Materialist Analysis and the War Against Iraq

By prisma@goldrish.com, 23 February 2003

The liberal left in the U.S. and Europe spends a lot of time and energy documenting government lies. But they seldom get around to recognizing that, like the lies of everyone else, those of political leaders are always told in the service of what they consider overriding truths, and, that the latter just happen to be understandings vital to defending their own social existence and that of the elite’s they so efficiently represent.

Colin Powell is said to be a follower of the Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz, in turn, deeply admired Machiavelli, who, like Marx three centuries later, described a world in which people come together in communities/classes/nations in order to cooperate, compete and clash in a never-ending, often desperate, attempt to be socio-economically sustained. Politics is conservative reasoned Machiavelli. Clausewitz agreed, adding, and War is but a continuation of politics by another means. They were certainly right about this much: when employing force becomes the easiest way for people joined in communities/classes/nations to maintain their social existence, they have had no difficulty whatsoever justifying a wanton pillage and plunder. With remarkable ferocity, they rape, torture and kill until the crisis has been eased and their socio- economic situations are again secure. Whereupon they lay down their instruments of brutality, becoming peaceable, humane and loving once again.

Certainly, to look at the material underpinnings of the on-going conflict between Iraq and the U.S. is to acknowledge that, to date, the Machiavellian-Clausewitzian doctrine has been very much on the mark. As the global economy entered a period of crisis in the late 1980s the U.S. sought to alleviate its own difficulties by obtaining cheaper oil. To do so, we encouraged Kuwait as, using British side-angle drills, it began to pump large amounts of oil from the Rumaila oil field, 95% of which lies across the border in Iraq. With its economy being devastated as Kuwait drove down the global per-barrel price by pumping oil well in excess of its OPEC quota. Iraq reacted. Historically part of Iraq, Britain had only given Kuwait independence in 1962. To Iraqis, the situation was intolerable. They believed Kuwait remained Iraq’s territory, and its oil was now being used to wreck the country’s economy. The rest of that particular part of the story is well known. Saddam informed U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie that unless Kuwait agreed to stop what it was doing his country would invade. Glaspie responded that Secretary of State James Baker specifically instructed her to say the U.S. had no opinions on such Middle East disputes. Iraq then invaded, and the U.S. went to war against Iraq. The ensuing slaughter of Iraqi conscripts, writes British newsman John Pilger, was carried out in an industrial way. Three brigades of the United States 1st Mechanized Infantry Division used snow ploughs mounted on tanks and combat earth movers, mostly at night, to bury terrified Iraqi teenagers, many of them still alive, including the wounded, in more than 70 miles of trenches. A brigade commander, Colonel Anthony Moreno said: ’For all I know, we could have killed thousands.’

Following the instructions of U.S. Commander General Norman Schwarzkopf, no precise count was made of the number of Iraqis slain in the war. However, Pilger continues, Schwarzkopf later informed Congress that at least 100,000 Iraqi soldiers had been killed, and, in a comprehensive investigation of the casualties, Britain’s Medical Education Trust subsequently reported that as many as 250,000 non-combatant Iraqis were also killed. On its part, the U.S. suffered a loss of somewhere between 150 and 400 soldiers, at least 1/3 of whom died by friendly fire. Upon their return to the U.S., the military officers who oversaw the slaughter were given a ticker-tape parade in N.Y. (Is it really possible to decry the Palestinians who celebrated 9/11 without blushing?)

Now the U.S. is preparing to go after Iraq again. Its situation made desperate by the U.S. imposed sanctions and the injurious impact of a global economic crisis, Iraq has been (not-very secretly) selling more oil than the oil-for-food arrangement officially allows. Anthony Cordesman, a National Security Adviser for President Reagan, gave a clear depiction of the Iraqi situation which Alexander Cockburn recounted in CounterPunch and The Nation. Only twenty-four out of seventy-three oilfields are working, writes Cockburn, and anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent of the wells are at risk. These days, with a population expected to reach 37 million by 2020 (up from 9 million in 1970) unemployment stands at more than 25 percent, with 40 percent of the population under 15.

On its part, the U.S. is behaving no less defensively. Consider our own predicament: Over the past two years our stock market losses have amounted to $7 trillion, probably more. Approximately 82 percent of U.S. stocks are held by the wealthiest 10 percent of our population, who also possess 69 percent of the country’s net worth. The left and the right agree on those figures, though they heatedly dispute their implications. It it therefore reasonable to suppose the same wealthiest 10 percent suffered 82 percent of the decrease in stock values. An economist on CNN’s business channel recently observed that holders of Mutual Funds have lost roughly $900 billion, a figure which makes sense if Mutual Funds are where the poorer 90 percent have most of their money invested.

Under the circumstances described, if the fundamental aim of politics is the preservation of social existence, we would expect the wealthiest 10 percent to begin formulating unique defensive logics and exerting great pressure at every level of government in order to bring about their implementation. In short, we can make material sense of Bush’s insistence on huge tax cuts for the wealthy and the elimination of dividend taxes at the very time when millions of middle class individuals are becoming poor and millions of the poor grow destitute. (While aggressively conducting class warfare, the president is quick to accuse others of doing so merely for pointing that out).

