Month in Review #25
May 29, 2007
By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras
IRAQ: "HANDWRITING IS ON THE WALL"
This time the admission came from a senior military official of Washington's
only remaining major ally:
"The evidence does not suggest that the surge is actually working," said
Alastair Campbell, the outgoing defense attache at the British Embassy
in Baghdad
May 20. According to Britain's Sunday Telegraph, Campbell also disclosed that
U.S. commanders had decided that the criteria for "success" would be only
a reduction in violence to the level prior to last year's bombing of
the al-Askari
Mosque in Samarra. That means 800 dead Iraqis a month - a figure that
the Telegraph
admits "few would regard as anything remotely approaching peace."
The administration's utter failure in Iraq is the driving force behind Bush's
loss of public support and the fracturing of his right-wing coalition.
The latest
poll (May 24) shows opposition to the Iraq war at an all-time high: 60% say the
U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq; 76% - including a majority of Republicans -
say that the additional U.S. troops sent this year have had no impact
or are making
things worse. Bush's overall approval level is just 30% compared to
63% disapproval.
Bush won some breathing space when the majority of House and Senate
Democrats caved
in to "don't-stab-our-troops-in-the-back" demagogy and approved Iraq
war funding. But defeat in Iraq and popular disgust with the war are
here to stay.
Even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell predicted a change: "I think
the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the
fall." He added the Republican spin that Bush "is going to lead"
this policy shift and the White House leaked its standard scam that
Bush is "considering
major troop reductions next year." But the President will be even weaker in
September than he is now.
Indeed, the main trend this last month was one setback after another
for the beleaguered
White House. Paul Wolfowitz was forced out at the World Bank (because
of Iraq and
the Neocon agenda, not favoritism toward his female companion).
British Prime Minister
Tony Blair - "Bush's poodle" - had to step down before he planned.
Alberto Gonzales is skewered daily - he's now a symbol of the drive to make
the Justice Department a Stop-People-of-Color-From-Voting arm of the Republican
Party.
The London Times decided that it would stick a thorn in Bush's eye by choosing
one-time leftist turned war hawk Christopher Hitchens to make its
point about U.S.
politics today:
"The main noise in Washington right now is that of collapsing scenery. The
Republican party is in total disarray. They've been dropping their
most intelligent
people over the side while the presidential candidates are all
outbidding each other
to be nice about the revolting carcass of (Jerry) Falwell."
Bush and the right are not surrendering any ground without fighting
and fear-mongering.
But dramatic shifts in the public mood over the last year provide huge openings
for the antiwar and other progressive movements to expand our reach,
become a force
in mainstream debate, and exert independent leverage as the guardians of empire
grapple with over-reach and crisis on almost every front.
THE DESPARATE "SECOND SURGE"
The crisis in Iraq is already out of Washington's control. Even to maintain
a figleaf of progress the administration keeps sending more troops to
kill and be
killed. According to a Hearst Newspapers analysis May 22, "The Bush
administration
is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in
Iraq this year...
The little-noticed second surge... is being executed by sending more
combat brigades
and extending tours of duty for troops already there... the total number of U.S.
troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -
a record-high
number - by the end of the year.
"'It doesn't surprise me that they're not talking about it,'
said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander of NATO troops
in Bosnia. 'I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention
paid to this.'"
But it's too late. Bush can escalate, but he can't hide.
TAKE IT OUT ON THE PALESTINIANS
With Iraq a lost cause, a desperate-for-success U.S. administration is
unleashing
its fury on the long-demonized Palestinians. It is an open secret throughout the
Middle East that the latest intra-Palestinian violence in Gaza has the
hand of Israel
and Washington all over it. Even the Washington Post reported (May 17)
that "Israel
this week allowed the Palestinian party Fatah to bring into the Gaza
Strip as many
as 500 fresh troops trained under a U.S.-coordinated program to counter Hamas...
The troops' deployment illustrates the increasingly partisan role that Israel
and the Bush administration are taking in the volatile Palestinian
political situation."
Veteran South African journalist and TIME.com senior editor Tony Karon
cut to the
heart of what's happening under the headline "Palestinian Pinochet Makes
His Move":
"The Fatah gunmen who are reported to have initiated the breakdown of
the Palestinian
unity government may profess fealty to President Abbas, but it's not from him
that they get their orders. They answer is Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza warlord who
has long been Washington's anointed favorite to play the role of a Palestinian
Pinochet. Needless to say, only a U.S. administration as deluded about
its ability
to reorder Arab political realities in line with its own fantasies -
and also, frankly,
as utterly contemptuous of Arab life and of Arab democracy - as the current one
would imagine that the Palestinians could be starved, battered and
manipulated into
choosing a Washington-approved political leadership."
