Only workers and poor can solve Iraq nightmare

Bush’s new strategy in Iraq, described as a "Quagmire of the Vanities" by US columnist Paul Krugman, is the military equivalent of President Nixon in 1970 claiming that the invasion of Cambodia was the only way to win the war in Vietnam. Instead it proved to be a disaster for US Imperialism and hastened their military defeat in Vietnam.

Bush’s new Iraq strategy will be no more successful than Nixon’s. It has already resulted in a torrent of abuse in the US press. With Republicans as well as Democrats in the US coming out against the Bush’s plans. In rejecting the Iraq Study Group, which probably reflected the majority view of the US capitalist class.

Bush has put himself even further out on a limb that will hasten his own political demise. The ISG report was no solution however, at best it was a strategy for a managed retreat, accepting the reality of what is becoming a military and strategic defeat for US imperialism which will have profound consequences.

New wars and conflict

Bush's statement was quickly followed by US soldiers raiding Iranian missions in northern Iraq and seizing Iranian diplomats there. One Iranian minister said the Bush regime was moving from "cold war" to "hot war".

An Israeli attack on Iran cannot be ruled out – under the pretext of tackling Iran’s nuclear programme. But the consequences of that would be incalculable and could throw the whole region into a new deadly spiral of war.

The Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki was brutally warned by US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, that it was living on borrowed time unless it reined in the Shi-ite militias - an increasingly improbable prospect. The Iraqi army, which is supposed to take the lead in reigning in the militia’s is itself increasingly seen as being unable to carry out that task.

It is clear that Bush hopes that tackling the Shia militias is the first step to reducing sectarian violence and undercutting Iranian attempts to influence a Shia-dominated Iraq.

Whereas, the Iraq Study Group was pushing Bush to try and draw in Syria and Iran in to the process of 'stabilising' Iraq, the Bush regime now prefers to go it alone - raising the danger of a wider Middle East conflict.

In reality the possibility of other Middle East states being drawn in to an increasing sectarian slaughter cannot be ruled out. These include the Sunni elites of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well as Iran and Turkey who may intervene if the Kurds in the north of Iraq move towards declaring an independent region – which the Turkish ruling class are opposed to.

Ethnic cleansing in parts of Iraq is already a reality. And there can be no neat carve up of Iraq into three areas based on the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocks, as some imagine. 50% of Iraqi’s live in the four cities of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul and Basra.

Of these only Basra is overwhelmingly dominated by one group. The other three are mixed areas, which could lead to armed conflict over every street and house and a horrific and bloody civil war.

The only alternative to this nightmare is for workers in Iraq, together with the rural poor, to start building a strong non-sectarian movement of workers against imperialism. They should fight for a government of their own representatives to act in the interests of Iraq's workers and poor rather than those of the capitalist class in the West and within Iraq.

Tony Blair's political failures in Iraq and Afghanistan - which have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians and nearly 200 UK service personnel deaths - has not stopped the megalomaniac prime minister envisaging a future of wars without end.

However, rather than countering 'terrorism' Blair's and Bush's military adventures around the world have further fuelled the rise of right-wing political Islam and its networks of terrorist operatives.

History lesson

Incredibly, Blair said the challenge since the 9/11 attacks in the US resembled the 'free world's' fight against "revolutionary communism in its early and most militant phase".

This is a blatantly false and reactionary historical comparison. The response of British imperialism and its allies after the 1917 Russian revolution, where the working class came to power, was to try and crush it in blood!

Some 21 allied armies were sent to destroy the workers' government (which had ended Russia's war, and the Tsar's oppressive rule) and restore a capitalist dictatorship.

Only socialist internationalism and massive sacrifices by Russian workers and peasants prevented the imperialist powers in succeeding.

However, the devastation of the wars of intervention and the resulting political isolation so weakened the workers' state as to create the conditions for the rise of a one-party Stalinist dictatorship - the negation of workers' democracy.

Vladimir Lenin, the revolutionary socialist and leader of the 1917 revolution, described imperialism as "horror without end". Blair with his 'wars without end' clearly identifies with continuing this bloody imperialist legacy.