On May 1st 2003 George Bush stood on the flight deck of USS Abraham Lincoln and bragged, ‘Mission accomplished’. But now Bush and Blair’s claims to be winning the war in Iraq look about as credible as the statements of Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Saddam’s Minister for Information when he claimed on TV that the Iraqi forces were defeating the US army’s push into Baghdad. “Aren’t those American tanks we can see behind you?” the interviewer asked. Today Bush and Blair’s claims that they are on the verge of victory are belied by every TV report coming out of Iraq.
But far worse is the fact that the military chiefs have given up on the politicians and are deliberately signalling via the media that they demand an exit strategy. The will to win of the world’s military superpower is bleeding away in the sands of Iraq. Major military figures have come out against the continued indefinite occupation that the Bush administration and the Big Oil clique and the Israel lobby so wanted.
Bush and Blair know well what is at stake. The failure to secure a victory in Iraq will signal to the world that the war on terror has been lost, that the superpower and its most loyal ally have been defeated. This war was undertaken to escape the “Vietnam Syndrome”, which hampered the USA’s war making capacities for thirty years. They fear that “the Iraq syndrome” could ruin their whole strategy for achieving another American century, speeding up the emergence of rival regional blocks like the EU, important independent powers and even a rash of “rogue states.” Defeat in Iraq- closely followed by the collapse of the Afghan puppet regime – would be a disaster.
However increasingly the military wing of the state is ‘off-message’. Attempts to get them back to the script, by taunts about “cutting and running” will not work for long. Why are the generals in revolt? Not just because they are closer to the reality of the men and women currently fighting and dying in Iraq, facing an increasingly hostile population, stuck in a quagmire that is getting deeper.
It is also because they know that the American and British professional armed forces are at full stretch, that recruitment has slumped. They have used up their reserves – including the National Guard in the USA, who never expected to be thrown into an all –out guerrilla war. The eruption of any other international crisis would find them simply unable to meet it. The political leaders are well aware of this scenario but, but for them the possibility of retreat when so much is at stake is unthinkable.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock former British ambassador in Washington, recently said “There are only bad options for the coalition from now on”. He was clear that the bad options are a retreat now or a retreat later. There is a growing consensus amongst the pro-war establishment that they are only delaying the inevitable.
His comments echo General Sir Richard Dannatt – the Chief of the General Staff, that the presence of UK troops in Iraq were “exacerbating the security problems facing Britain around the world”, that if this goes on the British army would cease to exist in 5 years and they would have to get out “soon”. Since then he has been forced to backtrack, claiming there was not a ‘blade of grass‘ between him and Blair on the issue. But the damage had been done. A full-scale debate had started not about if the troops should be withdrawn but when.
What do the present defeats mean for the Neo cons in the White House and their allies in Britain?
The victories of the coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan during the invasions were a foregone conclusion. Both countries are economically under developed, Afghanistan’s problems caused by over a decade of reactionary Taliban rule and Iraq by Saddam’s hated rule and the crippling UN sanctions imposed on it for 15 years. Neither had a powerful army, nor even modern equipment, and the full might of the US armed forces effectively crushed the weak states in a matter of weeks. That was the easy part.
Whilst neither country had the military organisation or fire power to defeat the Imperialist armed forces in a head on confrontation both countries could easily provide thousands of capable guerrilla fighters who have been slowly wearing down the occupation forces and even managed to drive them out of many parts of both countries. The defeat of the Imperialists in Afghanistan and Iraq, two of the militarily weakest ‘axis of evil’ countries, will prove to Iranians and North Koreans that they have a chance to beat the invaders.
