21.09.2005
US-UK troops out now! Hands off Iran!
Mike Macnair disccuses the tasks for the anti-war movement
The US-British invasion and occupation of Iraq has turned out to be a disaster. Opinion is beginning, slowly, to turn against it in the US. The occupiers have for some time been seeking an 'exit strategy' which would let them withdraw most of their troops, so far without success. But the Bush administration has one last dice to throw to avoid the appearance of defeat in Iraq: this is the threat of a nuclear attack on Iran. The labour movement needs to fight for immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the occupying troops from Iraq. That means immediately fighting for British troops out and British withdrawal from the coalition. All the talk of developing democracy or protecting the Iraqi workers' movement through the occupation has proved to be garbage. As long as the US is seeking an exit with dignity, the dynamics will point to bombing Iran. It is only if the anti-war movement unites round the single demand - 'Out now!' - that the movement will be able to offer an alternative to the threat to Iran. Iraq disaster It is now two and a half years since, on March 20 2003, the US-led terrorist coalition invaded Iraq. Those two and a half years have seen a continuing guerrilla war against the occupation and against those Iraqi political groups who have been willing to work with it. To suppress the guerrillas, the occupiers have attempted to use arbitrary detention and torture of suspects, most famously in the Abu Ghraib scandal (the effect has been to increase support for the guerrillas and other opponents of the occupation), and 'search and destroy' missions, which have inflicted ruin on Iraqi cities - most infamously Fallujah, most recently Tal Afar - without affecting the capacity of the guerrillas to strike even at the heart of Baghdad and in the environs of Basra. The invaders-occupiers destroyed the Iraqi economy and much of the infrastructure, first by 'sanctions', then by 'shock and awe' bombing. Millions of Iraqis are unemployed. Billions of dollars supposedly allocated to 'reconstruction' have either been transferred to 'security' or been converted into cash and disappeared. 'Reconstruction' contracts have been handed out left, right and centre to US and other companies who take the money, but cannot do the job. Occupied Iraq is lousy with cowboy mercenary outfits described as 'civilian contractors': early September saw the occupiers back the right of (British) 'security contractors' to shut down Baghdad airport, against the supposedly 'sovereign' and 'elected' Iraqi government, in defence of their sweetheart deal negotiated with the US (earlier this week British forces demolished a police station in Basra in an attempt to rescue two undercover agents who had been arrested by forces of the same 'sovereign' and 'elected' Iraqi government). Electricity and water supplies remain erratic. The occupiers have presided over a regime of local micro-warlordism and mosque militias. In their search for Iraqi support they first attempted direct rule, then to rule through some of their kleptocrat cronies, then more kleptocrats in the ex-Ba'athist collaborator grouping round Iyad Allawi. Since the January 'elections' they have been allied with the pro-Iranian islamists of Dawa and the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its Badr Brigade militia, which has been partially rebadged as 'Iraqi police'. Iran is now to aid in training and equipping the Iraqi army. Bush has 'hailed' a draft Iraqi constitution which would entrench islamic law and provide for an effective partition of Iraq between Kurdish, 'shia' and 'sunni' regions (see Weekly Worker September 1). US opinion begins to shift US casualties in Iraq have now reached nearly 2,000 killed, and just under 20,000 have been evacuated (hence seriously wounded or injured - www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm). This is, of course, peanuts besides Iraqi casualties - according to Iraq Body Count, around 25,000 killed and more than 42,000 wounded (www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php). It is also substantially lower than the US casualty rate in Vietnam, which was itself substantially lower than what is expected in regular military operations. But the continuous dribble of US casualties is set alongside the invasion's exposure of the falsity of the 'weapons of mass destruction' claim. It is set alongside the fact that the fantasies of creating a 'western-style democracy' in Iraq have been blown up by the need to conciliate the shi'ite islamists. And it is set alongside the fact that invasion and occupation has transparently made life worse for ordinary Iraqis (except the Kurds) under the occupation than it was under the tyrannical Ba'athist regime and even under the 1991-2003 'sanctions' phase of the war. In this situation people in the US are gradually beginning to question why they should pay for the neocons' adventure with the lives of US service personnel and the estimated $205 billion so far spent on the war (http://costofwar.com/numbers.html). A CBS/New York Times poll conducted over September 9-13 showed that a slight majority (fractionally over 50%) now think the US should not have invaded Iraq, and 52% think US troops should leave Iraq as soon as possible rather than staying "as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable democracy". The figures have shifted gradually from clear majority support for the war in 2003 to a small majority against it now; as to how long troops should stay, answers have been variable since 2003. Ninety percent would oppose cutting domestic