. . . 6. The major post-Cold War policy directions of the US-led world imperialist order have ushered in a long historic period of unbridled military interventionism. The anti-war movement is the only force capable of overturning this state of affairs.
Since the collapse of the USSR, the evolution of the global relationship of military forces has virtually eliminated all impediments to imperialist interventionism. In the case of the nuclear deterrent, only a suicidal state would brandish atomic weapons against the US -- another matter being the case of a clandestine terrorist network not confined to any territory that could be targeted for reprisals. The main point is that no military force on earth can stop the steamroller of US hyperpower once it has decided to invade any given territory.
The only major power able to stop the imperial war machine is public opinion and its frontline detachments in the anti-war movement. Logically, the people of the United States play the decisive role in this regard. The "Vietnam syndrome" -- in other words, the impact of the spectacular anti-war movement that massively contributed to ending the US occupation of Vietnam -- militarily paralyzed the empire for more than 15 years, from the sudden withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 until the invasion of Panama in 1989.
Since the military action against the Panamanian dictatorship, Washington has been attacking enemies that are easy to demonize given their hideous dictatorial character: Noriega, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and so on. Moreover state and media propaganda blow things out of proportion whenever the need arises, i.e. if reality does not quite conform to the demonized image, especially in comparison with the West's allies. This was the case for Milosevic (compared to Tudjman, his Croatian rival), as it continues to be the case for the Iranian regime (compared to the far more obscurantist and medieval fundamentalism of the Saudi monarchy). Similar efforts are underway in relation to Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
Still, in 1990 Bush senior ran into some difficulty when he tried to obtain a green light from Congress for his military operation in the Gulf, in spite of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Similarly, the Clinton administration had problems getting support for intervention in the Balkans; and let us not forget its calamitous withdrawal from Somalia. This reflects strong and persistent reluctance within US public opinion and the impact of this uncertainty in the electoral arena. Unfortunately, this sentiment did not prevent the anti-war movement from promptly collapsing after its revival in 1990 in response to the Gulf crisis.
The September 11th 2001 attacks gave the Bush administration an illusion of mass, unconditional support within Western public opinion for its expansionist designs dressed up as the "war against terrorism." The illusion was short-lived. On February 15th 2003, 17 months after the terrorist attacks, the US and the world saw the broadest anti-war mobilization since Vietnam -- the broadest international mobilization ever in fact, around any cause. An expression of the massive opposition within global public opinion to the planned invasion of Iraq, this mobilization was nonetheless only a minority phenomenon in the USA itself. The international movement had, as usual, contributed powerfully to the strengthening of the US movement, but the effects of September 11th -- nurtured by a campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the Bush administration -- were still too strong.
7. Setbacks for the US-led occupation in Iraq have created the conditions for a major shift in US public opinion and for a powerful and inexorable rise of sentiment in favor of bringing the troops home.
The problem this time around is that the frontline anti-war forces have seen a decline in activity since the invasion, although it should have continued to grow. This untimely retreat in the anti-war mobilization was caused by a number of factors. For one thing, the movement was quickly demoralized due to an outlook overly focused on the short term, although it was highly improbable that the movement would manage to prevent the invasion given the tremendous stakes involved for Washington. For another, there is widespread belief in the US in the possibility of settling the question through the ballot box, whereas only mass pressure would force a withdrawal of US troops, given the bipartisan consensus around the importance of keeping a hold on Iraq. Finally, there is an illusion that the various armed actions against the occupation troops will be enough to end the occupation.
These views are at odds with the Vietnamese experience, too far removed from the awareness of new generations for the lessons to have remained in collective memory. There has not been the kind of continuity in the anti-war movement that could ensure such lessons are passed from one generation to the next. The movement that put an end to the US occupation of Vietnam was built over time, as a long-term movement, and not as a mobilization immediately preceding the outbreak of war and then demobilized once the invasion began. The movement had far fewer electoral illusions in the USA given that it had been built under the Johnson Democratic administration and then peaked under the Nixon Republican administration. It was clear to the movement that, in spite of their impressive resistance, incomparably broader and more effective than Iraq's, the Vietnamese were tragically isolated militarily and could not inflict a Dien Bien Phu on US troops -- that is to say, a defeat comparable to the one that had ended the French occupation of their country in 1954.
This is even more evident in the case of Iraq. Leaving aside the heterogeneous character of the origin and form of violent actions -- where terrorist attacks of a sometimes communalist character against the civilian population are combined with legitimate actions against the occupation forces and their local subordinates -- the nature of the terrain itself makes it impossible to inflict a military defeat on the US hyperpower. This is why the occupiers are far more fearful of mass mobilizations of the Iraqi population, such as those that forced the decision to hold elections by universal suffrage by January 2005 at the latest.
Only a big upsurge of the anti-war movement, relayed by anti-war public opinion in the USA and around the world and combined with pressure from the Iraqi people, can force Washington to release its grip on a country whose economic and strategic importance is far greater than Vietnam's, and which has already cost so many billions of dollars to invade and occupy.
Iraq is only a potential "new Vietnam" from a political angle, not a military one. It is certainly the biggest quagmire for the US since 1973 -- a quagmire whose repercussions are amplified by memories of Vietnam (proof of the persistence of the "syndrome") and by the development of global media and communications since that time.
We have an historic opportunity to resume the momentum of February 15th 2003 and rebuild a long-term anti-war movement. This movement could transform the US-led Iraq adventure into a new Vietnam, in the political sense: a new long-term paralysis of the imperial war machine. Combined with the rise of the global mobilization against neoliberalism, this would open up the way for the profound social and political changes urgently needed in this world of spiraling injustice.
August 29, 2004
Gilbert Achcar's latest books in English are The Clash of Barbarisms: Sept. 11 and the Making of the New World Disorder and Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror, both from Monthly Review Press, New York. This text, written for the general assembly of the French anti-war organisation "Agir contre la guerre" (Act against the war), was translated by Raghu Krishnan for the Canadian magazine New Socialist. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>