Dems in, Rumsfeld out, but war crisis remains

The Democratic Party sweep of both houses of Congress and the ouster of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have something in common. Both spring from the determination of the Iraqis to resist the U.S.-British occupation. Had it not been for the Pentagon’s enormous setbacks in its effort to conquer Iraq, and the sacrifices of the Iraqi people in their struggle to end the occupation, both events might not have happened.

The Democrats’ electoral victory was based upon two factors. The first is the massive anti-war sentiment developing among the population. Over 60 percent of the people registered their opposition to the war in numerous polls. With casualties and war costs mounting and the economic situation at home deteriorating, mass discontent was building at the bottom. The Democratic Party strategists played to this sentiment across the board.

This discontent might not have surfaced, however, had it not been for the second factor: the deep disillusionment and profound concern among major sections of the ruling class that U.S. imperialism is facing imminent disaster in Iraq. Without this disaffection within the establishment, which allowed some of the truth about what is going on in Iraq to take center stage during the election campaign, it might have been impossible for the broad anti-war sentiment to develop and be reflected at the polls.

Iraqi resistance and Rumsfeld’s ouster

The growing success of the resistance is behind three important developments: a call by a succession of U.S. generals for Rumsfeld’s resignation; a shift in campaign donations by sections of big business to the Democratic Party; and the appointment by Congress of the Iraq Study Group to devise a strategy to save the fortunes of U.S. imperialism in Iraq.

Rumsfeld’s unceremonious firing by President George W. Bush came the day after the election. While that might have influenced the timing, Rumsfeld’s head was scheduled to fall, regardless. The New York Times of Nov. 10 revealed that “President Bush was moving by late summer toward removing ... Rumsfeld as defense secretary. ... Weeks before election day the question still open was when, not whether, to make the move.” It was a “summer of heavy violence in Iraq” that sealed Rumsfeld’s fate.

The resistance was making steady progress. The ruling class and sections of the military were blaming it on Rumsfeld, who would not allow any shift in strategy or tactics. His strength was his support from Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The rigidity of the Rumsfeld faction made flexibility in dealing with the crisis impossible. Thus the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld grouping had to be broken up.

The key player in charge of military operations was fired.

Rumsfeld a war criminal

Of course, Rumsfeld was a political liability all over the world for Washington. In fact, there is a motion in Germany to put him on trial as a war criminal for his policy of torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has joined German groups in filing a complaint and an application for a criminal investigation to be launched with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe. In addition to the CCR, the International Federation of Human Rights and others are part of the suit.

Lawyers are basing their case model on that of the prosecution of Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested several times on violations of human rights charges but has not been jailed. The complaint is on behalf of 11 Iraqi citizens who were held at Abu Ghraib and one Saudi detainee who was held at Guantánamo. The plaintiffs were victims of beatings, sleep and food deprivation, hooding and sexual abuse.

Military say send more troops

One of the keys to the firing of Rumsfeld may have been revealed in statements from “anti-Rumsfeld” retired generals and experts who publicly called for his resignation. Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command, was opposed to the war but argues against “any substantial reduction of American forces over the next several months.”

“Instead of taking troops out, General Zinni said, it would make more sense to consider deploying additional American forces over the next six months to ‘regain momentum’ as part of a broader effort to stabilize Iraq.” (New York Times, Nov. 15)

John Batiste, a retired Army major general who commanded a division in Iraq, also called publicly for Rumsfeld’s ouster. Yet Batiste branded the call for troop withdrawals “terribly naïve.”

“There are lots of things that have to happen” before troops are withdrawn, he said. According to the Times, Batiste “has recently written that pending the training of an effective Iraq force, it may be necessary to deploy tens of thousands of additional ‘coalition troops.’ Some military experts said that while the American military is stretched thin, the number of American troops in Iraq could be increased temporarily—by perhaps 10,000 or more, in addition to the 150,000 or so already there—by prolonging combat tours.”

Thus, at least one important part of the argument that led to the firing of Rumsfeld, as far as sections of the military are concerned, is that his strategy refused to contemplate adding more troops, even on an emergency basis.

Iraq Study Group: more than a family affair

There has been much speculation about the Iraq Study Group (ISG), a 10-member bipartisan commission headed by James Baker III, who was secretary of state under former President George H.W. Bush. Baker is a loyalist to the Bush dynasty who engineered the current president’s theft of the 2000 election in Florida.

Bush the younger reluctantly agreed to the ISG when it was formed in March. As the military situation deteriorated, he allegedly grew more receptive. But Baker would not agree to bring a report to him until Rumsfeld was fired.

Rumsfeld’s replacement, like Baker, served under the elder Bush. Robert Gates was CIA director at that time and a hardened Cold Warrior who, during the Reagan administration, had doctored intelligence to exaggerate Soviet weapons stocks in order to get maximum funding for Reagan’s $2 trillion military spending.

The conventional wisdom is that the Baker commission, co-headed by Lee Hamilton, former Democratic senator from Indiana, is basically a Bush family affair by which the elder Bush is attempting to bail out his son and keep the family name from being completely dragged into the mud.

There is some truth to this. But this is more than a family affair. The elder Bush is part of a ruling class political/economic dynasty that goes back at least three generations, to Orville Prescott Bush, a senator from Connecticut and a ruling class investment banker associated with railroad magnate-turned-banker Averill Harriman. The Bush family is based in investment banking in the East and banking and oil in Texas. During the Reagan administration, the elder Bush was vice president and represented the centrist wing of the Republican ruling class establishment, while Reagan represented the right wing.

