T drawn at this stage. They allow us to resolve the debates which have been taking place inside the anti-imperialist and anti-war movements around two closely connected questions:
that of the real objectives of the imperialist intervention and that of the real relation of forces, beyond all the fantasies stemming from contradictory motivations and leading to contradictory conclusions.
The fact that the scenario developed by
Washington and "so much foretold" can be implemented with such ease, proves firstly that it was necessary to take this scenario seriously, as we have always done. Secondly it shows that this scenario was perfectly plausible — contrary to the belief of those who took for good coin George Bush's rantings comparing the stakes in this war to those in the Second World War, or in Saddam Hussein's blusterings about certain victory.
Errors of well-intentioned doves
Until the last minute, two huge errors of interpretation of the US administration's designs were current among well-
"doves". The first was to intentioned believe that the main function of the massive forces deployed against Iraq was deterrence, aimed at defending
Saudi
Arabia and persuading the Iraqis to withdraw from Kuwait. The second was to imagine that, if force was used, due to
Baghdad's obstinacy, this would take place in line with the objectives set by
4 the United Nations Security Council, that is the removal of Iraqi troops from the start we have insisted that Washington's real objectives went far beyond the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. "International law" was the least of George Bush and co's concerns. For them the issues were:
1. To defend their hegemony in a region of the world which not only contains the world's largest reserves of oil, but also puppet states which "recycle" enormous oil revenues to the direct or indirect profit of the imperialist govern-
2. To affirm the absolute political and military supremacy of the United States in the "new world order" after the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the growing paralysis - and collusion — of the bureaucratic regime in the Soviet Union;
3. To justify, in this context, the maintenance and even reinforcement of the American armed forces, with financial contributions extracted from beneficiaries — whether other imperialist countries or the oil monarchies - of the American military umbrella;
4. To compensate for the decline in the US' economic position in the face of underlining the importance of US military power, which had tended to be minimized in the euphoria of world detente with all the fine words about economic competition replacing war, and using its military role as a lever for gaining commercial and financial advantages.
to regional hegemony in defiance of the US, and in this way to set an example to the rest of the world. This objective had to be reached at whatever cost - whether by military or "peaceful" means.
Thus the only choice left to Saddam Hussein was whether to capitulate without a fight or be crushed by force - to grovel or be forced to grovel. This analysis completely ruled out all the chimerical "Arab solutions" and other compromise formulas. As we have stressed, the intransigeance in this conflict has not come from Saddam Hussein, but the American president. The Iraqi dictator was certainly ready for a variety of possible compromise formulas.
Even ruling out any Iraqi territorial gain, in line with Bush's "principle" of "no reward for aggression", a compromise would have been possible on the basis of the proposal made by Saddam Hussein himself on August 12, 1990, ten days after the invasion of Kuwait. (This "principle" is not, of course, applied to Israel — plans floated by the US government for Israeli withdrawal from any part of the territories occupied in 1967 always involve big concessions by the neighbouring Arab states).
Falling into Washington's
The despot of Baghdad had then realized the hole he had dug himself into. He had marched blindly into the trap set for him by Washington*. After vainly threatening the Emir of Kuwait to extract from him the funds needed to refloat the Iraqi state, he then invaded Kuwait, promising to withdraw three days later with the hope of getting a satisfactory deal.
Then, faced with the refusal of the Kuwaiti ruler to negotiate, he proclaimed announced the annexation of Kuwaiti territory, pursuing his flight forward faced with American and world reaction. On August 12, Saddam Hussein proposed a global discussion on the presence of his army in Kuwait and those of the Israeli forces on the West Bank and Gaza and of Syrian forces in Lebanon.
The aim of this manoeuvre was not to justify the continuation of the occupation 1. "Une guerre tant annoncée" the title of an editorial in Le Monde, January 18, 1990. 2. See International Viewpoint, nos 190, 191, 194 and 197. 3. /V 191. 4. It has been well documented that the US govemment allowed Saddam Hussein to believe that it would not intervene in his conflict with Kuwait.
