The crisis of American capitalism and the war against Iraq

By David North
21 March 2003

1. The unprovoked and illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States is an
event that will live in infamy. The political criminals in Washington who
have launched this war, and the wretched scoundrels in the mass media who
are reveling in the bloodbath, have covered this country in shame. Hundreds
of millions of people in every part of the world are repulsed by the
spectacle of a brutal and unrestrained military power pulverizing a small
and defenseless country. The invasion of Iraq is an imperialist war in the
classic sense of the term: a vile act of aggression that has been
undertaken on behalf of the interests of the most reactionary and predatory
sections of the financial and corporate oligarchy in the United States. Its
overt and immediate purpose is the establishment of control over Iraq’s
vast oil resources and reduction of that long-oppressed country to an
American colonial protectorate.

Not since the 1930s—when the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini were
at the zenith of their power and madness—has the world been confronted with
such a display of international gangsterism as that being provided by the
Bush administration. The most direct historical precedent for the violence
that is being unleashed against Iraq is the invasion of Poland in 1939. The
announced intention of the American military to launch a barrage of
thousands of missiles and bombs on the city of Baghdad is part of a
conscious strategy to terrorize the Iraqi people. What the Pentagon brass
refers to as the strategy of “Shock and Awe” draws its inspiration from the
infamous blitzkrieg methods employed by the Nazi Wehrmacht at the opening
of World War II. This is how one historian described the Nazi destruction
of Poland.

“The storm of fire and steel that struck the Poles during the first few
days of September left that unhappy people stunned and shattered. At the
end of ten days, the German mechanized spearheads had sliced through the
Polish defenses all the way to Warsaw. Most of the inadequate Polish air
force had been destroyed on the ground before it could even get into
action; the fighter planes and Stuka dive bombers of the Luftwaffe, acting
in tactical support of the advancing ground forces, disrupted Polish
communications and spread terror and destruction from the skies. ‘The
Germans,’ reported an American journalist, ‘are today crushing Poland like
a soft-boiled egg.’”[i]

All the justifications given by the Bush administration and its accomplices
in London are based on half-truths, falsifications and outright lies. At
this point, it should hardly be necessary to reply yet again to the claims
that the purpose of this war is to destroy Iraq’s so-called “weapons of
mass destruction.” After weeks of the most intrusive inspections to which
any country has ever been subjected, nothing of material significance was
discovered. The latest reports of the leaders of the United Nations’
inspection team, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, specifically refute
statements made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell during his notorious
UN speech on February 5, 2003. ElBaradei exposed that allegations trumpeted
by the United States about Iraqi efforts to import uranium from Niger were
based on forged documents provided by British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s
intelligence services. Other major allegations, relating to the use of
aluminium tubes for nuclear purposes and the existence of mobile
laboratories producing chemical-biological weapons, were also shown to be
baseless. As one lie is exposed, the Bush administration concocts another.
So great is its contempt for public opinion that little concern is shown
for the consistency of its own arguments.

On Sunday, March 16, Vice President Richard Cheney appeared on television
to declare that Iraq “has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” Less
than five minutes later, he asserted that it was “only a matter of time
before he [Saddam Hussein] acquires nuclear weapons.” This flagrant
contradiction between Cheney’s two statements was allowed to pass without
challenge by the interviewer. Nevertheless, Cheney’s claim had already been
refuted by Mohamed ElBaradei, who reported to the Security Council
that “there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities.”

The second major justification for war against Iraq—that the Ba’athist
regime of Saddam Hussein is in league with Al Qaeda terrorists—is another
fabrication upon which the Bush administration has increasingly relied, as
the findings of the United Nations’ inspection team disproved claims of
weapons of mass destruction. But, if anything, the attempt to link Hussein
to Al Qaeda rests on even flimsier foundations. Absolutely no credible
evidence has been provided by the administration to support this allegation.