spending to pay for the war and 77% would be unwilling to finance it through increased taxes (www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm). Cleft stick Given the shift in US opinion, kites have been flown for US troops to be withdrawn without a prior 'defeat' of the insurgency. On August 23 major general Douglas Lute, director of operations at Cent Com, flagged the idea that 'Iraqisation' might allow significant troop reductions, though Bush dismissed the idea as "rumours" (Financial Times August 24). The Christian Science Monitor headlined an article by staff writer Mark Sappenfeld: "US tempers its view of victory in Iraq"; with the subhead, "The Pentagon hoped to quell unrest before a pull-out, but violence is changing US goals" (September 16 ); the text quotes several US commentators suggesting, as Sappenfeld puts it, that "the insurgency will probably outlast the American occupation". The difficulty is that the US is in something of a cleft stick. On the one hand, the justifications for the invasion and occupation of Iraq have come unravelled; the occupiers are unable to defeat the guerrillas; persisting with the occupation is creating serious recruitment and morale problems for the US army (see 'Drawing Down Iraq' Newsweek August 8); and public support in the US is ebbing away. These are pretty good reasons to withdraw troops. On the other hand, the 'Iraqi troops' engaged in the assault on Tal Afar were, in fact, Kurdish peshmergas; the Baghdad 'government' of shia islamist parties has not yet been able to produce combat-capable troops willing to fight the insurgents, or even to control its own capital. An anonymous correspondent reported on Juan Cole's blog that the insurgents had imposed 'lockdowns' on five Baghdad neighbourhoods and that "The only place we are sure they cannot control is Sadr City, unless of course they want to take on Jaish Mahdy [Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army], and that would be bloody" (http://www.juancole.com, September 18). In this situation, it is fairly clear that if the occupiers withdrew their troops, the 'insurgents' would take Baghdad and the 'shias' would be forced to call for Iranian military intervention to save them. No matter what 'peace with honour' rhetoric were used, this outcome would be perceived worldwide as the fall of Saigon in 1975 was: that is, as a military defeat for US imperialism. It would also be perceived - at least initially, and assuming the existing configuration of forces - as a victory for either sunni jihadi islamism or the Iranian 'islamic revolution'. The Bush administration urgently needs to do something to avoid this outcome. Back to Ba'athism? The international edition of Newsweek International carries a suggestion from its editor, Fareed Zakaria, about what they should do ('Talking with the enemy', August 8). The answer, he suggests, is to split the insurgents between the Ba'athists and the jihadis. The insurgents are now widely believed to have broadly two elements: highly militarily competent groups led by Ba'athist military commanders, who hit hard military targets; and the sunni jihadi islamists (of whom the most notorious is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), who tend to hit shia civilian and religious targets (this division was also identified by Al-Hayat, as quoted in Juan Cole's blog on September 16.) Zakaria reports several sources as indicating that the Ba'athist military element wants to obtain a negotiated settlement with the Americans. If the Ba'athists among the guerrillas could be brought onside, Zarqawi and co could rapidly be eliminated. US withdrawal would then not look like a victory for the sunni islamist jihadis. But there are two problems with this hopeful scenario for the US. The first is that what the Ba'athist element of the guerrillas want (according to Zakaria's informants) is two things: rejection of the 'federal' carve-up proposed by the shia islamist parties and the Kurdish nationalists; and the legalisation of the Ba'ath party (even if under a new name) and an end to de-Ba'athification. But these demands have been precisely and explicitly rejected by the 'shia'/Kurdish bloc when they decided to go forward with the draft constitution. The second is what lies behind this 'shia' intransigence: Iranian support. Once the occupying troops go, a revived Ba'athism could probably stabilise the centre of Iraq and reconquer the south - as long as the Iranians do not intervene. Without US military support, an Iraqi regime would be helpless against Iran. Threatening Iran September has seen a new wave of diplomatic and media noise about Iran's nuclear programme. It is may not be a coincidence that it has also seen a US ideological offensive against the United Nations. The International Atomic Energy Authority has not yet decided whether to refer the Iran case to the security council: the British have been 'trying again' this week. North Korea has been temporarily cleared out of the way by a diplomatic deal. We may be looking at the preparation of another 'coalition of the willing', or preparation for unilateral US military action against Iran. It may seem insane for the US to rattle sabres at Iran when the US's current allies in Iraq are the pro-Iranian islamist parties. But the internal logic of the situation in Iraq means precisely that the US needs to reduce the political autonomy of these parties in order to get a deal which will not look like a US defeat and a jihadi or islamic-revolutionary victory: and this means bringing Iran itself under control. It may also seem insane for the US to rattle sabres at Iran when 140,000 US troops are 'bogged down' in