Bush resorts to playing fear card

President George W. Bush has cynically used the anniversary of the Sept. 11 disaster to escalate anti-Islamic hysteria. He is trying to stir up fear as a way of justifying the current failing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a speech on 9/11, Bush linked the war in Iraq to his so-called “war on terrorism” and dubbed it “a struggle for civilization … to maintain the way of life of free nations,” which he counterpoised to a “radical Islamic empire.” Trying to posture as the leader of some great, long-term historic struggle, he declared: “We are now in the early hours of this struggle between tyranny and freedom.”

The fact is that the current struggle between Washington and Islamic forces throughout the Middle East and beyond is basically a struggle between U.S. imperialism, which is trying to conquer the region, and a great variety of anti-imperialist forces. Many of these forces, but by no means all of them, fight under religious banners.

And this is not at all the “early hours” of this struggle. One or another colonialist power in the West has been engaged in conquest in the Middle East since feudalist Christian extremists began the Crusades in the 13th century. The March 20, 2003, U.S.-British invasion of Iraq and the recent failed attempt to crush Hezbollah and subdue Lebanon by the U.S.-backed, religion-based Zionist settler state in Israel are but the latest examples.

“Civilization” and “freedom” are complete cover-ups for U.S. imperialist aims in the region. In Iraq, both secular and religious forces are trying to prevent the U.S. government from taking the country’s oil, setting up permanent military bases, privatizing the economy and turning it over to U.S. corporations.

When the Iraqis kicked out the British colonialists with their revolution of 1958, they took possession of their own oil, their own land and their own economy. The present struggle against the U.S. occupation is directed at warding off Washington’s new colonialism.

Even a brief examination of some of the contending forces exposes Bush’s lies.

What Mideast countries have in common

The Iranian government is standing up to the world’s greatest nuclear power in Washington and trying to defend its sovereign right to economic development, including the use of nuclear technology. The Islamic Republic was established when the U.S. puppet shah of Iran was overthrown.

It is public knowledge that the shah was installed by the CIA in a 1953 coup d’etat to prevent a nationalist revolution and, in particular, to prevent the nationalization of Iran’s oil. Giant U.S. oil monopolies laid claim to Iran’s oil after the coup. But Iran’s revolution of 1979 changed all that.

Now Bush is attempting another “regime change” in Iran, which he sells as a crusade against “Islamic extremism.” Like 1953, it is aimed at getting back Iran’s oil, taking over its economy and returning to the days of the shah.

Hezbollah, a religious organization in Lebanon with a vast social network, is also a national resistance movement which organized the poor and struggled for 18 years to overcome the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The Lebanese fought against French colonialism, U.S. military intervention and U.S.-backed Israeli aggression and occupation. Washington and Israel have the common aim of wanting to destroy this anti-imperialist resistance.

Hamas won a popular election among the Palestinians because it reflected the steadfast determination of the Palestinian people not to recognize the right of Israel to occupy Palestinian land seized in wars of outright conquest in 1948 and 1967.

Whatever the ideology and social practice of the Taliban and other forces in Afghan istan, the “extremists” there, too, are the Pentagon war criminals who, after Sept. 11, rained thousands of tons of missiles, laser -guided bombs, satellite-guided bombs, 15,000-pound “daisy cutters” and other forms of murderous firepower down upon the Afghan people. Thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands made homeless.

Is it any wonder that Washington and NATO are now facing mass resistance in Afghanistan?

Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iraqi resistance and the government of Iran are on Wash ington’s “terrorist” list not because they are Islamic but because they are anti-imperialist. While they may organize and fight within the ideological form of religion, the social content of their struggle is to resist colonial domination and occupation.

But the Bush administration, along with the Democratic Party leadership and the entire capitalist media, are engaged in a massive slander campaign against Islam in order to dehumanize and vilify the resis tance and prepare the masses in the U.S. for continued war in the Middle East and beyond.

Racist rhetoric to mask crisis

Bush’s desperate, right-wing rhetoric was an attempt to arrest the rapid decline of public support for the occupations and to counteract the increasingly dire reports pointing to the Pentagon’s inability to subdue the Iraqi resistance and the growing resistance in Afghanistan.

While Bush was on the campaign circuit trying to stir up fear with his racist diatribes against Islam, behind the scenes at the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department the anxiety level was rising and the discontent of the officers in the field growing.

The Sept. 11 edition of the Washington Post broke the story about Anbar province. Describing a secret report submitted by Col. Peter Devlin, the chief intelligence officer of the Marine Corps in Iraq, the Post wrote that Devlin’s report concluded “that the prospects of securing … Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there.…

“‘I don’t know if it is a shock wave, but it’s made people uncomfortable,’ said a Defense Department official who had read the report.

“There are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar,” continued the Post. “Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.”

