February 20--To understand the current phase of the imperialist war against Iraq, it is necessary to see it in the perspective of the recent historical period involving the Middle East as a whole.The first phase of the struggle began with Iraq's Aug. 2 intervention into Kuwait, which it proclaimed part of the Iraqi nation. From Aug. 2 until Aug. 8, the U.S. mobilized the leading imperialist countries--Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Spain, Italy and Canada--and a number of minor dependent states. During this period the U.S. and its imperialist allies utilized the UN Security Council as a screen for their preparations for a predatory war against an oppressed nation. Kuwait was the pretext.
For the next three-and-a-half months, the U.S. was engaged in dragooning as many governments as possible--by coercion, bribery or corruption--to support its designs on the sovereignty of the entire Middle East region. During this period, both China and the Soviet Union definitively defected from their previous anti-imperialist positions. Earlier, they had been relatively helpful in supporting the struggles of oppressed countries against imperialism.
During this entire period the USSR seemed to work hand in glove with the U.S. The aim was to force the Iraqi government to capitulate to the demands of the Security Council resolutions and unconditionally withdraw from Kuwait. This was the period when the UN imposed a whole series of economic sanctions against Iraq.
The Nov. 29 resolution
The series of anti-Iraq resolutions emanating from the Security Council reached a climax on Nov. 29 when that body passed a resolution--sponsored by the U.S. and co-sponsored by the Soviet Union--that gave the U.S. the green light to militarily attack Iraq. China abstained on this last resolution, but had voted for the previous ones. China effectively removed itself from the UN deliberations and the maneuvers directed against Iraq, but also made a deep retreat from any semblance of anti-imperialist solidarity with Iraq.
Then came the period of the UN ultimatum. January 15 was set as the date for Iraq to unconditionally withdraw from Kuwait or face military consequences. The very formidable, utterly unprecedented deployment of U.S. air and naval forces followed. It reached the astonishing number of almost half a million women and men.
Iraq failed to heed this diktat from the UN Security Council, which had in fact acted as the instrument of the collective imperialist powers. So on Jan. 16 the U.S. and its principal imperialist coalition co-conspirators opened a massive air assault on Iraq.
The assault's proportions are comparable only to the Nazi Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War. But the current air offensive by the allied imperialist powers uses more sophisticated technology. And it is coordinated among the U.S., Britain and France. To this very day, these air raids continue. They now number over 80,000 sorties, carried out on a daily, unremitting, unrelenting basis.
According to the claims of the allied imperialists, almost all of Iraq's significant military installations, so-called biological and chemical weapons centers, and supposed nuclear capabilities were either effectively crippled or demolished. Yet there was no capitulation by the Iraqi government, nor any significant signs of a break in the morale of the embattled Iraqi people.
Change in military strategy
So another phase of the imperialist assault upon the Iraqi people was begun. Up until Feb. 13, the unprecedented massive air assaults on Iraq seemed to be directed against military targets. There was, of course, what the imperialist military refers to as "collateral damage," meaning civilian casualties. But the civilian casualties, even according to the Iraqi government, were not so massive as to convey the impression that the U.S. was specifically aiming at civilian targets.
The air assault of Feb. 13 changed everything. It did not of course change its class character, as a war of the leading monopoly capitalist imperialist countries against an oppressed people. But it did change the character of the war's conduct from a military standpoint.
For on Feb. 13 the U.S. unleashed an unprecedented massive assault, a pinpoint attack by two missiles launched from a Stealth bomber against not a military target, but a civilian establishment--an air raid shelter, no less. The U.S. claim that the shelter was a cover for a military outpost was ridiculous on its face.
It would have been entirely in order, even customary, for the U.S. Air Force to give a warning of even a few minutes if not some hours before attacking the facility so its inhabitants could vacate the premises. This they failed to do.
They also failed to answer a reporter's key question at a military briefing: why didn't they show the video that supposedly showed military personnel going in and out of the bomb shelter? The U.S. military refused to produce the pictures or allow an independent investigation of the incident. Within the space of 24 hours it announced that its own internal investigation, conducted in secret of course, was over and the case closed.
British join in with attack on market
Thus, the character of the war had changed from attacking military targets to the fascist-like mass destruction of the civilian population. Soon the British joined in, killing 130 civilians in a market while attacking a bridge supposedly used for military purposes. The mass destruction of the civilian population has gone on steadily in the week since.
What is the significance of the swift change from attacking military targets to wholesale attacks on the civilian population? It foreshadowed the beginning of a genuine genocidal war against Iraq. This was a turning point in the war. It elicited an announcement and an offer from the Iraqi government, which for the first time stated it would withdraw from Kuwait and offered to begin discussions toward that end.
The Feb. 13 attack was a deliberate, premeditated move that couldn't be explained away. So within the space of a few days, this mass murder carried out by the U.S. military against a civilian population all but disappeared from the capitalist media here.
Here it is necessary to recall another so-called military incident that will shed considerable light on the meaning of the bloody Feb. 13 attack on the air raid shelter.
It took place toward the close of the Iran-Iraq war when both the belligerents were nearing exhaustion.
Remember the Iranian airliner?
The U.S. had for a considerable period secretly supported the Iraqi side of the war. The U.S. aim during the early period of the Iran-Iraq war was to allow both belligerents to exhaust themselves in a conflict which could only benefit the imperialist ruling classes in the end. But by the summer of 1988, the U.S. had decided that its secret support of the Iraqi regime was inadequate for its sordid purposes. And it had to send an unmistakable message to Iran that the U.S. was shifting its support to Iraq, in order to curb and possibly destroy Iran's economic and political influence in the Persian Gulf.