Iraq. But the nature of the threat seems to be radically different to the threats and ultimate invasion of Iraq. The US is not threatening to invade Iran. Through indirect means (and perhaps also in private diplomatic communications), the US administration is threatening to use nuclear weapons against Iran. It was leaked in July to a US conservative website that "The Pentagon, acting under instructions from vice-president Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons" (The American Conservative, August 1). The claim has not been denied. More recently, there was a leak of a draft Pentagon document containing a more general account of plans for first use of nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike - not merely in response to a terrorist attack, but to 'threats' like the Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment programme (see New York Times September 11). The document has been confirmed as genuine. From the point of view of the interests of the human species, for the US to nuke Iran would be almost the ultimate insanity. From the point of view of the Bush administration, however, the threat and if necessary use of nuclear weapons against Iran looks like a win-win strategy. Iraq is beginning to look like a disaster not merely for the neocons' policy but also for the global authority of the US military. It is the global authority of the US military which backs the status of the dollar as the ultimate reserve currency and hence the elaborate financial manipulations of neoliberal 'globalisation'. There are thus very big stakes in the question as to whether a US pull-back from Iraq looks like a US defeat. If the threat to nuke Iran produces an Iranian back-down and a diplomatic deal, that deal could extend to leverage over the Iraqi shia islamist parties, which would allow a form of withdrawal from Iraq which looked less like US defeat. If the Iranians do not back down and the US actually drops the bomb on Iran, a moral and political line will be crossed which has held since 1945. The US will be able to hold the threat of nuclear attack over every country which does not already have strategic nuclear weapons targeted on the US. The authority of the US military will be reasserted, and what happens in Iraq will become unimportant to world politics. As a relative incidental, the administration might calculate that dropping the bomb on Iran - or even making a credible threat to do so - might precipitate the overthrow of the clerical regime in some sort of coup. In this case, too, the Iraqi shia islamist parties would be deprived of their backer. A serious and believable threat to make a nuclear attack on Iran, with a real willingness to do so if the Iranian regime does not back down, is therefore rational politics from the point of view of the US administration and potentially of the US state. It would be a gamble: maybe dropping the bomb on Iran would provoke not fear but a global backlash against the US. But the Bush administration has already, in Iraq, shown itself willing to gamble on a large scale, and Bush is no longer seeking re-election. If Bush leaves office as the president who got the US into an Iraqi quagmire which was seen in the end as a US defeat, his memory will be damned on all sides. If he leaves office as the president who 'freed America's hands' to use nuclear blackmail, and 'dealt with Iran', US big capital and its supporters may adopt the old motto, oderint, dum metuant: 'Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.' He would then certainly have left his mark on history. Defeat the US wars: out now! When the invasion of Iraq began, the Weekly Worker's front page headline was: "Better the defeat of British troops than their victory." Our basic reason as communists for this headline was simple: the main enemy is at home: the workers' movement needs to break from loyalty to the British state if it is ever to seek power for the working class. We can add the old slogan, that 'A people that oppresses another can never itself be free'; and invading and occupying Iraq is precisely to oppress the Iraqis. But the headline was also true at a lower and more immediate level. US-British victory in the invasion has made things concretely and materially worse for most Iraqis. Moreover, US-British victory leads to further war. If the US and its allies had been successful in their plan to remake Iraq as a neoliberal regime, its neighbours would have been targeted next. The occupation has in fact led to an ongoing and destructive guerrilla war. But military victory in the invasion and threatened political defeat in the occupation is also leading to new threats: right now to bomb Iran. The best way to stop US-British aggression is for it to be politically defeated at home. If it is not politically defeated at home, it will go on until it eventually creates a coalition of major powers willing to fight the US in a general world war. Defeating US-British aggression at home requires building an anti-war movement which unites on the basis of a single, clear and unambiguous slogan: 'Out now!' No conditions, no hesitations, no delays until things get better; and, on the other hand, no additional conditions like 'Solidarity with the Iraqi resistance'. This narrow focus reflects what we are after: open political defeat of the US-British policy of military aggression. To force, if we can, British and US governments to accept defeat of their aggression against Iraq, by pulling troops out without conditions, is the best way to reduce the danger of more wars. To place conditions on troop withdrawals is actually to support the occupiers' policy. To demand 'solidarity with