that will have enormous political consequences. The idea of American military might imposing total world dominance - an ersatz sort of US world government - is being put at risk. How so?
The battles in Iraq are the result of a national uprising: US repression has enormously strengthened the idea of a panIslamic, pan-Iraqi resistance. In the stormy days of April thousands of ordinary Shi'as in the south of the country lined up to give blood and donate food to the embattled Sunni community in Fallujah. A national liberation war is unfolding. America's master plan for Iraq - a puppet government, US control of the economy and 14 massive military bases in perpetuity - is now in danger. A USoccupied Iraq looks ungovernable, period.
troops now returning in coffins factor in American politics. There are limits to this of course, given the craven support of the Democrats for the war, and the Nonetheless post-September 11 unanimity behind Bush is a distant memory.
The Bush regime's strategy has been undermined by four factors. First the heroic resistance in Fallujah, obviously mainly carried out by Iraqis and not by 'outsiders". Second the devastating torture scandal, hardly news to the Iraqis, but a crushing blow to claims of Anglo-American moral superiority and their claims to be 'liberators'.
Third is the disquiet about US blitzkrieg tactics in the Iraqi puppet government itself, leading to several resignations. And finally the refusal of sections of the re-formed Iraqi army to fight against their embattled brothers and sisters in Fallujah, which makes it an unreliable alternative tool of repression.
This adds up to an enormous political defeat for the invaders. Political and military defeat in Iraq is leading to political defeat
Three things show this. First the Al-Qaida train bombings in Madrid, and the defeat of the right-wing government in the elections which followed. It was self-evident to large parts of the Spanish electorate that the bombing was a response to Spain's participaThe reaction of many of the Madrid population out on the streets in their millions after the bombing was to demand 'peace' not revenge. Masses of people making the connection between western policies in the Middle East and terrorism is a huge development. Pre-war warnings (even by Tories like Kenneth Clarke) that invasion of Iraq would make terrorist attacks more likely are evidently coming true, something well understood by European governments, who unlike their US counterparts have large Muslim
The second key factor is the torture scandal. This is not like the 1950s and early 1960s when France could use systematic torture in Algeria, with only the small non-Stalinist left Contemporary sensibilities about human rights, and indeed the utilisation of human rights rhetoric by the Clinton administration especially, make the torture scandal an absolute disaster for the Bush regime and its affiliate in Downing Street.
On September 12 2001 the French daily Liberation proclaimed 'We are all Americans': where is the newspaper outside the US that will echo such sentiments today? T sharon an when me he we return for making Israeli settlements on the West Bank permanent, thus gutting any possibility of even a Palestinian mini-state.
US diplomatic policy has traditionally been process', focusing on Palestinian surrender, under the auspices of the State Department.
This is what the utterly capitulationist 1992 Oslo peace agreement negotiated by Arafat and the Shamir-Perez government
Whatever the reality, in appearance it maintained the US role of an 'even-handed' America, sympathetic to Israel by acting for a
The rejection of the plan by Sharon's Likud party is of little consequence. Bush has nailed his colours to the mast (to woo the Jewish vote), and Israel will act on some variant of
To the hard-core US neocons this seems like a smart move, but old diplomatic hands
It only adds the US's international isolaSharon's assassinations policy - bloody conwhile to look back at the Vietnam war. The US was not defeated militarily in Vietnam in the sense of being physically thrown out of the country or having its army defeated in open battle - a total impossibility given the vastly greater firepower of the US legions.
But defeats in battle, spiralling casualties -more than 16,000 dead in 1967-8 alone -and most importantly an inability to defeat a tenacious enemy with massive popular supIs Vietnam being repeated? Yes and no. US casualties are not nearly so high as in Vietnam. So far, Iraq is not nearly such a divisive issue in US politics, although discord is growing. Neither is Iraq anything like so costly to the US economy - so far.
But there is one decisive similarity already the US has lost the political battle in the country itself, decisive and irreversibly. This means that - at differing tempos over time - the insurgency will continue. Bush and the generals want more troops, which repeats the 1960s Vietnam fallacy that more
Political defeat and military setback have already clipped the empire's wings, with little talk now of going on to Syria, Iran or North Korea. Fallujah has shown the limits of what
New debates will unfold in the American political and business elites about the US being 'overstretched' and the foolishness of such a decisive reliance on military power. This will reshape the political map - and very gradually, open up new opportunity for
Peace movements, as broad alliances, wil axis their slogans around troop withdrawa and peaceful settlement. Marxists will haster the development of these broad forces towards anti-imperialism by urgently raising the necessity for solidarity with the Ira
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Palestine