JULIAN COPPENS looks at the similarities between the Iraq war and the Vietnam war.
The US will be defeated in Iraq as it movement at home. However, this time sections of the US military have started to realise this at a far earlier point in the conGrowing support among Iraqis for the armed resistance against the US-led occupation has led top US military officers to acknowledge that the US is headed for defeat in Iraq. According to the May 9 Washington Post, this "view is far from universal, but it is spreading, and being voiced publicly for the
The Post reported that a "senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United
"It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this", the general, who asked not be named, said. "The American people may not stand for it and they should not."
His comments were echoed by US Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad and who is
Hughes told the Post that the US military in Iraq was headed toward the same sort of strategic defeat that it had suffered in
" lost. my brother in Vietnam", said Hughes. "1 promised myself, when I came on active duty, that i would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic defeat] from happening again. Here 1 am, 30 Resistance on the ground in Vietnam reinforced the growing opposition within the USA years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't underMany senior US officers, the Post reported, "are worried by evidence that the United States is losing ground with the Iraqi public". It cited a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll conducted in March which found that about twothirds of Arab Iraqis want the US-led occupaMajor General Charles Swannack, the commander of the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division, told the Post he believed the US occupation forces were capable of winning any specific battle with Iraqi resistance fighters. But when asked whether he believed the US was losing the war, he responded: "I think
"In Iraq, we are rapidly losing the support of the middle, which will enable the insurgency to persist practically indefinitely until unnamed senior US military intelligence offiThe anti-war movement has also built the biggest and broadest movement possible by concentrating on one fundamentally anti-imperialist demand, "Troops Out
The result has been the largest global antiwar demonstrations ever that have brought down Aznar's pro-war government in Spain and devastated the Labour Party in local elecThe next pro-war government to the face the ballot box will be John Howard's conserhasn't been called yet but George Bush has already publicy supported Howard and called on Australian voters not to vote for the Australian Labour Party, who have promised to pull out Australian troops by Christmas if elected.
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, America's second most senior diplomat, also publicly stated that if the Australian Labor Party is elected and fulfils its electoral promise to pull the troops out they will end the US-Australian military alliance and the Free Trade Agreement currently being
in all its Australian print and broadcasting media to re-elect Howard.
The June 30 Global Day of Action against the war will be a very important mobilisation knows the defeat of another pro-war government at the ballot box before the US presidential elections will be a serious blow to the legitimacy of the ongoing occupation and his chances of re-election.
On the left the anti-war movement has deepened the political consciousness of the anti-capitalist movement, that developed during a relatively peaceful period for global capigiven the left a valuable lesson in the necessity
The broader left unity of RESPECT has only been possible because of the success of antiwar activists in building the largest anti-war
Vietnam demonstrated to the world that the most powerful military force in human history can be defeated, a phenomenon referred to as the "Vietnam Syndrome" by
The Iraq War will confirm that the "Vietnam Syndrome" is alive and well. The left has learnt the lessons of the Vietnam War well. Imperialism's defeat is only a matter of "The Day After Tomorrow" ", reviewed THE SIGNIFICANCE of this film for a socialist newspaper is that it tackles a current political issue, namely the effects of human-induced climate change. Many commentators have hailed the fact that a Hollywood blockbuster is at last tackling a serious environmental issue. However, the its handling is so crass that the likelihood of previously uninformed cinema-goers concluding there was a need to actively address climate change is small.
The film takes as its premise the possibility that global warming will eventually shut down the warm sea currents circulating between the equator and the North Atlantic, so that large sections of Europe and North America experience a cooling of their climates over a period of 50-100 years.
A scientific paper in March strengthened the view that these currents have naturally shut down in the past, causing a cooling period known as the Younger Dryas I1,500 years ago.
As pointed out in Socialist Resistance previously - even the Pentagon is taking seriously the possibility that the human-induced global warming could have a similar outCome
This view is also shared by the film's hero, a climatologist, who announces to a nearly snow-bound New Delhi conference that a "new ice age" could be only a hundred years away. The skeptical Cheney-like Vice President scoffs at these "extreme" views.
