Re: [Marxism] What is antiwar.com? And what is really at issue?

[<g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Very interesting as always, Fred, though I must confess that
the perigrinations of Jack Barnes get less important to me as
they become more bizarre.  But then I do not live in the USA
and I can afford to be stand offish.  You said this

"As Buchanan once suggested, the road to world domination for
US imperialism has got to take on the block by block fight to
transform the political situation in the United States
radically in favor of the rulers.

Without that, I have become convinced that world hegemony on
the scale required by the needs of the US ruling class is not
attainable today.

And I suspect that means -- although I am well aware that such
predictions have been made many times in the past, and their
track record is not exactly fantastic -- that we are headed
into a period of serious political, economic, and social
crisis."

>From outside the "Beast", it looks as if domestic opposition
to Bush is massive, but unfocussed and in many ways all too
easily recruited into the pro-Democrat camp.  I may be wrong
about that, but that is as I see it from Brisbane.

Your second point as I understood it is that Bush must meet
and defeat the challenge of domestic opposition or even non-
compliance with the aims of the American Ruling class.  They
cannot be hegemonic abroad if they do not win hegemony at
home.

The set back in Iraq will if anything make this struggle an
even greater necessity. I think there is little doubt that
Iraq has proved to be an unexpected thorn in the flesh.
However Bush & Blair appear to have bought themselves a
little breathing space with their setting up of the puppet
regime and bringing the UN on board.

I suspect though that the current set up and agreements
really constitute a house of cards and a determined push from
the resistance will bring it all down.  Nevertheless the mass
media have proclaimed the new government and even the English
liberal Guardian had a piece in favour of the quislings. Here
in Oz, the Prime Minister, John Howard was strutting joyfully
around like the little peacock he is with his usual smirk
plastered over his ugly features.

The fact of the new government has been used by Bush & Blair
& Howard to patch up their damaged domestic hegemony.

What I think, however, is really represented by the new
government in Iraq is Bush's continued ability to intimidate
Arab & Iranian leaders.  The "Axis of evil" stuff appears for
instance to have spooked the Iranians into covert
collaboration with the US in Iraq. See for example their
links to Chalabi and Arrawi and Talabani of the Kurds.  They
use these links not to subvert the Americans as the CIA have
recently suggested but rather to get back into the good books
of the USA and to get taken off the hit list.  Al-Ghadafi has
followed a similar trajectory.

But the more successful the Iraqi resistance then the more
the current crop of Arab and Iranian leaders will feel that
they are trapped between the resistance and their harsh
American masters.

Despite the agreements stitched up at the UN,  we are poised
I think for a massive struggle against the American
Occupation over the next few months.  Without extra troops it
will be a very dangerous time for the quislings.

That will in turn undo the temporary glow that Bush & Blair &
Howard have gotten from the UN.  Hegemony is not won so
easily.

regards

Gary



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