the resistance' is to subordinate building an anti-occupation movement to an indefensible alliance with enemies. British politics There was never the same mass support for the war on Iraq in this country that there was in the US. The government had some hope that they were gaining ground at first. But more recently the strategy has been to marginalise the issue. UK pollsters have stopped asking questions about the presence of British troops in Iraq since a Times/Populus poll in February 2005 produced a whacking 66% for early withdrawal, against 24% willing for troops to stay "as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable democracy." (http://pollingreport.co.uk/blog/index.php?page_id=445). News management at work ... It has been easier to marginalise the issue because British troops have been stationed in the south of Iraq, where the guerrillas have been less active, and have therefore taken fewer casualties. There are also much fewer British troops than US troops to start with, and the financial cost of the occupation is dramatically lower. In the ministry of defence's accounts for 2002-03 and 2003-04 the amounts reported as spent on Iraq are only marginally different from the total MOD budget underspend: £630 million against an underspend of £2,475 million in 2002-03 and £1,539 million against an underspend of £1,002 million in 2003-04. These should be set against a total MOD budget of around £35 billion (figures from the accounts at mod.gov.uk). The numbers are large by comparison with the cost of schools or hospitals, and there has probably been some 'creative accountancy' to reduce their size; but they are not a potential major distorting element in British budgetary decisions, as the Iraq war is in the US budget. Moreover, British troops have been serving abroad on counter-insurgency and 'peace-keeping' duties more or less continuously since decolonisation in the 1950s and 60s brought to an end most of the formal British overseas empire. The presence of British troops in Iraq is then 'business as usual'. Nonetheless, in spite of the news management Iraq remains an issue in British politics. The Lib Dems at their conference have called for an early end to the occupation, and Ken Clarke has identified himself as an opponent of the invasion (but supporter of the occupation) in his campaign for the Tory leadership. Labour movement There is probably broad mass support for getting the troops out of Iraq soon. The silence of the polls obscures it. But the outcome of the May general election showed hostility to the war which the first-past-the-post system blocked from clear appearance, and the continued willingness of some Tories and of the Lib Dems to posture on the issue points in the same direction. But the organised labour movement remains unwilling to take a clear and unambiguous stand against the occupation. Largely, this is about the trade union bureaucratic leaders' loyalty to the Blair government. To mix metaphors, however often these characters are kicked in the teeth, they still won't rock the boat. The ideological cover for this policy is provided primarily by the Communist Party of Iraq's decision to participate in the occupiers' appointed governments and to obtain the 'state franchise' for their Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions alliance with elements of the former Ba'athist state-run union apparatus. In 2004 IFTU representatives intervened against anti-occupation motions at the TUC and Labour conferences. Internally, this cover is supported by groups like Labour Friends of Iraq and ex-communist supporters of the invasion like Dave Aaronovitch, Johan Hari, Norman Geras and so on, and on a more ambiguous level by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty. In their different ways, all these argue that the labour movement should not commit itself to fighting for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. 'Sticking it out' and 1945 The most bizarre aspect of these arguments is the idea that the US has begun a process of democratic reconstruction of Iraqi society and that the present situation in Iraq parallels that in Germany and Japan between 1945 and 1950. Just stick it out a few more years, then, and we'll get democratic stabilisation. Now it is true that the political situation in occupied Germany and Japan in the immediate aftermath of World War II did not display 'normal democracy', and that there was some military resistance to the occupiers. But this is not remotely comparable to a guerrilla movement which, two and a half years after the invasion, is able to strike at will more or less anywhere outside the Green Zone and even from time to time in it. Moreover, what enabled democratic stabilisation in Germany and Japan was the turn in US policy represented by the Marshall Plan and the original Gatt agreement. That is, the US accepted a large measure of statisation, subsidy and protectionism in the European and Japanese economies in order to get people back to work and overcome the 'communist threat'. In Iraq, the US shows no sign of accepting any deviation from neoliberalism or permitting Iraqis to reconstruct their own country. Finally, when Bush hails a constitution which would entrench islamic law and the authority of the ulama to strike down legislation, we can hardly say that the US is in the process of constructing even the sort of 'democracy' which exists in Latin America. And the alternative? Bringing back the Ba'athists, as they attempted with Iyad Allawi and may yet attempt with the Ba'athist element of the guerrillas. 