This article was written by the International
Bureau for the Revolutionary Party
Iraq: Oil, Blood and Class
Humanity is once again about to live one of its defining moments.
The spectre of war is looming upon us. U.S. imperialism is about to
unleash its fury upon the people of Iraq and the attack could be
imminent. Every day, the U.S. State apparatus is waging a preparatory
propaganda war on the world scale to prepare public opinion for the
next bloody onslaught. This war is once more presented to us as a
fight for freedom and world security against the dastardly regime of
Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. We have
absolutely no sympathy for Saddam and his henchmen. During the Gulf
Crisis of 1990 we wrote: 'Saddam is an imperialist (albeit on a
smaller scale) who has put to death thousands of Iraqi workers (not
to mention the half million who died fighting on behalf of Western
and Soviet imperialism on the Iranian front).' However, if Saddam is
certainly an enduring threat to his own population (which capitalist
leader isn't?), it is highly doubtful that he now represents much of
a menace outside the borders of Iraq.
Iraq suffered tremendously during the Gulf War and is economically
and militarily drained by the ordeal of nearly 12 years of a very
harsh embargo and continuous bombardments. Iraqi society has been
reduced to the state it was in many decades ago. It is estimated that
one million people have died, half of them children. The economic
infrastructure has been shattered and the military arsenal
disintegrated. Whatever Saddam may have left in terms of germ and
chemical warfare capabilities was given to him by the U.S. between
1985 and 1989. During this period, we know by Congressional testimony
from 1994, that the U.S. military sent him quantities of the West
Nile Virus, E. coli, anthrax, botulism and a nerve gas rated a
million times more lethal than Sarin! All this was to be used against
his and the U.S.'s rivals. So whose use of weapons of mass
destruction constitute a threat to humanity?
Why then is Bush so hell-bent on war? It is obvious that the arms
issue also invoked by his pal Blair is no more than a pretext for an
assault that has much more devious objectives. Saddam's purported
weaponry is not what is at stake. The London Daily Mirror dubbed
Blair's recent dossier as 'being full of marshmallow facts'. The
title of a September 15th article in the Washington Post gives us a
better clue: 'In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil is Key Issue'. Indeed, oil
production and its control is of the outmost importance. World oil
production is expected to reach a peak between 2008 and 2010 and then
begin an irreversible decline. In a context where the U.S. is ever
more unsure of its great Saudi Arabian supplier, the old Oklahoma and
Texas oilfields are becoming exhausted and even the Alaskan ones are
running out. The different imperialist powers are competing to assure
a steady and secure supply of oil in a steadily more explosive
economic situation. France, Russia and other imperialist powers have
been investing heavily in and around Iraq for this reason. The same
edition of the Washington Post goes on to write: 'A U.S. ouster of
Iraq President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil
companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between
Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries, and reshuffling world
petroleum markets, according to industry officials and leaders of the
Iraqi opposition.'
But another issue exists. The US absolutely wants to defend the
primacy of the dollar on the oil market, because this is a source of
a perfectly parasitic rent for the US, which is estimated at around
500 billion of dollars annually. This financial rent in its turn is
the material condition for the survival of the American economy which
is seriously suffering on the global markets. In the mean time the
other imperialistic (great or small) powers are getting impatient
with these conditions where they have to pay dollars for oil and thus
pay a rent to the US, and they are agitating in both Iraq and Iran,
which are both ghettoized by the embargoes imposed by the US. That is
the real reason tens of thousands of human beings are probably about
to be slaughtered. Let us not forget that capitalism was born
'sweating blood from all its pores' (Marx).
Iraq's oil reserves are the second biggest in the world in a
region that contains 2/3 of global petroleum reserves. The economic
and geo-strategic importance of control over it is obvious. That is
why France, Germany, Russia and China, among others are less than
enthused by U.S. plans. The basis of their present resistance to war
with Iraq is based on their own imperialist appetites. The U.S. is
able to do what it is doing because its competitors do not have
comparable strength. It's for this reason that, despite the tensions,
if the U.S. and the U.K. do go forward with military intervention,
some of these countries might support it at the last minute in an
effort to maintain their interests in post-Saddam Iraq. Italy is
already planning this manoeuvre and with the same imperialistic aims,
is sending thousand of its alpine troops to Afghanistan.
Internationalism and War
In this war we offer support to neither side. We will not fall
into the frequent leftist trap of giving 'critical' support to Iraq
because it is the weaker of the two belligerents and is not the
aggressor. We reject any nationalist and patriotic mobilizations
whether in the Arab or the Western world. For workers everywhere our
greatest enemy is in our 'own' state. This means that we demand the
immediate recall of all Western forces about to be sent to or already
in the Gulf area. This also means participating in all anti-war
activities on an internationalist 'No War but the Class War' basis.
This requires fighting the bourgeois propaganda war machine by
exposing its lies and undoing its traps at every turn. Finally and
above all it means supporting every form of a workers upsurge. No
more cuts in programs and services in the name of 'national
interests'. We must fight austerity, fight the cuts, fight the lies
and ignore all nationalist and militarist hysteria.
We are often asked: is there to be no end to this horror? Is the
future of humanity reduced to the constant pursuit of blood-soaked
horizons? The internationalists of the International Bureau for the
Revolutionary Party see their duty as 'saying what is'. We think that
there is a way out of this quagmire if we know what direction to take
and who is blocking the way forward. That is why we accuse the
capitalist system itself of warmongering and crimes against humanity.
We proclaim that the international working class is the only social
force that has the potential to put an end to this barbarism (for
example the possible work stoppage by the U.K. firefighters alone
would impede the war efforts of the British state as it would require
10 000 troops to cover the strike). We consider that the class
struggle waged to its finality, the great social upheaval of
proletarian revolution, is the only way out of the nightmarish cycle
of war-reconstruction-crisis-war.
Whatever the present state of awareness and wills, we are
convinced that imperialist wars will not be stopped by debates in
Parliaments, Senates no more than in the United Nations. The first
steps towards a real opposition lie in the consciousness and the
realisation of the fact that the destiny of war and peace will only
be decided in our factories, our workplaces and in our streets. Until
then, in the ongoing chain of conflicts and wars, imperialism will
always emerge as the real victor and the international proletariat
and indeed humanity itself, the great vanquished. Imperialism or
socialism, war or revolution, there is no other alternative!
The only way to guarantee peace is to get rid of capitalism.
Workers, comrades, our only war is the class war!
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