[Peace-discuss] The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that’s a good thing.

[Morton K.Brussel]

[Powerful, emotional statement on where we, the AWARE left, stand. 
Courageous opening sentence. mkb]

ZNet Commentary
Losing A War, Dismantling An Empire December 22, 2004
By Robert Jensen

The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that’s a good thing.

By that I don’t mean that the loss of American and Iraqi lives is to be 
celebrated. The death and destruction are numbingly tragic, and the 
suffering in Iraq is hard for most of us in the United States to 
comprehend. The tragedy is compounded because these deaths haven’t 
protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis -- they have come in 
the quest to extend the American empire in this so-called “new American 
century,” as some right-wing ideologues have named our future.

So, as a U.S. citizen, I welcome the U.S. defeat, for a simple reason: 
It isn’t the defeat of the United States -- its people or their ideals 
-- but of that empire. And it’s essential the American empire be 
defeated and dismantled.

Making that statement in the United States, as I often have done over 
the past year, guarantees that one will be attacked as a traitor by 
those on the center and the right; in their world, to oppose any U.S. 
military action is by definition treason because, in their world, the 
U.S. military is always on the side of truth, freedom, justice and 
democracy. These people condemn me, in the words of one who wrote to 
berate me, for engaging in “constant introspection of what you think 
are the flaws in America.” For these people, whatever potential flaws 
there are in U.S. society or politics are so minor as to be 
meaningless, hence any critical moral assessment is wasted energy. 
Better to move forward boldly, they argue, lauding George W. Bush for 
exactly that.

But stating that level of intensity of opposition to the U.S. assault 
on Iraq also opens one up to criticism from many liberals who complain 
that such remarks are callous; I’ve been scolded for not taking into 
consideration the feelings of Americans whose friends and loved ones 
serving in the military are at risk in Iraq. Other liberals have argued 
that such blunt talk is ill-advised on strategic grounds; it will 
alienate the vast majority of Americans who reflexively support the 
U.S. military for emotional reasons.

But now is precisely the time to make these kinds of blunt statements. 
The 2004 elections made it clear just how marginal the 
anti-empire/global-justice movement in the United States is at this 
moment in history. There is no hope of success in watering down a 
message in a vain quest to accommodate the maximal number of people for 
a short-term campaign; that kind of attempt in the run-up to the U.S. 
invasion of Iraq failed.

Although the worldwide turnout for the mass demonstrations on Feb. 15, 
2003, was inspiring, we shouldn’t delude ourselves about the 
composition of the crowds in the United States. Many of those anti-war 
demonstrators were motivated by simple hatred of the Bush 
administration; if it had been a Democratic president taking us to war, 
those folks likely would have stayed home. Another segment of 
demonstrators was there not through the long-term work of organizing 
and public education, but because of a rejection of the Bush ideologues 
that was based more in a visceral fear than in analysis; without a 
connection to a movement, they disappeared from public protest once the 
bombs started falling. In my estimation, at best only a third of the 
people who participated in that mass mobilization had any meaningful 
connection to an anti-empire/global-justice movement that looked beyond 
the moment.

So, there is no short-term strategy for victory that makes any sense if 
one takes seriously a left, anti-authoritarian political project. That 
doesn’t mean there is no hope for left politics in the United States, 
but only that we have to avoid naiveté and wishful thinking: We are in 
a period of movement building -- trying to identify a core group, 
radicalize and clarify the analysis, and begin the process of finding 
ways to speak to a broader public that is (1) intensely propagandized 
through a highly ideological news media to accept hyperpatriotic 
politics, and at the same time (2) encouraged to be politically passive 
and disengaged from meaningful participation. That kind of change can’t 
happen overnight. We are faced with the task of literally rebuilding 
U.S. politics.