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GULF WAR part Il
February 4, 1991 • #199 International Viewpoint of Kuwait, but to allow him to withdraw without losing face. This became and more clear as
GULF WAR the were a ing country means of saving it from pillage.
the evidence thus
All more time went on. The behaviour of the Iragi troops in Kuwait, which they pillaged, carrying off every- NEW WORLD ORDER WAY DOES THE thing to Iraq, was LOOK SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE WAR!! evidence that their pres- THE OLD WORLD ORDER? ence there was not considered irreversible.
The Iraqi leader wanted to be able to boast that he had won not a "reward" for himself - he had probably understood that there was no hope of this - but a "victory for the Arab cause." He would probably have been satisfied with a decision to hold an international conference on the Middle East, in exchange for the withdrawal of his men.
The American administration torpedoed this prospect whenever it presented itself - right up until the rejection of the French proposal at the UN Security Council. Bush categorically and explicitly ruled out not only any compromise or "reward for aggression" but any way out that would allow Saddam Hussein to save face.
Bush's insults and provocations
The fact that an American president surrounded by a multitude of advisers, including psychiatric experts, chose to violently and systematically insult the megalomaniac of Baghdad - calling him "worse than Hitler" and stating that in case of war he was going to "get his ass kicked" was not a matter of impulse. These words were calculated to provoke Saddam into hardening his position and thus justify the military smashing of Iraq.
The feeble diplomatic efforts of the White House, such as the Baker-Aziz meeting in Geneva on January 9 this year were exclusively designed to soothe American public opinion and win support from the US Congress. The idea was to make the Iraqis appear intransigent when they refused the only choice on offer, total and unconditional surrender.
The letter from Bush to Saddam Hussein that the Iraqi foreign minister Tarek Aziz refused to receive owing to its insulting nature intimated worse than surrender. The letter spelt out the Americans' threat: not only the "liberation" of Kuwait by force, but the "destruction" of "the Iragi military establishment", adding in this terrible sentence: "What is at stake here is not the future of Kuwait — it will be free, and its government restored -but rather the future of Irag."
Washington's real objective could be read from the very deployment of the forces in the Gulf. The "logic of war" was deliberately chosen by administration from the beginning. The forces deployed bore no relation to the stated objective, that of forcing the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, even basing oneself on the doctrine of overwhelming superiority enunciated by Powell-Cheney. The figures are well known.
add this commentary from Newsweek® on the 2000 airplanes of the imperialist air armada. "Essentially
NATO arrayed against the Soviet bloc in Central Europe, it represents a 40-year effort to negate the through advanced technology. But the Iraqis have only about 650 operational jets, of which only between 65 and 75 are top-of-the-line Soviet models. The allied air forces face good defenses by Third World standards, but nothing comparable to the forest of surface-to-air missiles in
This shows the degree to which the forces were without relation to the means chosen by the UN Security Council to force an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait: an embargo, and de facto a blockade. The White House's arguments against those, including members of the US Congress, who supported the option of a long-term obtaining Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait were in this respect of unequalled absurdity and hypocrisy.
The Bush administration explained that the size of the forces deployed ruled out a blockade lasting perhaps one or two years, if only for financial reasons, not to mention the morale of the troops and the immobilization in one place of the bulk of the US intervention capacity. If this was the case, however, why could not Bush deploy forces suitable to the aim of a long-term blockade?
Bush himself added: the liberation of Kuwait is an urgent task, since the Iraqis are pillaging that country — as if destroypoints to the fact that the war was desired by Washington, and that its objective was from the start the destruction of Iraqi military/industrial capacity. All those who have contributed to conferring "international legitimacy" on the American action and have maintained the fiction that the objective of the troop build up in the Gulf was the restoration of the "sovereignty" of the Kuwaiti state over its territory - that is, the restitution to the Emir and his family of their property -have been accomplices of the American aggression.
This is the case of the Congress "doves" taken in by Bush's claims that the threat of war was the only way to get Saddam Hussein to withdraw without a fight, who voted through war powers. And, of course, it is also the case of that false innocent, the European social democracy, since, from the start, following the example of the French "socialist" government, it has supported all the American resolutions at the UN, including the one authorizing the use of force after January 15, 1991 — which amounted to an abandonment of the blockade strategy.
