|
| |
Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
January/February 2001
The Gulf War and Bush, ten years later
The tenth anniversary of the start of the Gulf War was remembered with
anti-sanctions demonstrations in several U.S. and world cities. Coinciding
by only days with the presidential inauguration of George W. Bush, the
occasion raises a number of issues.
The unified NATO alliance, along with UN backing and support from key Arab
countries, put together by the first George Bush to wage war against Saddam
Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait, has long since fallen apart. Russia,
France and China have, in practice, disassociated from the UN Security
Council-sponsored sanctions against Iraq, and Britain, the remaining
military ally of the U.S., wants to cease the constant bombing patrols.
Saddam observed the anniversary by denouncing the Gulf War allies (except
the Arab countries involved) as "the enemies of God, the followers of
Satan"; earlier, he reviewed a four-hour military parade which reportedly
featured hundreds of tanks and other weapons.
The embargo against Iraq has been broken by everyone-western capitalists,
especially oil companies, looking to do business with Iraq again; Arab
countries (except Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) showing solidarity with Saddam's
anti-Israel stance and his pledge of political and financial support for
the Palestinian uprising; and international humanitarian organizations
ferrying in medicine and other supplies.
This hardly means improvement in conditions for the Iraqi people. They have
endured the full impact of sanctions and Saddam's repressive regime, which
has used a good portion of the UN-controlled "oil for food" revenues to
repair the military and construct megalomaniacal monuments like the Saddam
Grand Mosque. The most disgraceful result of the sanctions is measured by
the catastrophic infant mortality rate which has risen to 108 of every
1,000 babies dying before his or her first year from lack of adequate
medicine, nutrition and sanitary conditions.
Two engineers of the Gulf War, Vice President Dick Cheney (then secretary
of defense) and Secretary of State Colin Powell (then head of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff) are now prominent in Bush's administration. In the
immediate period Bush will likely continue Clinton's policy, which had
mutated into binding the end of sanctions to the end of Saddam. Powell has
supported a U.S. stance to "re-energize the sanctions regime," which may
mean targeting sanctions to military commodities, while ending the blanket
trade embargo.
A hard-right, militarist group, including Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and others, lines up with Cheney, who stated during the campaign
the U.S. "might have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam."
This side has lent vociferous support to reviving the Iraqi National
Congress, a so-called opposition alliance led by exiles with no support
within Iraq, which was totally fabricated by CIA funding under the first
Bush administration, and later openly funded by Congress under the Clinton
presidency for $97 million.
More crucial, the Iraqi people have not forgotten that the first Bush
administration and its armed forces stood aside at the end of the Gulf War,
when the genuine opposition to Saddam-the Kurds in the north and Shiite
Muslims in the south-rose up in near-revolution and were viciously
slaughtered. These indigenous mass revolts are anathema to the U.S. and to
regional Arab rulers.
The other volatile factor driving U.S. policy, as it has in the past,
revolves around maintaining stable oil supplies, especially with a U.S.
recession on the horizon. Iraq did not participate in the recent OPEC
agreement (and has not since the Gulf War) to cut oil production in order
to raise prices. Currently, Iraq is keeping most of its oil off the world
market.
Looming over whatever posture the Bush administration takes towards
Iraq-especially with the likely February election of a right-wing Sharon
government in Israel-is the question: what lessons have we learned from the
ill-fated protests against the Gulf War ten years ago? The military
build-up and war took place in the period of the collapse of
state-capitalist regimes calling themselves "Communist" in East Europe and
Russia. Yet the anti-war protests did not rise up to full stature when the
need was to state what we stand for-a new, human society. This allowed some
tendencies to fall back so far as to lend support to Saddam in the name of
an unexamined anti-U.S. imperialism.
|
|
