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NEWS & LETTERS, NOVEMBER 2003Lead ArticleBush's deepening quagmire--the U.S. economy and Iraqby Gerard Emmett George W. Bush has troubles. He is facing a nasty quagmire of his own making in Iraq, with the steady loss of U.S. soldiers--at a rate of one death for every two days of the occupation of that country--that has become absolutely unacceptable to the public. The 28 soldiers who have failed to report back for duty in Iraq after domestic leaves are the tip of the iceberg of a growing resistance to Bush's Iraq adventure. Further, he is also facing a new revolt of workers here in the U.S. in a nationwide wave of strikes, largely over health care and health insurance issues, that have implications that cut to the heart of the capitalist system and its current world order. HEALTH CARE BATTLEFIELD Many of the current strikes are the result of pressure by employers to foist rising costs of health care benefits onto workers. U.S. workers today are being forced to pay 50% more for health insurance than they were just three years ago. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, two-thirds of large employers increased what employees must pay for health insurance this year, and half plan such increases next year. Nearly one-third of the 44 million American workers without health insurance are employed by large companies, up from one-quarter in 1987. Concessions over health care, plant closings, and other issues were pushed on auto workers by the big three automakers, and similar demands were made on Detroit newspaper workers. The new three-year contract with Detroit newspapers means that new employees will not be eligible for insurance after they retire, among other concessions. Other union workers are fighting back against this trend. About 90,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union are now out on strike against grocery stores in California (see story on p. 3), West Virginia and Missouri. Other states' unionized workers will follow them out soon. The ever-increasing cost of health care is one aspect of an ever-increasing pressure on workers. The pressure to increase productivity results in new technology and speed up. One worker at United Parcel Services’ plant in Hodgkins, Illinois--where workers’ bodies are pushed to match the speed of computer signals--said: “I can only keep working because I’m in small sorts now. Everybody’s body breaks down in this place, sooner or later.” Accidents become commonplace, and turnover is so ferocious there that many workers never make it into the union to gain health coverage. Health care is a logical place for workers to draw the line against the logic of capital which gets played out in the bodies of the working class, even in their very cells. This logic is seen at its most vicious in the attack on the unemployed army, on myriad warehoused prisoners of the “war on drugs,” and in the denial of health care to them which helps spread diseases like AIDS and hepatitis C. It is seen as well in the warehousing of the sick and the elderly in nursing homes, especially wretched, crowded inner-city ones where the Black poor are shelved, where people may go for weeks without a hot meal. There the only "crime" being "paid for" is human mortality itself. Cuts and restrictions in the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), which has greatly aided the working poor, is a case in point. Despite Bush's words on fighting AIDS, the budgetary crisis in state governments has meant that funds for ADAP are being cut or capped, that requirements for assistance under it have been tightened, and that people have begun to die needlessly. This is the class struggle in its most brutal form, MURDER, PASSED OFF AS ECONOMIC "REASON." This logic gets played out internationally in the human devastation of Africa, by poverty and diseases like AIDS, in the threatened devastation of India and China by AIDS, in the fallen life expectancies for Russian workers and the spread of AIDS in Eastern Europe, and in the struggle over obtaining affordable AIDS drugs in poorer countries. The logic of capital ends up being not so far removed from the insane “logic” of the Taliban which, in the name of religion, helped to give Afghanistan the lowest life expectancies in the world. The struggle of American workers for health care now has to be seen to be opening new international perspectives and possibilities. ACTUALLY CARING ABOUT IRAQ Those who have been proven to be right about the war in Iraq are the many who attended anti-war rallies saying things like, “Yes, Saddam is evil and should go, but I don’t trust Bush to remove him.” As during the Vietnam War, opposition has begun to emerge from the mainstream. Two mothers of military families recently spoke out in Chicago. Stacy: “I got a call from my son and he didn’t sound like himself. Two soldiers he knew committed suicide. The despair in his voice was unbelievably terrible. I don’t think the numbers of deaths they [the military] are reporting are accurate.” She read a letter from her son: “The past month I’ve been sick twice, once from sand flea fever, once from the water.” Her son said, “What’s the purpose? They [the Iraqis] don’t want us here.” Another mother, Fran: “I believe the only way to support the troops was to speak out. My son is attending group therapy at Camp Pendleton [for stress]. Half of the young men in his platoon just graduated from high school. Combat pay is $250 a month. My son wishes he did not join.” A survey in ARMED FORCES magazine reported that one-third of the U.S. forces in Iraq are suffering from low morale and don’t intend to re-enlist. These aren't people who sympathize with any dictator who says they oppose the U.S., nor are they apologists for Al Qaeda. They represent that large majority of Americans who opposed unilateral U.S. action against Iraq, and were genuinely concerned about Iraqis. The opposition to Bush and Ashcroft's USA PATRIOT Act is another expression of this mainstream dissent. A recent Chicago City Council resolution states: “The USA PATRIOT Act signed by George W. Bush, in the opinion of many Americans, contains a number of provisions that...fundamentally alter our civil liberties without increasing our security...the City of Chicago joins the almost 200 other U.S. cities and affirms its strong opposition to terrorism, and also affirms that any efforts to end terrorism not be waged at the expense of the fundamental civil rights and liberties of the people of Chicago, the United States and the World...” The Resolution passed by a 37 to 7 vote in the Council, with 6 abstentions. A Chicago activist who worked to build support for this resolution, said, “The idea behind passing it was to alert the public to the danger of the Act to civil liberties in general, to immigrants, labor, and general privacy issues. The U.S. State’s Attorney was spurred into coming to the hearings and making ludicrous statements about how harmless its provisions really were. This led one Alderman to ask, then why do you need to have this Act at all? ” Indeed, as another Chicago activist said, even many on the Right have come to the conclusion that Ashcroft’s efforts are a threat to civil liberties. TOWARD INTERNATIONALISM The situation of women is a measure of the state of occupied Iraq. Baghdad native Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International said: “Food distribution...was occurring mostly through the mosque....There are now a lot of women who are required to dress in specific ways, women who had not previously worn the veil and now have to so they can get food packages. And because of the security risk, every time they leave the home to get to food or whatever they may need, they risk their safety.” (OFF OUR BACKS, July-August 2003) The Iraqi Left has presented more serious proposals and analyses than have so far been expressed from the large anti-war coalitions' platforms. The Worker-Communist Party of Iraq calls for an end to the U.S. occupation but holds out no illusions in the Ba'athist or Islamist "resistance": "The resistance by the remnants of the Ba'ath regime, nationalist, and Islamic groups..not only have nothing to do with the rights and future of the Iraqi people, but they are completely against the interests of the masses. To achieve their own reactionary objectives, these groups victimize people and sacrifice the basis of life in the society." The moment is ripe for a rebirth of genuine internationalism. This has not been the gist of the debate that has flowered in today's fertile crescent of unreason, with imperialist Bush as one horn, terrorist bin Laden as the other, passing through their MUTUAL friends and allies in totalitarian Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, encompassing THEIR friends the Muslim Brotherhood, and THEIR allies, the British Socialist Workers Party and U.S. International Action Center. "Nevertheless," as Marx wrote, "in human history reason does conquer." Just as the human logic of the American workers' struggle opens international perspectives, so the human logic of the struggles of workers, women, gays, youth, and others in Iraq opens new possibilities for solidarity. |
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