<It is worth noting that, two days before Rich’s column, the Washington
Post published an op-ed column by former Nixon secretary of state Henry
Kissinger, for decades one of the most ruthless and cynical strategists
for American imperialism. Kissinger wrote: “Because of the long reach of
the Islamist challenge, the outcome in Iraq will have an even deeper
significance than that in Vietnam. If a Taliban-type government or a
fundamentalist radical state were to emerge in Baghdad or any part of
Iraq, shock waves would ripple through the Islamic world. Radical forces
in Islamic countries or Islamic minorities in non-Islamic states would
be emboldened in their attacks on existing governments. The safety and
internal stability of all societies within reach of militant Islam would
be imperiled. This is why many opponents of the decision to start the
war agree with the proposition that a catastrophic outcome would have
grave global consequences—a fundamental difference from the Vietnam
debate.”
Kissinger’s last point is the most important: unlike Vietnam, where
there were deep divisions within the ruling elite over whether that war
was worth the cost, there is virtual unanimity today, among both leading
Republicans and Democrats, that American imperialism cannot afford to
lose in Iraq. There is no significant section of the Democratic
leadership that supports withdrawal from Iraq. On the contrary, the most
prominent spokesmen for the party on this issue, such as senators
Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joseph Biden, are calling for more
troops and a more forceful effort to suppress the insurgency against the
US occupation.>
[Kissinger is couching his stentorian pronouncements about "global
consequences" in the context of Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations",
accurate enough in terms of elite perceptions, and of course without
mentioning US myopic distortions and geopolitical objectives; and while
Kissinger is right that this time, unlike with Viet Nam there is virtual
unanimity among our patriciate about the need to prevail in Iraq, still
the corporate media are not keeping this game in bounds recently, as
they chase the only news in the summer doldrums that is both credible
and newsworthy, as it happens in Crawford and in Baghdad.
And while we tend to discount the likelihood that public opinion in the
US, otherwise illusory in countless respects, can prevail in matters of
US foreign policy against the imperatives of ruling circles, still while
it is not sufficient in itself, in combination with the resistance among
the people being brutalized this has happened before and is obviously
the only hope. Note in that regard that Kissinger, ever the illusionist,
here still speaks of "the Vietnam debate". rj]
-------------------------------------------------------
Where Frank Rich goes wrong: the war in Iraq and the stakes for American
imperialism
By Patrick Martin
16 August 2005
*Email the author <https://www.wsws.org/phpform/use/comments/form1.html>*
Frank Rich of the New York Times is one of a handful of columnists for
the major daily newspapers in the United States who exhibit intelligence
and compassion. He makes no secret of his loathing for the war in Iraq—a
sentiment entirely to his credit and rare in the media. And he
recognizes that the Bush administration, with its combination of
criminality and recklessness, represents something qualitatively new and
troubling in American political life.
That being said, the limitations of Rich’s liberalism were all too
clearly on display in the column published on Sunday under the headline,
“Someone Tell the President the War Is Over.”
Rich compares Bush to the proverbial Japanese soldier marooned on a
Pacific atoll and still fighting World War II, writing: “President Bush
may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if
not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over.” Citing the growing public
opposition to the war in Iraq and the danger of huge losses for the
Republican Party in the 2006 mid-term elections, Rich declares, “Such
political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war’s end.”
The Times columnist is clearly encouraged by the media attention given
to the antiwar activities of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a young
soldier killed in Baghdad who is camped outside Bush’s Texas ranch,
demanding a meeting with the president. He also cites the near-victory
of an antiwar Iraq war veteran, running as the Democratic candidate in a
special election for a normally safe Republican congressional seat in
Ohio, and statements by nervous Republican politicians, concerned that
the White House has failed to recognize the growth of public
disillusionment with the war as the US death toll approaches 2,000.
Rich is not wrong to believe that, in terms of public opinion, the
summer of 2005 has marked a decisive shift against the war. He makes a
striking comparison, noting that Bush’s approval rating on the war, now
down to 34 percent, nearly matches the low of 32 percent for Lyndon
Johnson’s conduct of the war in Vietnam in March 1968, just before
Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. Bush’s overall approval
rating at 42 percent is just barely higher than Johnson’s 41 percent in
his final year in office.
But it is self-delusion to believe that the collapse of public support
for the Bush administration, as measured by opinion polls or even
elections, will be sufficient, in and of itself, to bring an end to the
war. Rich writes: “The country has already made the decision for Mr.
Bush. We’re outta there.”
One small difficulty stands in the way: it is Bush, not “the country,”
who exercises the powers of commander-in-chief. Congress, not the
American people, authorizes the tens of billions to finance the war.
Neither the Bush administration nor the congressional Republican
leadership has shown the slightest intention of getting out of Iraq.
As for the Democratic Party, the nominal “opposition,” it is a
remarkable fact—one whose significance Rich ignores—that as the American
people have turned against the war, leading Democrats have come forward
to attack the Bush administration from the right, calling the existing
troop levels inadequate and urging a significant expansion of the Army
and Marines, the two forces tied down by the bloody guerrilla warfare in
Iraq.