Israeli government officials say outright that their own bombardment
of Palestinians
in Gaza (combined with support for Dahlan) is designed to destroy the
Palestinian
unity government and any Palestinian faction resistant to Israeli
political demands.
(Against this backdrop, the June 10 "The World Says No to Israeli Occupation"
Mobilization - go to http://www.endtheoccupation.org/ for full information - is
more important than ever.)
Palestinian civilians are also the main victims of the current
fighting at Palestinian
refugee camps in northern Lebanon. The U.S.-supplied Lebanese army is bombarding
civilian areas in its fight with the Al-Qaeda-linked militant Sunni group Fatah
al-Islam. Thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee to other
camps where
they are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
Ironically, as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh told
CNN International,
it is U.S. policy that nurtured Fatah al-Islam in the first place:
"The current situation is much like that during the conflict in Afghanistan
in the 1980s - which gave rise to al Qaeda - with the same people
involved in both
the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and the same pattern of the U.S. using jihadists that
the Saudis assure us they can control. Since the Israelis lost the war with [the
Shia-based] Hezbollah last summer, the fear of Hezbollah in the White House, is
acute. As a result... we're in the business of supporting the Sunnis anywhere
we can against the Shia... We're in the business of creating...
sectarian violence."
IMMIGRANT RIGHTS VS. RACIST INDENTURED SERVITUDE
Another area where major damage is being done to human lives and human rights is
so-called "immigration reform." The Republican-Democrat "compromise"
bill announced last week includes a few concessions to the immigrant
rights movement
but overall is a formula for placing millions in a form of racist
indentured servitude.
It includes a temporary worker program where the "guest workers'"
status is tied to approval by their employers and where these workers
to not have
any meaningful pathway to permanent legal residence. The League of United Latin
American Citizens declares: "If enacted, the temporary worker provision alone
would create a new underclass of easily exploited workers who would be forbidden
from realizing the American Dream. This bill will dehumanize workers... "
The bill's future is uncertain. Opposition from immigrant communities, labor
and the progressive movement is growing as more and more of the bill's specifics
are revealed to the public. The bill is also coming under furious
attack from the
extreme nativist right. This battle is taking place as divisions on
the right are
increasing, the Bush administration (which supports this legislation) is losing
leverage, and progressive activists are feeling new energy and
momentum. This means
there is a definite chance to defeat this anti-immigrant attack -
provided the broad
peace and justice movement acts on the principle that "an injury to one is
an injury to all."
KEY PRIORITY: INDEPENDENT LEVERAGE
With the 2008 presidential race already underway, struggles on every
front inter-mesh
in complicated ways with candidates' calculations and electoral dynamics. On
the pivotal issue of Iraq, for instance, the Democratic hopefuls are
all scrambling
to burnish their antiwar credentials. This is a telling comment on how
these ambitious
figures read opinion within the Democratic Party's mass constituencies, and
it provides both a huge challenge and a huge opportunity to the
antiwar movement.
So do the unmistakable signs that congressional Republicans are
anxiety-ridden that
continuing the disaster in Iraq will end their careers in 2008.
The challenge is to create such a powerful wave of popular antiwar
sentiment that
every candidate for office is forced to bow to it or pay a huge political price.
Attempts to turn this relationship on its head - to subordinate the
grassroots movement
to a candidate's agenda instead of the other way around - will come from foe
and "friend" alike. To resist this dynamic - which is buttressed by the
very structure of the U.S. electoral system - the antiwar movement
needs to aggressively
reach into every corner of political and social life and substantially
strengthen
its independent infrastructure.
A number of important gatherings and initiatives are already in motion
toward those
ends, from next month's U.S. Social Forum and United for Peace and
Justice National
Assembly to the Iraq Summer effort initiated by Americans Against Escalation and
the proposals being discussed in ever-wider circles for an Iraq
Moratorium beginning
in September and a "No War/No Warming" mobilization in October. A great
deal rests on the capacity of some or all of these efforts to gain
large-scale traction
and make a dent among the millions of people whose thinking and
actions will determine
the next phase of U.S. politics.
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is a fiscally sponsored project of the
Center for Third
World Organizing. Donations to War Times are tax-deductible; you can
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