10 years after Gulf War
New era of struggle gives hope to Iraq
By Sara
Flounders
On Jan. 16, 1991, jet bombers, aircraft carriers and
almost a million troops from 17 nations began an all-out
assault on Iraq under U.S. command.
This year is the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War, which
provides an opportunity to put it in historical
perspective.
As the son of George Bush prepares to sit in the White
House with the same advisors and generals who conducted the
1991 assault on a small, developing nation in the Middle
East, it's important to evaluate what U.S. imperialism
achieved--and what it did not.
U.S. imperialism used both massive, overwhelming military
force and the harshest economic sanctions in history against
Iraq. Yet it did not accomplish its aims.
The United States did not succeed in dismembering Iraq,
although its murderous policy has killed over 1 million
Iraqis.
Nor has Washington been able to reduce Iraq--a country
that ranks second in the world in oil reserves--to a puppet
regime.
The question of who owns and controls oil is vital to the
handful of major corporations and banks that decide
development on a global scale. After a decade of military,
economic, financial, media and diplomatic warfare, the
immense oil profits of Iraq are still not in the hands of
U.S. corporations.
In fact, the sanctions are crumbling. Iraq is breaking out
of its U.S.-imposed isolation.
Despite Washington's fierce resistance, flights to Iraq
are now almost a daily occurrence. Demonstrations across the
world and many solidarity delegations show Iraq is not
alone.
The struggle in the Middle East is on the rise again. The
Palestinian struggle is in a sustained revolutionary mood.
The U.S. government is more hated than ever.
U.S. presence sparks outrage
Using the war against Iraq as a pretext, the Pentagon was
finally able to permanently position U.S. troops in the
Middle East and establish bases throughout the oil-rich
Persian Gulf. This region holds two-thirds of the world's oil
reserves.
But the presence of U.S. troops and mass awareness of the
enormous suffering in Iraq caused by U.S.-imposed sanctions
has raised the level of anti-imperialist outrage throughout
the Arab world.
U.S. soldiers are under orders to keep a low profile.
Bases are almost hidden.
U.S. officials hardly dare to leave their embassies. U.S.
consulates have closed throughout the region. Families have
been sent home.
The huge U.S. aircraft carriers and destroyers must fuel
offshore. Even offshore, these death machines are a target.
Consider the fate of that most advanced high-tech destroyer,
the USS Cole.
Bush Jr. can't carry out his father's program, even if he
stocks his administration with all the same right-wing and
militarist faces.
It has little to do with intelligence or skill. This is an
altogether different epoch.
'The New World Order'
In 1990 the growing crisis in the socialist camp gave
enormous leverage to U.S. imperialism. The working-class
movement and developing nations that had relied on aid,
solidarity and protection from the Soviet Union were
overwhelmed.
For decades, the developing nations and liberation
struggles had had an alternative. Total isolation couldn't be
enforced as long as there was an alternative world system in
conflict with the imperialist powers.
So the setbacks in the socialist camp were a serious
blow.
With the 42 days of massive bombardment of Iraq, the
Pentagon moved militarily against the Arab people in a way
that had been impossible when the Soviet Union was strong.
What the senior Bush termed the "New World Order" was really
an aggressive effort to re-colonize the globe.
Today, in contrast, it's a capitalist crisis that is
looming.
The brutal impact of imperialist globalization has
devastated many countries. Resistance to the dictates of the
capitalist market is growing. The tide is turning against the
U.S. ruling class's effort at conquest.
Military strength doesn't always reflect political
strength. It's increasingly clear that even with unopposed
control, Wall Street's system creates far more suffering than
development.
International support and acquiescence to the sanctions
are crumbling. Even the other members of the U.S.-engineered
alliance of robbers and pirates, which were willing to join
in the looting of Iraq 10 years ago, have grown increasingly
restive as they realize they did not benefit from the
war.
Why is this happening? Because Iraq has managed to
organize and resist, and because the world movement has
refused to be silent.
Millions have been mobilized in solidarity with the Iraqi
people, especially as the murderous consequences of the
sanctions have become clear.
Gulf War Syndrome and
Balkan Syndrome
The U.S.-led war against Iraq was a testing ground and an
advertisement for every new weapon. The media were awash in
descriptions of U.S. high-tech military technology. This
included laser-guided smart bombs, cruise missiles, Patriot
missiles and a new generation of tanks equipped with
depleted-uranium shells.
Despite endless wild descriptions of Iraq's "weapons of
mass destruction," Iraq had no weapons in its arsenal with
which to defend itself against this high-tech barrage.
