20.11.1997
US bullies the world
Ever since the reactionary collapse of the Soviet Union, the power of US imperialism has gone unchallenged. The 1991 Gulf War between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the United Nations - ie, the United States - was the first bloody manifestation of this new world order. Rex Americana has become increasingly arrogant, ever eager to stamp its imprimatur on the international plane.
Once again the USA has turned its attention to Iraq. With a full support from a sycophantic British government, it has been loudly rattling its sabres. After expelling American weapons inspectors from the country, Saddam Hussein has been playing a cat and mouse game with the world’s last remaining superpower.
Saddam’s motives are not too hard to guess. Large areas of Iraq - particularly in the Kurdish north - are under UN ‘protection’. Iraqi planes are excluded from US-controlled ‘no-fly zones’; UN inspectors were crawling everywhere - schools, universities, hospitals, etc. This is the humiliating consequence for Saddam of losing the Gulf War.
Despite Bill Clinton’s claims (“We are not refighting the Gulf War: this is about security for the 21st century”) the US agenda is clear. It wants to stamp its hegemony all over Iraq - and hence across the globe - at the ‘touch of a button’. Whatever the sanctimonious words of US officials and their lackeys - faithfully echoed in the wall-to-wall anti-Iraqi propaganda of the British media - we can see that the US is acting as the world’s bully. Its chosen victim at the moment is Iraq - but who is next?
Many of the Middle East states - mainly on pragmatic grounds - became the steadfast ‘allies’ of US imperialism during its war against Saddam. Then it was an Arab country - Kuwait - that had been invaded, and the ‘oil’ autocrats and dictators were alarmed at Saddam’s possible ambitions. Despite the lack of enthusiasm in the wider Arab world for US domination, the leaders of the Gulf States - and countries like Egypt - were willing to hide behind US military hegemony.
Today that is much less likely as US secretary of state Madeline Allbright so graphically demonstrated on her failed mission to Qatar. She was unable to drum up any support for US imperialism. Even Kuwait has shown no interest in supporting America’s militaristic plans.
Given these unfavourable conditions for US imperialism, any intervention would most likely be limited to a few ‘tactical’ air strikes. It is not impossible that the US will back down - for now - altogether. On Monday, Iraq offered to allow US weapons inspectors back into the country on condition that they made up no more than a fifth of the total UN monitoring contingent.
The hypocrisy of the US is astounding. The state of Israel has broken every UN resolution going - but no sanctions have been imposed on it. The US remains the sponsor of Zionist terror and aggression in the Middle East. The irony is that prior to the Gulf War, Saddam was viewed as a favoured ally and was generously supported by the west.
We should make clear our view that Saddam Hussein is a vicious dictator, renowned for his brutal repression of the Iraqi masses. There is nothing remotely progressive about the Ba’ath regime. Its fake ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric should be treated with contempt by real anti-imperialists and revolutionaries - as should those left groups in the past, and even in the present, who attempted to paint the Iraqi regime ‘red’.
Nor, as dogmatic Trotskyists insist, is Iraq a ‘semi-colony’ - which therefore should be supported in any confrontation with the metropolitan imperialist powers. Iraq is developing monopoly capital internally and has proto-imperialist designs of its own.
This fundamental misunderstanding of the real nature of Iraq led some leftists to proclaim, ‘Victory to Iraq!’ during the Gulf War. They nonsensically claimed that “victory breeds revolution” - when all historical evidence thus far points to exactly the opposite. Revolutionary defeatism, not revolutionary defencism, was the only correct and principled position for revolutionaries to take - whatever country they operated in
As we saw immediately after Saddam’s defeat, there was a temporary revolutionary situation in Iraq - the Kurds in the North and the ‘Marsh Arabs’ in the south both rose against him. These localised rebellions were crushed viciously and very effectively by Saddam - some think with implicit US connivance
The role of the Labour Party has been despicable - quite naturally. It has behaved in exactly the same manner as the Tories did during the Gulf War. Robin Cook and co have loyally echoed US imperialist propaganda. Yet again the left’s preference for Blair as ‘the lesser evil’ has been clearly exposed.
The current conflict reveals - once more - Britain’s cosy and servile relationship with US imperialism - and the more general clash between the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and Arab worlds. The legacy of colonialism still runs deep.
All genuine communists and democrats denounce American aggression and the imperialist sanctions against Iraq. They have inflicted appalling suffering and misery upon the Iraqi people and enabled the butcher Saddam to portray himself as the ‘defender’ of the masses.
Paul Greenaway