This isn’t an argument for self-indulgent ideological purity or 
dogmatism; in fact, just the reverse. It’s an argument for carefully 
assessing where we are -- both in terms of the state of the power of 
the empire worldwide and of domestic U.S. politics -- and charting a 
path that can do more than put forward an argument for a 
softer-and-gentler empire, a la John Kerry and the mainstream 
Democrats. That project, we can hope, is dead forever (though many 
Democrats hold onto the notion they can ride it back to power).

What is the message that the U.S. left needs to refine? We have to find 
a way to explain to people that the fact the Bush administration says 
we are fighting for freedom and democracy (having long ago abandoned 
fictions about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties) does not 
make it so. We must help U.S. citizens look at the reality, no matter 
how painful. Iraq is the place to start to explain how this 
contemporary empire works.

The people of Iraq are no doubt better off without Saddam Hussein’s 
despised regime, but that does not prove our benevolent intentions nor 
guarantee the United States will work to bring meaningful democracy to 
Iraq. Throughout history, our support for democracies has depended on 
their support for U.S. policy. When democratic governments follow an 
independent course, they typically end up as targets of U.S. power, 
military or economic. Ask Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez or Haiti’s 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In Iraq, the Bush administration invaded not to liberate but to extend 
and deepen U.S. domination. When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 
says the Iraq war “has nothing to do with oil -- literally nothing to 
do with it,” he is telling a complete lie. But when Bush says, “We have 
no territorial ambitions; we don’t seek an empire,” he is telling a 
half-truth. The United States doesn’t want to absorb Iraq nor take 
direct possession of its oil. That’s not the way of empire today -- 
it’s about control over the flow of oil and oil profits, not ownership. 
Vice President Dick Cheney hit on the truth when in 1990 (serving then 
as secretary of defense) he told the Senate Armed Services Committee: 
“Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not 
only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as 
well.”

So, in a world that runs on oil, the nation that controls the flow of 
oil has great strategic power. U.S. policymakers want leverage over the 
economies of competitors -- Western Europe, Japan and China -- which 
are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Hence the longstanding U.S. 
policy of support for reactionary regimes (Saudi Arabia), dictatorships 
(Iran under the Shah) and regional military surrogates (Israel), aimed 
at maintaining control.

The Bush administration has invested money and lives in making Iraq a 
platform from which the United States can project power -- from 
permanent U.S. bases, officials hope. That requires not the liberation 
of Iraq, but its subordination. But most Iraqis don’t want to be 
subordinated, which is why the United States in some sense lost the war 
on the day it invaded; one lesson of post-World War II history is that 
occupying armies generate resistance that, inevitably, prevails over 
imperial power.

Most Iraqis are glad Hussein is gone, and most want the United States 
gone. When we admit defeat and pull out -- not if, but when -- the fate 
of Iraqis depends in part on whether the United States (1) makes good 
on legal and moral obligations to pay reparations, and (2) allows 
international institutions to aid in creating a truly sovereign Iraq. 
We shouldn’t expect politicians to do either without pressure. An 
anti-empire movement -- the joining of antiwar forces with the movement 
to reject corporate globalization -- must help create that pressure. 
Failure will add to the suffering in Iraq and more clearly mark the 
United States as a rogue state and an impediment to a just and peaceful 
world.

So, I talk openly in public about why I’m glad for the U.S. military 
defeat in Iraq, but with no joy in my heart. We should all carry a 
profound sense of sadness at where decisions made by U.S. policymakers 
-- not just the gang in power today but a string of Republican and 
Democratic administrations -- have left us, the Iraqis and the world. 
But that sadness should not keep Americans from pursuing the most 
courageous act of citizenship in the United States today: Pledging to 
dismantle the American empire.

Here is what U.S. citizens have to come to terms with if the planet is 
to survive: The planet’s resources do not belong to the United States. 
The century is not America’s. We own neither the world nor time. And if 
we don’t give up the quest -- if we don’t find our place in the world 
instead of on top of the world -- there is little hope for a safe, 
sane, and sustainable future.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at 
Austin and the author of “Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim 
Our Humanity.” He can be reached at rjensen at uts.cc.utexas.edu