As the occupation collapses socialists and anti war activists need to reiterate that we support the complete withdrawal of all Imperialist and coalition forces from the region. We should have no illusions in the UN or any other international body to manage the occupation more humanely so that democracy and human rights flourish. The United Nations is not a benign representative of the “international community”. It is, as Lenin said of its predecessor the League of Nations, a “thieves kitchen”: one where the very imperialist powers that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq call all the shots. They only use the UN to either provide a pretext for their aggression (as recently over North Korea’s attempts to get a nuclear deterrent) or a means of covering their retreat, (i.e. robbing the resistance forces of the fruits of victory).
The reasons for going to war were based on lies to cover up the real goal, the corporate plunder and colonialist rule of these countries. The continuation of the occupation or its replacement by forces from the “Muslim world” loyal to imperialism under a UN mandate would simply perpetuate and compound the error under the cover of multilateral involvement.
What about a civil war?
The political basis for the slide into what the media calls a “civil war”, now taking place, was created by the Imperialists within weeks of the occupation ending. Paul Bremer set up Governing Council in Iraq, comprised thirteen Shia, five Sunnis, five Kurds, one Christian, and one Turcoman were put onto it. From this point onwards the Shia and Kurdish leaders began to support the Governing Council (and therefore the occupation that supported it), whilst the Sunnis opposed it. The creation of the state body along sectarian lines therefore preceded the beginnings of sectarian violence.
The co-option of military organisations like Badr Organization, formerly the Badr Brigades of Hadi al-Amir (SCIRI). Or Muqtada al-Sadr’s Shia militia (the Mahdi Army) into the elections allowed the Imperialists to continue the pretence that only Sunnis – angry at their loss of dominance – opposed the occupation whilst all the Shia supported it. The reality on the ground in Iraq today is very different, with both Sunni and Shia militias organised and fighting in the resistance. The government forces, on the other hand, are not a unified state machine standing above and able to discipline the pseudo-religious or tribal factions. The ministries were all divided up amongst the militias before the government was formed. That was why the process took so long. It was a division of the spoils. Much of the brutal killing, of a sectarian and communal character, is the result of ongoing turf wars between them.
The resistance against the occupation can and must drive home the advantage. The expulsion of Imperialism would be a massive victory to everyone who is suffering under its yoke. The military and political hegemony of the USA is the major the shaping factors of globalization and the current world order. This political hegemony is there only through the combined might of the USA’s economic and military standing. The defeat of its armed forces would devastate the status quo and provide a huge boost for the anti globalization movement, anti militarists, campaigners against debt, third world poverty and against privitisation.
Rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship
In January 2003, 3 months before the invasion, Charles Sheehan-Miles who was a tank crewman in the first gulf war said “This war isn’t worth the life of one American soldier, 43 months later the death toll for soldiers alone stand at over 3,000, 93% of whom are US dead. Currently 119 British soldiers have been killed. James Baker the US secretary of state recently described the situation in Iraq was ‘a hell of a mess’, but continued to say that the Bush administration was still looking at ways of staying into finish the job.
The deaths of around 665,000 Iraqis is a terrible reminder of what the reality of ‘staying in to finish the job’ means for the people of Iraq. Over 2 million Vietnamese died in the 7 year conflict with the USA before the imperialists withdrew. However many more died from the overall devastation done to the infrastructure, the agriculture, the poisoning of the water supply by chemical weapons like Agent Orange.
The US then pursued a policy of ‘Vietnamisation’ of the conflict. Hoping to gradually withdraw their own forces and replace them with indigenous fighters. This is the same failed strategy they are now trying in Iraq. The coalition forces from Britain and the USA are attempting to train and prepare a new Iraqi army and police force so that they can withdraw in 18 months time. General Casey, one of the chiefs of the US army, claimed that the Iraqi forces were “75% of the way there”. Casey is used to making such predictions, in early 2005 he said that US forces would be out by that summer, a prediction that failed to come true as sectarian violence and resistance attacks escalated.
