The Gulf War: What it means and how to stop it

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[Statement by Socialist Action Political Committee] President George Bush, and America's ruling capitalist class, have unleashed the most destructive air bombardment the world has ever seen against the 17 million people of Iraq. In the last two weeks, over 40,000 bombing sorties—10,000 more than were flown against Japan during the last 14 months of World War II- have been launched to drop record tonnages of high explosives.

In the first week alone, the destructive power of 2000 daily sorties by the U.S.-led air-raiders was reported to surpass the explosive force of one Hiroshima-type atom bomb. Moreover, the deadly accuracy of computerized, guded bombs has intensified the havoc being wreaked on this poor coun try.

But despite virtually 24-hour electronic news coverage, we have been given hardly an inkling of what must be the most terrible cost in life, and in the quality of life of Iraqi men, women and children. The Iraqi people and their armed forces seem to have weathered the holocaust, thus far, without any sign of an impending break in morale or mass determination to resist.

And the whole world seems to have exploded in massive and repeated protests from Germany across Europe to Spain, and from Mexico down the continent to Argentina.

In the face of the fearsome forces unleashed by the most powerful military power on earth, the initial hopes for a quick victory seem to have been dashed. From expectations of a war only days or weeks long, U.S government estimates of the war's duration have stretched gloomily to months and possibly longer.

In this country alone, two giant antiwar protests, just one week apart, have already taken place on both coasts. On Jan. 19, over 100,000 people marched in San Francisco; nearly that amount marched in Washington, D.C. And on Jan. 26, some half million marched and rallied against the war in the same two cities.

Another coordinated national mobilization, this time planned as local actions on campuses and in towns and cities across the land, has been called by the organizers of the Jan. 26 demonstrations. The new actions are to take place on the weekend of Feb. 15-16. On Jan. 27, a national student antiwar conference also called for national student actions on Feb. 19.

Moreover, unlike during the Vietnam era, unions in many countries having suffered increasing setbacks and takeaways, have entered the struggle against capitalist war at its very outset.

On Jan. 26, in San Francisco, thousands of trade-unionists, officially called out by Bay Area Central Labor Councils, organized union-by-union contingents. Their banners and slogans reflected both their opposition to the war and their anger at the capitalist assault on their living standards.

While many have noted the speed with which the current antiwar movement erupted even before the air attack began, most people did not expect such massive turnouts before U.S. troops were sent into Kuwait to force the Iraqis out. It was widely believed that only large-scale casualties would trigger such massive mobilizations as have already taken place.

This unexpected explosion of mass opposition marks the opening of a new period of pre-revolutionary action on a scale previously undreamed of. This is despite continued, albeit shaky, economic stability.

However, this sudden shift in consciousness doesn't come from out of the blue. The only reasonable explanation is that worldwide mass awareness of the crimes of world imperialism has been accumulating beneath the surface and is now breaking through the myths which the capitalist monopoly of the media relentlessly propagates.

More and more people now see that the unending series of wars—which since the mid-1930s have accelerated in frequency and 4 SOCIALIST ACTION destructive force-had little to do with the myth of "Communist expansionism."

And the economic and social convulsions ples. in the Stalinist world have led Mikhail Gorbachev and his bureaucratic counterparts in Eastern Europe to plead for peace and disarmament, and for membership in the imperialist camp of "free and democratic nations." But this only accelerated world capitalism's need to send guns, planes, rockets and EBRUARY 1991 declaration of war against Iraq constitutes Gorbachev and Co.'s down-payment on dues to be paid to the U.S. lords of world imperialism.

The pretext for American imperialism's relentless stockpiling of planes, tanks, rockets-and enough atomic bombs to destroy all life on the planet many times over-has suddenly evaporated. It is now clear that this massive military force had nothing to do with "defense of freedom and democracy."

Now, adding further to the radicalization of mass consciousness is a developing economic crisis which threatens to throw the entire world into major financial collapse. This explosive mixture is rising in temperature and is showing signs of boiling over.

This grave threat to the stability of world capitalism is the real reason for "Operation Desert Storm." The aggression of the U.S. is intended to send a message to the exploited and oppressed everywhere that every challenge to the rights and privileges of the world's exploiters and oppressors will be met by unlimited force.

From Northern Africa to the Persian Gulf, the Arab nation has been parceled out as booty among the imperialist brigands. Like the hundreds of millions throughout the colonial world, the Arab and other peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America have been struggling for freedom since the beginning of this century.

In a cascading series of uprisings, the captive peoples of the world have fought for and achieved a condition of semiindependence from Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Austria-to name only the main imperialist oppressors.

In the course of the colonial revolution, most of the old-style colonies won their political "independence"-many of them only since the end of World War II.

But as the vassal states won a measure of independence, they were immediately subjugated by a new kind of capitalist imperialism which continues to reign over and super-exploit the neo-colonial world by virtue of its enormous economic power. Kings, princes, and dictators of all kinds are regularly installed and replaced by mighty international banking and industrial corporations-backed up by the military force of the most developed industrial powers in the capitalist world.

And standing above them all is the superPeter Tumley imperialism of the American ruling class, the richest and most powerful of the new colonialist powers.

The U.S. military colossus, before World War II, sent its marines to maintain "order" in its Latin American backyard. But since the second big re-division of the colonial world among the victors after World War II, American military power has increasingly functioned as a central force for maintaining imperialist world domination.

Now, in addition to the advanced consciousness prevailing in the colonial world for most of the past century, we are seeing the first signs of the rise of pre-revolutionary consciousness in the West, including in the very heartland of world imperialism-the United States.

And now, the world's exploitative and parasitic regimes have become aware of the new stage being reached by the developing world revolution.

But they, like all social and political entities in critically threatening circumstances, are being driven toward choosing between two antagonistic "solutions." On the one side, they are pressured toward uniting in defense of profits and privilege wherever it is challenged. But, on the other, they are also being driven toward the choice of saving one's self at the expense of one's allies.

This is because, among other things, they are increasingly being divided by the sharpening conflict between them over everdeclining sources of profit. Consequently, they find it increasingly difficult to hold together at the very moment they have chosen to unite in defense of common interests.

Joseph Ryan Socialist ACIlOR American imperialism's role in the New bombs to its colonial puppets threatened by World Order is to police its partners in the the revolutionary action of their hungry peo- ruling alliance, as well as its rebellious victims. Like a general compelled to take the Gorbachev and Co.'s application for most drastic measures in battle, American membership in the free world as they simul- imperialism is prepared to shoot its own tanieously began a running jump toward cap- stragglers and deserters. italist restoration, led not to a "peace diviThe Iraqi regime, wracked by a crisis dend," but to the invasion of Panama and the partly resulting from their eight-year war Persian Gulf! And the Eastern European Stalinist bureaucracies' approval of the U.N. (continued on page 13)

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