We can make material sense of the Bush government’s demand for an equally huge increase in military spending, since the stocks of corporations which produce our planes, guns, bombs, uniforms, etc., are among the most stable, and, with the great increase in spending, will become yet more highly profitable.

But there’s another, more critical, materialist observation to be made about the impending assault on Iraq. As in the 1930s, today’s economic crisis is global, requiring industrial-elite nations to become ever more brutally competitive, all they while they argue for cooperation. Now, the world’s industrial economies literally float on oil. Products ranging from tooth brushes, to soaps, to soap dishes, to clothing, to telephones, to fertilizers, television cases and park benches are made with derivatives of oil. Homes are heated with it, and cars, trains, ships and planes are totally dependent upon its availability at a moderate price. Consequently, if one or more European country were suddenly able to obtain vast amounts of cheap oil it could outcompete the U.S. respecting a cornucopia of manufactured goods. With that in mind, consider remarks made by Jeremy Scahill in an interview by David Ross (Z Magazine, November 2002).

Ross: Why does the U.S. government want to attack Iraq again?

Scahill: When I was in Iraq this past May and June, Iraq celebrated the 30th anniversary of its nationalization of foreign oil companies. They celebrated it with a jolting announcement, if you’re an oil dictator in Washington. The country’s oil minister, Mohamed Rashid, announced on national television in Iraq (and it was something that was carried all over the Arab world on al Jazerra and other outlets) that Iraq was going to begin oil exploration in two of the largest untapped oil and natural gas reserves in the world—two fields in Iraq: one called West Qurnan and the other called Majnun. These two fields had been allocated to two companies, one a French and one a Russian company, but, because of U.S. pressure and U.S. sanctions, the Russians and the French never began drilling in those fields. So Iraq was not going to wait for the Russians and the French to stand up to America. It was not going to wait for a time when the sanctions were lifted. Iraq said that they could nearly double their oil production in the next three years. Iraq could theoretically surpass Saudi Arabia as the number one producer of oil in the world.

Saudi Arabia, Scahill continues, has an enormous border with Iraq. If that border was erased and the U.S. controlled those two countries—the U.S. would control the world oil markets. That is, the U.S. would be able to outcompete, and dictate to, the rest of the industrial world, enabling our elites to be socio-economically sustained, while keeping things quiescent at home by maintaining the social existences of those below them. At least, that appears to be the Bush Administration’s hope.

And When the Bombs Begin to Fall?

Let’s go on being honest with ourselves and one another a while longer. IF the U.S. industrial-elite is able to carry out its plan to topple Saddam and take control of Iraq’s oil; IF it can do so while keeping the lids on the economies of Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and Central America, along with those of Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc., where, in many instances, rapidly building pressures are already threatening to blow lids sky high; IF, as a consequence, the U.S. quickly becomes sufficiently competitive in the world market that our deepening economic crisis is at least temporarily eased, THEN, common sense argues the present ground swell of domestic opposition to our government’s domestic and foreign policy will begin to dissipate. Bush will return to speaking less harmful innanities; Rumsfeld’s and Rice’s brutal expressions will begin to soften; and, at least for a time, our pell mell move into fascism will slow.

However, there are many signs that this (from the vantage point of our leader’s, happy) scenario may not play out. With their nations’ economies imploding, many Latin Americans are not merely menacing, they are once again moving to expropriate U.S. investments. In Colombia, when not fighting one another, each month paramilitary groups and Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) rebels siphon gas and oil from U.S. owned pipelines valued at $15 million. Many Colombian gas stations now buy directly from such elements, since the per gallon cost is considerably lower. As a result, the U.S. recently sent 1,500 counter-guerrilla forces to assist in hunting them down. If Colombia’s crisis worsens, as it is likely to do, 1,500 troops will hardly be sufficient. Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela is in an equally profound crisis and is adopting policies expropriative of U.S. corporations, while the troubled economies of Argentina, Ecuador and much of Central America likewise spell growing trouble for major U.S. interests. Ditto with the agricultural/raw-material-elite economies of the Philippines (where we just sent more U.S. troops), Indonesia and Pakistan, which also threaten to implode, bringing great injury to U.S. interests which profit from the maintenance of feudal structures in those countries.

Then, there is the predicable reaction of Mid East Muslim populations.

As in Iran in the the 1970s, many sons and daughters of Saudi, Iraqi, Yemeni, Egyptian, etc. elites are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with employees of U.S. corporations. It’s not mere chance that Usama bin Laden was from a family which made its fortune from construction, or that Mohammed Atta acquired his graduate degree in city planning. Nor is it only chance that millions of the Saudi, Pakistani, Afghani, etc. poor are hanging on to a life-sustaining existence by a weakening thread, a thread supplied by the same elites whose sons and daughters are having so much difficulty defending their own social existences. (Sixty percent of Saudis are unemployed, while the situation in Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Afghanistan and other Mid East states is not noticeably any better).

