[Marxism] Misdirecting the antiwar movement

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

The critique of the Democrats being made in the Counterpunch article is
rather weak, I think, beyond the metaphors and the one-liner about "being
for peace, but not against war", because the real crux of the issue in
public opinion is precisely the moral or political justification of the
military occupation of Iraq.

It is clear that the neoconservative elite considered that this military
occupation was in the interests of the world as a whole, or more precisely,
in the interests of the advancement of capitalist civilisation globally. As
Wolfowitz himself said, the war isn't simply about oil, but about a whole
package of interests, reflective of a set of "Western values" which required
that assertion of power to maintain and advance them.

In post-Westphalian thinking, national sovereignity is subordinate to
policing the interests of the world community, as interpreted by (the
Straussian elite of) the most powerful capitalist nations, who seek to
mobilise public opinion accordingly. Integrating nations into a world
capitalist market with standardised rules obviously cannot work, if those
nations resist integration because they feel it does not benefit the local
population. In that case, you have to help them along a bit.

A large percentage of the Democrats agree that ousting Saddam Hussein
militarily was morally justified, even if they might disagree with the exact
modus operandi being followed. This gets us to the real point - EVERYBODY is
"for peace". You can hardly find anyone in favour of more war, more
bloodshed, etc. Everybody would like peace to break out as fast as possible.
The critical issues where people differ include:

-  whether such a military occupation is justifiable at all, morally and in
terms of the overall political-economic-social effect it has (and in
pragmatic thinking these are linked),

- whether Iraq really benefits from the occupation, and who really benefits
from it,

- whether a withdrawal would make things worse, or better, and for whom.

Democrats deny that the US is imperialist or morally wrong, if it
unilaterally interferes in the political and economic affairs of another
country, because their ideology is, that America is helping a foreign
country reach a better life.

As regards the benefits of the Iraq operation, the Democrats are much more
divided - some take a nationalist view, some a globalist view, and some a
pragmatic view (but basically imperialist). The general argument has been
that if the troops were unilaterally withdrawn, that the result would be
more geopolitical instability, both within Iraq and because countries like
Iran, Russia and China could make political capital out of the situation; it
would be a defeat for the US and its regional sphere of influence.

One could be morally offended by the fact that the Democrats support the war
against Iraq, but this misses the substantive arguments being made, whether
they have any merit at all, and what support they obtain. The real sensitive
issue here is the moral crisis with the US itself.

It is not that Americans are all dumb fucks who elect proven liars to
governmental authority, but rather that they are unable to tell right from
wrong, good from evil as they lack criteria by which to judge that (a
circumstance which the elite also uses, with the Straussian justification
that the masses don't know what's good for them). The Bible simply cannot
tell you what to do in geopolitics, at best you can do is some biblical
quote-mongering to justify a policy. You can appeal to Hezbollah to turn
their swords into plowshares, but you cannot prevent Nazi Israel from mass
murdering with a US-supplied killing machine.

Behind all the propaganda, though, is the reality that all the key US
politicians have already said that the US will stay in Iraq "as long as it
takes",
indicating thereby that it is, ultimately, just simply a question of who
holds power, of asserting power and maintaining power - for the sake of
establishing a social order that meets US business requirements. The only
things that could force withdrawal from Iraq is 1) escalation of costs
beyond a certain limit, 2) mass resistance from Iraqis themselves, 3) a mass
popular movement against war in the USA, 4) strong political pressure from
other powerful nations, or 5) a political crisis causing divisions within
the elite itself. None of those things are really happening though, and that
precisely is what sustains the Democrats position. They hope quite possibly
that the Republicans will, over time, politically discredit themselves.

In order to build any mass movement against the war, people must be fully
convinced that (1) the war is morally indefensible, that (2) it opens up a
new "can of worms", to the extent that it makes the people in the region
more hostile to the US, (3) that it is possible to stop the war by political
means. So long as people are in doubt about that, at a basic level, there
will be no mass anti-war movement. And I think that the American politicians
know that very well, and try to manipulate the "benefit of the doubt" people
have.

The Democrats and the Republicans are just the A-team and the B-team of the
American plutocracy. And it is a plutocracy, not a democracy. Democracy is
"rule of the people, by the people, for the people". Plutocracy is "rule of
the rich, by the rich, for the rich". In a plutocracy, people are
expendable, because there is a higher good: creating a stable investment
climate promoting the private accumulation of capital.

Jurriaan


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