US
Press Justifies Slaughter In Iraq
By Bill Van Auken
13 April 2004
World Socialist Website
The
uprising sweeping Iraq has shaken the confidence of ruling circles in
the US, and this has found unmistakable expression in the press. The
lead editorial in Sundays New York Times, entitled The Story
Line in Iraq, begins by comparing the Iraqi revolt against the
US occupation to the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam.
It warns that while
the US military was able to crush the Tet offensive, it marked
the beginning of a shift in the attitude of the American public
toward the US intervention in Vietnam.
The Times adds:
The lesson of Tet that President Bush needs to embrace is that
the American people will faithfully follow a commander in chief through
a difficult course, but only if they have faith in the mission.
There are many lessons
from Tet worth remembering. The US military response gave rise to the
infamous words of a US officer explaining the annihilation of an entire
village: We had to destroy it in order to save it.
A similar campaign
has unfolded in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, where F-16s, Apache helicopters,
artillery and tank fire have been unleashed against densely populated
residential areas, killing at least 600 and wounding more than twice
that number. Medical officials in the town report that the majority
of these casualties are women, children and the elderly.
Fallujah has produced
its own bloodthirsty statements expressing the brutality of Washingtons
occupation and its gross indifference to human life. Asked about the
dead in the city, a Marine lieutenant colonel responded: The fact
that there are 600 goes back to the fact that the Marines are very good
at what they do.
Tet unquestionably
had an electrifying effect on the American publics opinion of
the Vietnam War. This shift in attitude found direct expression within
the mass media. Prominent television newscasters like Walter Cronkite
began to openly question US policy in Vietnam.
No such critical
approach is to be found today. For the most part, the media act as cheerleaders
for US military atrocities. To the extent that the press even questions
the Bush administrations policy, it is entirely from the standpoint
of its tactical expediency in suppressing the resistance of the Iraqis
to foreign occupation. Not a single prominent voice in the media has
been raised in protest against the barbaric siege against a city of
over 300,000 inhabitants, an act of collective punishment that violates
the most basic laws of war.
The press is marching
in lockstep because the criminal war in Iraq represents a policy embraced
by the entire US ruling elite. To the extent that the Times raises doubts
and criticisms, it is from the standpoint of advising the Bush administration
that it must repackage its message to stem the growing popular demand
for the withdrawal of US troops.
The Washington Post,
the other authoritative voice of the US establishment, is even more
blunt. Its Sunday editorial also criticizes the Bush administrations
tacticsspecifically, its failure to get UN assistance and its
over-reliance on the US-led Iraqi security forces that have melted away
in the face of the mass insurrection.
But on the essential
question of the occupation of Iraq, the Post advises the American people
to get used to the killing and dying. Suppressing Iraqi resistance,
the paper warns, will require military power and probably more
of the woeful casualty reports and gruesome television footage that
have been shocking the country. More troops will be needed.
The day after the
editorial appeared, Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the US Central Command,
formally requested reinforcements to deal with the growing resistance.
He asked for two more combat brigades, consisting of 10,000 troops.
Right-wing columnist Robert Novak had reported last week that US commanders
were furious at the administrations failure to provide adequate
forces for the occupation, and were telling the Bush White House that
they would not be the fall-guys for a US debacle in Iraq.
But where are these
troops to come from? The military is stretched so thin that it has been
forced to halt the return of soldiers who had been deployed in Iraq
for a full year, telling them on the eve of their flights home that
they have to stay another three months. The Pentagon has also resorted
to stop-loss orders to impose involuntary service on GIs
who are prepared to quit, subjecting them to as much as a year-and-a-half
of involuntary servitude. Reservists and National Guard members have
been mobilized in unprecedented numbers.
Restoring the draft
The Times proposes
a solution to this problem. [I]f the goal was clear, and people
understood how to reach it, Mr. Bush could compensate, the paper
states. He could even bolster the desperately straitened military
with a draft if Americans understood the need to sacrifice.
This proposal is
a measure of both the desperation and intransigence within ruling circles
over Iraq. It has been over 30 years since the Pentagon abandoned compulsory
military service, a decision taken in 1973 in the face of the virtual
disintegration of its largely conscript army in Vietnam. Now, with Iraq
and the mushrooming global deployment of US forces threatening to have
a similar effect on the all-volunteer force, dragooning American youth
into fighting and dying to maintain a dirty colonial occupation is once
again seen as a viable option.
All that is needed
is a clear goal, the newspaper argues. The problem, the
Times acknowledges, is that the American people have already been presented
with multiple goals, all of them lies. The goal has gone from
destroying weapons of mass destruction to ousting a repulsive dictator
to stopping terrorism to establishing a free and stable democracy in
the Arab world, the editorial states.
There were no weapons
of mass destruction, something that was evident to most of the world
before the US ever invaded. Similarly, the only tie between Saddam Husseins
regime and the Islamist terrorists blamed for attacks on US targets
was one of mutual hatred. As for establishing a free and stable
democracy, the events of the past two weeks have thoroughly exposed
the US project in Iraq to be a brutal colonial dictatorship.
