It would be at this point, according to the plans, that the ground forces would go into Kuwait. According to Newsweek, this would be a frontal land attack, since the option of a flank attack by air or sea has been found to be impracticable (the Marines' disembarkation exercises in Saudi Arabia have been lamentable). Washington would prefer — for political reasons, but also, and above all, to minimize its own casualties - that Saudi and Egyptian troops should bear the brunt of this ground fighting.
These latter however enthusiastic about the idea and are not militarily reliable. Thus the air phase is decisive for the whole scenario. and the Pentagon would hope that it alone would be enough to make Saddam Hussein back down, or provoke his overthrow, or at least the demoralization and disintegration of his army, little inclined to sustain another massacre for no result, as in the war with Iran.
To complete its war preparations, on November 29 the White House gained the approval of the United Nations for military action. The January 15, 1991, deadline gives the Pentagon exactly as much time as it needs to deploy the reinforcements and prepare for the attack. This was the context behind Bush's November 30 proposal for a meeting with Saddam Hussein.
In fact, the American president has been 4 erosion of support in the United States confronted since September by a constant itself for his aggressive policies. In November alone, he suffered a series of political reverses, including a unanimous resolution from the National Council of Churches demanding the immediate withdrawal of the bulk of American forces from the Gulf region (except those required for the embargo, and on the condition that these act under the UN flag). There have also been a number of antiwar declarations by retired generals and military experts testifying before the Senate's Armed Services Committee. The previous month had seen a political offensive by the Arab and world supporters of a compromise that would allow Saddam Hussein to withdraw without losing face?
Bush had to act without further loss of time. He had to show both that he does not want war and that he had made sure that, if it happens, it takes place in the best possible conditions for his troops. He also has to answer both those who accuse him of not seriously exploring the opportunities for a bloodless resolution of the conflict and those who accuse him of being light-minded about the realities of war with Iraq and of under-estimating that country's capacities. Thus, at one and the same time, we see the further build-up of the forces on the ground, in line with the doctrine of overwhelming superiority, and the offers of discussion.
Certainly, Bush is ardently hoping that Saddam Hussein will give in to the threats against him, thus sparing the American president a war which, whatever the Pentagon's plans, will be extremely risky. The minimal demand for Washington is that the Iraqi dictator takes his troops out of Kuwait without getting anything in return.
Bush demands surrender
That is to say, he must submit totally to the will of the United States and its allies, since there is no other way in which his regime can survive financially. Even if this happened, as Dick Cheney put it in a TV interview: "We still are going to be faced with an Iraq that has enormous military capability and has developed a desire to develop even more nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles etc".."It would be important to fashion in the international community a set of sanctions that were targeted specifically on these technolo-
If, however, Saddam Hussein does not give in, which is far from certain, given his track record, there will be war. In his November 30 speech, Bush declared to American public opinion: "I assure you that if military action is required, it will not be another Vietnam. This will not be a prolonged war." Rather, his generals' plans point in the direction of another Hiroshima. * 6. IHT, December 1/2, 1990. 7. See /V, no. 194, November 12, 1990. 8. IHT, December 3, 1990
Growing US
antiwar movement plans
January 26
march on
Washington
A RAPID, qualitative leap in antiwar activity in the
United States followed the November 29 UN Security
Council vote to authorize a
US attack on Iraq. Until November 29, most people In the US had been contused by the Bush administration claims that the deployment in Saudi
Arabla would prevent war, not prepare it. After
November 29, thousands of people reacted with fear and protest to the obvious drive towards war.
PETER DRUCKER T WO days after the Security Council vote, on December 1, over 10,000 people turned out for a regional antiwar demonstration in Boston and 5,000 in Seattle. The turnouts were high for these medium-size cities, comparable to 100,000 or more in New York or at a national march in Washington.
A week later on December 8, regional demonstrations took place in Chicago (5,000 people), Berkeley (5,000 people), Washington and Denver. Several demonstrations took place in smaller cities in response to a call by several national peace organizations (Mobilization for Survival, Pledge of Resistance, and War Resisters League). The call was also picked up in the Canadian state, where
December 24, 1990 • #197 International Viewpoint demonstrations took place in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Victoria, Halifax and St. Johns.
