Editorial
Stand up to stop war drive!
If it had been suggested before September 11th it would have been regarded as bizarre. The US is not only preparing to launch all-out war against Iraq, without anything that can be claimed as new justification from the Iraqi side, but has decided to use nuclear weapons in that war if necessary – as revealed in the recent Strafor report on US global strategy.
It now emerges, in a leaked classified Pentagon report called the Nuclear Posture Review, that Bush has a list of countries against which the US is prepared to launch a nuclear first strike. The list includes not only Iraq but North Korea, Iran, Libya, China – and even Russia, despite President Putin’s repositioning towards NATO. The report also includes the use of nuclear weapons in the event of an Arab-Israeli conflict.
The report was signed by Donald Rumsfeld as recently as January of this year, and was leaked to the LA Times. Included in the circumstances under which nuclear weapons could be used against the countries concerned are the possibility of "targets able to withstand a non-nuclear strike", and "surprising military developments". Alongside this the report revealed that the US is developing a new generation of so-called battlefield nuclear devices designed for particular situations.
Before September 11th these chilling revelations might have been dismissed as the ravings of a right-wing lunatic fringe: but unfortunately they represent another major development in world politics.
Nuclear weapons, sold for the last 50 years as a supposed deterrent, are being rehabilitated as a legitimate means of warfare, even against states which do not have such weapons. The lunatic fringe of the Republican right is now calling the shots for the world’s only super-power, and it is clear that they are prepared to contemplate the use of nuclear weapons – at least against Iraq.
At the same time political preparation for an attack on Iraq is going ahead apace. The Strafor report makes it clear that there is nothing Iraq can do which would divert the Bush administration from attacking it.
If Iraq agrees in principle to let so-called weapons inspectors in the US will demand a regime so stringent – access to anything and everything at a moment’s notice – that it will be impossible for the Iraqis to accept.
Rumsfeld has said "we do not intend to take yes for an answer".
The coalition pieced together for the assault on Afghanistan will of course shatter once a war against Iraq is launched: but this is already factored in by Bush. Dick Cheney’s current shuttle diplomacy is not designed to hold the coalition together – that is not achievable. It is designed to neutralise or contain the hostile reaction.
For Bush only one thing really matters, that he has the support of Tony Blair, along with British troops and strategic British bases – and this is already in the bag. Blair is totally committed.
He is banging the war drums as much as Bush and is clearly prepared to commit large numbers of British troops in a new Gulf war, and is not particularly concerned about of opposition on Labour’s back benches. His warmongering is being egged on even further by the far-right leadership of the official Tory opposition.
Bush calls the preparation for war against Iraq ‘stage two’ of his "war against terrorism". But stage one is still expanding rapidly, and the world is changing by the day.
Military action continues in Afghanistan in the guise of so-called "mopping up" operations.
But the Palestinians also face all out war from Israel, with the direct support and protection of the USA. This has escalated consistently since September 11th and continues to do so.
In the USA Bush has increased defence spending by 14%, or $48 billion dollars. There has been a militarisation of society. Thousands of immigrants have been rounded up and imprisoned.
US troops are already intervening in the Philippines and Colombia and well as Somalia and the Yemen, and civil rights are under attack across the world.
In Britain the Crime and Security Act has introduced internment without trial in contravention to the European convention on human rights. A number of people, all of Arab origin, have been detained without trial or any apparent evidence of wrong-doing under this draconian legislation, and kept under top security conditions.
India, too, has responded, using its own "Terrorist" problem in Kashmir as the pretext for an internal crackdown with new draconian anti-terrorist laws.
As a result of all this US imperialism is stronger that ever before in military and political terms, having gained a new hegemony in central Asia and greater influence over Russia and China. There has been a fundamental strategic shift in Russian foreign policy towards the USA, with far reaching implications for the West. – even though Russia is on the hit list for nuclear strikes.
The danger of an open-ended war, in which the most barbaric weapons of mass destruction are used by the world’s dominant imperialist nation in pursuit of a fraudulent war against "terrorism" has never been greater.
Labour back-benchers remain muted in their opposition, possibly still incredulous that their party and its leader could be so totally craven in support of a vicious war for global domination by the USA – or possibly still hedging their bets, hoping that they can avoid a confrontation with the Millbank machine, and keep open their hopes of a ministerial appointment.
But anyone concerned about the future of the planet should react with anger and horror at the US plans to bombard defenceless, dependent nations with nuclear radiation. Anyone committed to defending the rights of the oppressed should be joining the protests at the brutality of the Israeli forces, wielding the full force of a terrorist state to crush any aspiration of the Palestinians for the liberation of their occupied homeland.
A new US war on Iraq aimed at ousting Saddam Hussein and replacing his dictatorship with a dictatorial regime more amenable to Washington will escalate the slaughter of innocents that has followed September 11.
Already far more Afghan civilians have died in US bombings than the death toll in the Twin Towers and Washington on that day. But a war against Iraq brings the certainty of a far larger death toll, even without the threat of a US nuclear strike.
The Bush-Blair war drive has to be opposed by anyone committed to notions of democracy or to the working class.
Those who fail to stand up and fight it before the onslaught begins are likely to be discredited and unable to resist the war fever once the bombs and missiles start landing on innocent civilians.