[Peace-discuss] Why are we in Iraq?

[C. G. Estabrook]

The lead article in The Politico this morning includes the following
observation:

"...the leading Democratic candidates are trying to run as hawk and dove
simultaneously. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama
(Ill.), for instance, are both moving rhetorically and substantively
against the Iraq war while calling for an increased military presence to
fight terrorists in Afghanistan."

I posted something yesterday about Obama's tergiversations on the war
(which have led the commentator Alexander Cockburn to refer to him as
"Senator Slither"), but Clinton's been just as bad:

"In the past year, she has advocated stances she once opposed, both on a
set timetable for withdrawal and in utilizing the 'power of the purse'
to end the war in Iraq. But last month, at a Take Back America
conference of liberal activists, she offended some by treading a careful
rhetorical line. 'The American military has succeeded,' Clinton
declared. 'It is the Iraqi government that has failed.' That drew boos
from the hall. Clinton's rhetoric seemed 'almost calculated to draw a
negative response' before the liberal audience..."

Given that Democratic party obfuscation of America's war in the Middle
East is being added to the administration's lies about it, it will
probably become increasingly difficult to see what really has happened
and is happening in the massive and ongoing blood-letting that we're
allowing our government to commit.

The first thing that is required is that we oppose it. But effectively
to oppose it requires understanding it.  Why are we in Iraq?  Are the
actions we're responsible for as criminal as they seem to be -- or is
the Bush administration in some way justified in destroying nations in
the Middle East and killing a million people?

I tried to answer that question in the briefest possible way in the July
4 flyer (and expand the answer with a comment on this list about the
role of Israel).  If AWARE is going to be able to convince our fellow
citizens to take action against the war, we need to discuss not only
what actions we can do but why we're doing them.

So I offer the text of the flyer again for discussion.  How should the
argument be corrected, modified, or added to?  Why are we in Iraq?

==================================

	"...the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter 
of 'right or left' but 'right and wrong' ... I believe that partisan 
politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of 
people are dying for a war, based on lies, that is supported by 
Democrats and Republicans alike ... if we don’t find alternatives to 
this corrupt 'two' party system our Representative Republic will die and 
be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check 
or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland."
	--Cindy Sheehan, 28 May 2007

...As Americans we hold that all people are created equal, "that they 
are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  Our rights to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness mean that our enterprise
should be free -- we should not be compelled to use our talents for
purposes not our own.  The lives of "the hireling and slave" are
condemned in "The Star-Spangled Banner."

But we find as we grow up in present-day America that our enterprise is
not free.  In order to live we have to sell our work in an economy
directed by ever-larger corporations, and they are only buying some
things -- not necessarily what we want to do with our talents.

In the early days of the United States, corporations were granted
charters by the states only if they were formed for a beneficial
purpose, and then only for a limited time.  But by the beginning of the
20th-century, corporations maneuvered themselves into being "legal
persons," with all the rights that the Bill of Rights granted to
individuals.

This corporate economy now dominates the world and directs the policies
of the United States.  Our vast system of corporate media, public
relations, and marketing -- the world's largest by far -- pretends that
the interests of the few who dominate the corporate economy are
essentially the same as those of the majority (we're all "persons,"
aren't we?), but in fact they're contradictory: the corporate economy
has to dominate the enterprise of the majority to continue to enrich itself.

Democracy and the corporate economy are contradictory.  Democracy
implies equality: "one person, one vote."  But the corporate economy
implies inequality: power in society depends on how much money is
controlled -- "one dollar, one vote." A few people in control of
corporations decide what should be produced and therefore what jobs
should be available.

The corporate economy drives America's criminal wars and occupations in
the Middle East.  Both Democratic and Republican administrations demand
that the US control Middle East energy resources -- even though we
import very little oil from the Middle East for use in the US -- because
that gives the US control over America's principal economic competitors,
Europe and northeast Asia (China, South Korea and Japan).

Free enterprise and peace are impossible until the corporate economy is
brought under democratic control.

	--CGE
(I wrote about this theme just before the invasion of Iraq in "Anti-war 
= Anti-globalization" http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrookglobal.html.)