Washington in crisis over opposition to Iraq war

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Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:16:08 -0700

[Zepps_News] WSWS: Washington in crisis over opposition to

Iraq war

 

 

 

 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/iraq-j28.shtml>

 

Washington in crisis over opposition to Iraq war

By Bill Van Auken

28 June 2005

 

 

President George W. Bush has been forced to renew his efforts at

selling

the war in Iraq to the American people under conditions in which

Washington's military adventure has turned into a quagmire and popular

support for a withdrawal of US troops has reached an all-time high.

 

Bush is set to deliver a rare prime-time television address Tuesday

night, using massed troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina as his

backdrop. The setting is itself highly significant, casting the

president once again as the war-time " commander-in-chief, " accountable

to no one because of his control over the US military.

 

The administration's recent attempts to portray anyone questioning its

policy in Iraq as a traitor and accomplice in the death of American

troops is a measure of its growing desperation in the face of a

sea-change in public opinion.

 

Recent polls have shown fully 60 percent of the American people

favoring

US withdrawal from Iraq. They further indicate that more Americans

blame

Bush for the war (49 percent) than Saddam Hussein (44 percent). More

than half of those polled say the war was " not worth fighting, " and

that

it has contributed nothing to the security of the US, while fully

three-quarters believe that the current casualty levels are

unacceptable.

 

What is Bush's response? In a radio address from the White House

Saturday he previewed the thrust of his upcoming televised

speech—essentially a call to stay the course in Iraq and maintain a

brutal and hated military occupation, in the name of " freedom " and the

struggle to defeat " terrorism. "

 

" Now we will see that cause to victory in Iraq, " Bush declared. " A

democratic Iraq will be a powerful setback to the terrorists who seek

to

harm our nation. "

 

Bush made it clear he intends for US troops to be killing and dying in

Iraq for years to come. He declared, " Our military strategy is clear:

We

will train Iraqi security forces so they can defend their freedom and

protect their people, and then our troops will return home with the

honor they have earned. "

 

Even those most optimistic about the fledgling Iraqi security forces

say

that it will take five more years before they are in any position to

fight on their own. Less sanguine observers question whether the goal

will ever be reached, given the identification of these forces with a

despised foreign occupation and their infiltration by the Iraqi

resistance.

 

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave his own estimate Sunday, stating

in a television news interview that the " insurgency could go on for any

number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, ten,

twelve years. "

 

After more than two years of a war that has claimed tens of thousands

of

Iraqi lives together with those of nearly 1,750 US military

personnel—and at a cost of nearly $180 billion—the administration

envisions another decade of carnage in Iraq and a permanent US military

occupation.

 

Meanwhile, US military commanders have begun to distance themselves

from

the false optimism exhibited by the administration—summed up in Vice

President Dick Cheney's claim last month that Iraqi resistance to the

US

occupation was in its " last throes. "

 

Testifying before Congress last Thursday, US Central Command chief Gen.

John Abizaid said " there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq

than

there were six months ago, " while " the overall strength of the

insurgency...was the same as it was six months ago. " Pointing to

deepening military morale problems, he added that soldiers were

starting

to " ask me the question whether or not they've got support from the

American people. " Asked about Cheney's remark, the general replied,

" I'm

sure you'll forgive me from criticizing the vice president. "

 

The continuing setbacks suffered by the US military, the mounting

casualties, and the growing popular opposition have emboldened the

administration's nominal political opponents in the Democratic Party to

criticize the conduct of the war—while swearing their allegiance to

same

cause proclaimed by Bush. For the most part, the Democrats' reproach of

the administration starts from the call for more troops and greater

national unity behind the war effort.

 

The clearest enunciation of this reactionary policy came from Senator

Joseph Biden, the chief Democratic foreign policy spokesman and an

early

contender for the party's 2008 presidential nomination. Speaking before

the Brookings Institution last week, Biden declared, " I want to see the

president of the United States succeed in Iraq...His success is

America's success, and his failure is America's failure. "

 

What America is Biden talking about? Success in a war launched on the

basis of lies and for the predatory aim of asserting US hegemony over

the strategic oil reserves of the Middle East will not benefit American

working people. Rather, the aims of this war are bound up with the

interests of a financial oligarchy that is pursuing an equally

rapacious

campaign to destroy the living standards of workers in the US itself.

