Iraq War intensifies as U.S.-Maliki government declares "victory"

[by Jeff Mackler]

Sure enough, the Iraq War is over! At least, that’s the word from the corporate media. Eighty-five percent of U.S. bases and “outposts” in Iraq were slated to be closed as of June 30, according to U.S. military officials. U.S. forces were said to be withdrawing from Iraq’s cities, “under cover of night,” reported The New York Times.

In Orwellian double-speak, the U.S. puppet government of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has declared a “great victory” comparable to the 1920 Iraqi rebellion against British troops, a “repulsion of foreign occupiers” no less! The cynical June 26 Times “news” article could not help but observe that “the Americans are going along with it, symbolically and substantively.”

Maliki, desperate to demonstrate his independence from U.S. imperialism, declared June 30 a national holiday. He ordered U.S. troops to disappear, like “invisible genies,” according to Ali al-Adeep, a top leader of Maliki’s Dawa Party, but only for a few days!

Meanwhile, the U.S.-financed thugs of the Awakening group have stepped up their attacks, mostly on Shiite civilian targets, although Sunni communities, American military, and Iraqi security forces have also suffered important losses as a result of a series of bombings. Hundreds were killed in three days, June 23-26; many more were wounded.

Undoubtedly, and without Maliki’s permission, Shiite militants will respond with the formation of their own militias. Few believe that the U.S.-trained and backed security forces have the capacity to quell either the mass hatred of the still present U.S. occupation forces or the internecine and U.S.-fueled rivalries among Iraqi groups.

U.S. helicopters continue to pockmark the Iraqi skies, operating out of U.S. bases in Baghdad and elsewhere. They and their bases have been excluded from the “withdrawal” agreements by virtue of a re-drafting of the city’s borders and in recognition that the presence of a U.S.-led rapid and deadly military response was absolutely essential.

Some 130,000 U.S. combat troops remain in Iraq, re-classified as non-combatants and trainers, though armed to the teeth. They have been momentarily removed from public view but remain entrenched in massively fortified and armed bases and airfields replete with the most modern weapons of mass destruction. They will remain in Iraq as long as necessary to assure the exploitation of the nation’s resources and otherwise serve U.S. interests in the region.

Maliki insists, “We will not ask [the U.S.] to intervene in combat operations related to maintaining public order.” But “public order,” a term implying a police operation, is far from what U.S. officials in Iraq have in mind. Deadly force levels are still a requirement for Iraq “stability.” Indeed, the recent wave of bombings could well provide yet another pretext, along with the original claims of “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and “collaboration with the Taliban in the 9/11 bombings,” to justify the continuation of the occupation force.

In addition, 150,000 or more U.S.-paid American mercenaries of every variety continue their deadly deeds unimpeded, the largest privatized army in U.S. history. Last month’s bipartisan Congressional “supplementary” appropriation of $80 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars stands in sharp contrast to all assertions that stability and victory for the U.S. and its puppets is at hand.

American imperialism faces an insoluble dilemma in Iraq. It is hated by the vast majority of the population and the world’s people for its near-genocidal super-power interventions (1.5 million have already been murdered since the first U.S. Persian Gulf War in 1991). And at the same time, enmeshed in the greatest U.S. and world economic crisis of the capitalist order since the Great Depression 80 years ago and challenged by its international capitalist competitors for access to and domination of the world’s markets and resources, it has no exit strategy from Iraq or Afghanistan.

The U.S. is driven by the nature of its exploitative system to ever expanding wars and long-term occupations­–today in Pakistan, where its dependent allies are threatened by their own peoples, and perhaps tomorrow in Iran, where the insurgent mass movement threatens to break out of the framework of clerical capitalist reaction and chart a new course independent of U.S. and world imperialist domination.

Indeed, the rise of the Iranian masses and the ongoing discrediting of all of the pre-selected candidates in the recent rigged elections pose a greater threat to U.S. imperialism than either of the Ahmadinejad or Moussavi pro-capitalist camps. Nevertheless, the Obama administration, initially understanding that U.S. threats against Iran or advice to its government regarding its conduct largely falls on deaf ears, was cautious in its approach, referencing Obama’s rhetorical and deceptive Cairo speech as its new and “humane” guidepost.

