Palaces Instead of Hospitals

Mike Palecek

The Iraqi state has crumbled. Baghdad has fallen. And a new regime is being built, not in the image of the bourgeois democracy of the United States, but in its interests. George Bush sums up the rottenness of Hussein’s government as “a regime that built palaces in a country that needed hospitals”. But has the regime in Washington done much better? No. The hypocrisy of the imperialists is daunting. One can’t help but think of the Enron executives who built their own palaces, while stealing the retirement funds of thousands of working people. Or the state that builds bombs while nearly 33 million Americans (the equivalent of the population of Canada) live in poverty. We ask ourselves, “How can such a regime bring democracy and prosperity to the people of Iraq?” The answer is simple: they cannot.

The American and British military will be forced to rely on the old state to form a new one. This is already evident as US forces are using the old police force to gain control of Baghdad. Nearly every meeting of the new administration has been met by a mass demonstration. In Basra, thousands of people hurled stones at the house where the first meeting of the provincial authority was held. British forces were on hand to clear the crowd. Their anger is completely justified; The new leader of Basra
was not only a Baath Party member, but also an old general in Hussein’s army! In Mosul, a crowd of at least

20,000 was cleared by American troops. The crowd had gathered to
protest the American occupation of the main government building in the city. As the Americans set up offices inside, tension reached a breaking point when troops raised the stars and stripes. As the crowd erupted, US troops opened fire on the demonstrators. The latest report says at least seven civilians were killed and as many as one hundred injured. This is how they treat demonstrators in the new “free” state of Iraq.

The American ruling class is euphoric with the swift victory, but they are not content with the oil fields of Iraq. They now turn their heads to Syria. It is not yet clear weather they are just rattling their sabres of preparing the American public for another war. But the white house is accusing Syria of hiding members of the Iraqi regime and shipping military equipment to Iraq during the war. They claim that Syria is supporting terrorist groups and is developing weapons of mass destruction. And in their most blatant move yet, have cut off the flow of oil from Iraq to Syria, a move that is expected to cost the Syrian economy at least one billion US dollars per year. This is a very large chunk of change for a country with a GDP of only 54.2 billion USD.

But the optimism of the US government is premature. The war launched on Iraq has had an earth-shattering effect on the masses in the whole of the middle-east. Not one country can claim to have a stable government. Every regime is in crisis. The people of the middle-east have poured onto the streets and this is not limited to that region. The anti-war movement is unlike any other. This year has seen the largest demonstrations in human history. Never has the world spoken out so loudly on one issue.

And this is not the least of their worries. The war has also deepened the ethnic conflicts in the region. In the north of Iraq, there are reports of Arab families being driven from their homes by the Kurds. In Afghanistan there are still isolated battles taking place with no end in sight. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still spiralling out of control. North Korea now proudly boasts that it has nuclear weapons. The anti-capitalist movement in Venezuela continues to gain strength, and all indications are that of a civil war on the horizon. India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, are still at odds. The invasion of Iraq has not made the United States any safer. On the contrary, it has only served to destabilize the whole region. The world in which we live in is becoming increasingly dangerous. Threats of war and revolution are popping up all over the globe.

The people of Iraq are waking up to a harsh reality. This whole war has only served to replace one corrupt regime with another. All the promises of freedom are proving empty. The people of Iraq need the help of the working class of the entire world. The anti-war movement must move its emphasis from stopping the war, to ending the occupation. Bring the troops home now! The labour movement must take industrial action to protest this act of aggression. And we must arm the masses with the only weapons that can stop imperialism: the Marxist method and a real socialist program.

Iraq has the potential to be a very rich country. But the people will never see this wealth if the imperialists have their way. The capitalists see only profit and brush everything else aside. They were very careful not to damage the oil fields in the war, but had no problem dropping cluster-bombs in the cities. These people serve the interests of capital and nothing else. The task that lies before the people of Iraq is the same one that lies before the workers of all countries. This system exploits us all. Workers everywhere are being attacked by the bosses. The international labour movement must focus all of its energy on ending the capitalist system. Only then can we be free from war, exploitation and all forms of abuse thrown on us by this rotten system.

Mike Palecek

May 2003