March 6, 2007: At least 113 Iraqi civilians and nine U.S. soldiers are killed in Iraq, and hundreds more wounded.
In Baghdad, capital of one of the most energy-rich countries in the world, the average household has electricity for about three hours.
In Washington, hearings continue for the second day on the abysmal treatment of badly wounded soldiers and their families at the Army’s Walter Reed Medical Center.
Like every other day, the cost of the war today is about $280 million, or $12 million an hour. From the point of view of the people, especially in Iraq but in the United States as well, the war is an unmitigated disaster.
The same day, President Bush speaks to the American Legion, repeating his “victory is the only option” mantra. While feigning concern about the treatment of returning soldiers in Army hospitals, he proposes major cuts in next year’s Veterans Administration budget—at the very time when medical costs are bound to soar due to rising casualties from the ongoing wars.
In his speech, Bush demands that Congress “support the troops” by voting another $240 billion to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of 2007 and 2008. And, no doubt, Congress will.
The day after the Democrats won the November congressional elections, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated, “as long as our young men and women are in harm’s way, we’ll do everything necessary to support them.” Translation: As long as the U.S. troops are “in harm’s way [in Iraq],” most Democrats will join with most Republicans in voting the funds to make sure they stay there to continue killing and dying.
Dems, GOP posture
While engaging in much posturing, neither the Democratic nor Republican leaders have any intention of leaving Iraq. Some politicians want to pull back some of the troops. Others support Bush’s “troop surge,” the addition of at least 21,000 more soldiers. But at the top, both the Republican and Democratic parties are loyal to the imperialist ruling establishment and its objective of dominating the Middle East, particularly the oil-rich Gulf region.
Control of the Middle East is viewed as central to the achievement of global supremacy. These are the ABCs of understanding U.S. policy in the region. All the talk about weapons of mass destruction, “spreading democracy” and the “war on terrorism” is just propaganda.
To believe that Congress, or particularly the Democrats in Congress, will rise up, take on the Pentagon and the White House and vote an end to the funding of the war is to believe in an illusion. To peddle the idea that the funding vote in Congress is now the “decisive battle” for the anti-war movement is to propagate both defeatism and a false understanding of what it will take to stop the war and end the U.S. presence in the Middle East.
Half-century of intervention in the Middle East
For the past half-century, a succession of U.S. administrations have intervened in the Middle East, invoking various “doctrines” and pretexts. The following list is far from exhaustive.
In 1957, the Eisenhower Doctrine announced that the United States assigned to itself the right to intervene militarily anywhere in the Middle East to stop the spread of “communism.” By “communism,” Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, meant anything from actual communist parties to Arab nationalist governments—even if they were themselves anti-communist.
It was really a declaration by Washington that it had the right to overthrow and destroy any government or popular movement that interfered with U.S. corporate or state interests in the region.
It was not just talk. The next year, the day after the Iraqi Revolution ended four decades of British colonial domination, 20,000 U.S. Marines began landing in Lebanon to protect the pro-Western government there.
The U.S. and British governments were also contemplating an invasion of Iraq to overturn the revolution. A variety of circumstances including the support of the socialist camp and Arab nationalist movements and governments for Iraq forced a postponement of that operation for another 45 years.
The CIA under John Kennedy between 1961 and 1963 made repeated attempts to assassinate General Qasem, the president of Iraq after the revolution. It supported a right-wing coup that led to the massacre of thousands of communists and progressive nationalists in 1963. Kennedy increased aid to Israel and Iran.
When Israel invaded and conquered parts of Egypt and Syria—then the two most militantly anti-imperialist Arab states—as well as the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six Day War, President Johnson deployed the U.S. Sixth Fleet as backup.
His successor had his own “doctrine,” which designated Israel and Iran—then under the exceptionally brutal reign of the CIA-installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi—as the U.S. proxy military forces to control the region. The Nixon Doctrine was driven by the fact that 550,000 U.S. troops were tied down in a losing war in Southeast Asia.
During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Nixon put U.S. nuclear forces on worldwide alert.
Under Gerald Ford, the U.S. government, along with others, intervened to prevent a victory by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the progressive Lebanese National Movement. The resulting stalemate dragged the civil war out for another 15 years, destroying much of Lebanon in the process. But the U.S. aim of heading off a revolutionary or progressive state in Lebanon was achieved.
After Ford came Carter, much acclaimed today as a “peace-maker.” But the Camp David Accord in reality had the effect of removing Egypt, the largest Arab country, from the Arab camp. It paved the way for Israel to invade Lebanon in 1982.
Carter hailed the Shah of Iran, and did everything he could to prevent the Shah’s overthrow in 1978-79, to no avail. With the Nixon Doctrine in ruins, Carter commenced a new tactic relying on the Rapid Deployment Force. The RDF involved the pre-positioning of military supplies in Israel, Turkey and countries with pro-U.S. governments in the Arab Gulf states.
Carter, his national security advisor— Zbigniew Brzezinski—and the CIA initiated the bloody contra war against the young revolution in Afghanistan.
