Iraq: Two Years after the 'End' of the War
What's Going On
At the height of the Vietnam War, singer Edwin Starr asked, "War!
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing." While the question is still
important, we should also ask about the war in Iraq, who is it good
for?
Certainly not the countless thousands of Iraqi casualties stemming
from the U.S. invasion; not the civilians in Barcelona, Bali, London
and other points caught up in this sprawling global conflict; not
even the 20,000 dead or injured U.S. troops; while George Bush
benefited through a successful re-election strategy, the U.S. has
largely failed in its aims in the invasion of Iraq. If anything, the
war has shown the widening cracks in the entire capitalist
structure.
Prior to the war, various theories were advanced for Washington's
motives: Cheap oil; a U.S. beachhead in the Middle East; settling a
score with Saddam Hussein left over from the first Gulf War;
disciplining the rest of the Western bloc. While there may have been
some truth in each of these, Red & Black Notes argued at the time
that the real reason was from problems in the debt-crippled U.S.
economy. A successful Iraqi campaign which would grant the U.S.
control over oil resources and increase its presence in the region
would do much to restore international capital's confidence in the
U.S. economy at the expense of its rivals. But it's all gone
wrong.
The U.S. has demonstrated that there is no military power capable
of resisting it in conventional warfare, but the war has also showed
the weakness of U.S. military power in non-conventional warfare.
Instead of being greeted as liberators for overthrowing a brutal
dictator, the U.S. presence has served as a lighting rod for
discontent, not helped by the various brutalities its soldiers are
committing.
While the beachhead goal is still theoretically achievable, the
longer the U.S. remains in Iraq, the greater the possibility of the
destabilization of the entire region. As to the U.S.'s musings about
bringing 'democracy' to Syria and Iran, in actuality, the last thing
the U.S. wants is to become involved in a broader conflict; not least
because its erstwhile allies in the region, deeply unpopular among
their own people, fear that the anti-U.S. movements will engulf them
as well. (Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf seems the most likely
loser if the war continues)
To make matters worse, the U.S. economy has both gained and lost
from wildly accelerating oil prices, but has also been battered by
Hurricanes Katrina, and now Rita. The U.S. probably should have moved
to guard its economy from Weather of Mass Destruction rather than
anything Iraq could create.
The problem the U.S. finds itself in is one of its own making.
While it is unable to defeat the insurgency, it's unable to extricate
itself from the situation without the fear that the entire structure
will collapse and everything will be swept away. Saddam Hussein was a
tyrant, but he was hardly the expansionist threat to the U.S. painted
by the Bush administration and a complaint media, forays into Iran
and Kuwait notwithstanding. Remember, Hussein's appeals to
pan-Arabism largely fell on deaf ears. Yet it is the logic of
capitalism which has forced this engagement.
Ironically, those who stand to gain most from the invasion now are
the leaders of the insurgency: the sections of the Iraqi ruling
groups which were threatened by the fall of Hussein.
What is the insurgency? In section of the left, the insurgency has
been prettified and depicted as a heroic, national liberation
movement akin to the Palestinian Intifada. But unlike the sympathetic
images of children with rocks against soldiers with automatic
weapons, the "Iraqi Intifada" has featured massive civilian
casualties inflicted by the insurgents, and gruesome beheadings. If
the murder of civilians in London in July was an anti-working class
atrocity, how it is different from the September 14 bombing in
Baghdad which killed 114 day labourers looking for work? Hardly the
stuff of heroes.
The insurgents are former members of the Ba'ath party, religious
fundamentalists, and supporters of various militias, but all have in
common their desire to impose a new capitalist order in Iraq. It is
unlikely that the insurgency can militarily defeat the U.S., but it
can impose stinging blows, which may force the U.S. to reconsider its
options. Of course, the U.S. is well aware of the effectiveness of
this tactic, having used guerilla armies to strike at its enemies as
recently as the 1980's in Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
However, it is possible that U.S. defeat is not the insurgents'
goal, only to strike a deal and to increase the power of the Sunni
elites in danger of losing the privileges they enjoyed under Saddam
Hussein to the Kurdish and Shiite majority.
The perspective largely absent from the mainstream media and all
too often leftist public opinion is that of the working class. It is
often forgotten that demonstrations, strikes, and protests have all
continued during the U.S. presence. And it is only the struggles of
the global working class that can resist imperialism, can ultimately
solve the problems of Iraq, the Middle East region and the entire
world through the destruction of capitalism, and establish a global
community fit for humans to live in.
September 24, 2005.
This statement was distributed at the September 24, 2005
anti-war demonstration in Toronto.