The Iranian people have not forgotten the 1953 U.S.-sponsored coup that removed the democratically-elected Mohammad Mossadegh government nor the U.S.-financed 10-year war waged against Iran by Iraq, when the latter was under the tutelage of the U.S. government. Two million Iranians and Iraqis died in that war.

U.S. officials are also mindful that on June 29 six of Iraq’s largest oil field were up for auction to the world’s oil giants. Iraq sits on the world’s third largest oil reserves, after Saudi Arabia and Iran. Backed by the U.S. occupiers, there is little doubt that U.S. oil corporations will have the inside track against its imperialist competitors. Few have forgotten that among the first acts of the U.S. “victors” in 2003 was the tearing up of the oil contacts signed by the Saddam Hussein government with U.S. rivals in France, Russia, and elsewhere.

Conference for a united antiwar movement

The second national conference of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations (National Assembly) comes at a propitious time, when the notion that the Obama administration would fulfill its promise of “change” is beginning to crumble against the reality of the policies implemented under his reign. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars, now Obama’s wars, have been extended to Pakistan, and new threats of aggression and war have been added to the mix with Obama’s belligerent stance toward Iran and North Korea.

The recent military coup in Honduras, with that nation’s newly-elected president forced into exile, cannot be understood without factoring in the role of the U.S. military. U.S. military bases in Honduras have long been used as a launching point for U.S.-sponsored wars and interventions. The Honduran military has been historically armed, financed, and trained by the United States.
The National Assembly’s July 10-12 conference in Pittsburgh is expected to draw over 200 leading antiwar activists from cities across the country. An ambitious nine-point Action Proposal has been prepared by the Assembly’s Coordinating Body (CB) for the consideration of all attendees. One-person-one-vote will be the operative decision-making principle. Everyone opposed to U.S. wars and occupations is welcome.

The strategic and political goals of the National Assembly are a united and independent antiwar movement focused on mass mobilizations and demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The National Assembly also calls for an end to U.S. support to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and support to the right of self-determination of all oppressed peoples and nations.

Tens of thousands of conference brochures have been distributed nationally to outline the conference’s objectives and to solicit additional Action Proposals for the consideration of the Pittsburgh conference. Three lengthy plenary sessions are scheduled to discuss and debate all proposals and amendments presented to the conference, which will also elect a new National Assembly leadership to help implement the network’s decisions.

The Coordinating Body’s Action Proposal centers on a call for nationally coordinated local and regional antiwar actions on Oct. 17, a month that includes the dates of the beginning of the U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the 40th anniversary of the massive antiwar mobilizations initiated by the Vietnam Moratorium in 1969. Leaders of the present Iraq Moratorium organization have joined with the National Assembly in calling for the Oct. 17 mobilization.

The CB’s Action Proposal also includes the organization of a National Assembly “Out Now!” contingent in the Sept. 24-25 protests at the third G-20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh. Other prominent parts of the Action Proposal that will be discussed and debated include a coordinated week of student protests, a national speaking tour of prominent antiwar figures, the establishment of a Working Committee to “ensure that the antiwar movement stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine and integrates the issue of Palestine in the broader antiwar struggle,” and the continuation of National Assembly efforts “to engage all organizations and constituencies … in nationally coordinated mass demonstrations in selected sites, including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco in the spring of 2010, the seventh year of the U.S. war on Iraq.”

The Pittsburgh conference includes two important panel discussions and rallies where leading activists from many antiwar and social justice organizations are slated to present their views. Central leaders of the ANSWER Coalition and United for Peace and Justice will be active participants, along with representatives of Palestinian, Iraqi, and Iranian groups and individuals organizing against Washington’s wars and threats of war.

Eighteen workshops covering a broad range of have been confirmed. In light of ongoing U.S. threats against Iran and developments in that country, the Iran workshop is expected to attract a large audience with a diverse range of opinions. The National Assembly has adopted a position of unconditional support to the fight of self-determination for the Iranian people and for “U.S. Hands Off Iran!”

Conference participants include leading labor and social activists, from the president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, two leaders of the recent successful general strike in Guadeloupe, and leading social activists from Canada.

