A call to anti-war forces
Strong action needed to stop U.S. war on Iraq
By Brian Becker
The writer is a co-director of the International Action
Center and a spokesperson for the ANSWER
coalition.
It is imperative that all progressive working class and
anti-war organizations try to stop the pending U.S. war against
Iraq.
These progressive organizations should base their strategy
and tactics on the assumption that the administration of
President George W. Bush is determined to attack Iraq and
replace the current government with a puppet regime, like the
one that exists in Afghanistan.
Despite this Bush administration goal, however, there exist
sufficient potential deterrents--in the U.S. and around the
world--that could still prevent a new invasion.
A war on Iraq is a war of imperialism against an oppressed,
formerly colonized people. It is a war for Big Oil against a
country that dared to nationalize its oil fields and tried to
use the revenues from that oil to help Iraq emerge as an
independent, modernizing regional power in the Persian/Arabian
Gulf. This area contains two-thirds of the world's known oil
reserves.
Working people must not be taken in by the war propaganda of
the White House. It's just propaganda aimed at justifying
aggression against Iraq.
Ten years ago, an authoritative Pentagon policy study was
leaked to the New York Times, which published it on March 8,
1992. It was reportedly drafted by Paul Wolfowitz, now deputy
secretary of defense. The U.S. strategists made it clear they
would accept no challenge to U.S. domination of any world
region.
Bush and the Pentagon are planning a war, but not because
they fear Saddam Hussein's potential to develop weapons of mass
destruction, or because they are sickened by the undemocratic
nature of the Iraqi government. Washington supports dictatorial
monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It sends $15 million a
day to Israel while that government has invaded Lebanon,
occupied the Palestinian territories and created a large,
illegal arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Psychological war as prelude to invasion
The Bush administration has recently stepped up a full-scale
psychological war against the Iraqi regime and the people
there. It is going out of its way to create an aura of
inevitability about the coming conflict. This is a coordinated,
high-profile campaign designed to split the Iraqi government as
a prelude to U.S. military action.
From July 11 to 13, a CIA-supported gathering in London of
hundreds of Iraqi military and political foes of Saddam Hussein
announced a virtual government in exile. Notably present at the
meeting was Jordan's number two leader, Crown Prince Hassan.
Although Jordan has publicly opposed a new war against its
larger neighbor, the Western media on July 12 widely reported
that the pro-U.S. monarchy has "agreed secretly to allow U.S.
special forces to operate from two of its air bases" when the
invasion takes place. (The Herald of Scotland, July 12)
Other lead articles have appeared in the major press of U.S.
allies with screaming headlines like that in the July 16
National Post of Canada: "Iraq is bound to lose, quickly,
completely." On the same day British Prime Minister Tony Blair
went out of his way to tell the members of Parliament that his
government will not be compelled to discuss with them any
British participation in the coming war.
On July 14, Paul Wolfowitz, now the Pentagon's
second-ranking official and a leading cheerleader for the war,
held a press conference in Turkey--a likely site from which the
U.S. attack would be launched--announcing that Turkey would
reap "economic" benefits from the overthrow of the Iraqi
government. Turkey is experiencing a severe economic crisis and
its government was on the verge of collapse even as Wolfowitz
was putting on his widely covered saber-rattling media
performance.
Impact of "leaked" war plan
The administration's psychological war, or Psyops as it is
known in military parlance, began with special intensity when a
top secret, five-inch-thick dossier detailing plans for an
invasion of Iraq with 250,000 troops was "leaked" to the New
York Times. The Times on July 5 featured the story prominently
on the front page. Its follow-up editorial two days later did
not dispute the legality or rightness of the planned
aggression--as it did so famously with the publication of the
secret Pentagon Papers in June 1971 that increased public
opposition to U.S. policy in Vietnam. The Times follow-up
editorial to the July 5 Iraq invasion story only called for the
tactics of the war plan to be debated in Congress and
elsewhere.
Since the Times story on July 5, the print media and
television have been dominated by a discussion of the tactics
of the coming war. Should it be a large-scale invasion of
hundreds of thousands of troops or a lightning-fast special
forces operation accompanied by strategic bombing? The debate,
limited exclusively to what would be the "best tactics," is
designed to leave everyone-in Iraq and among the public at
home--with the distinct impression that the military conflict
is unavoidable, inevitable and thus impossible to resist.
Which raises the question of who leaked the classified
document to the New York Times in the first place?
"The Observer of London has been told that the leak ... came
from within the Pentagon, from the office of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, the top professional soldiers who drew it up in the
first place," wrote The Observer newspaper on July 14.
Can the war be stopped?
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are creating an aura of
inevitability around the war with two audiences in mind. They
are hoping to split the Iraqi military-hoping that sections of
the Iraqi High Command will defect rather than face certain
annihilation. But Bush and company are also trying to
demoralize any, at home or abroad, who desire to challenge the
war before it starts.
Bush and the Pentagon know the history of the Vietnam War
and they are actually frightened by the potential of massive
anti-war resistance from Washington, D.C., to the streets of
Cairo and Amman.
While the centers of bourgeois liberalism are playing their
usual frightened and collaborationist role in the face of the
ultra-militarists, the genuine progressives and
anti-imperialist fighters need to do everything in their power
to mobilize grassroots opposition on every campus, high school,
workplace and community.
While Bush slashes funds for education, housing, jobs and
health care, he is calling on the sons and daughters of the
working class to kill and be killed in the deserts of the
Arabian peninsula for the sake of ExxonMobil, Texaco, Chase,
Citibank and his corporate constituents. This war doesn't have
to happen. Now is the time for the anti-war movement to
intensify its mobilization among working and poor people, and
especially young people--including those in uniform.
All anti-war forces should unite right now to launch an
energetic and determined mobilization of the people--in the
United States and around the world. It is time to remind the
war-makers of the inevitability of resistance to their plans
for slaughter and destruction.
Reprinted from the July 25, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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