BY GRAHAM MATTHEWS
MELBOURNE — "US troops [in Iraq] are forced to stay inside their bases most of the time, and when they do emerge, they are attacked", US socialist Paul D'Amato told a public meeting organised by Socialist Alternative on September 18.
Throughout his address, D'Amato, a leader of the US International Socialist Organisation, concentrated on the problems facing the US empire in Iraq. He said that US troops in Iraq were facing an average of 25 attacks a day from the Iraqi resistance fighters.
While acknowledging that the US anti-war movement had declined in activity since the fall of Bagdad to the invading US troops in April, D'Amato saw indications that the movement was beginning to revive — among high-school students, campus students and on workplaces.
He particularly looked to the October 25 march on Washington as a potential relaunch of the public campaign against the war.
The key political factor rejuvenating the anti-war movement has been the strength of the Iraqi resistance, D'Amato argued. "The Iraqi resistance has changed everything", he said.
He painted a dramatic picture of the low morale of US soldiers in Iraq, saying that the general feeling of US soldiers was expressed by the attitude: "If I'm not here to do what you said I was supposed to do [liberate the Iraqi people], then I don't want to be here. I don't want to be an oppressor."
Morale was so low, D'Amato said, that US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld declined to address US troops when he visited Iraq recently, fearing that he might be howled down by the GIs.
D'Amato went on to argue that the seeds of Bush's war in Iraq were planted in the 1990s with the collapse of the USSR and the beginning of a "unipolar world". The basis for the "war on terror" was laid in the actions of the Clinton administration. However, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were a vital catalyst.
"The way to understand September 11 is that most of the world saw this as a tragedy", said D'Amato. "The Bush government saw it as an opportunity" for global domination.
He presented an optimistic assesment of the possibilities for building the anti-war movement in the US and internationally. "We are seeing the re-emergence of a radicalisation like nothing we have seen since the 1960s", D'Amato concluded.
From Green Left Weekly, September 24, 2003.
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