The July 10-12 conference is another important effort organized by the National Assembly aimed at re-building a national antiwar movement capable of uniting around clear “Out Now!” political demands in coordinated and massive national antiwar protests. These are a pre-condition for the organization of the kind of struggle necessary to halt present and future U.S. wars and re-order the nation’s priorities in the interests of working people and their allies.
All Out for Pittsburgh, July 10-12! For further information, e-mail: natassembly@aol.com or check the National Assembly’s website at natassembly.org.

Illusions in Obama are eroding

National Assembly organizers have taken note of the fact that Obama’s large Democratic Party majority turned a blind eye to even a pretense of winding down the Afghanistan war when the House of Representatives in late June overwhelming rejected the recent McGovern amendment that posed so-called timelines for a U.S. withdrawal.

The Assembly demands the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops, mercenaries, contractors and the dismantling of all U.S. bases, and has always rejected such “timelines” and other schemes to defuse antiwar sentiment and channel the movement into the framework of the two-party corporate system.

Obama’s pre-election promise that Afghanistan was the real place to fight a war to “end terrorism” has become a bitter reality. It is a signal that more, not less, wars are to be expected from his administration.

Similarly, the promise of a serious health-care reform has been replaced with yet another bill to tax working people to the hilt while gifting the health-care industrialists with proposals for mandatory coverage at working people’s expense. Torture under another name remains government policy while the previous administration’s torturers, from government officials to the executioners themselves, have been granted immunity from prosecution.

Trillions have been allotted to the banks and related ruling class institutions, additional trillions to the military while working people increasingly suffer the effects of the capitalist crisis to a greater extent than at any time in the modern era.

The illusion that an Obama’s administration signaled a significant shift away from Bush-era brutalities is slowly but steadily fading. That Obama has no choice but to represent the same corporate interests as his predecessor is a reality that is increasingly penetrating the consciousness of antiwar and social movement activists.

It is only a matter of time until the great expectations that millions had for the Obama White House, now steadily diminishing, will give way to a resumption of powerful mass movements that have the capacity to effectively challenge the U.S. corporate warmakers.

Support the General Strike in Honduras!

Down with the Micheletti Government! No Negotiations with the Coup-Makers!

[by James Frickey & Clay Wadena - The following article will appear in the July issue of Socialist Action newspaper. The article reflects the views of the Political Committee of Socialist Action.]

On June 28, the Honduran army deposed the elected president of that nation, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, waking him in the dead of night, abducting him from his bed in the presidential palace, and expelling him to Costa Rica, where he held a press conference in his pajamas alerting the world to the coup. The army replaced Zelaya with the president of the Honduran Congress, Roberto Micheletti, a move that met with near-unanimous approval from the Congress and Supreme Court, the latter of which had "authorized" the coup as a legal measure taken in defense of the national constitution.

The coup-makers have acted in accord with the wishes of a Honduran oligarchy that is unified in its hatred for the unexpected populist turn of Zelaya, whom it loathes for his minimalist reform program and his public association with the Chavez regime in Venezuela and other left-populist leaders in the region.

Viewed through the reckless actions of the oligarchy, the Honduran state has shown itself to be structurally incapable of weathering even the minimal reforms of a bourgeois liberal type. The unity of its state institutions in favor of the overthrow is not a sign of ruling-class strength, but an acknowledgement that it is totally alienated from the conditions of the masses in Honduras and incapable of relating to them in any but the most predatory ways.

Honduras is one of the poorest and most economically polarized countries in the Western Hemisphere, with half of its population living below the poverty line. Since the military restored formal democracy there in 1983, the country has been ruled by two political parties sustained by ties to the national oligarchy.

Voter turnout in Honduras was 46.0 percent in 2005, the lowest of any national election in Central America in the past four years–significantly lower than any of its neighbors. Regional experts have attributed the high rates of voter absenteeism to the extreme indifference with which the Honduran masses regard the two oligarchic parties, which have presided over a pauperized nation with no semblance of real political differences between them.

The coup-makers have gone to great lengths to prevent the Honduran masses from expressing their discontent with the toppling of the democratically elected government. The state-run television network and another network known for its loyalties to Zelaya were immediately blacked out by the coup-makers when they seized the presidency. Zelaya’s ministers and political allies have been detained.

