The anti-swp gang won't like this

national | miscellaneous | news report

Friday September 13, 2002 13:02

by Alan

Mumia quotes Tony Cliff

The Road to Iraq

THE ROAD TO IRAQ

"War is the health of the state." -- Randolph Bourne (RADICAL WRITER)

To the U.S. Civil War general, William Tecumsah Sherman is ascribed
the saying, "War is hell," but, truth be told, war is not hell to all.

War *is* hell to the poor, to the weak, to women, children, and the
elderly. It is often hell to the young men who wage wars, who see
and experience the inhuman horrors of war, and have to carry the
physical and psychological scars of battle into their last days.

To the wealthy, to the elites, to the business class, war is not
only not hell, it's opportunity. Indeed, war *is* big business.

To the U.S., war is profitable simply because it is the top arms
dealer on earth. The U.S. military well knows Iraqi military
capability in part because the bulk of their war material came from
the United States. Remember the charge that Iraq was worthy of
invasion because it used "weapons of mass destruction" (poison gas)
against its "own people?". Does the reader recall the recent news
that at the time of the gassings against the Kurds and bordering
Iranians, U.S. weapons and military people were *there, assisting them*?

Boy, is this hypocrisy, or what?

Back then, Iraq was a client state, a 'pal,' and the Islamic
Republic of Iran, "the bad guys." Now, the Bush regime is rattling
the shiny sabers of war against Iraq. Like a Roman potentate, Bush is
saying the U.S. could care less what its European or Arab so-called
"allies" want; the U.S. will act, if needs be, unilaterally -- alone.

Empires, you see, don't need allies; they need subjects. More
specifically, *this* empire needs oil. It's all about oil. For, as
socialist Tony Cliff has noted:

If we were talking about Middle East oil before the
Second World War, we would have spoken mainly
of British oil imperialism. Then Britain controlled 100
per cent of Iranian oil and 47.5 percent of Iraqi oil;
the U.S. interest was only 23.75 per cent in Iraq
(equal to France's). Since then the situation has changed
radically; in 1959 the U.S. share rose to 50 per cent of
all Middle East oil, while that of Britain declined to 18 per
cent (France had 5 per cent, the Netherlands 3 per cent,
other, including the local Arab governments, 24 percent).
Now oil imperialism is really United States imperialism.
[From Cliff, T. "The Struggle in the Middle East," in Tariq Ali, ed. The New Revolutionaries* (Marrow 1969)]

The U.S. really could care less for the people of Iraq, its
Kurdish minority, "weapons of mass destruction," or any of the other
pretexts it offers as justification for war.

It cares about the dark, slippery ooze beneath the sands of Iraq,
and it wants to wage war to control its flow and distribution.

Human blood for the long-dead remains of dinosaurs!