Perhaps the most absurd and cynical of all the justifications given by the
Bush administration is that the war is being undertaken to bring democracy
to the Iraqi people. This is a theme that has played well with
sanctimonious ignoramuses like Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York
Times, who wrote on March 19 that “removing Saddam Hussein and helping Iraq
replace his regime with a decent, accountable government that can serve as
a model in the Middle East is worth doing—not because Iraq threatens us
with its weapons [which Friedman had acknowledged previously was not the
case], but because we are threatened by a collection of failing Arab-Muslim
states, who churn out way too many young people who feel humiliated,
voiceless and left behind. We have a real interest in partnering with them
for change.”

What contemptible verbiage! The murdering of thousands of Iraqis in a
firestorm of bombardment is presented as a form of “partnering!”

A few brief points must be made in reply to these “War for Democracy”
claims. Aside from the fact that the coming to power of the Bush
administration through electoral fraud represented a major defeat for
democracy in the United States, there is no reason whatsoever to believe
that the American conquest of Iraq will bring its people, and those of the
region, anything but more oppression and misery. The historical role of the
United States in the Middle East is a bloody record of crimes against the
people of that part of the world. Every major ally of the United States in
the Middle East and northern Africa—Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Jordan and Turkey—has been cited by the State Department for gross abuses
of human rights. Israel, that exemplar of American-supported democracy,
rules over the Palestinian people on the basis of naked terror. The methods
of rule employed by the Zionists in the occupied territories increasingly
resemble those used by the Nazis against the Jews in Warsaw. In Iran, a
quarter-century of brutal oppression under a dictator installed by the CIA,
after it had orchestrated the overthrow of a popular nationalist
government, led to the revolution of 1979. That power subsequently fell
into the hands of right-wing Islamic fundamentalists was largely a
consequence of the CIA-supervised destruction of the mass socialist-led
opposition to the regime of the Shah.

The regime of Saddam Hussein is itself a by-product of the murderous
efforts of the United States, throughout the 1950s, 1960s and even into the
1970s, to liquidate the socialist workers’ movement that once represented a
significant political force in the Middle East. The coup d'etat of February
8, 1963 that overthrew the left nationalist Qasim regime and brought the
Ba’athists to power for the first time was organized with the support of
the CIA. An authoritative Egyptian journalist, Mohamed Haikal, reported
what he had been told by Jordan’s King Hussein:

“Permit me to tell you that I know for a certainty that what happened in
Iraq on 8 February had the support of American intelligence. Some of those
who now rule in Baghdad do not know of this thing, but I am aware of the
truth. Numerous meetings were held between the Ba’ath party and American
Intelligence, the more important in Kuwait. Do you know that ... on 8
February a secret radio beamed to Iraq was supplying the men who pulled the
coup with the names and addresses of the Communists there so that they
could be arrested and executed.”[ii]

It was in such bloody operations that Saddam Hussein first emerged as a
major figure in the Ba’ath movement. Later in his career he would again
find favor with the United States. It supported his bloody purge of Iraqi
Communists in 1979 that played a crucial role in his consolidation of
power. Hussein’s decision to go to war against Iran in 1980 was encouraged
by the United States, which provided him with material and logistical
support for the next eight years. Much of the stockpile of biological
agents that Hussein built up in the 1980s was provided by an American
company, the American Type Culture Collection of Manassas, Virginia. This
was done with the explicit approval of the Reagan-Bush
administration. “ATCC could never have shipped these samples to Iraq
without the Department of Commerce’s approval for all requests,” said Nancy
J. Wysocki, vice president for human resources and public relations at the
American Type Culture Collection, a nonprofit organization that is one of
the world’s leading biological supply houses. “They were sent for
legitimate research purposes.”[iii]

Aside from these and other important details of the long and unsavory
relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, the attempt to
invoke democratic ideals as an excuse for attacking Iraq ignores one
essential democratic principle: that of national self-determination. The
invasion and conquest of the country, and establishment of a military
protectorate under would-be Generalissimo Tommy Franks, constitute a
complete violation of Iraq’s national sovereignty.