Another strategy is to give Iran and Syria more of a role in the occupation of Iraq. The neo cons believe that Iranian involvement would go down better with Iraqis and help tame some elements of the resistance. However this strategy is basically an admission of defeat. It would effectively lead further down the road of a sectarian break-up of the state, but it would also give Iran much more power in the region. That the US government, who in the summer of 2006 were condemning Iran and Syria for its involvement in the Hezbollah resistance movement in Lebanon, are now turning to another of the axis of evil for support is a sure sign of an impending defeat and a desperate grab for exit strategies.
The Pentagons four-year review published earlier this year stated that there would be a reorientation of US military strategy in the war on terror to supporting more wars by proxy, conflicts that did not directly involve US armed forces. Their first opportunity to test this new method out came in southern Lebanon over the summer, when Israel invaded to attempt to crush Hezbollah. The catastrophic failure of this conflict showed that even this new strategy cannot win.
Blair’s legacy — it will live in infamy!
Blair’s fate is inextricably linked with the fate of the imperialist project in Iraq. He has hitched his wagon to the war on terror and everything that means, from anti terror laws to torturing of prisoners to the 665,000 dead in Iraq.
The defeat of the British army will cause an instant blame storm in the British political establishment. Pro war MPs and journalists will claim Britain failed to fight the struggle properly, that the anti war movement and bureaucratic inefficiency wrecked our fighting spirit and hampered our troops. Some of them will jump ship and claim that they have opposed the war for a long time.
The cloud that will hang over parliament for some time to come is the realization that a key part of the entire strategy of globalization has failed. The Labour party leadership staked so much on the invasion, the claim that they were fighting for democracy and that ‘history would prove me right’ as Bair said.
Furthermore the economic backlash from the stock exchange could well hurt the capitalists and cause many more repercussions for ordinary workers.
As the imperialists are driven out of Iraq and Afghanistan we need to build a movement on the streets, in the schools and colleges, in the workplaces to drive the Blairites out of power. We can show that the anti-war movement was right all along, we argued that the weapons of mass destruction was an outright lie. We were right. We argued that the invasion would not make us safer but increase tensions and the likelihood of terrorist attacks. We were right.
Blair may be one of the longest serving Prime Ministers in British history and the longest running Labour holder of the office, but his legacy is an infamous one. It will be seen as a true continuation of the Thatcher legacy – neoliberalism and imperialist war. These policies have created the biggest social movement in human history, the 2003 anti war movement and campaigns like that now developing against the “reforms” in the NHS.
Political leadership
The war issue does not just affect Blair’s Labour Party, it also affects the Republicans in the USA. Recent polls suggest that the mid term elections could witness a major electoral defeat for the Republicans in the Senate and Congress in the mid term elections in November. The political problem that the anti war movement faces both in the UK and the USA is that there is no political party that speaks for them. That the Democrats and Conservatives seem likely to reap the benefits of the loss of support for the ruling parties is evidence that without a real working class party that the anti war movement can point to as the party that expresses their political aims, troops out now, an end militarism and further invasions, the defence of Palestine, only bourgeois parties will gain. The Democrat party and the Conservatives both support the war on terror to the hilt and were rabid supporters of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Democrats in the Presidential elections of 2004 even called for more troops to be sent into Iraq to quell the uprising.
Workers and anti war activists must build new working class parties, both in the USA and the UK. They must be parties that fight for the interest of working class people, in struggle not only against the imperialist war, but also against all the attacks of neo liberalism and globalisation. A new workers party that does not just stand in elections but is an organic part of the class struggle, that organises the most class conscious and militant fighters against capitalism, in short a revolutionary party in the traditions of Lenin and Trotsky. Revolutionary parties today, in the era of imperialism and globalisation, need to be international ones. Each national party must be a section of a new Fifth International. They can grow out of the success of the anti war movement if it strikes back at the imperialists as they are being forced into retreat, attacking their whole political agenda, from war and racism to privatisation and destruction of the welfare system.
Workers Power and the League for the Fifth International are fighting to build these parties, if you agree with us then join us and speed the achievement of this historic goal.