A CALL TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT:

A CALL TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT:
Stop the war on Iraq before it starts!

By Brian Becker
(The writer is a co-director of the International
Action Center and a member of the A.N.S.W.E.R.
coalition steering committee.)

It is imperative that all progressive working class
and anti-war organizations organize now to try to stop
the pending U.S. war against Iraq.

These progressive organizations should base their
strategy and tactics on the assumption that the Bush
administration is determined to attack Iraq and
replace the current government with a puppet regime
like the one that exists in Afghanistan.

Despite this Bush administration goal, however, there
exist sufficient potential deterrents -- in the U.S.
and around the world -- that could still prevent a new
invasion.

A war on Iraq is a war of imperialism against an
oppressed, formerly colonized people. It is a war for
Big Oil against a country that dared to nationalize
its oil fields and tried to use the revenues from that
oil to help Iraq emerge as an independent modernizing
regional power in the Persian/Arabian Gulf -- an area
that contains two-thirds of the world's known oil
reserves. The U.S. reserves for itself the right to be
the only regional power in this oil-rich area.

Working people must not be taken in by the war
propaganda of the White House. It's just propaganda
aimed at justifying aggression against Iraq.

Bush and the Pentagon are planning a war not because they fear Saddam Hussein's potential to develop weapons of mass destruction, or because they are sickened by the undemocratic nature of the Iraqi
government. Washington supports dictatorial monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It sends $15 million a day to Israel while that government has invaded Lebanon, occupied the Palestinian territories and created a large, illegal arsenal of nuclear weapons.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR AS PRELUDE TO INVASION

The Bush administration for the last two weeks has
engaged in a full-scale psychological war against the
Iraqi regime and the people there. It is going out of
its way to create an aura of inevitability about the
coming conflict. This is a coordinated high-profile
campaign designed to split the Iraqi government as a
prelude to U.S. military action.

From July 11-13, a CIA-supported gathering of hundreds of Iraqi military and political foes of Saddam Hussein in London announced a virtual government in exile. Notably present at the meeting was Jordan's number two leader Crown Prince Hassan. Although Jordan has publicly opposed a new war against its larger neighbor, the western media on July 12 widely reported that the pro-U.S. monarchy has "agreed secretly to allow U.S. special forces to operate from two of its air bases" when the invasion takes place. (The Herald of Scotland, July 12)

Other lead articles have appeared in the major press
of U.S. allies with screaming headlines like that in
the July 16 National Post of Canada: "Iraq is bound to
lose, quickly, completely." On the same day British
Prime Minister Tony Blair went out of his way to tell
the members of Parliament that his government will not
be compelled to discuss with them any British
participation in the coming war.

On July 14, Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's second
ranking official and a leading cheerleader for the
war, held a press conference in Turkey -- one site
from which the U.S. attack is likely to be launched --
announcing that Turkey would reap "economic" benefits
from the overthrow of the Iraqi government. Turkey is
experiencing a severe economic crisis and its
government was on the verge of collapsing as Wolfowitz executed his widely covered saber-rattling media performance.

IMPACT OF "LEAKED" WAR PLAN

The administration's psychological war, or Psyops as
it is known in military parlance, began with special
intensity when a top secret, five-inch thick, dossier
detailing plans for an invasion of Iraq with 250,000
troops was "leaked" to the New York Times. The Times
on July 5 featured the story prominently on the front
page. It's follow-up editorial two days later did not
dispute the legality or rightness of the planned
aggression -- as it did so famously with the
publication of the secret Pentagon Papers in June 1971
that increased public opposition to U.S. policy in
Vietnam. The Times follow-up editorial to the July 5
Iraq invasion story only called for the tactics of the
war plan to be debated in Congress and elsewhere.

Since the Times story on July 5, the print media and
television have been dominated by a discussion of the
tactics of the coming war. Should it be a large-scale
invasion of hundreds of thousands of troops or a
lightning-fast Special Operations accompanied by
strategic bombing? The debate, limited exclusively to
the "best tactics" of war, is designed to leave
everyone -- in Iraq and among the public at home --
with the distinct impression that the military
conflict is unavoidable, inevitable and thus
impossible to resist.

Which raises the question of who leaked the classified
document to the New York Times in the first place?

"The Observer of London [newspaper] has been told that the leak ... came from within the Pentagon, from the
office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top
professional soldiers who drew it up in the first
place." (The Observer, July 14)

CAN THE WAR BE STOPPED?

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz grouping are
creating an aura of inevitability around the war with
two audiences in mind. They are hoping to split the
Iraqi military -- hoping that sections of the Iraqi
High Command will defect rather than face certain
annihilation. But Bush and company are also trying to
demoralize any, at home or abroad, who desire to
challenge the war before it starts.

Bush and the Pentagon know the history of the Vietnam
war and they actually fear the potential of massive
anti-war resistance from Washington, D.C., to the
streets of Cairo and Amman.

While the centers of pro-establishment liberalism are
playing their usual frightened and collaborationist
role in the face of the ultra-militarists, the genuine
progressives and anti-imperialist fighters need to do
everything in their power to mobilize grassroots
opposition on every campus, high school, workplace and community.

While Bush slashes funds for education, housing, jobs
and health care he is calling on the sons and
daughters of the working class to kill and be killed
in the desert of the Arabian peninsula for the sake of
Exxon/Mobil, Texaco, Chase, Citibank and his corporate
constituents. This war doesn't have to happen. Now is
the time for the anti-war movement to intensify its
mobilization among working and poor people, and
especially young people -- including those in uniform.

All anti-war forces should unite right now to launch
an energetic and determined mobilization of the people
-- in the United States and around the world. It is
time to remind the war-makers of the inevitability of
resistance to their plans for slaughter and
destruction.

GET INVOLVED!
Go tohttp://www.internationalanswer.org for
information about upcoming activities against a new
U.S. war in Iraq, including the October 26
Internationally Coordinated Day of Mass Actions and
the January 18, 2003, National March on the White
House in Washington DC.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
dc [at] internationalanswer.org
New York: 212-633-6646
Washington DC: 202-332-5757
Chicago: 773-878-0166
Los Angeles: 213-487-2368
San Francisco: 415-821-6545

International A.N.S.W.E.R.
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