George W Bush cuts a beleaguered figure these days. Most Americans disapprove of his performance, and a CNN poll last month showed 60% opposed the war in Iraq, while 48% believed the US would eventually lose the war. More than one in four Americans wanted all American soldiers withdrawn by the end of the year.
These ratings are far worse than polls taken at the equivalent stage of the Vietnam war. If the war is this unpopular after 2,500 US troops have been killed, what will happen if, as in Vietnam, the body count rises above 50,000?
Predictably, though, Bush has fought back by re-committing himself and the US to the “long war". He told an audience of former soldiers in Salt Lake City, “As veterans you have seen this kind of enemy before. They are successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be. This war will be difficult. This war will be long. And this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists.” He added that this war would be “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.” The message is: we have to sacrifice some freedoms in order to defend Freedom; what we are doing now may be unpopular, but the alternative is unthinkable.
Quagmire
When the doors are closed and the microphones turned off, Bush and Blair’s conversation must sound a lot different. As can be seen from the facts on this page, the US and Britain are clearly losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The resistance to their occupations is growing stronger and more sophisticated; the territory that they control is shrinking, not expanding; the morale of their troops is vanishing.
The Pentagon’s four-yearly review last April tacitly recognised the inability of the US to invade and occupy countries and install stable pro-imperialist regimes on a hostile population. It planned to put more resources into fighting wars by proxy. Israel was the first test of that policy. It failed spectacularly.
But it would be a grave mistake to assume from this that the threat posed by imperialism in the region is likely to diminish. On the contrary, US and UK will act more viciously than ever before. Of course, in strictly military terms, an attack on Iran in the near future would be foolish in the extreme. But it cannot be ruled out. The push towards imposing economic sanctions shows the direction US policy is moving in.
Such actions may not appear rational, but, from imperialism’s point of view: what is the cost of the alternative, of doing nothing? Loss of prestige will encourage open disobedience across the globe, as poorer capitalist regimes calculate that now is a good time to wrest some control over their economies and policy back from the West.
Look at what happened in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s defeat in south Lebanon. Iran showed a long-range missile test in the Gulf on live TV, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered to debate George Bush, again on live TV, and proceeded with the country’s nuclear programme in defiance of the UN. Further a field, Hugo Chavez cemented his alliance with Iran and Hizbollah, raising the spectre of an independent alliance of oil-producing nations.
A defeat for imperialism does not simply result in the status quo; it shifts the balance of forces in the class struggle towards the oppressed nations and the global working class.
Also, imperialism’s policy is driven not just by greed alone (though this is, of course, a characteristic of the ruling class), but by the economic weakness at the heart of its system, capitalist competition and domestic politics. The US economy is the largest in the world, but its advantages over Germany, France and Japan will not last forever. The growing threat of China should not be overestimated, but it too is a powerful spur to aggressive US foreign policy.
Finally, Bush and Blair – the chief protagonists of the “long war” – are approaching their sell-by date. Neither has more than, at most, two years to achieve some kind of result. Four or five years ago, they may have hoped to have achieved more, but they remain determined to at least entrench their policy, making it extremely difficult for any successor to reverse it.
In short, America has a limited window of opportunity to make a grab for the strategic area of the globe that is the Middle East. This, even more than oil, is their aim. The new Middle East that Bush and Blair talk about is one in thrall to Anglo-Saxon imperialism, where any regime that does not display complete subservience to its masters must be removed.
Israel is the key to this new Middle East. Its invasion of south Lebanon fully aided and abetted by Britain and the US, who stopped the United Nations even calling for a ceasefire so long as it looked like the Israelis might succeed, was conceived as attack that would disarm Hizbollah and deal a double blow to Iran’s ambitions as a regional power and Syria’s ability to resist.
So where now?
The global antiwar movement must build on this summer’s victories and make it impossible for imperialism to return to the offensive.
First we must openly solidarise with all those forces resisting imperialism and its Zionist watchdog. If anyone was in any doubt that a victory for the resistance would have a powerful, progressive impulse across the region and beyond, then Hizbollah’s success should have dispelled it.
In Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon, we support all those who are fighting against occupation.
Second, we must demand the unconditional and immediate end to imperialist and Zionist aggression. End the occupations now! All occupying troops – be they US, British, Israeli or UN – must be driven out.