The BBC reports from Honduras that soldiers are blockading the highways to the capital, preventing the arrival of caravans of protesters. Jose Antonio Zepeda, president of the Central American Union Movement, recounted in a video posted on YouTube that at one roadblock soldiers shot out the tires on buses carrying peasants and union members to Tegucigalpa (the capital city). The protesters continued the rest of the trip on foot.

Despite the ruling class's efforts, the masses have braved severe repression from the police and military to take to the streets in opposition to the coup. The BBC reported that anti-coup protests have occurred in the majority of Honduras' departments, and moreover that protesters have blocked major highways in Copan and Tocoa.

CNN quoted Oscar Garcia, vice president of the Honduran water workers’ union SANA, as saying that three major public-sector labor unions launched an indefinite general strike pending the restoration of Zelaya to power on June 30, claiming the participation of over 100,000 workers. “We don't recognize this new government imposed by the oligarchy," declared Garcia. "It will be an indefinite strike." TeleSur reports that the teachers union has declared an open-ended national strike of the schools, also pending the restoration of Zelaya to power.

The Bolivarian News Agency reports a march of 4000 in Tegucigalpa July 2, and other sources put the number at 6000. A report coming out of Tegucigalpa from the Socialist Workers Party of Argentina claims that the banana workers have joined the national strike along with sections of the maquiladora workers.

In response to these demonstrations the government of coup leaders revoked the right to freely assemble at night and gave the police the power to detain anyone for longer than 24 hours without charge. There are reports that electricity has been cut to working-class districts, where anti-coup sentiments are highest.

Zelaya “converted” to populism

Zelaya was elected in 2005 as the candidate of the Liberal Party, one of two parties that has alternated in power in Honduras for the last 25 years. He is part of the elite of the country, having amassed a fortune as a rancher and landowner. Moreover, his populist credentials are belied by allegations that he supported the death-squads in their dirty war against the Honduran Left in the 1980s.

It wasn't until Zelaya was elected to the presidency in 2005 that he showed signs of populist conversion. Until then he had advocated for Honduras to enter into the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., and was considered a reliable tool of the oligarchy, which had endorsed and funded his candidacy.

The rift opened when Zelaya began accepting shipments of subsidized petroleum from the Chavez government, and thereafter guided Honduras into the regional trade block known as the ALBA. These initiatives, along with some domestic reforms like raising the minimum wage, established a social base for Zelaya among the peasantry and some trade unions, but fomented the hatred of the oligarchy against him.

The fact that Zelaya’s own party was complicit in his overthrow is a clear indication of how isolated he has become. Micheletti, the army’s choice to replace Zelaya, is a member of the same Liberal Party.

The immediate cause of the coup is being widely attributed to Zelaya’s plan to reform the Honduran constitution, which opponents contend was simply a maneuver by Zelaya to stay in power beyond the one-term limit specified under the current constitution.

Zelaya was deposed from office on the eve of a non-binding national referendum that he had proposed as a means to measure popular support for a constituent assembly. Based on what he presumed would be a clear victory on that vote, Zelaya was planning to hold a legally binding second referendum during the upcoming November presidential elections.

Though Zelaya was noncommittal as to what type of constitutional reforms he proposed, the call for a constituent assembly had attracted the attention of Honduran farmers, workers, and leftist radicals. The oligarchy’s false cry of “dictatorship” was only a cover for its real pervasive fear that a constituent assembly could lead to numerous reforms (driven by involvement of the masses) that would curtail its economic and political domination of Honduras.

The Honduran oligarchy attempted to obstruct the referendum prior to the coup through various institutional means—from legislating against it in the Congress, to issuing a ruling from the Supreme Court declaring it unconstitutional, to instructing the army brass to refuse Zelaya’s order to conduct the vote. Zelaya responded, in turn, by firing the defense minister and the senior military commander, and then leading a dramatic march of peasant farmers and unionists to an airforce base to seize the ballot boxes that had been suppressed by the military.

Within days the Supreme Court reinstated the senior military commander and issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya that military personnel “served” to the president on the night that they overthrew his government.