On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes launched a surface-to-air missile at an Iranian civilian airliner. It was on a scheduled commercial flight from Bandar-Abbas to Dubai. The attack resulted in the deaths of 290 passengers and crew members.
The U.S. proclaimed the whole thing was an "error" by the crew of the Vincennes. But further investigation found no fault and resulted in no punishment. The incident was dismissed and forgotten.
However, it was precisely this act of mass murder of civilians that compelled the belligerents in the Iran-Iraq war to call a halt to military hostilities. It effectively ended the war.
The July 3, 1988, mass murder was an attempt by the U.S. to demonstrate that it would go to any lengths to achieve its predatory imperialist objectives. It is a precise parallel to the Feb. 13 mass murder of civilians in Iraq under a similarly veiled cover of a supposed attack on a military target, which showed that the Pentagon and White House were at one in the goal of subjugating the Iraqi people to U.S. imperialism.
Up until Feb. 13, the U.S. was unable to subjugate or vanquish the small country of Iraq, even though the war conducted by the imperialists was of a collective, coordinated character, concentrated on one small country fighting alone.
Now, had the USSR not abandoned its limited anti-imperialist role and become an accomplice to butchering the Iraqi people, the outcome of this struggle might have been altogether different. It is questionable whether the imperialists would have been able to effectuate their conspiracy and form a coalition. They would have been unable to garner the support of the smaller countries. Even the puppet states in the Middle East might have hesitated had the Soviet Union taken a forthright stand, vetoed any of the U.S.-sponsored resolutions, and begun in earnest an effort to rally the anti-imperialist forces. The outcome might have been different.
As it turned out, the Gorbachev regime was working hand in glove with the U.S. It had become beholden to imperialism and in particular to the U.S. as a result of its program of instituting capitalist economic reforms under the assumption it would be the beneficiary of significant economic and political concessions from the U.S. and the other imperialist countries. But the capitalist reforms on which the Gorbachev regime staked its position led to one economic disaster after another. They have left the USSR in chaos and incredible economic dislocation.
From the most credit worthy country on the international arena, the USSR has become a debtor nation on the scale of Brazil and Argentina. It has received no significant economic or monetary concessions from the imperialists. But there has been an unending series of attempts to scuttle the socialized sector of the Soviet economy.
Gorbachev was unable to intervene on behalf of Iraq precisely because he had accommodated himself to the needs of the U.S. imperialist ruling class. His recent attempt to play the role of mediator, peacemaker, comes late in the day.
Gorbachev's role in `peace process'
So why is the Soviet governing group intervening in the so-called peace process when all the world knows it has been a firm pillar of the imperialist alliance? The answer lies in the dual character of the Soviet Union.
Notwithstanding the chaos, disruption, economic dislocation and dismantling of parts of Soviet socialist industry and agriculture, it is still nevertheless basically a social system that stands in irreconcilable contradiction to predatory imperialism. Gorbachev and his collaborators may surely be beholden to the imperialists. But they are also at the same time the custodians of a workers' state. They cannot give imperialism unlimited license to attack and possibly destroy Iraq and then become the supreme plenipotentiary controlling the entire Middle East. They can't completely pave the way for the U.S. government to establish a military fortress in Iraq, just 150 miles from the Soviet border.
But rather than do the principled thing--make a complete break with the imperialists and ally themselves with the oppressed peoples of the Middle East--the Gorbachev grouping has in fact defected from the anti-imperialist camp. Thereby it has weakened the cause of liberation of dozens of countries that suffer under the yoke of imperialism. It has also weakened the USSR itself and opened it up to the ravages of imperialist economic and financial penetration.
Gorbachev, in presenting what is now being called a peace plan, is not really a mediator between Iraq and the imperialists. A mediator has at least the perfunctory appearance of neutrality. Certainly this is true in labor relations. When a big stockholder in the company is appointed as mediator, the union rejects the appointment. A mediator who is known as a militant trade unionist is rejected by the company. There must be at least the external features of neutrality.
But Gorbachev has not been neutral in this struggle. The USSR under his leadership has voted for each one of the infamous UN resolutions directed against an oppressed country. He even co-sponsored with the U.S. the very resolution that gave the green light to the current imperialist war against Iraq. Even after his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, resigned, Gorbachev affirmed solidarity with the imperialists in carrying out the demands on Iraq. How then can he be regarded as a neutral mediator?
In reality, he is a principal prop of the imperialist coalition. Indeed, it is altogether doubtful whether the imperialists could have constructed their shaky alliance had they not first received support from the USSR governing group and in particular Gorbachev himself.
So why must Iraq deal with the USSR as though it were a neutral, if not an altogether friendly, power?
The Gorbachev "peace plan" doesn't represent so much a fundamental policy change by the USSR as an attempt by the governing group to persuade public opinion in the USSR that it is seeking a peaceful solution--that it is somehow still on the opposite side from the imperialists who are now preparing for their ground offensive. That offensive holds the possibility of destroying the very basis for the existence of the Iraqi nation.
Alarm over the course of the war is beginning to be expressed by the Soviet military itself. Gorbachev's military adviser, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, is reported to have criticized the allied bombardments of "the people and the economy" of Iraq. "This can't be tolerated any longer," Akhromeyev told the press.
More critical was General Vladimir Lobov, commander in chief of the Warsaw Pact forces. "No one should be allowed to use Security Council resolutions as a smokescreen to camouflage the massacre on Iraqi territory," he said.
The need is greater than ever for the anti-imperialist masses around the world, including and especially those in the imperialist countries themselves, to redouble their efforts at a time when millions are repelled and angered by the murderous bombings.