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NEWS & LETTERS,
January-February 2003
Lead Article
Iraq, North Korea crises test Anti-war movement
by Gerard Emmett The anti-war movement has come to a significant
crossroads. Some 83% of Americans oppose unilateral U.S. military action against
Iraq, a number which has increased in poll after poll. That number, as well as
the large and small demonstrations around the country, have forced President
George W. Bush to work through the United Nations arms inspections, against his
will, and have seemingly weakened his support among the U.S. and European
rulers. Bush is nevertheless pushing forward with his war plans,
which are driven by ideology as much as by pragmatic concerns. In the face of
all opposition Bush is assembling a massive U.S. military machine in the Persian
Gulf. He is sending over 200,000 troops, along with 1,000 tanks, and hundreds of
missiles. He has sent five U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in anticipation of an
overwhelming air attack that would presumably minimize U.S. troop casualties.
Bush's ally, Tony Blair of Britain, is also sending over
30,000 troops—one fourth of the entire British Army. The ongoing air strikes
carried out by U.S. and British forces are already destroying Iraqi command and
control installations making the war's "beginning" a somewhat moot
point. These forces have the potential to wreak tremendous
damage upon the Iraqi people, who have suffered the most from Saddam Hussein's
brutal rule as well as a decade of UN sanctions that have already devastated the
country. This massive employment of firepower has nothing to do
with "bringing democracy" to Iraq. Rather the administration sees the
overthrow of the hated Iraqi regime as a relatively easy demonstration of how
the use of American military power can remake the world in the image of the
bourgeoisie. He has so far deeply embarrassed the bourgeoisie. The 12,000-page weapons declaration Iraq issued as part
of the UN weapons inspection regimen listed 24 major U.S. corporations which
gave substantial support to Iraq's biological and nuclear weapon and
missile-building programs. The Bush administration tried to keep this aspect of
the report secret even from the members of the UN Security Council. In the case
of nuclear and biological weapons this kind of support was illegal since the
1970s. The companies named in the report include Hewlett
Packard, DuPont, Honeywell, Rockwell, Tectronics, Bechtel, Unisys and Sperry,
among others, along with the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and
Agriculture. The Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia nuclear laboratories provided
training for Iraqi nuclear scientists. Of major industrial countries, only
Germany had more business ties to the Iraqi regime. FULL CIRCLE FROM THE FIRST GULF WAR This support for Iraq's totalitarian police state was no
accident, but the recognition of a deep affinity that became even clearer after
the end of the Gulf War of 1991. The recent PBS "Frontline"
documentary on the Gulf War of 1991 graphically illustrated this. First, the
utter defeat of the Iraqi military, including mass desertions by the conscripted
troops who had no wish to fight for Hussein's regime to begin with. Then the
jubilation in the streets of Southern Iraq as the oppressed Shia population rose
up in rebellion, joined by thousands of army deserters. The U.S. military held back and allowed them to be
slaughtered. This was repeated in Northern Iraq in the Kurdish rebellion that
sacked the regime's torture centers. Saddam Hussein's loyal military was allowed
to attack the Kurdish cities, which had experienced the "weapons of mass
destruction," specifically poison gas that killed thousands of Kurds at
Halabja during the Iraq-Iran War. Meanwhile President George Bush distracted
himself with victory celebrations. These events form a pattern that has repeated itself
with variations since then. As the January-February 1993 Editorial in NEWS
& LETTERS stated: "Like Stalin, who stood outside the gates of Warsaw
in 1944 while Hitler slaughtered a mass uprising, U.S. imperialism manages to
come to the aid of suffering peoples only after they have been decimated by the
forces arrayed against them. The 'benign imperialism' offers humanity its
'freedom' only on the day of its burial." (This was reprinted in the NEWS
& LETTERS pamphlet BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: ACHILLES HEEL OF WESTERN
‘CIVILIZATION’.) Debate over this has emerged within the peace movement
over responses to Bosnia, Kosova, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, East Timor. In
retrospect it should have been obvious that it was bound to be a central debate
with the rise of the U.S. as the sole superpower following the collapse of
Russian Communism. In 1991 there was talk in sections of the Left about the
CIA orchestrating the anti-Hussein intifada. This was completely false. The
truly lower and deeper opposition to Saddam Hussein will be found now as then
among the exploited workers, like those who formed shuras, or workers' councils,
during the 1991 intifada, and the Iraqi women who are subjected to ever more
restrictive legal codes as Saddam courts the Islamists in the Middle East. ARRAY OF OPPONENTS The Iraqi opposition in fact includes the vast majority
of people in Iraq. It cuts across the political spectrum from monarchists to
Communists, including some critical of state-capitalism. The major pro-U.S
grouping is the Iraqi National Congress. Originally founded in 1992, it was at
first more broadly based than now, and it includes a number of groups including
the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia group; and other groupings as
well as independents. This is the "official" opposition as
recognized by the U.S. Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. A meeting is planned, to be
held in Iraqi Kurdistan, to name an Iraqi government-in-exile. Even in this
group's debates most oppose a U.S. military government for Iraq, calling instead