The problem is that while Cheney's view is undermined by the film, so are the real scientific findings, as the ice age proceeds to develop - not just in Europe and the USA, but all over the norther hemisphere -all in the space of the following week! Not only that, but the degree of cooling and the rate at which it occurs defy all scientific laws.
The ridiculous extremity of these events provides the excuse for the real substance of the film, which is to provide an adventure story, backed up by sophisticated computer graphics and a truly cheesy plot line.
Our intrepid hero redeems himself in the eyes of his semi-estranged son by rescuing him from an ice-bound New York public library. Mearwhile, the also-semiestranged neurologist wife waits selflessly at the bedside of the child brain tumour patient as the ambulance struggles to get through the snow to evacuate them. Yuk!
Meanwhile what remains of the US population evacuates to Mexico, the latter having agreed to this in return for the cancellation of all Third World debt.
The Mexican government is clearty not credited with enough intelligence to realise that the "big freeze" has basically done the debt cancellation for them by destroying all the imperialist powers
The rapidity of the climate change is pre sumably meant to highlight the contrast between what we have now and the devas tation of the "day after tomorrow". Ever this doesn't work. The prettiness of the computer graphics masks the horror of the death of hundreds of millions of US people.
The film is basically so unrealistic as to be complacent. Nowhere is the role of fossil fuel use in dimate change addressed, nor the responsibility of the oil companies (The film was made by Fox, a Murdoch company).
Everyone (well, half of them) lives happily ever after and now-President Cheney is also redeemed by apologising for his earlier dismissal of the climatologists' views and decides that the "USA" should now be nice to the third world which is accommodating them.
Hollywood has addressed environmenta issues in the past, in a much more coherent way.. One example, which looked at cli mate change as early as 1973, was Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston and Edward G Robinson.
Because it wasn't "the day after tomorrow", but 50 years hence (now 20 years) the film was able to show the social effects of gradual environmental destruction, with food riots, rátioning, armed guards on every farm and one corporation controlling half the world's food supply (including Soylent Green, made from euthanased humans).
A film to look out for is of T. Coraghessan Boyle's book "The Tortilla Curtain". In this, a bourgeois US environmentalist develops rabidly anti-immigrant views as a result of an encounter with the destitution of the Mexican immigrants his lifestyle depends on.
This film will hopefully show what the day after tomorrow is likely to hold for us: continuing environmental destruction and its social and political consequences
page 22 of the scan
22 soclalstn Joe Craig reports from
Belfast on the result of
the referendum which proves that Ireland is
as racist as any other
"If your Irish come into the parlour
There's a welcome there for you
If your name is Timothy or Pat
There's welcome here in Ireland
As long as you're not black."
The referendum restricting Irish citior who had been legally resident in Ireland for three of the previous four years was passed overwhelmihgly by a decisive majority of 79.2 per cent to 20.8 per cent.
The change was initially motivated by the
minister Michael McDowell that foreign, i.e. black, women were putting significant strain on the Irish State's maternity hospitals through arriving late into the country in order to give birth and claim Irish citizenship for their children. The "integrity' of the citizenship laws had to be upheld and this. loophole' closed. It was claimed these women were 'citizenship tourists' who were unfairly gaining rights to live within other countries of the EU. They were thus gaining citizenship while having little or no loyalty to the Irish State.
No reliable figures were ever presented on the extent of this 'abuse' but whatever numbers were quoted made clear the phenomenon was insignificant.
The 'integrity' of the law had not previously been questioned except by acknowledged extremists and the change to the constitution and proposed legislation did not propose to take citizenship rights off those IrishAmericans who had a grandparent from the Emerald Isle but who had never set foot on Irish soil. Their rights were not to be called into question despite their profession of allegiance to another state.
The arguments for the change involving foreigners' claims on resources and Irish integrity' were unsubstantiated, incoherent and racist to the core. They received widespread endorsement. In all areas of the country the change won substantial support. Voting took place on the same day as the local and European elections. This encouraged a high turn out. In the Dublin region the yes vote was 78.1 per cent while in Ulster it was 77.2 per cent. Urban or rural - all areas heavily backed the constitutional amendment. In only three areas did opposition to
nce Summer 2004 Stalingrad O'Neill the change exceed 25 percent.