The foreign policy establishment of the Republican Party and the mainstream bourgeoisie has crystallized around this Bush dynasty in order to intervene in the present Bush administration and try to salvage its fortunes in Iraq and the Middle East in general.

But as much as this study group studies, it cannot solve Washington’s fundamental dilemma. The U.S. cannot stay in Iraq, but pulling out altogether and leaving the country to the Iraqis is to humble the U.S. imperialist “superpower” and admit defeat. Already there are advance leaks that the ISG has few good options and that the masses should not expect anything new, any “magic bullet.”

To be sure, the sentiment for retreat may be strong at this point. In fact, the ISG only visited Iraq once. “The commission returned from a brief trip to Baghdad in September collectively stunned by the chaos—which is interesting, since they barely got to see it,” said a Time Magazine article of Nov. 12. “They apparently saw enough: the donning of the body armor, the corkscrew approach in the Air Force cargo plane, the harrowing treetop chopper flight into the Green Zone—it all left the commissioners shaken. ... There are no plans to go back.” But even if they want to devise a general retreat with minimal losses for the ruling class, it seems highly doubtful that this can be achieved.

Dems were Bush’s war enablers

The Democratic Party leaders, the so-called anti-war opposition, are clinging to the ISG report for their solution, since they have no answer to save the imperialists in Iraq. This is the thrust of their posture against the war.

Given all the demagogy and posturing going on in preparation for the presidential campaign in 2008, it is important to remember that these leaders were the enablers of the Bush administration’s war when they thought it could be won. With the exception of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Democrats gave Bush and the Republicans overwhelming majorities in the House and the Senate to approve the war resolution of Oct. 10, 2002. In the House, over one-third of the Democrats—81 members—voted with 215 Republicans for the war. In the Senate, 29 Democrats joined 49 Republicans.

Despite the polls at the time showing that sentiment in the country among Democrats was over 90 percent against the war resolution, the leaders jumped on board with Bush and defied the rank-and-file masses of their own party to do the bidding of the ruling class, which was overwhelmingly for the war.

Democratic Party leaders at that time, including House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt (Mo.) and Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle (S.D.), as well as Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), rushed to the Rose Garden to be photographed with Bush after the vote. Other leaders who supported the war include major party big wigs such as present Senate majority leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Joseph Biden (Del.), vice presidential candidate John Edwards (N.C.), Dick Schumer (N.Y.), presidential candidate John Kerry (Mass.), Birch Bayh (Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), among others.

But as the 2006 elections approached, it was clear that the occupation was on the ropes. U.S. casualties neared the 3,000 mark for those killed and over 25,000 wounded. The official cost of the war neared half a trillion dollars. Grassroots discontent was seething below the surface.

Thus, during the elections and up to the present the Democrats have tried to appear “anti-war” as far as Iraq goes by being not-Bush and repeating ad nauseam the obvious: that “things are not working.”

Up until the summer months the U.S. command was able to hold the resistance to a stalemate. But during the summer the situation begin to tip toward total loss of control of key areas by the Pentagon and the al-Malaki government. A failed attempt was made to crush the resistance in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. Then troops were rushed from Anbar to Baghdad to stabilize the capital of 6 million. The Baghdad campaign also completely failed.

By September the capitalist media began lifting the lid on the impending disaster with nightly reports of U.S. casualties and the loss of control by U.S. forces, stirring up anti-war sentiment. The cable channels and the networks promoted the idea that the elections were a referendum on Iraq—precisely because the corporate rulers who control the news wanted to weaken the Bush administration.

While the hatred for the war among the masses was and is completely genuine, based upon the suffering caused by the war, the anti-war demagogy of the Democratic Party leadership is not. It is driven by the overriding desire to get hold of the capitalist state, its $3 trillion budget and all the trappings of power that come with the presidency. Their eyes are strictly on 2008.

Their problem is that, while their masters are the imperialist ruling class, their electoral base is the workers, the oppressed and the progressive middle class. Their opportunist task is to serve their masters in order to get their support in 2008, but also deliver their base—which needs jobs, health care, social services, housing, a raise in wages, and all the things the masses are being deprived of.

Thus, the Democrats must try to placate the people with concessions, but just enough to keep from antagonizing the ruling class. The way they waged their electoral campaign is a model.

They said nothing about the outrageous racist attack on Harold Ford, the candidate to be the first Black senator from the South since Reconstruction. They played down the racism of Republican candidate George Allen in Virginia. They did not fight openly as a party for same-sex marriage. They did not campaign against the vilification of undocumented workers. They rejected universal health care as a campaign slogan. They failed to speak out against the layoffs and shut down of plants in the auto industry and elsewhere. And they refused to demand the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

While they are different from the Republicans in that they have a base in the progressive masses and must reflect that in their policies and agitation, they are as much a party of imperialism as the Republicans and the Bush administration.

In a crunch, they will do the bidding of the ruling class, even if it means dragging out the occupation in Iraq and sending more troops there. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, has already said he will not cut off funds for the occupation.

The only way to get the troops home and put an end to the bloodshed is to mobilize mass resistance to the war in every area of life.

The best way to take advantage of the anti-war sentiment that surfaced in the election is to turn it from the ballot box into the streets.