Worse still, it has actively participated in the US war preparations. French forces are now involved in the aggression, under American operational command, with the feeble and hypocritical caveat that they will only do their killing on Kuwaiti territory.
### Alliance with Saudi obscurantism
The social democratic leaders along with other "democrats" of imperialist Europe have used and abused the false arguments of the democratic battle against a terrible dictatorship, echoing Bush's hypocrisy. The value of this pretext can be seen from the fact that it is here being used to justify an alliance with the world's least democratic and most obscurantist state, Saudi Arabia, which even the intervention troops have found hard to put up with.
It should also be pointed out that this so-called battle for democracy has involved the deliberate over-riding of the majorities of public opinion opposed to the involvement of their country in this war. The grandiloquent speeches accusing the pacifists of wanting a "new Munich", referring to the complacency of the imperialist democracies toward the 5. TV 197. 6. Newsweek, January 21, 191.
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International Viewpoint #199 • February 4, 1991
GULF WAR Third Reich in 1938, are as wild as the line peddled by Bush and his agents on the theme of the "new Hitler". Comparisons between Nazi Germany, with its formidable industrial power and Hussein's Iraq, a technologically backward country, which exports only oil and dates and depends on imports in all other fields, including arms, are ridiculous and
On the other hand, support for the destruction of a country by the United States, the world's premier military power, for reasons which have everything to do with the latter's hegemony, at a time when it is in an economic recession, amounts to a contribution in reality to the formation of a Fourth Reich - at the moment formally democratic — whose New Order is this time called the "New World Order".
### Gorbachev sells Soviet support
The complicity of the Kremlin bureaucracy under Gorbachev — who only yesterday was passing himself off as the champion of peace — is vile. Moscow has literally sold itself to world imperialism, and first of all to American imperialism, its main opponent on the world stage for the past four decades. From the ignoHelsinki summit on September 9, 19907 until the vote on November 29, 1990 at the UN Security Council authorizing the use of force against Iraq - preceded by the promise of $6bn in credits from the oil monarchies of the Gulf®, of which $1bn from Kuwait - Gorbachev will at least have succeeded in dispersing any remaining illusions in the heads of the World as to support from the USSR for
The brutal and bloody repression of the Lithuanian national movement by Kremlin troops, profiting from the the concentration of the world's attention on the Gulf, the reaction of Bush — solely interested in Gorbachev's support for his Gulf
- to this, Kohl's declaration reproaching the Lithuanians for being "too much in a hurry", the green light given by Washington to Syria in Lebanon, and the reception of the Chinese foreign minister by White House, smack of the distribution of racketeering zones of control by mafia bosses. Only complete idiots can see in this a new world era founded on respect
The choir of hypocrites knew what to expect in the Gulf. They were perfectly conscious of the real objectives of Washington, as we were ourselves and as was anybody not taken in by the lies in the imperialist media.
We warned against the Apocalypse Now - Part 2 which the Pentagon was preparing in Iraq?. We stated that, when Bush assured the world that: "this will not be another Vietnam, it will not be a prolonged war", he was speaking the truth, since his generals were preparing instead another Hiroshima. We were proved not only right — except that reali-
In the course of the first day of bombardments, more than 20,000 tonnes of bombs were released on Iraq, with a power estimated at one and a half times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Compare this figure with the 3,000 tons dropped daily "in the heaviest of the raids that, in the last year of the Second World War, razed the German cities"11 or with the 40,000 tonnes dropped in two weeks in December 1972 on Hanoi and
In much less than 24 hours on January 17, the American and allied planes made over 1,300 sorties over Iraq and Kuwait, that is, as many as in all of those terrible two weeks at Christmas 1972 in Vietnam. This is indeed the biggest air-raid
The United States intends to continue this onslaught on Iraq at this rhythm for several days, and a month if necessary, according to Newsweekl3. Their action combines almost playful elements, evoking Coppola's film and a weapons' test on real targets, as with the crime in Japan.
Leaving aside the unprecedented mediatization of the conflict and its "video game" aspect on the technological level, there is also a bet between different parts of the American army on the possibility of winning this war using only air power - which would be the best thing for Washington, since it would lead to few dead and wounded soldiers.