When the proposal to hold the referendum was first announced it was widely char- , working class was taking place? acterised as racist. Some opponents however recoiled from such a characterisation. They feared it would be wrong to describe as racist all those who would support the racist proposal. Behind such views may have laid well-founded fears of the extent of racist views in the country. mary target of this referendum proposal was the Irish working class - both native and immigrant. The division of the working class through racism and xenophobia weakens the whole class and strengthens the State and employers. Attacks on the rights of asylum seekers and immigrant workers weaken the protection of all workers not just by attacking the most vulnerable but by undermining the grounds for defending native workers Hard memories of anti-Irish racism have not prevented Ireland's own racist bachlash
What was the trade union movement doing while this racist attack on the Irish
It would be wrong to say it did nothing just because it had not campaigned against the referendum. While the governing parties were campaigning to enshrine racism into the constitution the trade unions were negotiating a new social partnership deal with the government.
so disappointed many workers. It has been at the heart of the policies and programme that the government and all establishment parties have espoused and the legacy which workers have increasingly
The vast majority of workers therefore have no conception of a progressive alternative to the failed policies of the establishment, supported by the trade unions: its restriction of wage demands, privatisation agenda, parsimonious funding of public services, utility charges, stroke politics and wholesale corruption. In these circumstances both the anger and blame can be displaced onto immigrants and asylum seekers - for stealing the resources meant for native workers - precisely the argument of the referendum's sponsors The scale of the yes vote shows that no campaign against it in the last few months could have succeeded. The ground for the widespread racist sentiment it revealed has been laid over many years -through the policies of the government and the collaboration of the worker's own organisations. The opposition could have been W achieved during a campaign was promotion of the view that workers have their own interests and views to defend against racism and the racist arguments of the referendum. This opportunity was missed The opposition to the referendum from the main parties was not the sort of principled kind that could inspire a real resistance. Fine Gael initially opposed the referendum purely on the grounds of timing and then rowed in behind it. The Labour Party put up posters that exclaimed "no facts no figures" (but ignored the argument). Sinn Fein called for an undefined immigration policy that
respected human rights. We look forward to their devising the first ever nondiscriminatory immigration controls.
The campaign against the referendum created by the left was tiny and without resources and this has been the explanation for defeat put forward by its spokesmen. What was the trade union movement doing while this racist attack on the Irish working class was taking place? Negotiating a new social partnership deal with the government. That and the claim that the electorate had
been 'manipulated.' The element of truth in
both claims should not blind them or us to
the deeper failures.
Most important however were the political failings of the campaign. Its tone and content went little above the liberal one of all
children are equal.' We said that such arguments would be unconvincing and they
were. Neither adults nor children are equal
in Irish society.
Equality can only be achieved by the
working class but little specific appeal was
made to working class concerns. Once again
the left reduced its politics to the lowest
common denominator of opposition in order
to create a largely fictitious unity with others
Where are we now?
The referendum revealed the widespread racism that exists in lrish
society. The large yes vote right
across the country demonstrates this. That the referendum encouraged a higher turnout is troubling, whatever its extent. This racism pervades also those forces that call themselves 'left'.
An opinion poll before the referendum found that among Labour Party supporters 55 percent said they would vote yes, among Green Party supporters 60 per cent said they wotild vote yes and among Sinn Fein supporters 57 per cent would do so.
Apologists for Sinn Fein who try to claim the gains by that party on the back of some popular radicalisation will have a hard job explaining this.
The government now has a blank cheque to legislate what changes it wants and this will allow it further opportunities to promote a racist agenda. Racist attacks will probably increase. The task of advancing working class consciousness has received a real blow and has been set back. We have received more than a warning.
The left, the only irreconcilable opponents of racism, must realise that rejection of governments and growth of so-called radical alternatives that eschew working class and socialist politics will not automatically combat racism. Indeed we have just seen it is perfectly compatible with it.
The task of the left is not to reflect and simply capture the disenchantment and anger of growing sections of the working class with the present political establishment. The task is to give it some political leadership and content, to give it a programme.
This is necessary not just to fight racism but to fight all the attacks on the working class. • Visit Socialist Democracy's website www.socialistdemocracy.org/Index.htm
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soclaust resistance Summer 2004 23 .. •