None of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration and its media
apologists—quite aside from their underlying lack of credibility—provide a
legal justification for war. It must be stressed, however, that prior to
its attack on Iraq the Bush administration had already proclaimed a new
strategic doctrine that asserted the legitimacy of “preventive” or “pre-
emptive” war—that is, Washington reserved the right to attack any country
that it judged to be a potential threat to the United States. On this
basis, there is not a single country in the world that might not find
itself, at one point or another, under attack by the United States. In his
address to the nation on March 17, Bush formally invoked this doctrine as
his final justification for attacking Iraq: “We are acting now because the
risk of inaction would be far greater. In one year, or five years, the
power of Iraq to inflict harm to free nations would be multiplied many
times over.” In other words, the United States will attack Iraq while it is
still defenseless, and not for actions that it has taken, but for actions
that it may be able to take at some unspecified time in the future. This
doctrine, which has no in basis international law, embraces war and
conquest as a legitimate policy option. The invasion of Iraq is seen as the
first in a series of “wars of choice” that will be initiated in pursuit of
the unchallengeable world hegemony of the United States. Potential rivals
are to be destroyed before they can become a major threat.

2. The unabashed glorification of war as a legitimate instrument of global
imperialist realpolitik represents a dreadful political and moral
regression. A significant body of international law was developed on the
basis of the bloody experiences of the first half of the twentieth century.
The carnage of World War I between 1914 and 1918, which killed tens of
millions of people, led to a furious controversy over responsibility for
the outbreak of hostilities—the question of “war guilt.” Underlying this
debate was the essential idea that the decision of a government to initiate
and utilize war as a means of achieving certain policy objectives—whatever
they might be—was a criminal act. While the underlying reasons for the
outbreak of war in 1914 were certainly complex, there emerged a substantial
body of evidence that the decisions of the German government were
principally responsible. That government decided, for reasons of policy, to
exploit circumstances created by the assassination of the Austrian Archduke
in Sarajevo in a manner that was calculated to lead to war.

The issue of “war guilt” assumed even greater significance at the end of
World War II. The undoubted responsibility of the Third Reich for the
outbreak of war in 1939 led to the decision of the Allied powers, of which
the United States was the most powerful representative, to place the former
leaders of the German state on trial.

In framing the legal principles upon which the prosecution of Nazi leaders
at Nuremberg was to be based, the American attorney Telford Taylor insisted
that the purpose of the trials was not to determine all the varied causes
for World War II. Rather, a more specific issue was at stake. As Taylor
wrote in a memo to the lead American prosecutor, Robert Jackson: “The
question of causation is important and will be discussed for many years,
but it has no place in this trial, which must rather stick rigorously to
the doctrine that planning and launching an aggressive war is illegal,
whatever may be the factors that caused the defendants to plan and to
launch. Contributing causes may be pleaded by the defendants before the bar
of history, but not before the tribunal.”[iv] [Emphasis added]

It was well understood in 1946 that the Nuremberg trial was establishing a
major legal precedent. The basic purpose of the trial was to establish as a
matter of international law that planning and launching an aggressive war
was a criminal act. The representatives of the United States insisted on
this principle, and acknowledged that the United States would be bound by
it. As Jackson wrote: “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes,
they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does
them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct
against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”[v]

The “war of choice” being launched by the Bush administration is in no
legal sense fundamentally different from the decisions and actions for
which the Nazi leaders were tried and hanged in October 1946. The US
government knows this very well, and that is why it refuses to accept the
jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

3. That the United States is the instigator of this war is beyond question.
The principal objective of the war is to seize control of Iraq’s oil
resources. All efforts to deny the central role of oil in the American
drive to conquer Iraq reeks of dishonesty and cynicism. No other natural
resources have played such a central role in the political and economic
calculations of American imperialism over the last century as oil and
natural gas. Involved in this central preoccupation is not only the profits
of American-owned oil conglomerates—though this is by no means an
insignificant concern. American industry, the stability of America’s
financial-monetary structure and its dominant world position are all
dependent upon unimpeded access to, and control of, the vast oil resources
of the Persian Gulf and, more recently, the Caspian Basin.

