Blood for Oil Control by Paul Street (Dems just as motivated by American Empire)

[paparush]

SHARED INTERESTS IN THE ILLUSION OF LEFT VICTORY

The ongoing national political debate over the majority Democratic Congress’s vote FOR the supplemental funding of the illegal United States (U.S.) occupation of Iraq reminds me of Noam Chomsky’s analysis of the uses of the word “socialism” in relation to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As Chomsky explained in his 1992 book What Uncle Sam Really Wants (Berkeley, CA: Odonian, 1992), the Soviet Union from its inception was an authoritarian regime that moved quickly to dismantle incipient socialist institutions of popular control and workers’ self-management. In crushing popular and democratic forces, the Russian Revolution and decisively violated essential principles of socialism, including democratic control of production by the working class.

Nonetheless, it became useful for elites on both side of the Cold War to refer to the Soviet Union as the epitome and center of “socialism.” “The Bolsheviks called their system socialist,” Chomsky notes, “so as to exploit the moral prestige of socialism.” ‘ The leading propagandists of the capitalist, business-dominated West “adopted the same usage for the opposite reason: to defame the feared libertarian ideals by associating them with the Bolshevik dungeon, to undermine the popular belief that there might really be progress toward a more just society with democratic control over its basic institutions and concern for human needs and rights” (Noam Chomsky, What Uncle Sam Really Wants , pp. 91-92).

Just as both sides of the Cold War possessed their own very different interests in incorrectly calling the Soviet Union “socialist,” both sides in the current U.S. war-funding and timetable debate have an interest in falsely describing the Congressional votes as “antiwar.”

George W. Bush and his allies are eager to paint the Democrats out as recklessly indifferent to American “national security” and the needs of “our troops.” The right naturally wants to blame the failures of Washington’s incompetent oil invasion on “liberal” and even “left wing” Democrats who are “giving aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom.” The Republicans want to rev up their proto-fascist messianic militarist base by using the “peacenik” votes to advance their disturbing dichotomy between noble “generals” and “heroic soldiers” on the ground and evil “politicians in Washington.”

For their part, the Democrats wish to exploit the moral prestige of antiwar sentiment. Sixty percent of U.S. citizens oppose the increase of U.S. troop levels in Iraq. The occupation is now opposed by two-thirds of Americans. Nearly three fourths (72 percent) of Americans polled last year said that all U.S. in Iraq should come home by the end of 2006. Democrats rode this antiwar sentiment into Congressional majority power last November.

For these and other reasons, it is hardly surprising that Congressional Democrats and leading Democratic presidential candidates are trying to identify themselves with antiwar opinion and claiming to be involved in efforts to end the occupation.

“THIS WAS AN ANTIWAR VOTE?”
But just as the Soviet Union wasn’t really “socialist,” the congressional war-funding and “timetable” votes aren’t really anti-war or, much less, anti-imperial. The Democratic Congress has not exercised its power to end the war. It has not passed an antiwar bill.

In the March 23rd House vote, all but eight of the Democrats (Dennis Kucinich, John Lewis, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson, Lynn Woolsey, Mike McNulty and Mike Michaud) basically gave Bush the money he needs to continue and expand the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and possibly to initiate an assault on Iran.

If the Congressional bill was enacted tomorrow, without a Bush veto, it would fund Bush’s audacious, democracy-defying Surge (escalation) to the supplemental tune of $124 billion – considerably more than the White House actually requested.

The distant troop withdrawal proposed by the House bill is hitched to the same Iraqi government “benchmarks” that Bush announced in his nationally televised escalation speech of January 10, 2007.

The benchmarks for “withdrawal” include the passage by the Iraqi parliament of an imperialist, neoliberal petroleum law. Hidden beneath largely diversionary language about “revenue-sharing” across Iraq’s regions, this law will try to help subject Iraq’s stupendous oil reserves to domination by Western capital and the American Empire.

The “withdrawal” envisioned by Congress would only remove combat troops and only on the eve of the 2008 elections. In the names of “diplomatic protection,” “counter-terrorism,” and the “training and advising of Iraqi Security Forces” (translation: OIL protection), it would leave U.S bases and forces in Iraq for an indefinite period. However much they claim to oppose permanent military bases in Iraq, leading Democrats within and beyond Congress imagine an American military presence in Iraq for decades to come.

The recent legislation, waiting for Bush’s veto on the false grounds that it undermines the assault on Iraq, contains no enforcement mechanism to compel the White House to actually withdraw troops at any point.

The troops supposedly to be moved out of Iraq under Congress’ legislation would not actually “come home.” Congress’ “antiwar” plan re-deploys troops from Iraq to other parts of southwest Asia, reflecting the belief that U.S. forces have been over-focused on Iraq in a way that is dysfunctional for the broader and (Democrats think) noble project of U.S. dominance in the oil-rich Middle East.

The Congressional legislation even removes any stipulation requiring Bush and Cheney to receive Congressional approval before undertaking a major assault on Iran. “With the U.S. openly threatening Iran and with war preparations at an advanced stage, and given the Bush regime’s track record of launching pre-emptive wars based on lies,” Larry Everest notes, “this amounts to giving Bush a bright green light to attack Iran” (Larry Everest, “No Good Choices in the Halls of Power: Congress Votes $100 billion to continue the War,” ZNet, March 30, 2007, available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/print_ article.cfm?itemID =12456§ionID=72). Antiwar and anti-imperial sentiments have not seized the day in Congress

Alexander Cockburn puts the “antiwar vote” things in useful perspective in a recent column titled “This Was an Antiwar Vote?”:

"When it comes to the actual war, which has led to the bloody disintegration of Iraqi society, the deaths of up to 5,000 Iraqis a month, the death and mutilation of US soldiers every day, nothing at all has happened since the Democrats rode to victory in November courtesy of popular revulsion in America against the war. Bush's reaction to this censure at the polls was to appoint a new commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, to oversee the troop surge in Baghdad and Anbar province. The Democrats voted unanimously to approve Petraeus and now they have Okayed the money for the surge. Bush hinted that he would like to widen the war to Iran. Nancy Pelosi, chastened by catcalls at the annual AIPAC convention, swiftly abandoned all talk of compelling Bush to seek congressional authorization to make war on Iran.”(Cockburn, “This Was an Antiwar Vote?” The Nation, April 16, 2007).

Saddest of all, perhaps, 90 percent of the House’s 71 Progressive Caucus voted for the supplemental authorization bill.

This was a truly depressing “progressive” performance, one that speaks volumes about the absence of anything that deserves to be considered a relevant “Left” inside the narrow-spectrum U.S. political system.

All the Democratic congresspersons who voted to fund Bush’s criminal War last March should be sent the special Certificates of Iraq War Ownership that peace activists have designed for them (see http://www.mfso.org/article. php?id=953).
LINK

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Excellent article. Excellent link. K&R