Ronald Reagan, president from 1981 to 1989, fully backed the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, which killed at least 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. These civilians were victims of U.S.-supplied bombs and Israeli-supervised massacres, as in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
The U.S. government and its European imperialist allies poured weapons into Iraq during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. The U.S. military provided satellite imagery to the Iraq air force to help it target facilities inside Iran. At the same time, as became known in the course of the Iran-Contra scandal, the United States was secretly supplying Iran with anti-aircraft missiles, by way of Israel, to shoot down incoming Iraqi war planes. The revenues from the sales were used to finance the contra war against another young revolution in Nicaragua.
The real aim of the U.S. leaders in the Iran-Iraq War was to weaken both countries, the two independent powers in the Gulf region. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger expressed the true sentiment in ruling circles toward the war, saying, “I hope they kill each other,” and, “Too bad they both can’t lose.”
As the Soviet Union was collapsing, changing the world relationship of forces, the first Bush administration used the pretext of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait to launch a massive assault. The 1991 war intentionally destroyed nearly the entire civilian infrastructure of Iraq.
The combination of bombing and a 13-year economic blockade of Iraq killed more than a million Iraqis, the largest number during the eight years of the Clinton presidency. Clinton signed the “Iraq Liberation Act” in October 1998, making regime change in Iraq the official policy of the U.S. government.
Much of Clinton’s foreign policy efforts were focused on forcing the Palestinians to accept a weak quasi-state consisting of Gaza and parts of the West Bank. The price demanded was surrender of the Palestinian right of return and liquidation of the struggle for real self-determination.
The second Bush administration continued the blockade and bombing of Iraq. Knowing that these means alone would not achieve the stated goal of overthrowing the government and reducing Iraq once more to a colony, the course was set for all-out war.
In March 2003, the U.S.-British invasion began. On April 9, Baghdad fell, along with Iraq’s status as an independent country.
The Bush administration fully collaborated with Israel in the war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Throughout the past five decades, and especially since the 1960s, the U.S. government has been the primary supporter of the Israeli war machine, explaining why such a small country of 6 million people ranks as the fourth or fifth most powerful military in the world.
As a proxy force, Israel has repaid the vast assistance it has received—greater than any other country—by carrying out wars against liberation movements from southern Africa to Central America.
But no one has borne the brunt of its assaults as have the Palestinian people, deprived of their homeland and most basic rights.
Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II were Republicans. Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton were Democrats. During most of the past 50 years, the Democrats have held the majority in both houses of Congress. In regard to U.S. policy in the Middle East—and the world, for that matter—it has made precious little difference which party held the presidency or dominated Congress.
The military budget has never been voted down. In fact, nearly every member of Congress ends up voting for the military appropriations, no matter how bloated they may be.
What ended the war in Vietnam?
Congress only finally voted against funding the Vietnam War in 1975, weeks before the puppet government in the south collapsed and more than a year after the last U.S. combat troops had left the country.
While the tactics have shifted at times over the last 50 years, the pursuit of strategic domination of the Middle East has not changed. A fixed aim has been to destroy all popular movements and independent governments in the region. The war machine, the central core and defender of the capitalist state and interests, grinds on, regardless of which party or individual is in office.
Propagating the notion that Congress can be a vehicle for the anti-war movement reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how the U.S. imperialist system operates and who exercises real power. Focusing on Congress as the “decisive” body in this struggle promotes reformism and disorientation in the movement.
It was the people’s struggle that ended the U.S. war against Vietnam.
First and foremost was the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people who for three decades fought two of the world’s leading powers. The Vietnamese fighters refused to accept colonial occupation no matter what the cost.
They received invaluable material assistance from the socialist camp of the time, particularly the Soviet Union and China. They also received vital political solidarity from the anti-war movement in the United States and around the world.
That movement played a key role in limiting to a degree what the U.S. warmakers could do in Vietnam. The movement impacted upon and was greatly strengthened by the growing numbers of anti-war service men and women. By 1971, at least one out of every six U.S. troops had deserted or was AWOL—Absent Without Official Leave. Large sections of the U.S. military were disintegrating.
The Vietnam War ended when the U.S. ruling establishment—elected and unelected—concluded that the political cost was too great to continue. If they did continue, they concluded, there was a looming threat of even greater defeat.
The ruling class here was deeply fearful that defeat in Vietnam would shatter the myth of U.S. invincibility and encourage others to fight for liberation. They were right to worry about that.
Regardless of party affiliation, the leaders of today are just as fearful about a similar result if they are forced to accept defeat in Iraq. In the Vietnam War, it took many years, millions of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and countless forms of protest and resistance before Washington was willing to accept defeat.
There is no easy path to victory in a struggle of great importance. Iraq and the Gulf region are far more vital to the U.S. empire than was Vietnam. In the end, though, imperialism will be defeated, not only in the Middle East, but around the world, including here in its heartland.
What will defeat it, as in Vietnam, is a powerful and independent people’s movement.
Protest in front of Walter Reed Veteran’s Hospital, November 2004
Photo: Rick Steele
The final U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. Congressional funding ended nearly two years after U.S. troops ended offensive operations in 1973.
Photo: Wheeler Nick/SIPA
