Elizabeth Schulte, Chicago
In an effort to emphasise the few differences between his campaign and President George Bush's, Senator John Kerry is arguing that Bush's invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Not because of the terrible human cost of the war, though. Kerry claims that the attack on Iraq was a diversion from the so-called war on terrorism. Is this really the case?
In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush proclaimed an "axis of evil" in the "war on terrorism" — with Iraq at the centre. Since then, every lie that the Bush administration told to get its war on Iraq — from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein's nonexistent ties to the September 11 hijackings — has been exposed. But now that US troops are there, Bush says that they have to stay, because failure will breed more terrorism.
So even if the Bush administration fabricated Iraq's non-existent connections to terrorism in the run-up to the war, Iraq is part of the "war on terror" now. And Kerry echoes this line — now that US troops are in Iraq, he says, we have to "finish the job".
Iraq is as much a part of the "war on terror" as any other country on Bush's hit list — not because of any connection to terrorism, but simply because the Bush gang singled it out. And that, when all is said and done, is the central reason why any country is on Bush's highly selective list — which demonises Iraq and Iran, yet ignores atrocities carried out by US allies.
If committing acts of terror or procuring weapons of mass destruction got a country on the US hit list, Israel — which commits relentless violence against Palestinians, and which actually possesses nuclear weapons — would be public enemy number one.
Like every other potential stop on the "war on terror", Iraq made the list not because of actual links to terrorism, but for other reasons. One reason is oil — Iraq has 10% of the world's proven reserves of oil, second only to Saudi Arabia.
But it's not only oil that drives Washington's war on terrorism. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration seized the opportunity to put into effect the most hawkish foreign policy dreams of Washington's "neoconservatives".
Using the threat of a more dangerous and unpredictable world, the Bush administration made notions of "pre-emptive strikes" and "regime change" widely accepted centerpieces of US foreign policy.
Actually, the Clinton administration had already declared Washington's right to implement "regime change" with its 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. The attacks on September 11 simply gave the Bush administration the justification to carry through even more aggressive world policing.
The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq told other countries that displeased the US — or had the misfortune of having valuable natural resources — that this could happen to you if you cross Washington. It also sent an ultimatum to other world powers — that the US was calling the shots.
While the Kerry campaign strains to emphasise its differences in foreign policy aims, the "Kerry doctrine" has more similarities than differences with the Bush doctrine. Kerry promises to do whatever it takes to execute the "war on terrorism" — including "finishing the job" in Iraq.
And a centerpiece of Kerry's campaign is turning attention to the other partners in what Bush called the "axis of evil" — Iran and North Korea. "This president rushed to war, pushed our allies aside, and Iran now is more dangerous", Kerry said in one presidential debate. "And so is North Korea with nuclear weapons. He took his eye off the ball — off of Osama bin Laden."
These ideas aren't expressed only by conservative Democrats such as John Kerry. They are having an impact on those who opposed the war in Iraq. Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11 did a great job of taking down the Bush administration's war on Iraq and giving expression to all the doubts that millions of people have about that war. But it puts forth a similar idea that Iraq diverted the US from the "real enemy". Rather than cause havoc in Iraq, the film argues, the US would have done better to crack down on the "real" sponsors of terrorism, such as Saudi Arabia.
The idea that Iraq was the "wrong war" and a diversion from the real "war on terrorism" misses the point. Washington's "war on terrorism" has nothing at all to do with making the world safer. It is about furthering US dominance in the world — and that necessarily means making the world a more dangerous place for millions of people.
US military missions carried out in the name of spreading "liberty" have only spread more misery around the world — in turn, increasing the potential for more anger and violence to be directed at the US.
Unless anti-war activists are prepared to argue why we oppose all of the US wars — even those that US leaders, Democrat and Republican alike, claim are waged in the interest of "fighting terrorism" — our anti-war cause will be hamstrung.
There is no "right war" in the war on terrorism. The entire US imperialist project has to be beaten back.
[From Socialist Worker, weekly paper of the US International Socialist Organization. Visit <http://www.socialistworker.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, October 20, 2004.
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