[Marxism] NLR against Bush-Kerry, for the resistance

["andypollack@xxxxxxxx" <andypollack@xxxxxxxx>]

Editorial in the current issue, 
http://www.newleftreview.net/PDFarticles/NLR26201.pdf

Yet those who shook their heads at the pre-emptive proclamations of the 2002 
National Security Strategy have been unwilling to see it founder. With the 
upsurge of resistance in Iraq has come a flood of liberal imperialist advice on 
how to run the Occupation better. Joseph Nye laments the paucity of American TV 
channels capable of beaming us soft power into the Arab world. Anthony 
Cordesman offers recipes for more effective interrogation of prisoners. Michael 
Ignatieff, after deploring the painful moral juxtapositions that even sullied 
Reagan's funeral, warns that 'America cannot abdicate its responsibility'. 
Andrew Moravcsik explains: 'Europeans may find the next Iraq is a Kosovo, and 
they want America to intervene'. Though celebrations have been muted, the 
UN-sponsored installation of a hireling regime in Baghdad has been all but 
universally hailed in the Western media as a 'positive step'.

>From those who opposed the Anglo-American invasion in 2003 on the grounds that 
>it lacked UN legitimation, or that sanctions were doing the job, there has 
>been, understandably, a deafening silence about the future of the Occupation, 
>broken only by murmurs about deadlines. For many, opposition to empire has 
>been reduced to abhorrence of Bush. But the Bush administration has already 
>implemented every step in the Democrats' programme: handover to an Iraqi 
>government, with UN blessing and NATO involvement, as in Afghanistan. Hopes 
>that a Kerry Administration would significantly alter current us policies in 
>the Middle East are futile. As Clinton's foreign-policy linchpin Strobe 
>Talbott recently explained: `The Bush administration was right to identify 
>Iraq as a major problem. A President Gore or McCain or Bradley would have 
>ratcheted up the pressure, and sooner or later resorted to force'. Kerry 
>backed the invasion, will retain the Patriot Act, supports Sharon's security 
>policies and is calling for an extra 40,000 active-duty us troops and a 
>doubling of special forces capability. On present showing, a vote for him is 
>little more than another bullet for Iraq. In this sense, the Bush revolution 
>has succeeded; it has produced its heir. Whatever its colour, the next US 
>administration will attempt to consolidate its position there. It will not be 
>the November polls that decide the fate of the march on Baghdad. The reality 
>is that, so long as hard blows continue to be inflicted by the resistance on 
>the occupying army and its clients, domestic support for the recolonization of 
>Iraq will drain away, regardless of which multimillionaire sits in the White 
>House.

The same holds true of Europe, where Paris and Berlin have predictably hastened 
to patch up their relations with Washington and approved NATO engagement to 
support its Baghdad regime; in the case of Chirac, sealing the pact with the 
Franco-American invasion of Haiti, and UN-backed overthrow of the 
constitutional government there. The rifts that, eighteen months ago, 
supposedly threatened the Atlantic alliance have been ceremoniously buried in 
the Normandy sands, in County Clare and Istanbul. Washington's 
military-imperialist thrust into Central Eurasia, at first deplored by 
right-minded pillars of the status quo as an overreaching adventure, has become 
the basis of a new world consensus: the hegemon must not be allowed to fail. 
The first, elementary step against such acquiescence is solidarity with the 
cause of national liberation in Iraq. The US-led forces have no business there. 
The Iraqi maquis deserves full support in fighting to drive them out.


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