The Pentagon flew over 110,000 bombing sorties--one every
30 seconds for 42 days-- with impunity. "Collateral damage"
was a euphemism coined by the Pentagon to cover up its
targeting of civilians.
Over 100,000 Iraqis were killed in the bombing. U.S.
deaths numbered a mere 148, and more than half of these U.S.
casualties were from friendly fire.
Ten years later, the impact of the war--particularly the
consequences of the radioactive DU weapons first used against
Iraq--is finally coming back to haunt the U.S.
government.
Conventional weapons made with depleted uranium made every
weapon in Iraq's arsenal obsolete. Because of the material's
density, U.S. tanks could shoot twice as far. Their range was
two miles. The Pentagon seemed invincible.
Rank-and-file U.S. soldiers had no idea what the
consequences would be.
In the years since, over 120,000 of the 697,000 U.S.
troops who were stationed in the Gulf region have become
chronically ill with undiagnosed diseases labeled the Gulf
War Syndrome. Many experts, soldiers and activists connect
the extremely high rates of illness in healthy young people
to radioactive and toxic poisoning from the depleted-uranium
weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
In Iraq the impact is still greater. Cancer rates have
increased five-fold and 10-fold, as have immune diseases and
deformities in children.
U.S. Army documents prove that the generals and military
contractors understood the danger of using depleted uranium
during the Gulf War.
Now the issue has exploded in Europe. The political storm
has reached a level that threatens relations in the
imperialist NATO alliance.
It has even brought into question the continued
participation of some European nations in the occupation of
Kosovo.
Governments across Europe are outraged by the number of
cancer deaths of soldiers stationed in Bosnia and Kosovo. The
U.S./NATO bombardment of Bosnia in 1995-1996, and of
Yugoslavia in 1999, with tens of thousands of rounds of
ammunition made with depleted uranium is linked to what is
being called the Balkan Syndrome.
Sanctions: a weapon of mass destruction
From the Vietnam War, the Pentagon had already learned the
limits of its weapons against a people determined to free
themselves from colonial occupation.
Carpet-bombing, napalm, strategic hamlets, concentration
camps and a half-million well-armed U.S. soldiers could not
sustain the occupation of Vietnam in the face of a people's
war.
In Iraq the brass were determined not to repeat their past
miscalculation. U.S. troops did not march on and occupy
Baghdad, even though the Iraqis had no weapon to resist
them.
The generals were afraid that they could not hold the
country in the face of an aroused anti-imperialist movement.
And they feared that any U.S. casualties would awaken mass
opposition at home.
Instead they expected that comprehensive and complete
economic sanctions leveled against every sector of Iraq's
economy would grind the country down. They expected sanctions
to bring about a total government collapse and the rise of a
puppet regime willing to follow Washington's dictates.
To that end, U.S. bombing systematically targeted Iraq's
infrastructure. Every industry connected to food production,
water purification and irrigation was targeted for
destruction.
A baby formula plant, pharmaceutical plants, fertilizer
plants, pesticide plants, food warehouses, storage,
refrigeration, every grain silo in the country, electrical
generation and communication plants--all were destroyed in
order to intensify the sanctions' impact.
Iraq's government was demonized and isolated. Air travel,
phone calls, the Internet, satellite communications--all
these were denied to Iraq.
Billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues were frozen in
banks around the world. All imports and exports were
banned.
Iraq was a country cut off from the rest of the world.
The sanctions aren't just paper resolutions. The U.S. Navy
has stopped and boarded over 12,000 ships in the Gulf in an
effort to stop all forms of trade.
Today one-fifth of the total Pentagon budget is dedicated
to the military occupation of the Gulf.
In December 1998, in an effort to further intensify the
impact of sanctions, the United States and Britain began a
campaign of continual low-level bombing of Iraq's
infrastructure. In the past two years they have flown over
20,000 combat sorties.
Incredibly, Iraq has survived and is breaking out of its
absolute isolation.
Baghdad has re-established relations with Syria and Iran.
Since the visit by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in
September, Iraq has again been involved in international
conferences. It is once again a force in the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries.
On this 10th anniversary of the Gulf War, the Iraqi people
and the movement in solidarity with them have many reasons
for optimism. But the sanctions and the war have not ended.
The U.S. government--whether led by Republicans or
Democrats--is firmly committed to overturning the Iraqi
government and seizing control of the country's
resources.
The sanctions won't fall by themselves. It will take the
continued determination and renewed commitment of the world
movement to resist this ongoing imperialist crime.
The writer is an organizer of the fourth Iraq Sanctions
Challenge, which is taking 50 delegates and two tons of
medical aid to Iraq in mid-January.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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