Ten Years After

Ten years ago, on the 15th of February, 2003, millions of people around the world in almost every nation and in almost 800 cities marched and protested "“NO WAR". According to the French academic Dominique Reynié , between January 3 and April 12, 2003 , 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war.  Ignoring their own citizens wishes and paying no heed to the rest of the world's public opinion, the US and UK went ahead with the invasion of Iraq, which says all that needs saying about those two supposed “democracies”. American and British politicians were not misled by false intelligence about the existence of Iraqi "weapons of mass distruction". They created them to justify their actions. They even blamed God for the ar rather than accept their own culpability. Two high-ranking Palestinian officials relate how President Bush said to them: ‘I'm driven with a mission from God'”. He again repeated this belief when Bush said: “God would tell me: ‘George go and end the tyranny in Iraq '. and I did.” While Tony Bliar also was guided by his god when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq, "...you realise that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

The cost of the war in human tragedy, not capitalist dollars and pounds, has been 1.4 million violent deaths.( 2003-2010). Post-invasion non-violent excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 1.1 million according to research by Dr. Gideon Polya.  Post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.8 million. In 2010, the University of Ulster reported that increases in congenital birth defects, leukemia and infant mortality in Falluja were higher than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.” “Among the children with birth defects, lead levels were five times higher and mercury levels six times higher than for normal children. In Basra, birth defects had gone up to 23 per 1,000 births by 2003, a 17-fold increase since 1994. There is ‘Compelling evidence' to link the increased numbers of defects and miscarriages (in Iraq) to military assaults, says Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health.

The Abu Ghraib Prison torture scandal was just the tip of the ice-berg in human rights abuses. In June 2010 the General Secretary of the Union of Political Prisoners and Detainees in Iraq , Muhammad Adham al-Hamd declared that the US occupation administration in Iraq relied on systematic rape, torture, and sadistic treatment of Iraqi women prisoners in its prison camps in the country. Al-Hamd said that the enormous crimes being committed against women in the prison camps in occupied Iraq had the support and blessings of the US military..."

The "independent truth-searching" media was seen for what it is, mouth-pieces of official government propaganda, uncritically and unquestioningly relaying the lies and deceit, who now - incredulously - expect us to trust their reports on current bloody events around the globe that are being carried out in the same name of humanitarianism and democracy that they promoted the Iraq War.

But for the millions who demonstrated, have we learned any lessons since 2003? In many things they were proved correct. Iraq's WMDs were never the issue and did not to exist. That the war would provoke and increase more anti-Western resentment. That the killings would continue long after the military "victory" in an ensuing civil war. But in other regards the protestors remain mistaken that war can be sorted out by honouring capitalist diplomacy such as the United Nations. While it is important that workers oppose war, it is equally important to understand why conflicts take place and in whose interests wars are waged. Indeed, many in 2003 rightly recognised the war to be about control of oil resources. The events of February 2003 were clearly no rallying call to socialism but we can draw comfort from the fact that the workers cannot now be dismissed as totally apathetic and that people, as we have always maintained, can unite in common cause and will work together, when faced with the worst.

For the World Socialist Movement, ownership and control of the world's resources is at the heart of the problems confronting humanity. The relentless competition that exists between capitalist countries leads to wars which are fought by the poor and the powerless.  The peace campaigner Bertrand Russell once said, “If all those who disapprove of government policy were to join massive demonstrations of civil disobedience they could render government folly impossible.”  It's not impossible to believe that numbers of protestors could become so numerous that the forces of repression decide that they will no longer act against fellow citizens or against citizens of another nation. In the case of civil disturbances, strikes and demonstrations they will join ranks with their own family, friends, family and neighbours preventing repression at home and opposing interference in the destinies of other societies who they have no argument with. Imagine the power falling into the hands of this majority seeking an egalitarian and peaceful society. Imagine the armed forces, now under the democratic control of the people, committed to securing all weapons, armaments, vehicles, planes, helicopters, ships, submarines, war materiel of all kinds including factories and depots; securing all weapons and military equipment from any further use until they can be made safe and dismantled, or to be more ecologically minded, recycled - swords into ploughshares.

Did Bush and Blair force the American and British populations into war with Iraq against their will, based on power and intelligence the people didn't possess? No, they lied through their teeth and then held their nerve, while the protestors held their protests. Blair and Bush just bluffed the working class into believing they did. Imagine if the protests hadn't stopped but continued and intensified until the full power of our class as being applied.