The history of American foreign policy and military strategy over the last
three decades can be studied, from a purely economic standpoint, as a
response to the “oil shock” of 1973, when the oil embargo declared by
leading Arab oil producers in response to the Arab-Israeli War of that year
led to a quadrupling of petroleum prices—a development that staggered the
American and world capitalist economy. The second oil shock in the
aftermath of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 led to the proclamation of the
Carter Doctrine, which declared unimpeded access to the Persian Gulf to be
a major strategic concern of the United States. This set the stage for the
massive buildup of US military forces that has proceeded without
interruption for the last 23 years.

The world position of the United States as the principal imperialist power
depends not only on preserving its own unimpeded access to oil, but also on
its ability to determine how much of this diminishing natural resource is
available to other countries—especially to present-day or potential rivals.
The approach the United States has taken to this international geo-
political aspect of oil as a critical resource has been profoundly affected
by the most significant political event of the last quarter of the
twentieth century—the dissolution of the USSR.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was interpreted by the American ruling
elite as an opportunity to implement a sweeping imperialist agenda that had
been impossible in the aftermath of World War II and during nearly a half-
century of Cold War. Proclaiming the arrival of a “unipolar moment,” the
United States set out to prevent, as a principal strategic objective, the
emergence of another power—whether a newly-unified Europe, Japan, or,
potentially, China—that might challenge its dominant international
position. Aware of the significant decline in the position of the United
States in the world economy, the strategists of American imperialism came
to see its overwhelming military power as the principal means by which the
United States could effect a fundamental reordering of the world in its own
interests. Within this context, the use of military power to establish
effective control of oil producing regions and the world-wide distribution
of this essential resource was transformed from a strategic idea into a
concrete plan of action.

4. To recognize the centrality of oil in the geo-political calculations of
the United States does not mean, however, that it provides a full and
complete explanation of the war against Iraq and the general embrace of
militarism. The manner in which the United States, or another capitalist
country, identifies and defines its critical interests, and the means by
which it seeks to secure them, is not merely the product of simple economic
calculations. Rather, these calculations, however critical, are
fundamentally influenced and shaped by the whole structure and internal
dynamic of the given society. From this standpoint, the invasion of Iraq is
the manifestation of deep and malignant social and political contradictions
in the American body politic.

There is no impenetrable barrier that separates domestic and foreign
policy. They represent interdependent components of the class policy
elaborated by the dominant strata of the ruling elite. While subject to the
continuous pressure of global economic forces, the foreign policy pursued
by the ruling elite reflects, complements and projects its essential
domestic interests.

Nearly 60 years have passed since the end of World War II. An examination
of this period reveals very clearly the correlation of domestic and foreign
policy. These 60 years can be bisected into two eras. During the first 30
years, between 1945 and 1975, the predominant tendency in American domestic
policy was that of liberal social reform. In its foreign policy, the
American bourgeoisie championed a version of liberal internationalism,
rooted in various multilateral institutions. To be sure, these institutions
served what were perceived by the American ruling class to be its own long-
term interests. Moreover, the predominant tendency toward accommodation and
compromise with the Soviet Union was always opposed by powerful sections of
the capitalist class; and even within the framework of compromise the
American bourgeoisie bitterly defended, even to the point of war, what it
perceived to be its global interests. But under conditions of the immense
expansion of the post-World War II economy, American capitalism considered
social liberalism at home and liberal (and anti-communist) internationalism
to be the most advisable policy.

The end of this liberal era was foreshadowed in the weakening of the world
economic order that had been established in 1944 (the Bretton Woods
system). Its collapse in 1971 with the end of dollar-gold convertibility
ushered in a period of mounting international economic instability—
manifested especially in unprecedented price inflation—and a protracted
decline within the United States of corporate profitability.

The deterioration in the general world economic climate provoked a
fundamental change in the domestic and foreign policy of the American
ruling class. Within the United States, social policies that had been
oriented toward limited wealth redistribution and somewhat reduced levels
of social inequality were thrown into reverse. The election of Reagan to
the presidency in 1980 was followed by major reductions in tax rates for
the wealthiest Americans, massive cuts in social spending to alleviate the
plight of the poorest Americans, and a general assault on the trade unions.

The international component of this policy was the repudiation of “detente”
with the Soviet Union and the general intensification of military pressure
against national movements in the “Third World” that were seen as harmful
to America’s global interests.

