Bush didn't wait for election
WAR MOVES
By John Catalinotto
Even as the State Department is adjusting Washington's
United Nations resolution to win the compliance of its
reluctant allies for weapons inspection rules that Iraq will
find it impossible to comply with, the Pentagon is quietly
setting the stage for all-out war. Enough weapons and troops to
carry out the next assault are either in the region or on their
way.
The Bush administration is set on waging this war of
aggression despite its lack of support from traditional NATO
allies in Europe like France and Germany and from client states
in the Gulf region like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It is moving
ahead with these war plans in the face of a new but growing
anti-war movement inside the United States.
On Nov. 4, U.S. Navy spokesperson Marge Holtz from the
Military Sealift Command (MSC) said that three enormous cargo
ships owned by the U.S. military had recently left San Diego
and East Coast ports as "part of the repositioning of forces
and equipment in support of the war on terror." (Reuters, Nov.
4)
The cargo ships--the USNS Bellatrix, the USNS Bob Hope (!)
and the USNS Fisher--are almost as long as aircraft carriers
and are capable of carrying 58 Abrams battle tanks, 48 track
vehicles and 900 other trucks, according to Holtz. Obviously,
this equipment is meant not for small-unit actions against
"terrorists" but for an invasion of a sovereign country.
The speedier Bellatrix left from the West Coast with
equipment for the U.S. Marines. The others left East Coast
ports with equipment for the Army. Military analysts expect
them to join eight sister ships-each also over 900 feet long
and 100 feet wide and packed with equipment-that are already
anchored near the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, a
British base only days away from Iraq.
The MSC reported that there are another 13 massive cargo
ships in U.S. ports awaiting orders to sail. Along with these
government-owned ships, the MSC has chartered merchant ships to
carry tanks, shells, bullets and even helicopters to the Gulf
region.
50,000 troops already in place
Along with the equipment are the troops to use it. According
to a Nov. 6 French Press Agency report, around 50,000 U.S.
troops have already been deployed to the region, most of them
in Kuwait. This rapid buildup has taken place quietly, without
much publicity and with troop movements disguised as "war
games."
Some 400 warplanes are already in the area, and three
aircraft carriers are on the way. In addition, Gen. Tommy
Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, announced the
command's move from Florida to Kuwait.
Military analysts call it the largest gathering of U.S.
military power in the region since the 1991 war against
Iraq.
The Pentagon also announced plans to call up as many as
265,000 reserve and National Guard troops for deployment
wherever they were needed around the world. The implication is
that about that many troops would also wind up in the Gulf
region to back up the invasion of Iraq.
Faced with this aggressive military buildup force and the
Pentagon's potential to rain terror on the Iraqi population,
the government in Baghdad announced its readiness to go along
with a new United Nations Security Council resolution.
"If a resolution is issued that respects the UN Charter,
international law and Iraq's sovereignty, security and
independence, and does not provide a cover for America's ill
intentions, we will look into whether we will deal with it,"
Saddam Hussein was quoted as saying. (Washington Post, Nov.
6)
Bush regime wants war
The Bush administration, and especially the ideologically
committed cold war veterans around Vice President Dick Cheney,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his assistant Paul
Wolfowitz, have shown no sign they will accept any concessions
from the Iraqi government. The U.S. government wants to wage
war.
Long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, this grouping made clear its
intentions to finish the war started in 1991 by seizing Iraq
and changing its government to one completely compliant with
the interests of U.S. oil monopolies.
Within days after the attacks here last year, this group,
along with other veteran cold warriors, including Richard Perle
and Henry Kissinger, and right-wing politicians like Newt
Gingrich, met behind closed doors to discuss using the
disorientation in the population caused by the attacks to
mobilize for a "crusade" against any who resist U.S.
domination. This included the governments of North Korea, Iran,
Syria and Cuba, but had as its first target Iraq.
Since then this grouping has produced the so-called National
Security Strategy document, publicized in the New York Times on
Sept. 20. This document clearly lays out-with the obligatory
mention of democracy as a goal-a plan to maintain U.S.
domination of every world region. It includes U.S. hegemony
over all its imperialist rivals in Western Europe and Japan and
the prospect of returning the rest of the world to the status
of 19-century style colonies.
The document dictated the expansion of "free
trade"--meaning, for example, no state subsidies for farmers in
poor agricultural countries while the U.S. subsidizes
agribusiness here with billions of dollars--and even insisted
that countries not tax progressively.
Speaking at Trinity College, Dublin, on Oct. 12, 1999, Henry
Kissinger defined globalization quite frankly: "The basic
challenge is that what is called 'globalization' is really
another name for the dominant role of the United States." He
left out, of course, the hundreds of billions of dollars in
profits that U.S. corporations and banks rake in from
imperialist plunder, and also that behind the global expansion
of U.S. capital is the iron boot of the Pentagon.
How will the people here react?
The Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld gang is counting on
Pentagon power to win quick victories, whatever the suffering
for the Iraqi people and however long they must occupy Iraq.
These politicians, who themselves managed to avoid combat, are
more than ready to send the children of the U.S. working class
to police the world for the U.S.-based multinational firms.
What the Bush administration is dismissing out of hand is
the possibility of widespread popular actions against this war
of aggression. Its members have had no experience of a
situation where the people act in their own interests instead
of following those giving the orders. They arrogantly dismiss
the growing popular opposition both at home and abroad and push
ahead with the war.
The demonstrations of Oct. 6 and again on Oct. 26 have shown
that already hundreds of thousands of people were ready to come
out into the streets. Millions more are ready for action
against the war if the movement can mobilize them in time. The
passivity that followed Sept. 11, 2001, is coming to an
end.
Reprinted from the Nov. 14, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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