The antiwar movement expanded simulNovember, antiwar positions in the labor movement had been confined largely to several left-leaning Labor [trade union] councils in Northern California, while the national AFL-CIO trade union confederation took a prowar position. Jan Pierce, a New York leader of the Communications Workers of America, broke with the top AFL-CIO leaders in late November by the National Campaign Peace in the Middle East. The progressive monthly, Labor Notes, jumped into the fray with an antiwar editorial.
Student opposition to the war escalated as reports spread of possible reinstitution of the military draft (discontinued in the US since the end of the Vietnam War). There were antiwar teach-ins on hundreds of university campuses on December 7.
The National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East gave national expression to the new upsurge in its second national meeting, which took place on December 1 together almost 300 people representing 164 organizations: almost every national peace and anti-intervention organization as well as local antiwar coalitions from dozens of cities across the country. Timetable for national antiwar
It adopted a timetable for national antiwar actions: the December 7/8 actions already underway; vigils for peace on December 22-24; a national radio teach-in against the war on January 13, which will be broadcast across the country by satellite; local actions marking Martin Luther King's birthday on January 15 and 19-21; and national marches on Washington and San Francisco on January 26.
The liveliest discussion on December 1 concerned the date for the national marches. Many people argued for marches just before or after the January 15 deadline set by the UN Security Council. But the many students at the meeting spoke with almost one voice for January 26, spontaneously and with almost no prior discussion. Most US universities return from their holidays only in mid-January, and student organizers said that January 26 was the earliest possible date for a successful student mobilization.
The importance of students for a large turnout convinced the majority of organizations represented to vote for January 26. After an appeal for unity from the chairpeople, all but a handful of votes were cast in the final count for united marches on January 26.
The December 1 meeting also achieved complete unity around the march demands. The National Campaign for Peace's founding meeting on September
GREAT ETC.
### BRITAIN
USSR ALL THOSE OPPOSED TO THE USE OF FORCE... 18 had been marred by deep divisions over whether to condemn Iraq and support an international peace conference, reflecting in part some Palestinian activists' desire to use the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait as a occasion to build opposition to Israeli occupation of the West Bank
But the December 1 meeting forged broader unity for the January 26 marches. It rejected (by one vote) a proposal to make an international peace conference one of the march demands. Instead it overwhelmingly adopted three slogans
• No war in the Middle East.
• Bring the troops home now.
• Money for human needs, not war.
The meeting emphasized the January 15 and 19/21 local actions, both as events building for January 26 and in their own right. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday (which falls on January 15, but is now officially celebrated the following Monday) has become a national day of opposition to racism; a day of hypocritical lip service by the government but genuine antiracist organizing in the AfricanAmerican community.
### Martin Luther King anniversary hijacked
The government has provoked outrage in communities of color and the left by naming Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who happens to be African-American, as grand marshal of the official King birthday celebrations in Atlanta. This militarist appropriation of the King holiday is all the more outrageous in that King was not only an advocate of nonviolence in the civil rights movement, but a strong opponent of the Vietnam war before his assassination in 1968. The December 1 national meeting expressed the movement's determination to reclaim King's legacy for peace.
The January 15 and 19-21 events will provide a special opportunity to make the
GULF CRISIS AMERICAN THE PEOPLE AUTH connections between the US war drive in the Middle East and racism and austerity at home. People of color are disproportionately represented both among those who suffer from drastic social service cuts and among US troops who would die in a war with Iraq. People of color (along with working class people and women have expressed a disproportionate level of opposition to the war in polls. But so far people of color have not been proportionately represented in antiwar protests.
The call for January 26 has gotten strong support from around the country. The organizers of the December 1 and 8 regional demonstrations in Boston, Seattle, Washington, Berkeley and Chicago are all supporting the call for January 26 marches. A meeting in San Francisco on December 3 endorsed the call for a January 26 march by 102 votes to 2. The San Francisco meeting united the Committee Against a Vietnam War in the Middle East (CAVME), the major force behind the October 20 antiwar demonstration in San Francisco, with a range
The biggest obstacle to a strong mobilization against the war is the existence of two rival organizing efforts for a march on Washington. The Coalition to Stop US Intervention in the Middle East, the Workers World-led group' initiated by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark which organized the big October 20 demonstration in New York, preempted the December 1 National Campaign meeting by issuing its own call for a January 19 march on Washington.
