Bush's coming war on Iraq is a war on us all

[The following statement was issued by the national executive of the Socialist Alliance on September 18.]

We are approaching the moment when the richest country in the world, with the most powerful armed forces and most destructive arsenal ever accumulated, is about to unleash a torrent of destruction on Iraq in a war to control the world's oil supplies.

Tens of thousands of innocent people will perish in the hell this war will create. And the inferno will consume an already shattered country in which half a million children have died because of sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War.

We are told this “last resort” of military aggression is necessary because the Iraqi Saddam Hussein regime has accumulated weapons of mass destruction — conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear — and because it is refusing to allow UN weapons inspectors into Iraq.

We are told there is a “mountain of evidence” linking Iraq with the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers. But no evidence has been presented.

We are told that if the United Nations Security Council doesn't vote to present Saddam Hussein with an ultimatum and a deadline for compliance with its resolutions it will have lost its purpose as a defender of “global security”.

All this is a lie. What we are being treated to — by George Bush, Tony Blair, their mates in Canberra and the mass media — is war hysteria, pure and simple. The US wants to go to war to extend its influence, and stabilise and strengthen corporate domination of the oil-rich but politically unstable Middle East. The Howard government wants part of the spoils. Every mass media button is being pressed to justify Bush's coming aggression.

The key issue is not Bush's threat to take military action against Iraq without UN endorsement. Even with Security Council backing, this war will be a war for oil and against the peoples of Iraq and the Middle East. That should be obvious from the fact that another country, Israel, has flouted UN resolutions for years without anyone calling it a “rogue state” or even dreaming to suggest military action to force it to comply.

[Prior to Bush's September 13 UN speech] Middle East expert Robert Fisk described what is really going on: “The president is going to launch the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since the British and French parcelled out the Arab lands after the 1914-18 war. When he addresses the United Nations on Thursday, George Bush will be threatening not only Iraq — which had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington — but Syria, Iran and, by extension, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.”

Saddam Hussein's is certainly an oppressive regime, but a democratic alternative can only be won by the struggles of the workers, peasants and oppressed minorities of Iraq themselves. An imperialist war will only drastically undermine their fight for democracy, self-determination and social justice.

What the war is really about

In every outbreak of war hysteria truth is the first casualty as the warmongers strive to blind us to their interests and motives. But today, with the United States led by the most aggressively militaristic faction of its ruling elite, these motives are particularly transparent:

l<~>There is no urgent race against time to “get” Saddam Hussein before he develops weapons of mass destruction because there is no significant evidence that they exist. The estimations of Iraq's weapons capabilities are gross exaggerations designed to whip up support for a pre-emptive strike. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, summarising the results of the inspectors' work, has specified “that there was nothing left, that all proscribed weapons and their programs had been eliminated, and that the worst fears of a retained Iraqi capability — a nuclear device, for instance — were without substance”.

l<~>The Saddam Hussein regime is brutal, but has a much reduced military capacity today than in 1988, when President Bush senior was welcoming Saddam as an ally against Iran and as a trading partner after he had committed his worst brutalities-as in Halabja, where Iraq attacked Kurds with poison gas.

l<~>The war won't help contain terrorism, but help propagate it. It will confirm the view of the US as a ruthless aggressor. Many more will draw the conclusion that terror tactics are the only possible way to strike back.

l<~>If successful, the war won't help establish “democracy” in countries such as Syria and Lebanon, but will help reproduce regimes like Afghanistan's new “democracy” and reactionary Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia — totally obedient to their masters in Washington.

l<~>The Israeli state will be strengthened. The struggle for justice for the Palestinian people will be weakened.

l<~>The war won't just be a war on Iraq and for influence in the Middle East: it will be a war against the less developed countries as a whole. Its brutal message to any peoples in revolt against poverty, disease, injustice and environmental destruction will be: “Look what happens to those who step out of line.”

l<~>Whatever the formal coalition which eventually backs the US, the war will also be a war to strengthen the US's position against its own “allies”, particularly its major economic rivals, Europe and Japan. European states like France and Germany are particularly nervous about joining the US drive to war, partly due to direct economic interests in Iraq but also because they rightly fear the mass anti-war protests that could explode at home and in Arab countries. An imperialist war against Iraq could actually undermine the chances of bolstering capitalist stability in the Middle East and Central Asia.

l<~>The war will be a war against the American people themselves. In particular, Bush and company hope to finally demolish what is left of the “Vietnam syndrome”, that mass resistance to US aggression that arose with the movement against the Vietnam War. War abroad means repression of democratic rights and cuts to public services at home. Already in the US, “anti-terror” laws have been used to imprison thousands without trial. In Australia, the Howard government's “anti-terror” laws will dramatically endanger our civil liberties.

For the biggest protest movement possible

The Socialist Alliance says that this war must be opposed by building the biggest, most powerful, democratic anti-war movement this country has ever seen.

We call on the Greens, Democrats and all other organisations which have expressed concerns about the war to use parliament to oppose the Coalition's war drive and join with us in building a protest movement.

So far the parliamentary leadership of the Australian Labor Party has attacked the Howard government for slavishly tailing Washington. But last time, in 1991, when the US government went to war against Iraq, it was a Labor government that supported George Bush (senior). We therefore call on ALP members and unions affiliated to the ALP to struggle to commit Labor to opposition to this war — in the traditions of John Curtin's fight against conscription in World War I and Jim Cairns' battle against the Vietnam War.

The Socialist Alliance commits itself to help build such a movement in every workplace, school, university, college, place of worship and community across the country. Within it we will particularly fight to build solidarity with Arabic-speaking and Muslim communities, victims over the last year of a rising wave of shameful racist attacks. We will explain the real motives for this war in order to build a movement which not only stops it, but strengthens people's awareness that what lies at the root of war is the private profit system itself.

Within the trade unions we will raise motions aimed at involving the organised working class in the campaign to stop Australia's involvement in this war by mass activity, such as mass rallies and industrial action. Within the universities and schools we will push for the truth about imperialist policy in the Middle East to be explained and will help build a new generation of youth protest against the warmongers in Washington and Canberra.

Join the Socialist Alliance struggle against Washington's criminal war on Iraq!

• No US attack on Iraq!
• Lift the sanctions on the Iraqi people!
• No Australian government support for a war on Iraq!

From Green Left Weekly, September 25, 2002.
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