The Propaganda Behind the Occupation

Since 2003, "Iraq" has become synonymous with mass casualty terrorism, catastrophic sectarian bloodletting, American casualties and a failing occupation with no end in sight that's become a nightmare for policymakers.

The debate — both in the media and in Washington — is either "stay the course because the terrorists will win," or it's "how do we gradually withdraw, so we can better fight the terrorists?"

Both views reflect a consensus of what's good for the American empire, and the latter — voiced by the Democrats and other liberals — not only supported the war from the beginning, their "anti-war" stance is nothing more than opportunistic political gain.

The real anti-war movement that sought to head off the 2003 invasion by exposing the Bush administration's false pretexts and organizing mass protests has yet to crystallize around an anti-occupation movement that effectively challenges the underlying pillars of the occupation.

At the heart of the occupation is imperialism. The United States is an empire and that far from the lofty pretensions of liberating the oppressed and spreading democracy, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was done for self-serving reasons, namely spreading and maintaining hegemony in the Middle East.

We are unwitting participants in American Imperialism

We criticize the "handling of the war" but you display faith in the capacity of the US to remake the world in its image through military force and administration.

Such faith reinforces the logic of imperialist misadventures like Iraq, and paves the way for future ones. This illustrates an important feature of the discourse surrounding the war:

In the wake of failed imperialist projects, critics often leave military imperialism itself unquestioned and unchallenged. Indeed, they participate in its rehabilitation.

The Iraq War was waged in the name of Iraqi freedom, reflecting a misguided view of Iraqis as desirous of American intervention and influence, and ultimately of American-style democracy and capitalism.

In justifying the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld and his subordinates assumed that Iraqis were merely helpless victims waiting for Saddam's eviction.

We have learned--the hard way--that Iraqis had quite different perceptions of American power, as well as diverse and conflicting interests in the "post-war" environment. Reality simply failed to match the war advocates' elegant worldview.

What we need to realize is that the infamous "Bush bubble," the administration's no-reality zone, extends a long way beyond the White House.

Millions of Americans believe that patriotic torturers are keeping us safe, that there's a vast Islamic axis of evil, that victory in Iraq is just around the corner, that Bush appointees are doing a heckuva job - and that news reports contradicting these beliefs reflect liberal media bias.

Democrats: The Other Imperialist Party

It is no doubt puzzling to many that, despite the massive popular opposition to Bush and the Iraq war, the Democrats are powerless against the Bush administration.

In the past—in the run-up to the 2003 invasion and in the 2004 presidential election—the Democrats justified their prostration and complicity by the supposedly overwhelming popular support for the president.

The fundamental reason for the Democrats’ impotence is the character of the Democratic Party. It is, no less than the Republicans, a party of US imperialism.

The Democrats have from the onset supported the basic imperialist aims underlying the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the broader striving of the American financial elite to utilize its military power to dominate the world’s resources and markets.

The war was never simply “Bush’s war.” The Democrats repeated the lies used by the administration to drag the American people into the war and supplied the necessary votes in Congress to give Bush the authority to launch an unprovoked war of aggression.

Their criticisms have been directed not against the war itself, but rather against the administration’s incompetence in conducting it and the military and political disaster it has produced.

The Democrats have done, and will do, nothing to actually halt the war or impede its expansion, because the overwhelming consensus within the US ruling elite is that any outcome perceived as a defeat for the United States would have catastrophic consequences for the global position of American capitalism.

The Republican Party, no matter how unpopular and discredited among the people, prevails because it represents most directly the interests of the most determined and ruthless sections of the ruling elite.

The Democrats, on the other hand, serve a very specific function within the political establishment.

They defend the basic interests of the ruling class, while promoting the fiction that their party is something it is not now and never was—a party of average working people.

This is what imparts to the Democratic Party its inveterate duplicity, half-heartedness and cowardice.

tags: bush regime  iraq  empire  imperialism  

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