This game is not just for fun. There are real gains to be won. The same Newsweek explains candidly that the role of the different branches of the armed forces in this combat will determine the number of billions of dollars that they will be allocated in future Pentagon budgets. Iraq has thus become a vast field for experimentation with the American army's latest gadcompetition between its different corps.
This macabre game has, evidently, nothing to do with the "liberation" of Kuwait. This is also shown by the choice of targets: not only military targets, but also nuclear sites, chemical and biological factories, communications' centres, power stations and so on.
Who can tell how many Bhopals or Chernobyls the destructive fury of the US air force is risking. Who knows how many victims of the bombing and its consequences there will be. We don't know, and, most terribly of all, nor do the Pentagon or White House. The stakes in their eyes are worth putting in danger entire populations, not only that of Irag but also the neighbouring countries, to which Saddam Hussein has promised to take the
Destroying Iraq in order to
This carnage and destruction - aimed not at destroying a despot but his people and his country — must be stopped. Iraq, the new Carthage, is in the course of being destroyed by today's Romans, capable of vastly greater murders and violence than those of antiquity. It is necessary to maximize the cost of this imperialist aggression, as we have been preparing to do since the start of the build up.
The strong antiwar movement which preceded the unleashing of the aggression and which continues to grow, in particular in the countries taking part in the anti-Iraq crusade and in the Arab countries, can significantly hinder the US actions, 7. JV 190 and 191. 8. International Herald Tribune, November 30, 1990. 9. TV 190. 10. JV 197. 11. According to a military expert quoted in Le Figaro, January 18, 1991. 12. IHT, January 14, 1991. 13. Newsweek, op. cit.
February 4, 1991 • #199 International Viewpoint and, at the least, win the cessation of the bombing. It must continue without relenting and be stepped up until the withdrawal of all imperialist forces from the Gulf
For the same reasons that motivate the imperialist aggression we wish for the defeat of the imperialists with all our heart. But it is no use having illusions. The only real possibility for creating the conditions for a political defeat of imperialism - and even in Vietnam its defeat was political rather than military — today resides in the development and radicalization of the mass movements opposed to the aggression. Even this requires that Iraq resists for a long time, which is be no means certain.
The American air force's control of the sky gives it an immense advantage in these open desert regions and allow it to carry out of the work of destruction without great difficulty. No technologically inferior army could resist. There remain the urban zones where a very determined army could hold out for a long time, even against an enemy disposing of far more powerful firepower. This was demonstrated by the defenders of Beirut in the face of the Zionist army in 1982.
But how determined will the Iraqi soldiers be in Kuwait, which is where the Pentagon wants to dislodge them from? The bulk of Saddam Hussein's troops concentrated together there in thought out way that exposes them to huge losses, are made up of the "people's army", a kind of militia created by the Ba'athist regime, badly fed and poorly trained. These men, among whom are many Egyptian workers drafted by force were motivated to go to Kuwait by the prospect of unrestricted looting and rape — when they could have easily been disciplined by Ba'athist terror.
It is even probable that Saddam Hussein has chosen to send this mass of militia men to Kuwait because they are the least reliable of his fighters and might turn their weapons against him. The fact that the access from Kuwait to Iraq is held by Saddam Hussein's elite forces, famous Republican Guard, can thus be understood not only as a defence of proper Iraqi territory but as a force to dissuade the troops massed in Kuwait against any desertion and retreat. These troops would then find themselves between the imperialist hammer and the Ba'athist anvil.
The murderous folly of George Bush is only equalled by that of Saddam Hussein. He has dragged his country into a new illthought out adventure, which is now costing Iraq whatever and whoever escaped the destruction and massacres of the crazy war against Iran.
Even if you believe that there was something progressive in the Iragi invasion of Kuwait, it is clear that the relation of forces made it a senseless and thus criminal undertaking, the last madness of a dictatorship at bay. Even the Bolsheviks gave away a part of their territory at Brest-Litovsk owing to the balance of
Here is the difference between revolutionary realism and the blindness of a psychopath playing double or quits, in this way hoping to win a refulgent place in the pantheon at the expense of his murdered country.