 

The Democratic senator went on to urge a united effort to " regain the

confidence of the American people. " He called for a " new compact

between

the administration and Congress to secure the informed consent of the

American people for the remainder of the job... so that they will give

the president the time we need to succeed in Iraq. "

 

What once passed for a liberal media has sounded a similar note. Thus,

the New York Times began a June 25 editorial debunking the

administration's linking of Iraq to the September 11, 2001 attacks and

ended by insisting, " If things are going to be turned around, there has

to be an honest discussion about what is happening. "

 

It helpfully added: " Of all the justifications for invading Iraq that

the administration juggled in the beginning, the only one that has held

up over time is the desire to create a democratic nation that could

help

stabilize the Middle East. Any sensible discussion of what to do next

has to begin by acknowledging that. "

 

Having disposed of all of the patently false pretexts for the war, the

Times promotes the ideological big lie pushed to the fore by the Bush

administration itself in its second term, identifying the pursuit of US

strategic interests by means of war and colonial-style occupation as a

global crusade for democracy. This, it suggests, is a " sensible " sales

pitch for those trying once again to con the American people.

 

Similar views prevail as well among the more left-wing spokesmen of the

Democratic Party. Former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, writing in the

Guardian, lamented, " Bush's light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel vision can

only accelerate the cycle of disillusionment. His instinctive

triumphalism inevitably has a counter-productive effect. " Popular

disillusionment with the war, so evident in the opinion polls, is seen

as a cause for concern, rather than encouragement.

 

And New York Times columnist Bob Herbert Monday published his second

column beginning with the unequal burden borne by working class youth

in

the war and concluding with the clear suggestion that reinstituting the

draft is in order.

 

The precipitous decline in public support for the war is the product of

the unrelenting carnage in Iraq, together with the realization by broad

layers of the population that they have been systematically lied to by

the administration, the Democratic Party and the media, all of which

are

profoundly discredited.

 

The suggestion by leading figures within the administration that the

growing rejection of the war is the fault of a biased press is

ridiculous. The American mass media is no less culpable than the Bush

administration itself for dragging the American people into a war based

on lies. It has systematically censored from its reports any indication

of the depth of antiwar sentiment and has excluded from its stable of

pundits virtually anyone expressing the widely held desire for an end

to

the occupation of Iraq.

 

The near universal dismissal by the American media of the significance

of the so-called Downing Street memo—the British document confirming

that the Bush administration " fixed " US intelligence to provide a false

justification for an unprovoked war—is one more example of the media's

complicity in this aggression.

 

The media and the Democrats are united with the Bush administration in

their determination to exclude the " W " word from public debate.

Withdrawal of US troops, the public is told again and again, is not an

option. It would unleash bloodshed, sectarian violence and regional

instability—the very things that the invasion and occupation themselves

have produced.

 

But the shared concern of Democrats and Republicans—their public

recriminations notwithstanding—goes beyond the immediate political and

military conjuncture in Iraq. What is involved is the shattering of the

US government's credibility, which has far-reaching implications for

both foreign and domestic policy.

 

Beyond the fate of Iraq itself are the implications for the fundamental

strategy embraced by both big business parties: the utilization of US

military power to offset the decline in the global economic position of

American capitalism by seizing control of markets and resources. Iraq

is

by no means the last war on Washington's agenda. Victory there is seen

within the political establishment as laying the foundations for the

next war of aggression.

 

Bush himself has repeatedly talked about fighting " the new wars of the

21st century. " Vice President Cheney, addressing the graduating class

of

the US Air Force Academy at the beginning of this month, said that many

of the cadets had wished " that you could graduate on September 12 and

take your place in the first war of the 21st century. " He assured them,

however, " ... you will play an historic role in the great victories to

come. "

 

Where are these next " great victories " to be realized? Iran is clearly

in Washington's crosshairs. The Financial Times noted Monday that

Cheney, Rumsfeld and others within the Bush administration welcomed the

electoral victory of the so-called Islamic hard-liner in the country's

presidential election. They clearly hope it will pave the way for

confrontation and war.

 

Military aggression is equally possible against any number of other

countries, including oil-rich states such as Venezuela and Nigeria, as

well as named enemies like Syria, North Korea and Cuba.

 

The decline in public tolerance for such military adventures has dire

implications for the ruling establishment. Under conditions of

unprecedented social polarization within the US, war and the threat of

war have become the essential glue for holding society together and

legitimizing a government that defends the interests of a tiny

financial

oligarchy against those of the vast majority of working people.

 

Moreover, a repudiation of the war by the American people represents an

indictment of the entire political setup in the US. There is no faction

within the ruling elite that can credibly point to the record and

claim,

" We opposed this war. " The Congress, both big business parties, the

media and the corporations are all implicated.

 

The growth of popular opposition to the war has come entirely from

below. It finds no serious reflection in the political deliberations of

the US government or in the narrow and reactionary range of opinion

that

is permitted by the mass media. It therefore has profoundly

revolutionary implications and has provoked deep concern within the all

sections of the ruling establishment.

 

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If you agree with the war, then I think that you should enlist to back up your

beliefs or get your children to do so.