for some type of democracy. The Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya, now associated with
the INC but who has written some of the most important works on the current
regime, has said that there is only a 5–10% chance that U.S. military action
could bring democracy to Iraq. A different coalition, the Iraqi National Forces,
consists of groups that oppose both a U.S. invasion and the present regime. The
INF formed in 2002 with the aim of deposing Saddam Hussein without outside
intervention. It includes the Iraqi Communist Party, the Islamic Al Dawah Party
(whose forces have previously attacked U.S. military bases, including the 1983
bombing of marines in Lebanon), the Syrian-aligned Baathists, various Nasserite
Arab Socialist groups and ethnic minority groups. Still, the INF doesn't
necessarily criticize the groups who are willing to work with the U.S. The
Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, followers of Mansour Hekmat, do criticize the
idea of working with the U.S. Iraq is a relatively large country with a broad
political spectrum. It seems elementary that the next step for the broad
anti-war movement here is to bring the views of the Iraqi opposition into its
deliberations. As history has proven, that opposition doesn't have the same
interests as George W. Bush. NUCLEAR WAR THREAT IN KOREA The "axis of evil" that Bush announced was an
example of his foolishness, and it has blown up in his face. In an effort to
disengage himself from the Clinton administration's policy with regard to Iran,
Bush's attack on the moderate Khatami was a gift to the right-wing clerics. It
was a way to take the pressure off themselves. Bush's truly heedless actions toward North Korea have
threatened the world most. His belligerent language has angered people in South
Korea and accomplished the seemingly impossible: it has bolstered the regime of
Kim Jong Il, perhaps the purest totalitarianism that exists today, as well as a
miserable, bankrupt, and slowly dying regime before now. Bush's foolish approach was bound to backfire. First, it
would cost South Korea an estimated $500 billion over the first ten years to
absorb the North's failed economy in the event of the regime's downfall, a price
that dwarfs the unification of Germany. The South Korean bourgeoisie is not
anxious to put up this kind of money. Even more importantly, Bush's rhetoric conjures a vision
of nuclear war that is truly terrifying because it could so easily happen. Any
kind of war there would assure the destruction of North Korea itself, of Seoul,
South Korea, and of a large part of the 37,000-person U.S. force stationed in
South Korea. A nuclear war would be far worse. Kim Jong Il's ideological mentor,
Hwang Chang Yop, who defected to the South, spoke of contingency plans for
"torching Japan" with nuclear weapons in the event of war. Bush's rhetoric played right into the hands of Kim Jong
Il's dying ideology, "Juche," or "self-reliance," which was
never a form of Marxism as it claimed (Marx's works essentially are forbidden
there) or self-reliance at all. Rather it was a philosophy created to bolster
the fortunes of the North Korean ruling class, the Kim dynasty, as it maneuvered
within a world in which state-capitalist rulers competed for single-world
mastery, whether as the "socialist camp" against the "imperialist
camp" or as the rivalry of Russia and China for domination of world
Communism. This has come down in the last decade to the cult of Kim
Jong Il as a kind of earthly deity. Meanwhile North Korea is so far from
"self-reliant" as to be dependent on food aid from South Korea, China,
the UN, the Red Cross and Christian WorldVision. The situation in North Korea speaks to current debates
in the anti-war movement as well. Groups like the International Action Center,
which can correctly denounce the genocidal sanctions on Iraq, have no problem
embracing the regime in North Korea, although up to two million North Koreans
have been cruelly starved to death by this regime over the last decade. This
while Kim reserved food supplies for his military and government officials, as
well as for Petronian feasts and spectacles held for visiting Western leftists.
An estimated 25% of North Korean children are malnourished to the point of being
damaged for life, while Kim spends 25% of the Gross National Product on the
military and perhaps another 9% on statue-building and other manifestations of
his cultish rule. WHICH WAY FORWARD? The effect the anti-war movement has had on slowing the
pace of Bush's war drive, and of forcing him into positions he doesn't want, has
been a great achievement in itself. It has taken away the sense that we must
inevitably accept U.S. imperialism's drive for permanent war overseas and
increased repression at home. To go further requires going beyond simply stating what
we are against, no matter how passionately, not to mention avoiding the grosser
trap of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." With the experience of
Bosnia, Kosova, and East Timor in mind, historian Michael Berube has suggested a
formula of an anti-war movement that "would base those arguments [against
war] on an appeal to internationalism, rather than on appeals to national
sovereignty" (CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 11/29/02). Current discussions in left journals from THE
PROGRESSIVE to THE FIFTH ESTATE show that many anti-war activists are beginning
to search for and create a new language that could speak to people within Iraq.
The anti-war movement that has emerged in the current situation is still new, still finding its voice, as a movement akin to the anti-globalization movement that arose in Seattle. It carries within it the new experiences of the last ten years, of debates that have done much to clarify the importance of internationalism. What the movement hasn't accomplished yet is the difficult task of forging links with the forces inside Iraq that could uproot not only Saddam Hussein's regime, but also create the kind of new human relations that could open new pathways toward the future for all of us. |
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