| Military
Crisis and Empire |
Phil Hearse
Perhaps
700 Iraqis died in the battle of Fallujah, most of them
non-combatants. Over 100 US soldiers also died, which explains
the frustration and frenzy of the US bombardment of the town.
Some global justice campaigners (by no means all) note that
these figures -indeed
all the figures for deaths in the Iraq war and its aftermath
– are tiny compared with the Third World’s daily holocaust
at the hands of poverty and disease. Is not the left obsessed
with US militarism and the ongoing Iraq war?
The
truth is that what is happening in Iraq and to a lesser extent
Palestine is the cutting edge of the whole imperial system of
global injustice, which lies behind global poverty. What is
happening there has repercussions for the whole system.
American
marines lost the battle of Fallujah, politically as much as
militarily, but that in itself hardly threatens the US Empire.
What it does threaten is the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld way
of running the empire. And that will have enormous political
consequences. The idea of American military might imposing
total world dominance -
an ersatz sort of US world government – is being put at
risk. How so?
The
battles in Iraq are the result of a national uprising: US
repression has enormously strengthened the idea of a
pan-Islamic, pan-Iraqi resistance. In the stormy days of April
thousands of ordinary Shi’as in the south of the country
lined up to give blood and donate food to the embattled Sunni
community in Fallujah. A national liberation war is unfolding.
America’s master plan for Iraq – a puppet government, US
control of the economy and 14 massive military bases in
perpetuity – is now in danger. A US-occupied Iraq looks
ungovernable, period.
With
growing numbers of US troops now returning in coffins, Iraq is
becoming a destabilising factor in American politics. There
are limits to this of course, given the craven support of the
Democrats for the war, and the prostrate role of the US mass
media. Nonetheless post-September 11 unanimity behind Bush is
a distant memory.
The
Bush regime’s strategy has been undermined by four factors.
First the heroic resistance in Fallujah, obviously mainly
carried out by Iraqis and not by ‘outsiders’. Second the
devastating torture scandal, hardly news to the Iraqis, but a
crushing blow to claims of Anglo-American moral superiority
and their claims to be ‘liberators’. Third is the disquiet
about US blitzkrieg tactics in the Iraqi puppet government
itself, leading to several resignations. And finally the
refusal of sections of the re-formed Iraqi army to fight
against their embattled brothers and sisters in Fallujah,
which makes it an unreliable alternative tool of repression.
This
adds up to an enormous political defeat for the
invaders. Political and military defeat in Iraq is leading to
political defeat worldwide. Three things show this. First the
Al-Qaida train bombings in Madrid, and the defeat of the
right-wing government in the elections which followed. It was
self-evident to large parts of the Spanish electorate that the
bombing was a response to Spain’s participation in the war.
The reaction of many of the Madrid population out on the
streets in their millions after the bombing was to demand
‘peace’ not revenge. Masses of people making the
connection between western policies in the Middle East and
terrorism is a huge development. Pre-war warnings (even by
Tories like Kenneth Clarke) that invasion of Iraq would make
terrorist attacks more likely are evidently coming true,
something well understood by European governments, who unlike
their US counterparts have large Muslim populations at home.
The
second key factor is the torture scandal. This is not like the
1950s and early 1960s when France could use systematic torture
in Algeria, with only the small non-Stalinist left and a few
intellectuals protesting. Contemporary sensibilities about
human rights, and indeed the utilisation of human rights
rhetoric by the Clinton administration especially, make the
torture scandal an absolute disaster for the Bush regime and
its affiliate in Downing Street. On September 12 2001 the
French daily Liberàtion proclaimed ‘We are all
Americans’; where is the newspaper outside the US that will
echo such sentiments today?
The
third factor is US backing for the Sharon plan, which involves
giving up a few settlements in Gaza in return for making
Israeli settlements on the West Bank permanent, thus gutting
any possibility of even a Palestinian mini-state. US
diplomatic policy has traditionally been for an endless
US-sponsored ‘peace process’, focusing on Palestinian
surrender, under the auspices of the State Department. This is
what the utterly capitulationist 1992 Oslo peace agreement
negotiated by Arafat and the Shamir-Perez government amounted
to. Whatever the reality, in appearance it maintained the US
role of an ‘even-handed’ America, sympathetic to Israel by
acting for a peaceful settlement.
The
rejection of the plan by Sharon’s Likud party is of little
consequence. Bush has nailed his colours to the mast ( to woo
the Jewish vote), and Israel will act on some variant of the
plan. To the hard-core US neocons this seems like a smart
move, but old diplomatic hands know better. It only adds the
US’s international isolation, and guarantees – together
with Sharon’s assassinations policy – bloody conflict
without end.
How
will this new situation of military stalemate and crisis play
itself out? To assess this, it is worthwhile to look back at
the Vietnam war. The US was not defeated militarily in Vietnam
in the sense of being physically thrown out of the country or
having its army defeated in open battle – a total
impossibility given the vastly greater firepower of the US
legions. But defeats in battle, spiraling casualties - more
than 16,000 dead in 1967-8 alone – and most importantly an
inability to defeat a tenacious enemy with massive popular
support, led eventually to US withdrawal.
Is
Vietnam being repeated? Yes and no. US casualties are not
nearly so high as in Vietnam. So far Iraq is not nearly such a
divisive issue in US politics, although discord is growing.
Neither is Iraq anything like so costly to the US economy –
so far.
But
there is one decisive similarity – already the US has lost
the political battle in the country itself, decisive and
irreversibly. This means that – at differing tempos over
time – the insurgency will continue. Bush and the generals
want more troops, which repeats the 1960s Vietnam fallacy that
more troops will solve the problem.
Political
defeat and military setback have already clipped the
empire’s wings, with little talk now of going on to Syria,
Iran or North Korea. Fallujah has shown the limits of what can
be achieved by military muscle alone. New debates will unfold
in the American political and business elites about the US
being ‘overstretched’ and the foolishness of such a
decisive reliance on military power. This will reshape the
political map – and, very gradually, open up new opportunity
for anti-war and radical voices.
Peace
movements, as broad alliances, will axis their slogans around
troop withdrawal and peaceful settlement. Marxists will hasten
the development of these broad forces towards anti-imperialism
by urgently raising the necessity for solidarity with the
Iraqi national resistance.
May
2004
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