WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION

“They know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a good thing, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need.” - U.S. Brig. General William Looney (Interview Washington Post 1999)

“While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” - Washington think-tank report, September 2000

The first world war of the 21st century is already underway. Bush and the oilmen who run his government have given orders to make the oilfields of the Middle East safe for America. The US military are deploying their unimaginably powerful flotilla of death against Iraq, a country they have been bombing and denying medicine to for over 10 years. The corporate media are spinning their lies and whipping up war fever in exactly the way they always do. With its overwhelming military superiority, and without the Soviet Union or any other competing superpower to restrain its ambitions of world domination, the United States is not even pretending to conform to international law. It is left to Blair, like a gangster’s shiny-suited lawyer, to come up with pseudo-legal justifications for the violence that’s already been agreed on. Capitalism doesn’t get much more naked than this.

For the vast majority of humanity it’s perfectly clear what the United States is doing. The most powerful nation on earth, and capitalism in general, is totally dependent on oil to keep it running - and most of that oil is in the Middle East. Since 1945, the US has armed and relied on puppet Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia to ensure the cheap oil has kept flowing for the West’s ecologically suicidal way of life. It has armed the Israeli State to terrorise its Arab neighbours and ensure that the people of the potentially richest region in the world (the Middle East) are kept in poverty.

Iraq has the second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, and for years Saddam Hussein was given western support to keep it flowing. For years, Bush Senior gave Saddam loans and sold him advanced technology with clear applications for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Britain was still authorising export of military equipment and radioactive materials to Iraq even after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Iraq has been so important to the US that Saddam was able to get away with attacking a US naval vessel, the USS Stark, at the cost of dozens of American lives without any comeback.

Israel Politik

But things are changing. The level of oppression in the Arab world is so great that capitalism fears popular uprisings in the region will overthrow its puppet regimes and threaten its oil supplies. Israel has been armed to the teeth but has been unable to defeat the risen Palestinian people. The Saudi Royal family have been bankrolled to maintain their brutal regime but popular opposition to their rule is growing. The oilmen in the White House live in fear of being unable to control a region they have become so dependent on. Direct military intervention, shrouded by a thick layer of propaganda for the public, has become the preferred tactic for the new century.

Saddam is, of course, a brutal dictator - like Suharto, Pinochet, and all the others the US has payrolled. But the excuse for invasion, that he may have weapons of mass destruction and be a danger to his neighbours and others, is clearly just that - an excuse. The terrorist state of Israel has 200 nuclear weapons targetted at Arab capitals. It has illegally occupied Palestine for 35 years and breached dozens of United Nations resolutions – yet it wouldn’t exist without US support. When Saddam invaded Iran and gassed Kurds, the West just made money out of it, because its strategic interests were not threatened. The terrorist attacks of September 11th were carried out by an organisation payrolled not by Saddam Hussein but by the United States itself to fight its war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Anyone who thinks this new war will be a war to make the world a safer place just hasn’t been paying much attention.

Blairy-Eyed


The vast majority of humanity is against this war. If the United Nations votes to support it, it will only be because Washington has bullied, bribed or terrorised poorer countries into supporting its plans. In the US, millions oppose Bush’s imperialism. In Britain, despite Labour and Tory support for Bush and the usual media bullshit, half the population is against the war. If we wanna put a spoke in the wheel of capitalism’s war machine, we’ve got a lot of friends.

But we won’t achieve anything unless we really make a noise. When Blair gave a warmongering speech to the Trade Union Congress last month, he wasn’t even heckled – this pathetic response allowed Blair to appear statesmanlike and led directly to increased public support for the war in the following week. If even one person had stood up and refused to shut up it would have resonated around the world – but no one did. We won’t oppose this war effectively with that sort of cowardice.

It won’t be union leaders or paper sellers or ‘organisers’ that will stop this war. It will be ordinary, angry, active people – us, you, your neighbours, your mates – taking direct action. Stopping high streets at rush hour. Shutting down government and military buildings. Having sit down protests on marches instead of moving on whenever the police tell us to. As Mukhtar Dai of the Birmingham South Asian Alliance said recently, “If it means disruption by our people who work in various service industries that will happen. People working in taxis and buses will stop work and there should also be strikes in factories.” As even one ex-Labour MP said “The moment the bombing of Iraq begins we should stop for one hour. We should remember the women of Baghdad who will be widows, the children who will become orphans. I’ve never said this before. Non-violent resistance to the government will show they cannot claim to do this in our name. We should stop the buses, the trains, the schools. Everyone here should raise the threat of war in their schools, places of worship, where they work & live. We could be facing a Third World war triggered by stupid men.”