Laying siege

[Louis Proyect]

Although the USA has not admitted it, there is every likelihood that it 
destroyed Baghdad's electrical power station with the intention of 
making life unlivable. Today's newspapers are filled with reports that 
they intend to keep the city encircled while delivering punishing air 
strikes against the "enemy". In many ways, the scenario is beginning to 
look like Waco. In chiding critics of the war, Rush Limbaugh was quoted 
as saying that it took 51 days to storm David Koresh's followers, so why 
should we be impatient with Iraq.

Ironically, the crusade to liberate Waco was a humanitarian intervention 
project from the same Clinton administration that liberated Yugoslavia. 
Whatever ideological differences they had over abortion, the Bush 
foreign policy seems fairly consistent with what came before it. I have 
begun reading Diana Johnstone's "Fool's Crusade" and am more convinced 
than ever that the failure of the left to take a strong stand against 
NATO's mauling of Yugoslavia facilitated the new hegemonic drive of the 
USA. The melting of all resistance to the war in Iraq from France and 
Germany reminds us that this is basically an imperialist onslaught of 
the North against the South. Whatever the final outcome with the siege 
of Baghdad, the prognosis is continuing war and continuing resistance.

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