5. The aggressive policies of American imperialism produced the desired
consequences: within the United States the living standards of the working
class either stagnated or declined; within the so-called “Third World”
there occurred a horrifying deterioration in the conditions of hundreds of
millions of people. For the ruling class and the wealthiest sections of the
upper-middle class, these policies produced benefits of which they could
have only dreamed. Depressed wage levels within the United States, an
inexhaustible supply of low-cost labor overseas, and the availability of
cheap commodity prices, produced the ideal environment for the massive
stock market boom of the 1990s (which, it should be recalled, began in the
aftermath of the first Gulf War of 1991).

The economic stability of American capitalism and, with it, the vast
fortunes accumulated by its ruling elite in the course of the speculative
boom on Wall Street became dependent, or, one might say, addicted, to
depressed wage levels in the United States and the continuing supply from
overseas of cheap raw materials (especially oil) and low-cost labor. The
staggering enrichment of America’s ruling elite during the last decade and
the horrifying destitution of Latin America, Africa, Asia and the former
USSR are interdependent phenomena. If a mathematician were to study the
relationship between wealth accumulation in the United States and the
social consequences of low commodity prices and the super-exploitation of
labor overseas, he might be able to calculate how many millions of
premature poverty-induced deaths were collectively required in Africa,
Asia, Eurasia and Latin America in order to harvest a new Wall Street
billionaire.

The American ruling elite is hardly unaware of the relationship between its
own wealth and the exploitation and plundering of the great mass of the
world’s population. This relationship has created the objective basis for a
social constituency for imperialist barbarism among a noisy, stupid, and
arrogant milieu of nouveau riche spawned by the speculative boom of the
1980s and 1990s. It is this corrupt social element that dominates the mass
media and imparts to the airwaves and press their distinctly egotistical,
self-absorbed and generally reactionary characteristics. The brazen
glorification of American militarism within the mass media reflects the
correspondence of this stratum’s self-interest with the geo-political
ambitions of American imperialism. And so, Thomas Friedman of the New York
Times, who epitomizes the outlook of the pro-imperialist nouveau riche,
writes without the slightest sense of embarrassment, “I have no problem
with a war for oil.”

The war against Iraq promises to produce a bonanza for the ruling elite. As
Stratfor, an internet site that is closely attuned to the strategic aims of
the US government, explained: “The biggest winners in the impending
conflict will be the investors who are willing and able to scoop up cheap
assets. Foreigners familiar with the region and its business practices, who
have contracts there and an ability to tolerate risk, will find a host of
investment opportunities in everything from telecommunications to
manufacturing ... [F]or savvy investors who can take a risk, opportunities
will be sublime.”

This, in a nutshell, is the aim of “Operation Iraqi Freedom!”

6. That such words could be put down on paper testifies to the almost
indescribable levels of corruption and moral degradation that pervade the
ruling elite of the United States. In the final analysis, the magnitude of
corruption, which has metastasized throughout bourgeois society, is a
social phenomenon with deep objective roots. The increasing crisis of the
capitalist system, which finds its most critical and essential expression
in the protracted depression in profit levels in the basic manufacturing
industries, has generated an environment that has encouraged every form of
fraud. Executives, lacking any confidence in the long-term growth in the
real value of the assets for which they are supposedly responsible, devote
themselves entirely to their own short-term self-enrichment. Where profits
cannot be created legitimately, they are concocted through the fixing of
books. The science of corporate management, one of the genuine achievements
of American business in the first half of the twentieth century, has
degenerated into the art of fraud and defalcation.

7. The Bush administration is nothing other than the quintessential
political expression of this social dung heap. Its vice president, Mr.
Richard Cheney, divides his time between presiding over a secret government
and working as a bag man for Halliburton, which continues to pay him more
than a half million dollars a year. The secretary of the Army, Mr. Tom
White, is a former high executive of Enron. Mr. Richard Perle, who has
shaped administration policy on Iraq, holds secret business meetings with
the arms merchant Khashoggi. As for the president himself, the elevation of
this utter nobody—whose most notable characteristic is his personal sadism—
will be seen by historians as the expression of the moral and intellectual
degradation of the American ruling class. A class that could choose Mr.
Bush as its leader is one that has, figuratively and literally, lost its
head.