The Times account
of Washingtons shifting pretexts is discreetly silent on the newspapers
own role in promoting each and every one of them. Its senior correspondent
Judith Miller served as a conduit for phony intelligence
concocted by the Iraqi exile conman Ahmed Chalabi and his sponsors in
the Pentagons civilian leadership. Its senior foreign affairs
columnist, Thomas Friedman, peddled each and every one of the governments
justifications, not even bothering to square assertions in one column
with contradictory ones made in another.
On the eve of the
war, the newspaper published an editorial supporting the invasion while
voicing the pious plea for the Bush administration to use our
influence to unite [the world] around a shared vision of progress, human
rights and mutual responsibility.
How obscene these
words sound today as the world gazes with horror on the implementation
of Washingtons vision through the wanton slaughter
of women and children. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, as well as those who
provided them with alibis, stand dripping in blood.
What are the liberal
apologists for the war in Iraq left with now? The Times admits that
the sole remaining rationale is a negative one.
If the troops
leave, bloody civil war would probably follow and Iraq, which had not
been a haven for terrorists, could easily become one, the newspaper
declares. It adds a warning, however. If there is no vision of
a workable exit plan with a better outcome, even that terrible prospect
will lose its power to convince the public that this is a fight worth
continuing.
This is an argument
worthy only of contempt. The initial crime is used to justify new and
more terrible ones. As it twists and turns to come up with new rationalizations
for its filthy support of the war, the Times succeeds only in demonstrating
how the official pretexts become ever more threadbare, as the US occupation
becomes ever more violent and brutal.
In reality, Washingtons
self-serving warnings about inevitable civil war in Iraq without a US
military presence have suffered a resounding blow in recent weeks. Those
who would supposedly be the principal antagonists in such a conflictthe
Sunnis and Shiiteshave united in a common struggle against the
US occupation. Shiites have turned out by the hundreds of thousands
to demonstrate their support for the Sunni fighters in Fallujah, donating
blood and collecting food and supplies for the besieged city. Meanwhile,
posters bearing the photograph of Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr have
appeared throughout Sunni neighborhoods.
Iraq faces not a
sectarian civil war, but a war of national resistance against US colonialism.
A moral vision to mask a criminal war
In the face of this
uprising, the Times pleads: What we desperately need is a clear
mission, a believable strategy for success, a morally viable exit plan
and international involvement.
What are the vision
and clear mission the Times would have the Bush administration
present to the American people? What new lies do they think would be
believed, after the exposure so many previous ones? The editorial doesnt
say.
Perhaps Bush and
his ostensible political opponent, Democratic presidential candidate
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, should try something entirely different.
They could give a joint press conference and tell the American people
the truth. Kerry has no fundamental differences with Bush on the war,
so they should be able to work up a bipartisan statement. Bush could
read the following from his teleprompter:
Fellow Americans,
Senator Kerry and I agree on our vision for Iraq and are determined
to carry through the mission, no matter what the cost in Iraqi and American
blood. Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world.
Our principal vision is for these vast natural resources to be taken
from the Iraqis and placed under the control of ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco.
This will simultaneously advance our strategy of asserting US global
hegemony by means of military force, and further enrich the financial
oligarchy that we both represent.
We cannot
abandon Iraq. If we are defeated by the masses in that country, it will
only embolden people in other parts of the world to rise up against
the rule of the banks and transnational corporations, and fatally undermine
the myth that its military might makes US imperialism invincible.
Finally, such
a debacle would expose before the American people the complete rot of
the political system in this country. We are deeply concerned that many
of you would demand that we be held accountable for dragging the country
into a war that is criminal in every sense of the word. The viability
of our two-party system, which ensures the interests of the wealthy
at the expense of the vast majority of you, my fellow Americans, would
be called into question.
Senator Kerry
and I agree that the draft must be reinstated. We are calling upon you
to sacrifice your children and support the slaughter of the Iraqis to
further the interests of the banks, the oil conglomerates and the super-rich.
The above scenario,
of course, will not happen. There is no danger that either of these
politicians will level with the American people. There is, however,
every reason to believe that they will agree on a bipartisan policy
for escalating the US war against the Iraqi people. And, if it is deemed
necessary, they will support the drafting of 18-year-old working class
youth to carry out this dirty work.
Millions upon millions
of Americans are revolted by the carnage in Iraq and the pointless deaths
of young American soldiers in a war based on lies. Even the official
opinion polls have shown close to half of the population supporting
the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle Eastern country.
That these deep-felt
and broad-based sentiments find no expression in either party or in
the mass media is a measure of the vast gulf dividing Americas
wealthy elite from the vast majority of the population, and the effective
political disenfranchisement of the working class. Within the framework
of the existing two-party system, American voters have no means of even
expressing their opposition to war and occupation, much less bringing
them to a halt.
This goalthe
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troopscan be
achieved only through the emergence of a mass independent political
movement of working people in struggle against the two political parties
and the social system which they defend, and which is the root cause
of this war. Such a movement is likewise necessary to hold all those
who conspired to launch the unprovoked and illegal invasion of Iraq
accountable, by bringing them to trial as war criminals.
The Socialist Equality
Party is participating in the 2004 US elections to advance these demands
as forcefully and broadly as possible. Through our campaign, we seek
to develop the political debate and activity needed to prepare a mass
movement for the revolutionary transformation of American society.