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Watching Washington these days, it could easily appear that the Democrats in Congress want to end the war and get out of Iraq, while Bush—despite a growing number of Republican desertions and massive public opposition—wants to keep it going. The Democratic leaders keep coming up with convoluted and incomprehensible proposals to link “benchmarks” imposed on the puppet government in Iraq, to appropriations of hundreds of billions of dollars in additional war spending.
On May 1, Bush vetoed one bill passed by Congress, and says that he will veto a similar one due to be voted on May 10, if it passes the House and Senate. The administration is demanding that Congress continue handing over the money without conditions, as it has been doing for the past four years.
The Iraq war has already burned through more than $400 billion dollars. Bush wants an additional $120 billion just for the next several months in Iraq—and Congress will end up giving it to him. The cost will go from the present $280 million per day to more than $320 million, or around $3,700 per second.
At least half a million Iraqis have been killed since the March 2003 invasion, on top of the more than a million killed by the bipartisan-enforced blockade known as “sanctions” maintained by the administrations of Clinton, Bush I, and Bush II. Between two and three million Iraqis, out of a total population of 26 million, have fled the country since 2003.
More than 3,400 U.S. soldiers have been killed, with another 50,000 wounded or evacuated from the country due to injury or illness. Medical experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops may be suffering from undiagnosed brain injuries or mental illnesses due to the war. The U.S. casualty rate, moreover, is on the rise.
While there may be sharp tactical differences between the two parties regarding the conduct of the war and occupation in Iraq—now that it is clearly a losing proposition—the core of imperial bipartisanship remains intact. The Democratic leadership is as loyal to the central goal of empire as are Republican leaders. That goal can be summed up in two words: global domination. Control of the oil-rich and strategic Middle East is universally viewed in the Washington establishment as essential to achieving this objective. That is the real reason why the Democrats, with very few exceptions, are not advancing a plan that simply calls for getting out of Iraq.
The political leaders of both parties hide their real agenda behind feigned concern for U.S. soldiers. Right after the Democrats’ victory in the November 2006 election, Nancy Pelosi, the incoming Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, said, “as long as our young men and women are in harm’s way [in Iraq], we’ll continue to provide them with everything they need.” Translation: As long as U.S. troops are in harm’s way, we’ll appropriate the funds to keep them in harm’s way. Some support. Congress must appropriate the funds in order for the war to continue.
Equally hypocritical are the Republicans and Democrats who claim to oppose a U.S. pull-out on the grounds it could lead to a “bloodbath” in Iraq—as if that is not going on already. After 17 years of death and destruction due to imposed starvation, disease, bombing and invasion, Iraqis might be excused for doubting the sincerity of U.S. politicians’ alleged concern for their wellbeing.
There is little question about the Bush-Cheney strategy in Iraq. They are stepping up the war, sending in tens of thousands of additional troops, and increasing the spending in order to achieve victory. The Democratic leadership wants victory too, but they don’t think Bush’s strategy, having failed for four years, will begin to work now. They are seeking victory by other means.
Take, for example, Hillary Clinton, presently the leading candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She fully supported the so-called “Iraq Liberation Act” signed by her husband, Bill Clinton, in 1998 when he was president. It made “regime change” in Iraq the official U.S. policy, and helped set the stage for the invasion.
Recently Hillary Clinton has been saying things like, “knowing what I know now, I never would have voted for [the Iraq war].” This is supposed to mean that “bad intelligence” misled Clinton, as Bush also claims. But that is pure deception. Clinton, Bush, Cheney and the entire establishment knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Iraq posed no threat to the United States when they launched their attack.
What Clinton “knows now,” which she did not know before, is that the Iraqi people will never accept foreign occupation. What she “knows now” is that instead of the cakewalk that the Pentagon promised in Iraq, the United States has suffered a major setback, affecting its standing in the Middle East and the world.
Clinton, many of her fellow Democratic leaders, and the powerful corporate interests behind them, believe that the current course cannot be sustained and that attempting to do so could lead to a far greater catastrophe for them worldwide. They want to try something different, while, at the same time, keeping control of Iraq.
It is for this reason that Clinton has presented a plan to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely, but primarily remove them from heavy combat. As Barack Obama, Clinton’s main rival, points out, this proposal would leave up to 70,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq for many years to come. Obama, however, does not call for getting out of Iraq either.
Another Democratic contender, Sen. Joseph Biden, the head of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls for turning Iraq into a loose confederation of three regions, supposedly in order to end sectarian conflict. If enacted, such a proposal would be a big step toward the long-term U.S. aim of eliminating all independent strong states in the Persian/Arabian Gulf region, which holds 70 percent of the world’s oil supplies.
The Clinton and Biden plans seek essentially the same outcome as Bush’s strategy. The difference is that the Democrats’ plans seek to “win without war.”
No one who really wants to see an end to the seemingly endless death and destruction in Iraq should be deceived by, or place any hope in, the political maneuvering going on in Washington. Real hope lies in building a powerful anti-war movement that unequivocally demands an end to the war now.
The only just way to end the war in Iraq is for the United States and its allies to get out.
