Curiously, this poll shows more people disapproving of Bush's foreign policy than approving. Since the war is the centerpiece of his foreign policy, what does this mean? I suspect there's a lot of confusion and thinly held opinion around Iraq - people have been propagandized into thinking Iraq is a problem but don't know what exactly that means or what to do about it. And of course, direct questions always excite the patriotic reflex to support the troops. But the broad aggressively imperialist posture doesn't seem to have passionate popular support.
Doug ------------------------------------------------- Not surprisingly, most Americans oppose colonialism even as they don't recognize that they are doing so, but that is what this and the future wars planned are all about. Notice there is no talk of an "exit strategy"? Notice how the estimates of the length of the American occupation are already stretching out from 3, to 5, to who knows how long? The British managed 12 years, from 1920 - 1932, until they gave up repressing the Iraqi independence movement.
If the Americans end their occupation, will Iraq remain "Israel-friendly" (one of the intents of this invasion), or will it revert to being Israel's Enemy #1? Absent American-Israeli colonial occupation, what is to prevent Iraq, or components of Iraq (assuming fragmentation of the former state) from reverting to an anti-Israeli stance, perhaps now with a vengeance precisely as a legacy of this new occupation?
That is why the antiwar movement, particularly here in the USA, must sharpen its focus on opposition to _colonialism_. Why not have the vast majority of the American people, and the traditions of 100 years of US foriegn policy (however imperialist, but that is another, more general, matter) - not to mention the supposed founding traditions of the US, on our side? Let's see the Likud finesse that.
"Against US colonialism" also neatly encapsulates the Israel issue, as the colonial settler state merely becomes a piece (however key) of the overall neo-colonial picture in the Middle East. The corrollary of anticolonialism is "two states" in historical Palestine, another way of calling for the dismantlement of the setler-colonies. Another piece is calling for "regime change" in 'Saudi' Arabia, another US backed retro holdover. A progressive version of "taking the Saudi out of Arabia" - or do we think royal monarchies, like colonialism, is appropriate in our day and age? And the Saudi issue address a need to have a approach to the reactionary Al Qaeda gangsters.
But the antiwar movement seems clueless in addressing these obvious issues, as is it also only dimly aware of the real central cause of this war.
I know it sounds a bit "odd" to be opposing colonialism at the beginning of the 21st century. Didn't we get rid of this retrograde crap 50 years ago? But that we find ourselves trying to stop something so retrograde, besides being an indicator of how deeply reactionary our times are, also _precisely_ defines just what is so lunatic about this war.
-Brad Mayer
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 11:20:00 -0500 From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>