The other side of this tragedy are the immense illusions in Saddam Hussein amongst a significant part of the Arab masses, and above all the Palestinian
These illusions are certainly the product of years of frustration and bitterness in the face of imperialist and Zionist arrogance. But they are illusions all the same, and dangerous ones, since the awakening may be brutal and disillusion turn to
Twenty three years ago, in 1967, a generation of Arabs placed immense hopes in Nasser's Egypt. They believed in the invincibility of his army and his "rockets". The shock when these same masses realized that their hero had capitulated in six days was terrible. Nasser was an incomparably more progressive and popular figure than Saddam Hussein. The balance of forces between his army and the Israelis was far more favourable than that between the Iraqi army and the coalition it faces. Even so he was defeated.
He was technologically inferior to the Israelis and could not conceive of a strategy based on the revolutionary mobilization of the peoples of the whole Arab region, the break-up of the Zionist consensus by a fraternal appeal to Jewish workers and support from the worldwide anti-imperialist movement.
This lesson must, once more, alas, be learnt by the Arab masses. Two decades of defeats and the extreme weakness of the revolutionary movement have allowed the lessons of 1967 to fade away. The people of the Intifada itself have forgotten that, at its height in 1988, it gained more by its own popular, self-organized activity than from all the champions of bourgeois nationalism.
The example of the Intifada
It is the Intifada that has shown the way, and not Saddam Hussein. The Intifada must be extended to the other Arab countries, including Iraq. If it had triumphed there before the present war, it would have been able to take possession of a considerable potential to put at the service of the Palestinian cause and the revolution, potential which the madness of the Baghdad despot has given imperialism the opportunity to destroy. Imperialism will win a round, but not the whole battle. It will conquer Saddam Hussein, but not the Iraqi workers that he has
The task of the moment is, more than ever: two, three, many Intifadas! *
GULF WAR Massive turnout for
January 26 antiwar marches in United
States
"SUPPORT our troopsbring them home" was the most popular theme of the Immense peace marches in Washington and San Francisco on Saturday January 26, Police estimated the numbers taking part in the Washington march at 75,000, and the organizers at 250,000. The figures for San Francisco were simi-
According to our correspondent, there was a high turnout by young people on theWash Ington march, with students especially in evidence. There were officially-backed contingents from a number of trade unions, among them the
Amalgamated Clothing and
Textile Workers, the United
Electrical Workers, the Service employees union, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees
Other big contingents were of army veterans, Central
America and Palestine solldarity activists, Lesbians and Gays and the environmental protection organization
Greenpeace. Among other widely supported slogans were "Give peace a chance", and "No blood for oil."
The previous Saturday marches in Washington and
San Francisco - of perhaps
50,000 people apiece - had been notable for a high turnout from the black community.*
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According to initial reports the January 26 march in Bonn was attended by some quarter of a million people, with a demonstration of 100,000 tak
Ing place on the same day in Berlin.
International Viewpoint #199 • February 4, 1991
GULF WAR Worldwide protests greet onslaught on lrag
SPANISH STATE OVER the weekend of January 19/20, 1991, tens of thousands of people participated in demonstrations throughout the Spanish State — more than 80,000 in Madrid, 50,000 in Barcelona, and over 10,000 in cities such as Seville and La Coruña. These were united demonstrations, with a presence from the major union federations, the Workers' Commissions (CCOO) and UGT, and the United Left (dominated by the Communist Party). A general strike of school and university students is planned for January 24. In many neighbourhoods and small towns, all kinds of initiatives are taking place.
Four young soldiers summoned to join the Spanish fleet in the Gulf have refused to embark. Two of them gave a press conference in which they defended their
At the call of the CCOO, many workers stopped work for two hours on January 18. This organization has supported the idea of a general strike against the war. For the time being, the UGT has not responded to this proposal, although its leaders have been taking part in all the antiwar mobilizations.
Marches on American bases in the country are planned for January 27. * ITALY BEFORE the outbreak of the war, on January 12, more than 100,000 people gathered in Rome in opposition to NATO and for the withdrawal of Italian troops from the Gulf. The contingent from the Communist Refoundation current - the left wing of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) — was big, as was that of Demo-
The Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL — the biggest union central, close to the PCI) refused to take part in this mobilization, considering that there was not a sufficiently clear condemnation of the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. Nonetheless, unions at a local level were present.