The December 1 meeting tried to avoid a split by calling for local demonstrations on January 19; by offering to share decision-making for January 26 with the Coalition to Stop US Intervention; and by adopting slogans for January 26 which are 1. The Workers World Party also known as "the Marcyites" — a group which split from the American
Sampist Portical approach the 1950s. They have a 5
"campisı" political approach.
Kremlin cracks the
International Viewpoint #197 • December 24, 1990
GULF CRISIS / USSR completely acceptable to the Coalition. Despite this olive branch, and despite the absence of any political disagreement around the march call, the Coalition persisted with its call for January 19. Although the Coalition is not strong outside New York, its strength in New York counts heavily, because New York, the
SPEAKING on television at Gorbachev's request on largest US city and only five hours from
Washington by bus, usually provides the
November 11, KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov raised the stakes largest number of participants for national in the counteroffensive against the independent movements marches on Washington. The Coalition's which has been pursued by the bureaucracy for several organizing apparatus has also been in weeks. The secret police chief intoned the old Stalinist music.
place since before October 20, while the
National Campaign was still putting its
"The KGB has made its choice, to defend the socialist staff and office together after December motherland....The KGB will protect law and order and block all
1.
The Coalition has focused its propaganforces trying to tear the union apart... When our country needs da on its base among African-American unity as never before, we are coming up against forces who and Latino organizers in New York. The would undermine our fraternity."
National Campaign's failure to include
At the same time, Kryuchkov raised the old spectre of foreign organizers of color adequately in its leadership (despite backing from major Afrisecret services trying to destabilize the USSR. Paradoxically, can-American figures like Jack O'Dell, two days after Kryuchkov's speech, following in the wake of director of international affairs for the other Western governments, Washington announced that it
National Rainbow Coalition and Californian Democratic Congressman Ron Delwas going to begin aiding the USSR. Journalists writing for lums) is its most serious political such central US capitalist publications as Newsweek and the weakness.
International Herald Tribune have begun to reveal that
Western aid corresponds more to a policy of supporting
Two rival marches — a
Gorbachev than to any urgent needs of the Soviet people. In disheartening prospect fact, nearly all reports agree that the supply crisis in the USSR
Faced with the disheartening prospect of two rival antiwar marches on Washingis the result of bureaucratic mismanagement and ton, left forces such as the New Yorkmisappropriation and not of deficient production.
based left newsweekly, The Guardian, have called on the two efforts to unite.
The split looks unlikely to be healed in the short run, however. The Campaign and
Coalition are now publicly identified with their respective dates. Even an agreement on dates would not resolve the thorny issue of control. The Coalition is unlikely to settle for anything less than a veto on all decisions.
The Campaign is unlikely to concede this veto to one organization, however strong, with a base mostly limited to one city and a leadership identified with one political tendency.
Amidst the division, the three US groups affiliated with the Fourth International are showing a striking unity. Solidarity, revolutionary socialist a regroupment with a substantial Fourth
International Caucus, is solidly behind the call for January 26. So is Socialist Action, which has played a leading role in the
Committee Against a Vietnam War in the
Middle East in San Francisco. The Fourth
Internationalist Tendency, the third FI group in the US, has endorsed both January 19 and January 26, while saying that the January 26 date is "objectively superior" for a number of reasons.
The Socialist Workers' Party, which was formally the FI's sympathizing section in the US until its break with the FI last June, is also backing the January 26
61
• marches, as are the Communist Party and
Democratic Socialists of America. *
A CALL for a "return to order"
was raised by Gorbachev at the November 17 session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, accompanied by a series of measures designed to strengthen the regime. Under the third of six headings, he said: "Demands are justly being raised to reinforce law and order, to defend the security lics, in the localities."
In the first week of December, Gorbachev appointed a new minister of the interior, Boris Pugo, former commander of the Latvian KGB. That was another provocation against the national democratic movements. The previous minister, Vadim Bakatin, had been accused by neoStalinists of softness toward the national movements and independent republic governments.
The Baltic and Georgian governments have been trying either to get rid of their local KGBs or force them to accept republican authority. This has been a permanent point of conflict, particularly in Latvia, where the Soviet military and special forces have a heavy weight in the society. Moreover, service in a force
GERRY FOLEY charged with repressing a conquered nationality is a classical school of reaction.