Personally i broadly agree with the main thrust of this. that said

1) Is there going to be a war? the Republican Party establishment is split down the middle. I'm more optimistic the invasion can be derailed b4 it happens.

2) re. dismissing overthrowing Blair as a short term tactic - I disagree. My own opinion is that it would make an example of him. and politicains are ultimately careerists (to various extents). when they realise the price to be made for acting as American puppets the more foward looking ones will start seeing the advantages of appealling to the instincts of the Anti-American majority.

3) Given that if war happens they will be the mother of battles for the hearts and minds of the British masses (we will be in competition with the Sun here), and the low level of understanding in this country as to how American dominance really works in the UK, I think it would be effective to limit legitmate targets to those things directly related to the war effort (ie. the American Military bases, and possible diplomatic posts). So it's time to leave McD's, Nike, Gap et al. for another day.

It is not enough to think tactics-- the long term strategy requires attention.

The war on Iraq will involve the deployment of maximum force, massive bombing, and powerful military strikes probably from both the northern frontier zones (helped by Turkey, despite its protests) and from the south (via Kuwait and Qatar). And the Left better be prepared for the fact that THEY WILL BE SUCCESSFUL QUICKLY -- the coalition forces will drive towards Baghdad and the Iraqi defences will crumble. There are going to be relatively few American casualties and the Americans will be masters of the country within weeks. The Anti-War movement and the Arab world will be presented with a fait accompli which they will have to adjust to. We are in an era, like in the late nineteenth century, when Western imperialism is a quantum leap ahead of non-western armies. It is possible for the Iraqis to fight back-- as an American special forces officer noted recently if Iraq trained a few thousand snipers and planned infinite urban crossfires, they could inflict a lot of casualties on the invaders. But the Saddam Hussein regime is so unpopular in Iraq that you can bet that for lots of reasons the population will be in no mood to resist.

So what should be our game plan over the long term if the above scenario proves correct, and Iraq is quickly brought, as Afghanistan was, under American control? To my mind we need to begin by realizing we are in a new age of imperialism in which the sovereignty of nations (especially those outside the G8) is not recognized, in which there is an oligarchy in power across the world either directly through the millionaire politicians like Bush and Berlusconi or the brownosers of corporate power like Blair. The war against war in Iraq eleads directly to my mind, to the war to drive Bush/Blair from power, and that is only the beginning

Then we will say....The west created Saddam.

Whoever they replace him with will also be a brutal bastard!

'Regime change' = same old failed imperial plan!

We will renew and escalate our struggle for peace, global justice and human liberation, for the destruction of global capitalism, its state and Empires.

We will do this in a period of global instability, as the US tries to unravel and remake its crumbling global power structure.

George Bush 2nd provides the perfect global hate symbol - I am shocked by the ruling classes blundering stupidity here.

The people in the UK really hate and fear him - a walk around an English town elicits the same venom and ridicule, whether from right wing rugby playing white pro monarchy Tory policemen, from Islamic and Asian people, and of course from environmentalists, liberals, socialists and trades unionists and everyone else.

Those who have never been interested in politics before despise him the most. Its something everyone has in common in the bars over here!

People get it tacitly and instinctively from the subtle nuance of this twitching playboy hypochondriac presented as the face of US imperial hegemony on our TV’s. It just doesn’t work outside it’s target “homeland” audience, (and its rapidly fading there).

Here is the history.

In the 1960's Western Power installed Saddam Hussein and his Baathist party into power, to solve its local cold war problems of Iraqi secular nationalism and Arabic communism.

Saddam then wiped out America's cold war enemies, the Arab communists.

(In other parts of the Middle East, America and Israel promoted Islamic right wing groups to do this historic task)

Then, in the early 1980's, facing the threat of the Shiite Islamicist revolution in Iran, western power funded and armed Saddam's decade of war against these new foes. (millions dead).

(Oh, and the gassing of the Kurds of Halabja, which was no big problem in 1988 for western leaders).