At the same time, we demand the breaking of all economic blockades, designed to wear down the people of the Middle East, until they are incapable of resisting. Break the blockade of Lebanon and the elected Hamas authority! No sanctions against Iran! We support the right of Iran to develop nuclear energy, and even obtain nuclear weapons. Israel has an estimated 100-200 nuclear warheads and is a known aggressor. To demand that Iran cannot develop its defences against this constant threat is pure hypocrisy.
Third, we should prepare to stop any more wars with all the power at our disposal. Any attack on Iran or Syria must be met with mass demonstrations and civil disobedience, but most importantly walkouts. School students on a mass scale, and some workers her and there did take strike action on 20th March 2003, the day the war broke out in Iraq. But the union leaders, who graced Stop the War platforms in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square failed to give a lead. This time we demand that they call their union members out as soon as any military action is proposed or launched.
This highlights the importance of working class action in the anti-imperialist movement. The working class is the only social power across the world, whose interests lie in the defeat of imperialism. The working class also has the power to threaten imperialism’s rule in its homeland. This makes it uniquely placed to deliver solidarity by breaking sanctions and blockades, boycotting Israeli goods and services, and disrupting supply lines to the imperialist armies.
More than this, the working class movement must reach out and make a special effort to support all those trade unions and working class community organisations that are resisting imperialism in the Middle East. This is the best way to encourage the anti-imperialist resistance, not just to drive out the imperialist and Zionist armies, but to seize control of their economies and use the enormous wealth of the region for the benefit of the people.
Such a setback for imperialism would not just rock the Middle East, but threaten its dictatorship over its own working class.
Iraq
General George Casey, top US commander in Iraq, received a public dressing down from his president last month for suggesting that US troop levels in Iraq could be reduced by 30,000 by the beginning of next year. Such is the tension between the political and military command of the US occupation. The army knows it’s being beaten and needs to retreat; the administration knows it’s being beaten and needs to advance.
The killing of al-Qa’ida operative, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in June was heralded as another breakthrough. It was nothing of the sort. In July, according to the New York Times, “The number of roadside bombs planted in Iraq rose in July to the highest monthly total of the war… Along with a sharp increase in sectarian attacks, the number of daily strikes against American and Iraqi security forces has doubled since January."
The paper quoted a senior Defense Department spokesperson: “The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels.” The latest US offensive has been aimed at Baghdad. Following a pattern established several years ago, this has merely led to the resistance refocusing its efforts elsewhere. For example, the strategic oil city, Mosul, is now reportedly half under the control of an advancing anti-US militia.
The Baghdad offensive has been dressed up in Western media as a drive against sectarian cleansing. Its target has been Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army. While sectarian attacks on both sides have occurred, they only account for a small minority of all military attacks.
John Pilger reported in the New Statesman: “In Iraq, in contrast to the embedded lie that the killings are now almost entirely sectarian, 70 per cent of the 1,666 bombs exploded by the resistance in July were directed against the American occupiers and 20 per cent against the puppet police force. Civilian casualties amounted to 10 per cent."
The real reasons behind US attempts to take out the Mahdi army are al-Sadr’s closeness to Iran and his proven ability to mobilise mass forces in solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles, like the 100,000 that responded to his appeal for a Million Man March in Sadr City in support of Lebanon.
However, as General Casey knows, it will remain a futile attempt. But it will be a bloody one, with many thousands of deaths. And therefore one that we must end now.
Afghanistan
Blairite thug, John Reid, when he was Defence Secretary, sent in 3,300 UK troops into Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, and said he hoped they would stay for three years, “without a shot being fired".
Since that decision, the number of soldiers deployed has crept up to 4,000 and the number of those killed to 31. Lt Gen David Richards, the most senior British officer in Afghanistan and commander of all the Nato troops, described the situation as “the worst and most sustained fighting since certainly the Korean War and perhaps World War II… We can’t expect soldiers to be handcuffed in what amounts to open warfare in the same way as they had previously been in Iraq."
This plea by Nato’s commander is to allow occupation forces to be granted full license to kill – a far cry from his previous assessment that troops would be able to parade in soft hats, winning hearts and minds! Taliban leader Mullah Salahuddin more accurately described their role:
"We have confined the British to their barracks where they are anticipating their deaths and having sleepless nights. Their position is weakening daily.” (Sunday Independent 03.09.06)
Unfortunately in the main it is Afghanis and working class British soldiers who are paying the price for Reid’s bluster and Richards’ call to arms. That’s why we say, get the troops out now, and put their war criminal leaders in the dock.