In other words, the established political structures in the United
States, far from being responsive to public opinion, are increasingly
committed to carrying out deeply unpopular and anti-democratic policies.
...
The fallacy of Rich’s position is that his opposition to the war is
based on moral outrage, rather than an analysis of the social and
economic interests which are driving the conflict. He uncritically
accepts the Bush administration’s own description of the decision to
invade Iraq as a “war of choice,” as though there was no inner logic or
historical necessity involved.
While there is certainly an element of arbitrariness and willfulness in
the timing of the war and the pretexts used to justify it, it can hardly
be argued that Bush’s invasion of Iraq is purely subjective and
irrational. The current conflict, after all, is the second major US war
against the same country in 12 years, an interval during which Iraq was
subjected to economic blockade, the imposition of US-British “no-fly”
zones, and repeated bombing attacks.
After one abstracts from all such contingencies as Bush’s ignorant and
sadistic personality, the pro-war agitation of the neo-conservative
faction of the Republican Party, and the desire of White House political
strategists to divert attention from the domestic economic crisis, there
remain more fundamental driving forces behind the invasion of Iraq:
American imperialism seeks to control the world’s two largest sources of
oil and gas, the Middle East and Central Asia, both to insure its own
supplies and to give it the upper hand in the struggle against its major
rivals in Europe and Asia.
Iraq sits on the second largest oil reserves in the world, and the
conquest of Iraq puts American military forces in a key strategic
position at the crossroads of the Middle East, guarding access to the
Saudi and other Persian Gulf oil fields to the south, while able to
strike out to the west against Syria, to the north to the Caspian Sea,
and to the east against Iran.
Far from suggesting any pullback from Iraq, Bush gave an interview to
Israeli state television Friday night in which he threatened to use
force against Iran to destroy its nuclear energy program, which
Washington claims is a cover for the building of nuclear weapons. He
declared that the United States and Israel “are united in our objective
to make sure that Iran does not have a weapon.” (Israel, of course, has
hundreds of nuclear weapons targeted on the Arab states and Iran.)
Bush said that if ongoing talks between three European powers and Iran
failed, “all options are on the table.” In language that was
deliberately provocative and went beyond his previous hints of war, he
added, “The use of force is the last option for any president. You know,
we’ve used force in the recent past to secure our country.”
The obvious suggestion was that the invasion of Iraq is to be a
precursor to an even bloodier and more catastrophic military
intervention against Iran, a country three times larger in both area and
population.
On Monday, the Los Angeles Times carried a report by its senior
Washington correspondent Ron Brownstein citing military experts who said
the Pentagon was building the infrastructure to make possible a
permanent US military occupation of Iraq, with bases that could sustain
as many 50,000 US troops, a force sufficient to launch a major attack on
any of Iraq’s neighbors.
It is worth noting that, two days before Rich’s column, the Washington
Post published an op-ed column by former Nixon secretary of state Henry
Kissinger, for decades one of the most ruthless and cynical strategists
for American imperialism. Kissinger wrote: “Because of the long reach of
the Islamist challenge, the outcome in Iraq will have an even deeper
significance than that in Vietnam. If a Taliban-type government or a
fundamentalist radical state were to emerge in Baghdad or any part of
Iraq, shock waves would ripple through the Islamic world. Radical forces
in Islamic countries or Islamic minorities in non-Islamic states would
be emboldened in their attacks on existing governments. The safety and
internal stability of all societies within reach of militant Islam would
be imperiled. This is why many opponents of the decision to start the
war agree with the proposition that a catastrophic outcome would have
grave global consequences—a fundamental difference from the Vietnam
debate.”
Kissinger’s last point is the most important: unlike Vietnam, where
there were deep divisions within the ruling elite over whether that war
was worth the cost, there is virtual unanimity today, among both leading
Republicans and Democrats, that American imperialism cannot afford to
lose in Iraq. There is no significant section of the Democratic
leadership that supports withdrawal from Iraq. On the contrary, the most
prominent spokesmen for the party on this issue, such as senators
Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joseph Biden, are calling for more
troops and a more forceful effort to suppress the insurgency against the
US occupation.
At the end of his column, Rich seems to be drawn towards a position of
endorsing such an escalation, even though it conflicts with his past
denunciations of the war. He writes that, “this administration long ago
squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more
human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its
descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.”
Rich, of course, acknowledges that both the danger of civil war and the
influx of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are consequences of the US
invasion. But he nonetheless implies that a continuation and deepening
of the US intervention might be justified to prevent what he calls an
“even greater disaster” than what already exists.
All such arguments must be rejected. American imperialist military
intervention is the disaster in Iraq. Every day that it continues only
compounds the disaster for both the Iraqi people and the American
soldiers who are being used as cannon fodder.
The only principled course is to demand the immediate and unconditional
withdrawal of all American troops and personnel, as well as the
remaining troops of the US-led “coalition,” combined with the payment of
extensive reparations to the Iraqi people. This must be combined with
the prosecution for war crimes of all those responsible for planning and
perpetrating the invasion and occupation.