When at the end of "operation desert storm" in 1991, Bush the 1st called on the Iraqi people to "rise up", these poor, heroic people obliged. King George 1st then sat back and let Saddam prevail! Why?

The replacement, a 'tame' brutal dictator (Saddam sans moustache) had failed to materialise from within Iraq's Baathist elite.

So then in 1991 George Bush the 1st was faced with a Shia Islamic Revolution in the South of Iraq, and a Kurdish Revolution in the North. In this situation American Imperial power preferred a weaker Saddam to the revolutionary break-up of Iraq and destabilisation of the region.

A Kurdish victory in Iraq would have rocked the Turkish regime, a NATO member that is fighting a brutal war of oppression against its own Kurdish minority.

A successful Shiia revolution in the Iraqi South would also have signalled the doom of the feudalist pro western Islamic dictators of the Gulf - Saudi, Kuwait, etc.

The worst thing that could happen, in the view of Western Imperial Power, would be popular democracy in Iraq.

They might vote for the oil wealth to be spent on the poor, rather than on Arab elites and their Western capitalist corporate masters.

So King George the 1st followed a pattern established by Iraq’s British Imperial founders in the 1920’s. Iraq had been created by Sir Percy Cox, who drew some straight lines on a map after WW1 and the collapse of the Ottoman (Old Turkish) empire.

Britain created Iraq in the 1920's with military force. Winston Churchill advocated the dropping of poison gas to beat the Kurdish tribal warriors into submission.

Then the British backed Monarchy held together this state through violence. Saddam Hussein continued this project by crushing the progressive secular movements.

Whether the western powers keep Saddam, or replace him with a new group of puppets, the pattern will continue. For them all that matters is that the people of the Middle East are held down to ensure the continued flow of oil profits.

The struggle for basic democracy must simultaneously shatter the local rule of the Saddams, the Saudi Royals and the global dictatorship of the Bush’s of this world. Whatever the outcome of this battle, contradictions will emerge which will create the space for liberty, equality, democracy and solidarity. We will arise!

If Blair backs Bush in an unpopular war, we will destroy his phoney government. We, of the working class movements of Britain can drag our rulers away from this war. We can extract a heavy price. We will isolate the Bush and Blair clique, we can melt them down!

British Squaddies have no love for this war. In 1991 we saw more of our lads killed by American “friendly fire” than by Iraqi hands. And then the slow lingering deaths and illnesses of the “gulf-war syndrome”. Made into guinea-pigs for the biological and chemical weapons spawned in the Frankenstein laboritories of military evil. Illnesses denied by bureaucrats, experience is stronger than lies. Will we tolerate a new generation of our lads rendered old and weak in secrecy? And this is without mentioning the millions dead in Iraq, murdered by war and sanctions.

And we are only talking of the rebellion in little old Britain. We have not mentioned the coming earthquake in Jordan, Egypt, Palestine……Indonesia, Columbia.

It is almost as if the American ruling class has been secretly infiltrated by a lunatic Maoist sect, determined to drive the engine over the edge. Che said: “Make one, two, three vietnams” – a strategy to break US global hegemony. Sweet little Dubya obliges. The coke must be very good in the Bunker.

Our forces are coming together. The anti-Vietnam war movement, Black Power, May 68 – all these will be as children’s tea parties compared the revolt that is now brewing in the hearts of the worlds youth.

We will not rely on Iraqi conscripts to deliver the final blow to the power of the globalised militarists. They are no Viet-cong, believing in the hope of national liberation. They are no workers or peasants fighting for human liberation in the civil wars of Spain or Russia.

Yes, - America maybe able to walk in to Iraq or Afghanistan. It may stretch its power worldwide to back up the global reach of its obese, corpulent corporations. But I can see the stretch marks, I can see the bloated belly breaking wide open.

For those who live beneath that soft underbelly, then true democracy and popular power becomes a razor sharp sword.

Do you dig it?