Hence, it seems highly probable that soon after the U.S. attacks (and the chance it will not attack is now insignificant), all hell will begin to break loose as lids begin to blow off in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, and Americans are targetted as never before by Third World peoples struggling to survive.

(A brief aside: U.S. liberals and ultra-nationalists often talk about the hurtful blowback resulting from our reactionary international practices. Respecting al Qa’ida, the point has been made at length that bin Laden and his terrorists were largely U.S. creations; organized, trained and funded by the C.I.A. to carry out the struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. What such liberals/nationalists appear to forget is that the U.S. elites who formulated those policies not only profitted greatly from their implementation, they continue to reap profit from the blowback. The injuries our Third World policies inflict on Americans are been borne by the lower middle-class and poor soldiers who carry them out. They are the ones who lost limbs or life in Vietnam, or crippled their psyches with the things they did. It is they who for the rest of their lives must suffer painful and debilitating illnesses or deformed children as a consequence of the weaponry used (defoliants in Vietnam, depleted uranium in Iraq), or endure nightmarish memories of the brutalities they inflicted. For the clean-handed elites who sent them off to pillage, rape and slaughter, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Iraq were only moves on a chessboard; surgical operations carried out in defense of valued possessions, all paid for by the government. And, if on returning home those who did the killing require treatment, well, there is money to be made there too; from prosthetic devices for the crippled, medicines for those with internal illnesses, Prozac and Zoloft for those who are troubled by what they did.)

There is, then, an alternative set of equally probable IFs: IF lids begin to blow in feudal Third World nations; IF the economies of Western Europe, the U.S. and Japan continue their downward spirals, we can expect the current protests will not only grow, the protesters tactics will change. In a recent article written for The Observer, Paul Harris observed: Activists from the Stop the War Coalition . . . intend to hold a series of demonstrations and actions within hours of news breaking that the first bombs have been dropped. They will be joined by other protest groups, including anarchist cells and organizations linked to the annual May Day protest movement and anti-globalization campaigns. . . . Action to be organized across Britain will include strikes, the blockade of main roads, attempts to enter government buildings and sieges or invasions of military bases. Events where Ministers appear will be targets for sabotage and disruption. . . . One anarchist group in Hereford plans to block local roads the morning after any bombing starts to try to make ’business as usual’ impossible, said one local member. Other activists plan ’Stop the City’ campaigns in Bristol and Brighton. According to a Reuters report, in late January, Greenpeace activists broke into a military dock at Southampton, southern England, in a bid to obstruct a stream of military hardware destined for use in a possible Iraqi war.

On February 15th, the number of individuals involved in specific protests in England, Europe and the U.S. reached a few hundred thousand to a million. No great leap of imagination is required to conjecture what would happen if only 15 percent of their numbers decided to bring sleeping bags and napsacks containing two weeks worth of trail mix and water to a large protest, aware that just by sitting down and refusing to move they can block major bridges, rail lines and highways, as well as grind a major city’s central district to a halt; political authorities and police helpless where removing the large numbers is concerned.

One can imagine further the result of a particularly energetic and aggressive 5 percent deciding that with nothing more than rental cars and old wrecks purchased for the occasion they could render the blockades a hundred-fold more effective. Consider the consequence of U.S. protesters then taking up such tactics, bringing New York’s Lincoln Tunnel, the Brooklyn Bridge, the city’s rail lines and subway system to a screeching stop, while in San Francisco the Bay and Golden Gate bridges became clogged with locked, keyless and driverless cars.

Under the circumstances described, local, city and state authorities, the federal government in the lead, would surely reject the idea such protests were non-violent. Police, National Guard troops and doubtlessly military forces would be dispatched. Heads would be split, numerous arrests made, and, quite likely, lives lost. Applying provisions of the Patriot and Homeland Security acts, it’s probable many protesters would be charged with terrorism and given lengthy prison sentences. One can only wonder whether the Bush Administrators have taken these highly possible contingencies into consideration, or considered what they will do if they order out the national guard and police only to discover hackers have disabled their communications.

Shortly after the failure of the 1968 worker-student uprising in France, the noted political scientist Hannah Arendt observed that, though the rebels apparently did not understand it, they had actually brought the national government to a standstill and could have taken power. Likening it to a swaying feather, Arendt argued the government would have fallen readily, had anyone bothered to blow. But, she concluded, no one blew. All of which makes the point respecting the conservatism of political activity again. Workers were given modest raises and students additional educational opportunities, nearly all of which disappeared within a decade. As the U.S. war on Iraq approaches, one of the most vital question confronting the U.S. and European governments, is whether they, too, will be able to come up with adequate sops. It is anything but certain that they will. There is at least a small possibility that the gentlest among us, the Arundhati Roys and Robert Fisks of the world may soon find some of their wildest dreams coming true.