Smoking gun confirmed, bla bla bla
Today’s news is full of “confirmed” reports that chemical weapons have been found in Iraq. We can expect the Bush administration to claim vindication for their invasion of Iraq, since Iraqi possession of chemical weapons was the pretext for the invasion. Sensible Americans should view these claims with suspicion.
Leaving aside the fact that several previous reports of chemical weapons evidence have been found to be false, there is very little reason to believe this latest report. The U.S. military has zero credibility. The alleged evidence is presented to us by the same people who started the war. It would be no exaggeration to say that the political fate of the President of the United States, and many of his cronies, depends on finding chemical weapons in Iraq. We don’t think he’s above planting the evidence.
Even if the reports are true, however, the presence of banned weapons in Iraq in no way vindicates the war. The war was never about Iraq posing a threat. First and foremost, George Bush needs a permanent foreign war to maintain his repressive political program at home. Constant terror alerts and constant war provide justification for unprecedented rollbacks in civil liberties. They also provide cover for a domestic economic policy that is all about helping the rich at the expense of the working class. Huge tax breaks for the rich are just the most conspicuous aspect of the Bush program. Subsidies for churches, increased work requirements for those on welfare, handouts to insurance and drug companies, deregulation of media ownership, and the outlawing of affirmative action are all in progress.
The war is also part of a broad plan to remake the world on behalf of American capitalists. Under the Bush doctrine, no country is allowed to defend itself, or even potentially defend itself, from the United States. Under the Bush doctrine, only the United States still enjoys sovereignty, and only countries other than the United States are subject to international law. The wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have been just the beginning of this imperial plan. The next war, against Iran or North Korea or perhaps Syria, is presumably in the planning stages already.
The so-called liberation of Afghanistan has already returned the countryside to the rule of the brutal warlords who ran the place before the Taliban. The “liberation” of Iraq will, if Bush has his way, be implemented as a military occupation and dictatorship.
So none of our criticisms of the war, or the war criminals who started it, are going away. Nor will we stop opposing the war, or the occupation of Iraq, when the shooting stops.