8. There is still, despite everything, a real world. Beneath the glitz and
glitter, the crisis of American capitalism is assuming gigantic
proportions. Of the 50 states in the Union, well over a majority are on the
verge of bankruptcy. The essential systems of social welfare are breaking
down. The school systems are a shambles. If literacy were to be defined as
the ability to write a paragraph without a grammatical error, less than one
quarter of Americans would qualify as literate. The health-care system is
starved of funds and services are being cut back drastically. Entire
industries face collapse. Within less than a year, much of the American
airline industry will no longer exist. The massive diversion of resources
to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest section of the population threatens
national insolvency. The levels of social inequality exceed by far that of
any other major capitalist country. A staggering percentage of the nation’s
wealth is in the hands of the wealthiest two percent of the population. A
study by Kevin Phillips established that the annual income of the richest
14,000 families is greater than the annual income of the poorest 20,000,000
families.

9. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the extremely militaristic
evolution of American foreign policy is, to a significant extent, an
attempt by the ruling elite to deal with the dangers posed by the ever-
increasing levels of social tension within the United States. Militarism
serves two critical functions: first, conquest and plunder can provide, at
least in the short term, additional resources that can ameliorate economic
problems; second, war provides a means for directing internal social
pressures outward.

10. But these short-term “benefits” cannot cure the economic and social
diseases that afflict America. Even if the United States achieves a swift
military victory in Iraq, the social and economic crisis of America will
continue to fester and intensify. None of its institutions—economic, social
and political—is equipped to respond in any positive manner to the general
crisis of US society.

The war itself represents a devastating failure of American democracy. A
small cabal of political conspirators—working with a hidden agenda and
having come to power on the basis of fraud—has taken the American people
into a war that they neither understand nor want. But there exists
absolutely no established political mechanism through which the opposition
to the policies of the Bush administration—to the war, the attack on
democratic rights, the destruction of social services, the relentless
assault on the living standards of the working class—can find expression.
The Democratic Party—the stinking corpse of bourgeois liberalism—is deeply
discredited. Masses of working people find themselves utterly
disenfranchised.

11. The twentieth century was not lived in vain. Its triumphs and tragedies
have bequeathed to the working class invaluable political lessons, among
which the most important is the understanding of the significance and
implications of imperialist war. It is, above all, the manifestation of
national and international contradictions that can find no solution
within “normal” channels. Whatever the outcome of the initial stages of the
conflict that has begun, American imperialism has a rendezvous with
disaster. It cannot conquer the world. It cannot reimpose colonial shackles
upon the masses of the Middle East. It will not find through the medium of
war a viable solution to its internal maladies. Rather, the unforeseen
difficulties and mounting resistance engendered by war will intensify all
of the internal contradictions of American society.

Notwithstanding the opinion polls, which are no more believable than any
other product of the mass media, there already exists substantial and
growing opposition to the war. The demonstrations held on the eve of war
were larger than anything held even at the height of the antiwar movement
during the Vietnam era. Above all, the demonstrations within the United
States unfolded as part of a broad international movement against war. This
expressed the emergence of an entirely new quality in social consciousness:
the growing awareness that the great social problems of our epoch require
international rather than merely national solutions. This awareness must be
developed through the building of a new mass political movement of the
working class.

On the weekend of March 29-30, the World Socialist Web Site and the
Socialist Equality Party are sponsoring a public conference. Its task will
be to make a preliminary assessment of the consequences of the war, and to
develop the international and socialist program upon which the struggle
against imperialism and militarism must be based.

Notes:
[i] Gordon Wright, The Ordeal of Total War 1939-1945 (New York, 1968), p.
17.
[ii] Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements
of Iraq (Princeton, 1978), pp. 985-86.
[iii] The New York Times, March 16, 2003.
[iv] Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (New York, 1992),
pp. 51-52.
[v] Ibid, p. 66

-
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/iraq-m21.shtml

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