the south...Iran wants a stable Iraq. It is very concerned about any upheavals and will not support any Shi'ite movement, even if there is an uprising in Baghdad."

Turkey also prefers to see Hussein stay in power, so as to prevent the Kurds in the north from being able to attain a truly independent nationhood. Turkey's war against the Kurds of northern Iraq has been unceasing, as seen in its Feb. 22 air attack on 7,000 Kurds trapped between the Kurdish enclave and areas controlled by the Iraqi government.

CONTRADICTIONS FROM WITHIN
The way in which the U.S. policy in the Gulf feeds on and builds up the most reactionary forces can be seen perhaps most clearly in the way the current situation has been used to advantage by Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. Even without the U.S. bombing, tremendous damage, perhaps irreparable, has been done to the peace process.
The U.S.'s callous disregard for the effect of its policies on the Iraqi masses has compromised its position even with the most reactionary Arab regimes, making them more reluctant to pursue any future U.S. initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It is clear that no progress on the peace process will come from Netanyahu. He is making use of the growing expressions of support for Hussein in the Arab world to argue that any talk of peace with Arabs is useless, as it automatically translates into policies that will lead to strengthening those who support Israel's total destruction. Many Israelis are complaining that the Gulf crisis is paving the way for his reelection.
New expressions of militant opposition to U.S. policy have meanwhile emerged on the streets of several Arab countries. Anti-war demonstrations, some spontaneous, erupted in Egypt in February, while in Jordan, a major demonstration broke out in Maan on Feb. 21, which government troops repressed. Throughout February hundreds of Palestinians engaged in protests on the West Bank, which Arafat repressed.
Yet we should be under no illusion about the political content of such protests, as seen in the slogan shouted over and over in the protests on the West Bank-"Beloved Saddam, hit Tel Aviv." This was much the same sentiment which predominated in the protests which arose against the Gulf War there in 1991, sending the movement into a dead end.
VIEWING THE ENEMY OF YOUR ENEMY AS YOUR FRIEND, AND LIMITING YOURSELF TO WHAT YOU OPPOSE WITHOUT EVER WORKING OUT A COMPREHENSIVE PERSPECTIVE OF WHAT YOU ARE FOR, IS NOT SOMETHING THAT SIMPLY GOES AWAY WITH THE PASSAGE OF TIME. IT IS OVERCOME ONLY THOUGH A CONSCIOUS EFFORT, IN WHICH THE EMERGING STRUGGLES ARE CONNECTED WITH A VISION OF GENUINE HUMAN LIBERATION. THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT THE PRESENT SITUATION WHICH MAKES THE EMERGENCE OF SUCH A VISION ANY MORE AUTOMATIC THAN IN 1991.
For this reason, in order to project a total opposition to today's drive for war, in which we oppose the machinations of all state powers in the region, we need to absorb the historic lessons of the recent past, by coming to grips with a philosophy of revolution which comprehends this history.
An historic relation has existed between the U.S. and Iraqi masses, who possess a deep revolutionary tradition. Yet whatever has been the attitude toward the tyrant Saddam Hussein, U.S. support for counter-revolution has been absolutely consistent.*
HISTORY AND RECOLLECTION
Dur ing the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. "leaned" toward Hussein's regime, regardless of his use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops in the Faw Peninsula and upon the Iraqi Kurds of Halabja. Over a million Iraqis and Iranians died in the reactionary terror of that eight-year war.
When the U.S. turned against Hussein, after his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, countless thousands more were killed in Bush's Gulf War. These deaths included many thousands of Iraqi civilians, coldly termed "collateral damage," as for example the hundreds of women and children who died in the Baghdad air raid bunker penetrated by a "smart bomb" of the type Clinton is now relying on.
The Gulf War also saw thousands of conscripted Iraqi troops who had no desire to fight against any outsider and would have liked nothing better than to turn their guns around on their own oppressors. Instead, in acts of mass murder, these troops were massacred by the thousands on the "highway of death" leading out of Kuwait, or buried alive under the hot desert sands by American bulldozers.
Shortly after the Gulf War the Iraqi masses did rise up against Hussein's regime. The Kurds, Marsh Arabs, Shi'ites and other national minorities; women who armed themselves; workers who formed shuras, revolutionary councils, all used the moment to rise up. The response of the U.S. was a shift in policy toward Hussein, seeing his regime as preferable to the "instability" which a successful revolutionary upheaval would have brought to the region.
By 1996, Hussein was allowed to invade portions of Iraqi Kurdistan, and hundreds of Kurdish activists and militants were slaughtered. The Barzani faction of the Kurdish movement, which began to have armed battles with other Kurdish groups, helped pave the way for Hussein's invasion.
The revolutionary passions and forces in the U.S. must not be separated from those in Iraq or elsewhere. That is the only way to avoid the trap of reactionary positions-whether it comes from right-wingers like Richard Perle and Stephen Solarz, who prefer to try to corrupt the Iraqi opposition to the point where the current regime could be replaced with one more "cooperative" with the U.S. but no less reactionary, or whether it comes from leftists who tail-end Saddam Hussein instead of solidarizing with the masses of Iraq who are opposing him.
There is also the opposition to war against Iraq voiced by a racist xenophobe like Patrick Buchanan, who would rather turn his attention toward suppressing Blacks, immigrants, gays and women in the U.S. And there is the narrow nationalist opposition of Louis Farrakhan, who embraces the bloody Iraqi regime in the name of religion and, like Buchanan, anti-Semitism.
In combatting these and other reactionary tendencies, we need to keep our focus on the new voices of opposition to all the inhuman conditions of life in the U.S. while delving into the concepts of liberation which can move these voices forward. As Marxist-Humanists, we have an entire body of ideas to contribute to this effort. Opposition to war which roots itself in these new passions and new forces inseparable from articulating the idea of freedom itself can begin to create a real internationalism that includes within itself the very forward movement of humanity, as a vision and a goal.
- February 26, 1998

*For the unique Marxist-Humanist view of the Gulf War, see the analyses in NEWS & LETTERS in 1990-91, especially "Iraq's Revolutionary History" by Cyrus Noveen (December 1990) and "Bush's complicity in Hussein's genocide" by Peter Wermuth (May 1991).
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