Re: [Marxism] Re: [PEN-L] Al Gore for overthrow of Saddam Hussein in2000

["Marvin Gandall" <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis has commented on a post I sent to PEN-L (but did not originally copy
to this list). I was commenting on the following New Yorker cite by Louis:

> The idea of overthrowing Saddam is not an idle fantasy-or, if it is,
> it's one that has lately occupied the minds of many American officials,
> including people close to George W. Bush. In 1998, during the period
> when Saddam was resisting the international inspection team that was
> trying to make sure he wasn't manufacturing weapons of mass destruction,
> Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Iraq Liberation Act,
> which made available ninety-seven million dollars in government aid to
> organizations dedicated to the overthrow of Saddam. Two of the act's
> co-sponsors were Senators Trent Lott and Joseph Lieberman-not peripheral
> figures on Capitol Hill. Clinton was unenthusiastic about the Iraq
> Liberation Act and has spent almost none of the money it provides, but
> Al Gore, during the Presidential campaign, put some distance between
> himself and Clinton on the issue of removing Saddam. In the second
> Presidential debate, after defending his Administration's Iraq record,
> he said, "I want to go further. I want to give robust support to the
> groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

I wrote:

But this -- the Iraq Liberation Act -- is old news. It's well established
that it was under the Clinton admin that the Iraq policy shifted from
containment to the overthrow of Saddam. But this was to be accomplished via
an internal military coup using Iraqi exile groups as a conduit, with the
conditions for such to be created by economic sanctions, acting in
conjunction with the UN and the Europeans. It was also, as the article
notes, a back burner issue for the Democrats.

As we know, the Republicans made overthrowing the Baathist regime a foreign
policy priority. They decided to invade and occupy Iraq with US forces,
forcefully breaking with the US foreign policy establishment, the UN, and
the Europeans over this matter. Gore, again as the article notes, continued
with the Clinton line of "support to groups" inside Iraq.

Whether you think invasion/occupation versus sanctions/subversion represents
only a nuance of difference or is more significant than that is a matter of
judgment, of course. Certainly, you can make a case that the sanctions cost
many lives -- perhaps as many or more than the invasion and subsequent
occupation. But I think, if forced to choose, the Iraqis would still have
preferred to continue contesting and evading the sanctions rather than face
occupation by an invading American army. To be sure, I haven't seen any
evidence of Iraqis shrugging their shoulders and dismissing the US invasion
as being "really no different" than the UN sanctions. I've only seen this
view expressed by a minority of the US left which appears to dismiss that
there are any differences within the American ruling class and between
states which can and should be exploited in the interest of the world's
peoples.
---------------------------
To which Louis replied:

> Marvin Gandall wrote:
> > Whether you think invasion/occupation versus sanctions/subversion
represents
> > only a nuance of difference or is more significant than that is a matter
of
> > judgment, of course. Certainly, you can make a case that the sanctions
cost
> > many lives -- perhaps as many or more than the invasion and subsequent
> > occupation. But I think, if forced to choose, the Iraqis would still
have
> > preferred to continue contesting and evading the sanctions rather than
face
> > occupation by an invading American army.
>
> Of course. That is why the US ruling class opted for war rather than
> sanctions. They were becoming ineffective. Wars are made by a class, not
> individuals by the way.
----------------------------
My reply:

You seriously misunderstand the nature of the conflict when you state that
"the US ruling class opted for war." The US ruling class was and remains
very divided over the invasion of Iraq, over whether it served or hurt US
strategic interests. I think its closer to the truth to characterize the
Iraq invasion as a hubristic adventure by the Bush administration, acting in
maverick fashion against the wishes of a large, probably major, part of its
own ruling class and the international bourgeoisie. That operation, as
anticipated, turned into a debacle, and the Bushites have since been reined
in and their early foreign policy doctrines discredited.

I don't think you would argue the "sanctions were becoming ineffective" in
terms of the harm they were inflicting on the Iraqi population. It's true
that they had been ineffective in fostering the hoped-for coup, and were
being evaded and loosened in negotations through the UN. Nevertheless, it
doesn't follow from this (and there is no evidence to indicate) that a Gore
administration would have launched an invasion, especially when this would
have precipitated a rupture with its traditional and would-be allies and
weakened the authority of the UN, which the Democrats and many Republican
leaders properly view as a useful instrument of US foreign policy. As
Clinton has noted, and I believe this to be so, the Democrats would have
continued to work through the UN, prodding Blix and the inspectors to
disarm, humiliate, and neuter Saddam -- accepting this as a less certain,
but less risky, means of regime change than an invasion. They didn't have
the peculiar Saddam obsession of the Bushites, nor did they think it would
be easy to secure Iraq. Like you and I, the bipartisan foreign policy
establishment thinks more in terms of its overall class interests than
individuals.

MG






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