Some 30,000 U.S. troops occupy Anbar province, which is the size of Louisiana and accounts for 30 percent of Iraq’s land mass. Anbar stretches from the capital to the borders of Syria and Jordan. It includes Ramadi, Haditha, Hit and Fallujah, which, together with Baghdad, form the center of the resistance to the occupation.

The New York Times reported the following day (Sept. 12) that Devlin concluded that the situation will continue to deteriorate for the Pentagon unless at least another division, approximately 16,000 U.S. troops, is sent in.

In fact, the Pentagon has been diverting troops from Anbar to Baghdad, but it has failed to improve the situation for Wash ington and its puppet Iraqi government. William Kristol, a war-mongering right-wing supporter of Bush and the occupation, wrote a panicked op-ed column in the Sept. 12 Washington Post entitled, “Reinforce Baghdad.”

Kristol, who is close to the White House, Karl Rove and the neo-cons, has given up on Bush and Rumsfeld’s line claiming the Iraqi puppet forces are making progress. Talking about the attempt to secure Bagh dad, Kristol wrote: “The administration’s strategy has long been based on getting the Iraqis to do the ‘holding’ in the counterinsurgency strategy of ‘clear, hold, and build.’ That would obviously be ideal.… [But] if American troops hand neighborhoods over to the Iraqis, they are likely to soon deteriorate again.…” Kristol quotes Harvard Law School professor Wil liam Stuntz, who wrote that if more U.S. troops could help the situation, “not putting those soldiers on the ground is a crime.”

A recent report said that in Iraq, “attacks by insurgents jumped to 800 per week in the second quarter of this year—double the number in the first quarter.” (Washington Post, Sept. 11) The panic and defeatism in official circles is inevitable given the determined and unending resistance to occupation.

Afghan fighting ‘fiercer than Iraq’

In Afghanistan the recent intervention by NATO, which added 17,000 troops to the 20,000 U.S. troops already there, has also run into massive resistance, great enough that the NATO Commander, Gen. James Jones, who is also head of the U.S. allied command in Europe, has already called for more NATO troops.

Columnist Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote on Sept. 11 that “the top British commander in Afghanistan has said that the fighting there is fiercer than in Iraq. And the numbers bear him out: since the beginning of 2006, the NATO force in Afghanistan has had a higher rate of fatalities than that suffered by the coalition troops in Iraq.” This is the first time in its 57-year history that NATO has been in sustained ground combat and it is suffering significant casualties.

It is little wonder that Gen. Jones complained that he has been asking for more NATO troops for 18 months and not getting results. “Asked which of the 26 NATO nations were dragging their feet, Jones hesitated and then replied: ‘All of them.… We have received no offers.’”

The U.S.-NATO crisis is growing to the extent that Condoleezza Rice, while in Canada trying to get more troops, issued a warning that made her sound like Bush talking about Iraq. According to an AP report from Nova Scotia on Sept. 12, “Sec re tary of State Rice acknowledged ‘difficult going’ fighting a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, but insisted Tuesday [Sept. 12] that the world cannot afford to pull out now. ‘We owe it to the people of Afghan istan to finish the job,’ Rice said.”

To get a clue as to why they are failing so miserably in Afghanistan, the imperialists only need to refer to the criminal war waged by Washington against the Afghan people in the blustery, belligerent days of “regime change” and “preemptive warfare” after Sept. 11, 2001.

They might also ask themselves the same question that the Afghan people are asking: What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization doing in the far reaches of western Asia? Since when did Afghanistan become part of the jurisdiction of the European imperialist powers and the masters in Washington?

To the Afghans, as well as the rest of the people in the region, it looks and feels like the same old colonial expansionism they all have endured for centuries.

And what of the so-called “civilization” and “freedom” that Bush wants to defend? The workers and the oppressed people of this country do not need to fight abroad to defend capitalist “freedom” at home. This “freedom” has brought about the greatest polarization of wealth since the robber barons ruled in the 19th century.

The last few years have been called “the golden age of profits.” Meanwhile, wages are stagnating or falling. Layoffs, downsizing, offshoring and outsourcing are rampant. There is a massive health-care crisis that gets worse each year. The minimum wage buys less than it did in 1953. Young workers are finding fewer jobs at lower wages with diminished or no benefits.

The U.S. government watched passively as Hurricane Katrina drowned over a thou sand people, mostly African American, in New Orleans and deliberately allowed a natural disaster to turn into a social and economic disaster and a racist crime against the people of the region. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced while real estate barons hover over the ruins of the city, prepared to turn it into a tourist condo paradise for the wealthy.

At the same time a racist campaign against immigrant workers pervades the airwaves and the print media. Same-sex marriage and lesbian, gay, bi and trans rights have become high-profile targets for the right wing. The prisons are packed with over 2.1 million people, disproportionately Black and Latin@, and most of them poor. Reports of executions punctuate the news periodically, highlighting the racist death penalty.

Capitalist “civilization,” which puts profits before people and is based upon exploitation and oppression, does not need defending abroad. It needs to be fought against and overcome at home.