All your typesetting and design needs catered for Words and Pictures is a new company set up specially to cater for the demanding information and publicity needs of campaigns, community groups, small businesses and the student movement. Giving your publicity and campaigning leaflets the professional touch is vital in today's world and we can offer you a range of reasons for this defeat, and the prospects it opens up The reasons for the West's spectacular victory levels. First the mistakes made by Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party leadership. Second, at the deeper level of what it reveals about the Ba'athist regime and the war waged by the Americans.
What were the miscal. culations by Saddam? The first, obviously, was invad. ing Kuwait in the first place. The signals from the US, probably intentionally, were that it would not intervene in an Iraqi-Kuwaiti conflict. Deliberate or not. these wend ine signals unar saddam acted on.
The Ba'ath leadership played a game of brinkmanship over the start of the war Fast, Reliable, Professional very high quality services at competitive rates.
Words and Pictures can be found at: 284a-286a Seven Sisters Road, London N4 2AA = 081 880 1280 Fax: 081 880 1846
more decisive than military technology, was the morale and willingness of the Iraqi army to fight. This is an eminently political quesThe raot army was pounded with devastating weapons of destruction, including fuel-air bombs and in the days before the land war. But the North Vietnamese army NLP also suffered devastating attacks of this kind, without ever having such a Whole Iragi units surrendered without a fight. even those which were and better equipped than the American units The terror of a militarily superior enemy can only be faced by armies are ideologically motivated, politically led, and by troops who are in the end prepared to die for what they believe in.
This was not the case with the Iraqi conscripts. Their performance had much more in common with the Egyptian forces in the 1967 war with Israel than with the Vietnamese.
A conventional war in the desert is of course an ideal ground for US high-tech weaponry. But the Iraqi army was a conventional army with a conventional discipline based on fear, and with no great political attachment to their leaders. It lacked the capacity for initiative and improvisation at lower levels. Military superiority alone can never explain a casualty ratio of Saddam's final military tactics proved fatal. To tum and run in face of the onslaught opened his army to dreadful destruction. But it takes clements of political morale to understand that it is better, and probably safer, to stand and fight rather than run. The degenerate form of Arab nationalism which runs Iraq could not inspire this political loyalty and discipline among troops who Saddam was only too ready to abandon to their fate.
This outcome is the worst possible because the Iragis went down without a fight and, to be blunt. because Western casualties were light. gives a terrible message to the Arab masperialism powerful and cannot been fought and won by the US at the cost of tens of thousands of casualties the outcome would have been completely different. Antiwar sentiment in the West would have grown dramatically. The wisdom and justice of this mass slaughter would have been questioned everywbere. But with this overwhelming victory, the West has 'got away with it'.
Hundreds of thousands of Arabs may have been slaughtered were they in the Iran-Iraq war. Without the war being "brought home', the message will go out that the US can intervene anytime, with almost no cost - except to Arabs and 'commies". It will embolden imperialism and go some way towards overcoming the "Vietnam syndrome'.
Of course there is a downside for the US. It has probiems extricating itself from Iraq. It has ensured a generation of young Arabs whose loathing and hatred of imperialism will stay with them for ever. In the West a section of the antiwar movement will draw radical anti-imperialist conclusions. But this down side is for the moment little compared with imperialism's Imperialist militarism, of course, often goes with capitalist world is going into a tremendous economic US soldler: the desert was Ideel for the US high-lach weaponry recession. The Japanese and German economic challenge to the US cannot be shaken off by defeating the Iraqi army. But nose of this should blind socialists to the negative consequences of this victory for the US.
The outcome will be first and foremost a defeat for the Palestinians. Despite cosmetic moves on the diplomatic front, the Palestinians will probably be the victims of deepening repres sion and even moves towards expelling them from the occupied territories. Israel has been strengthened by this war by massive financial aid from the US plus a range of the most sophisticated weapon Maybe Saddam's defeat will give the Kurds the op portunity to deepen their struggle. But they face also Turkey, Iran and Syria, all of whom have benefitted politically and militarily from the war. For the Arab masses, coming after three defeats in wars with Isracl, this conflict will have the most profoundly demoralising effect. Any resurgence of Arab nationalism will be curtailed. It is likely to be the Islamic fundamentalists who bencfit.
Imperialist militarism will get a big boost in the third world. The US is likely to see itself as having a much freer hand in seeking a military solution in El Salvador. US support for the ex-contra ultras in Nicaragua is likely to be come much more explicit. The big prize for the US. now definitely in its gun sights, is Coba. In the next few years the US will be straining at the leash to find a way of dealing with the tiny country which has been a thor in its side for 30 years.
The Soviet Union, at present, could not stand idly by and see Cuba attacked But in the next few years who knows what kind of goverment will emerge in the USSR? One of the clear consequences of this war was the marginalisation and bumiliation of the Soviet Union as Gorbachev's peace initiative was swept aside.
For the Left, for the antiwar movement, the Gulf war has stark lessons. It has to tum now around anti-imperialist objectives, in particular solidarity with the Palestinians and against US military presence in the Gulf. It has to take up the campaign against the Third World debt. This summer George Bush and the other warmongering leaders of the 'allies" will all be in London for the 'G7" summit. This is an opportunity, in the activities organised to coincide with their visit, to maximise the campaign in solidarity with the victims of imperialism.