'Averting civil war?' The troops have to stay, pro-occupation liberals argue, to prevent full-scale civil war. This is an old chestnut which was used to defend the presence of British troops in Cyprus and is still used to defend the presence of British troops in Ireland. The implication is that the troops would stay ... forever. Al-Zarqawi's 'declaration of war' on the Iraqi shia in revenge for Tal Afar was given prominence in the media because it supports this view. The denunciation of this declaration by sunni scholars has got less prominence; the denunciation by Ba'athist guerrilla leaders (Al-Hayat) has got none. The other side of the coin is that in a sense civil war has already started under the occupiers' umbrella. What else is the meaning of the attacks on the (mainly shia) police, etc, or on the other side the bodies fished out of rivers, or the denunciations of people as 'insurgents' to the US? The truth is that US troops (and for that matter UN peace-keepers) do not actually stop civil wars. What they do is prevent one side from winning, and therefore keep the civil war going on for as long as the troops stay there. 'Defending the workers' movement?' The AWL in particular has argued that, whatever their intention, the occupying troops de facto protect the workers' movement from islamist terrorists. They have not been able to provide one single example of occupying troops intervening to protect Iraqi trade unionists or communists from the islamists. What protects the Iraqi workers' movement from the islamists is - if anything - their own guns and their own security measures. On the contrary, the puppet government has now issued a decree overthrowing the limited trade union rights granted earlier and demanding state seizure of trade union assets. 'Fighting the islamist terrorists?' Fighting for immediate withdrawal of troops would - occupation supporters argue - amount to supporting the islamist terrorists. But the truth is that the occupation has actually promoted the growth of islamist terrorism: not just in Iraq, but elsewhere in the world including the UK. As the occupation has gone on, the Iraqi secular parties who associated themselves with the occupiers have got weaker. The reality, moreover, is that the occupiers have made an alliance with one set of islamists - the shia islamist parties and in particular SCIRI's Badr Brigade militia - against another set - the salafi jihadis. Communists oppose the islamists. They have shown themselves to be an implacable enemy of the workers' movement over many years. But they have not by any means shown themselves to be an implacable enemy of the United States and the United States has not been an implacable enemy of the islamists. On the contrary, in Afghanistan, in the Balkans and elsewhere, the US and Britain promoted international jihadi groups as an instrument of their policy. Maintaining the occupation will not lead to the defeat of the islamists. It will lead to some form of deal which allows the occupiers to get out while saving their face. Such a deal will be on the islamists' terms - and at the expense of the Iraqi workers' movement and Iraqi women. Fighting to get British troops out of Iraq immediately and unconditionally is not an answer to the problem of islamist attacks on the workers' movement. For that, the workers' movement needs to develop its own solidarity and its own material aid for self-defence, independent of the capitalist states (whether imperialist or dependent). That is an important task, but one separate and distinct from the struggle against the US-British policy of aggression. 'Support the resistance?' We fight to get the occupying troops out of Iraq - by working class political means. The guerrillas fight the occupation arms in hand. Does that mean that we - or the anti-war movement generally - should 'support the resistance'? The answer is no. We are for the defeat of the US war drive. Does that mean that we were for the victory of the Ba'athist regime, or now for the victory of the Iranian regime? The answer is again no. The islamists are consistent enemies of the workers' movement. It bears repeating. The victory of either the salafi jihadis or of the Sadr movement would produce at best a repeat of the corrupt and tyrannical Iranian islamic republic; more likely a new Afghanistan in Iraq. The Ba'athist nationalists are also enemies of the workers' movement: we should not allow the personalist rhetoric of the media about 'Saddam Hussain' to prevent us from recognising that the regime overthrown in 2003 was a tyrannical nationalist party-state, not just the tyranny of an individual. Neither the Iraqi workers' movement nor the British workers' movement has any reason to suppose that the victory of the Ba'athist wing of the guerrillas would produce anything other than a repeat of the Ba'athist tyranny. We do not argue for the immediate withdrawal of troops and for the defeat of the US-British policy of aggression because we support the 'resistance'. They are our enemies, albeit secondary ones. The islamist enemy of our imperialist enemy is not our friend. The fate of the workers' movement in Iran should be the clearest evidence of this. But neither is the imperialist enemy of our islamist enemy our friend. We are for the immediate withdrawal of troops and for the defeat of the US-British policy of aggression, which leads not to the defeat of the islamists and Ba'athists in the interests of the working class or of political democracy, but to chaos, disaster and despair, which promote islamism, etc, and to US deals with sections of the islamists or with sections of the Ba'athists. It leads only towards endless war and tyranny. That is the fundamental lesson of the two and a half years of the occupation of Iraq.
Worker