Re: What now?

["Einde O'Callaghan" <einde.ocallaghan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

cuito61@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> thoughts?

I think you're suffering from an overdose of triumphalist American
propaganda.

Our demands must be things like "End the Occupation - Troops out now!",
"No imperialist carve-up". Because sure as hell the ballgame is only
just starting if they're talking about a military occupation lasting
months or even years. And from what I've heard over the last few hours
the fall of Baghdad doesn't seem to have led to the collapse of the
military struggle elsewhere.

Even if the troops are being welcomed by happy crowds, this doesn't mean
that the crowds will be cheering in 3 months' time. In August 1969
British troops were welcomed to Northern Ireland by a large part of the
Irish nationalist population - but it wan't long until they were
regarded as a hated occupation army by the very same people. And
considering how trigger happy some of the GIs seem to be I doubt if the
American occupation forces will have as long a honeymoon as the Brits
in 1969.

Be that as it may, I don't get the impression that the welcome is as
ecstatic as they would like us to believe. The crowds in pictures I've
seen of the demolition of the pulling down of Sadddam's statue don't
seem that large - certainly nothing like the crowds seen pulling down
Stalin's statue in Budapest in 1956 or the various crowds pulling down
statues of Lenin or Marx in Eastern Europe in 1989.

And a few hours I saw some Middle East "expert" sitting in New York
complaining on CNN that the pictures being shown on TV in Arab countries
were quite different from those being shown in America, i.e. looting,
social collapse, chaos. So it would appear that there is another quite
different side of the story.

I was never totally convinced that Baghdad would have to be taken by
storm in house to house fighting. And i suspect that away from the main
roads and the city centre American control is at best patchy.

And even without this sort of fighting the casualties have been
appalling - maybe not on the part of the imperialist forces, but
certainly on the of the Iraqi population. There are thousands of dead,
several tehn thousands have been wounded, the infrastructure is in total
collapse in the occupied areas (I've heard that the Red Cross is
considering withdrawing because the chaos places their workers too much
at risk) - we're talking about a human catastrophe of massive
proportions.

And we haven't lost the arguments. Everything we said about America's
imperialist interests is about to be proven true. Everything we said
about this just being another step in a never-ending series of wars
against the "Axis of Evil" is about to be proved true - Rumsfeld is
already lining up Syria to be next in line.

And anybody who hopes that democracy is now on the cards in Iraq is
going to be sadly disappointed. I mean, the last Gulf War was supposed
to be about bringing democracy to Kuwait - and 12 years on the Kuwaitis
are still waiting for the implementation of that "war aim".

We in teh anti-war movement can look to immense achievements over the
last few months. We have to build on those. It was magnificent that we
were able to get some parts of the official labour movement, trade
unions etc. on our side this time. And there were large numbers of
workers on the streets in the demonstrations - here in Germany at the
very least -  but they were there as individuals, not as organised
workers. We need to mobilise that potential if we're going to stop
Bush's crusade. That is our next task.

In the meantime we need to argue against dcemoralisation. Sure we wern't
able to stop the war, but we did achieve a lot. We need to remember that
the Vietnam War or the First World War weren't stopped for years - this
is the timesacale we need to work on, because it is certainly the
timescale Bush, rumsfeld, Wolfowitz & Co. are working on.