UNITED STATES: Moore backs ex-NATO general for president

Wednesday, January 28, 2004 - 11:00

Doug Lorimer

Filmmaker Michael Moore announced on his web site on January 14 that he would be backing retired US Army general Wesley Clark to the Democratic Party's candidate in the 2004 presidential election.

"I believe that Wesley Clark will end this war", Moore wrote, referring to the US war in Iraq. Moore presents little evidence to back up these claims.

While Clark has criticised the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, his criticisms concern the way in which the invasion was carried out — without the backing and involvement of all of Washington's European imperialist allies.

Clark contrasts the Bush administration's "unilateralist" invasion of Iraq to the 1999 "multilateralist" NATO war against Serbia which, as US Supreme Allied Commander In Europe, he directed.

NATO waged war on Serbia in order to force the ex-Communist, pro-capitalist Serbian chauvinist government of Sloban Milosevic to agree to a NATO occupation of the predominately Albanian-inhabited Serbian province of Kosova.

Washington and its European NATO allies had lost confidence that the Serbian army and police could crush the national independence movement of the Albanian Kosovars, and believed only the imposition of an imperialist military occupation could "stabilise" Kosova.

Today, NATO forces still occupy Kosova, denying the Kosovars their right to national self-determination. The US-led "multilateral" imperialist occupation of Kosova is the model that Clark proposes for Iraq.

Rather than immediately withdrawing the US-led occupation forces from Iraq, as the US and international anti-war movement is demanding, Clark's recipe for "ending this war" is to "internationalise" it. He wants Washington's NATO allies, particularly France and Germany, to send large numbers of their troops to help the US crush all Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation.

How does endorsing a candidate who seeks to escalate the war in Iraq help to win more people to oppose the war?

From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.

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