A bastion of the U.S. military

U.S. officials—both civilian and military—were well aware that a coup was being plotted within Honduras, as they had been participating in high-level discussions between the Honduran Congress, military, and president in the weeks leading up to the overthrow. But the American government did not use its immense power—as Honduras’ leading trading partner and as a major donor of military and civilian aid—to prevent the coup from taking place. The claim by an anonymous official in the Obama administration that the army broke off the talks is convenient to the U.S., but otherwise impossible to verify and therefore unreliable.

Despite statements by President Obama expressing disapproval for the coup, his administration continues to quibble over whether the term “coup” is applicable to the nighttime abduction of the Honduran president by the army. "There is a process that we need to follow ... it's a legal matter," said the State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. This is a primary consideration because the U.S., on making the determination that a coup has taken place, is required by its own laws to suspend all military and economic assistance to Honduras. The Obama administration is searching for a plausible legal argument to continue its long history of funding the Honduran military.

Honduras has long been a bastion of U.S military might in Central America, as it was a staging ground for the Reagan-era Contra attacks on the Sandinista-led revolution in Nicaragua, and has long been a training ground for death-squads that operated in many places around Central and Latin America, including Honduras itself. Hundreds of Honduran military officers participate in the counter-insurgency training programs at the U.S. School of the Americas (nearly 1000 from 2005-07) and the bi-national relationship in this regard is one of the most extensive that the U.S. enjoys with any Latin American nation.

Moreover, the Pentagon has maintained a constant presence in the country, where its Joint Task Force Bravo for the Southern Command coordinates joint exercises with Central American militaries. The U.S. shares the Soto-Cano air base in Honduras with the Honduran air force.
It is becoming increasingly clear that while the U.S. government is working publicly to isolate the Micheletti regime in Honduras—and endorsing similar efforts in the United Nations and the Organization of American States, it is privately setting terms on Zelaya’s return to power.

Obama has notably declined to join in the call for Zelaya’s “unconditional” restoration to power, instead advocating for “negotiations” with the coup-makers on the terms of the democratically- elected president’s return.

The Guardian newspaper in the UK published an article titled, “Does the US back the Honduran coup?” which observed, “the Obama administration claims that it tried to discourage the Honduran military from taking this action. … Did administration officials say, ‘You know that we will have to say that we are against such a move if you do it, because everyone else will?’ Or was it more like, ‘Don't do it, because we will do everything in our power to reverse any such coup’? The administration's actions since the coup indicate something more like the former, if not worse....”

The Mexico City daily La Jornada reported that representatives of the Obama administration warned the press that the negotiations will be “complicated” because they seek to resolve conflicts that have been festering in Honduras for some time prior to the coup. All of this indicates that the Obama Administration intends above all to ensure that should Zelaya return to the presidency of Honduras, he will do so as a hostage of the military and the oligarchy, and at the mercy of the U.S. government which was responsible for restoring him.

The specific price for Zelaya’s return has been suggested in the most recent reports: Zelaya's defense minister suggested yesterday a possible "peaceful arrangement" to the dispute in which Zelaya is willing to drop plans of pursuing a rewrite of the constitution in return for serving out the remainder of his term—a mere six months.

Socialist Action condemns the coup d’etat in Honduras and stands in solidarity with the Honduran workers and farmers and their supporters in the broad masses as they wield the weapons of mass street mobilizations and the political mass strike to cripple the putschist government of Robert Micheletti and the Honduran bourgeoisie. We support the self-determination of the people of Honduras and completely oppose any attempt to “negotiate” with the coup-makers or any similar disguise that imperialism designs for what is only its imposition of a government on a sovereign nation.

The explosive situation in Honduras brings sharply into focus once more the crisis of leadership at this phase of the international workers movement. No eccentric bourgeois politician has the political wherewithal to lead the masses in a determined struggle against the class that is responsible for the depredation of the land, the exploitation of the workers, and the impoverishment of the broad masses. With every subsequent crisis, and every “symbolic” leader who finds him or herself momentarily surging on the might of the discontented masses, the need for a revolutionary socialist party becomes increasingly clear to the best fighters in Honduras, who mean to make a permanent break with their ruling elite.