Now Open Season to Bludgeon World’s People into Accepting Arrangements Favouring US Imperialism?

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Election of George W Bush to White House

Bush Second Term: A Pyrrhic Victory

Bush Will Now Celebrate by Putting Falluja to the Torch

British Prime Minister Tony Blair Angers European Colleagues With Call to "Wake Up" to Bush Re-election Reality

The election of George W Bush as United States President for a second term looks like the green light for the long-anticipated murderous assault on Fallujah, as the starting point for bludgeoning the people of Iraq into cowering before Anglo-US occupation and the destruction of arrangements and a way of life that US imperialism cannot accept. That the Iraqi people are escalating their resistance to this onslaught is only making the US more determined to drown this resistance in blood. With Tony Blair following in Bush’s shadow, this translates into the beginning of an all-out campaign of revenge on any country or people that has the temerity to stand up to the US-British dictate, including the peoples of the US and Britain themselves.

            The occupiers continue to be haunted by their pragmatic ethos that "nothing succeeds like success". The resistance of the Iraqi people to the occupation is being called "terrorists" and "foreign fighters" who are "holding Fallujah hostage". The occupiers are expressing their terror and cannot cope with the fact that a people will act according to their conscience and fight to defend their sovereign right to determine their own destiny themselves, free from outside interference of any kind.

            This programme of US-British imperialism, and particularly the assault on Fallujah to raze it to the ground, must be vigorously opposed by the working class and people. US, British and all foreign occupation forces must be withdrawn from Iraq immediately. The working class and people must draw their own conclusions that the occupation and blood-letting of Anglo-US imperialism in the face of the people’s opposition represents the weakness of the colossus and WDIE calls on the working class and people to step up the struggle for their own empowerment.

Taken from TML, Daily On-Line Newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), November 3, 2004.

Pyrrhus inherited the throne of Epirus in Northern Greece around 306 BC. He is said to have had great strategic skills but also the reputation of not knowing when to stop. In 281 he went to Italy and defeated the Romans at Heraclea and Asculum but suffered heavy losses. The devastation led to his famous statement, "One more such victory and I am lost" – hence the term "Pyrrhic victory" for any victory so costly as to be ruinous.

            So too George W Bush's second term will prove so costly to the United States as to be ruinous. In fact, it will be even more ruinous than can be presently conceived given that at least Pyrrhus was able to draw this conclusion for himself while George W Bush cannot. Ignoring the deeply divided country and world, he is already gloating that he is now a "recognised winner with a clear mandate" to pursue his agenda for world domination with a vengeance. The following account by Ron Suskind comes to mind:

            "In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend – but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

            "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

            As part of creating this virtual reality, the craven monopoly-owned media are already performing yeoman's service by crowing that the "irregularities" as they call them – such as nine-hour long lines to cast a vote and partisan driven disenfranchisement of minority voters on a massive scale – all point to a "robust democracy".

            Meanwhile, foreign leaders from the countries which ardently hoped that Bush would be defeated are now said to be accommodating themselves to four more years of Bush's "war on terror". This is what Senator John Kerry conceded at 11 am today when he conceded the presidency to Bush. In the opinion of TML, Kerry's defeat reveals his lack of conviction in any way forward for the United States different to the unilateralism proposed by Bush. The spectre of a divided country now haunts him just as it haunted Al Gore in 2000. It underscores the fundamental point that the fraudulent US electoral system which does not enshrine the principle of one person-one vote to bring people to power is utterly incapable of sorting out the profound contradictions which are wracking the deeply divided country. This election provides no way forward for the United States whatsoever.

            TML is firmly convinced that the only way forward for the American people and the peoples of the world is to persist in building their movement to empower themselves. Together we must avert the grave dangers which lie ahead as a result of the drive of the US to establish fascism at home and war abroad and of countries such as Canada to embroil us in these dangers.

            TML concludes by calling on its readers to discuss the significance of the US election results. Today it is more urgent than ever for the working class to constitute itself as the nation and vest sovereignty in the people. All efforts must be made to step up the tempo of our work in a manner which puts the decision-making power in the hands of the people. This is the way forward!

By Robin Cook, The Guardian, November 5, 2004

If you imagine the rest of us have a problem living with George Bush for another four years, spare a thought for the 55 million Americans who voted against him. John Kerry is fated to be stuck with the label of a loser and is already being blamed for his lack of charisma, his absence of passion and his electoral misjudgment of being born on the eastern seaboard rather than the deep south. Yet in fairness to Kerry, more Americans backed him than supported Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, and some of them queued for two hours in their determination to vote for him. There may be more conservatives in America than ever before, but there are also more Democrats.

            Unfortunately this does not add up to a case for a recount. The US does not run a proportional system and the winner takes all. In George Bush's case, he not only took the White House, but he also took a clean sweep of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and he will now have the opportunity to take a majority of the supreme court. All the checks and balances that the founding fathers constructed to restrain presidential power are broken instruments.

            It is to be hoped that the obsession of President Bush with fitness will guarantee his health for the length of his renewed tenancy of the White House. Otherwise we get President Cheney. I met Dick Cheney immediately after he had been installed as vice-president in what was the most bizarre en counter of my time at the Foreign Office. He could not disguise his irritation that a European pinko had somehow wormed a way into his diary and for half an hour mostly confined himself to monosyllabic replies. By contrast, this week he was in full triumphalist flood, claiming Bush's election as the greatest "of any presidential candidate in history".

            Cheney himself may not go the distance if the rumours about Halliburton continue to lap closer to his desk, but while he is in post it is hard to see an administration so dripping in contacts with the oil industry taking serious action on global warming. This is a real problem for Tony Blair, who has identified climate change as a major priority for Britain's presidency of the G8 next year. The dilemma for Blair will be whether he uses the role to lever the Bush administration towards the consensus among the other seven, or cajoles the rest to accommodate the idiosyncratic Washington position. If he wants to signal a break from Bush, he will not get a clearer opportunity to do so.

            The first sign as to whether the Bush second term will be more flexible will be what now happens to the neoconservatives. Will Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon No 2 who lobbied for the invasion of Iraq, be promoted to the front rank? Will John Bolton, the No 3 at the state department who has overseen the Bush campaign to torpedo the International Criminal Court, survive in any rank? Bolton has been responsible for much of the sabre-rattling towards Iran and responded to a question about whether he would support Europe's attempt to offer Iran incentives with the terse one-liner: "I don't do carrots."

            What makes this web of reactionary ideologues a menace to the world is that they believe complex, historic problems have simple, instant, military solutions. And it is an article of faith with them that America must acquire full-spectrum dominance of military capabilities in order that it can impose such solutions unilaterally. They are the product of an era in which America has emerged as the sole hyperpower, and they regard allies not as proof of diplomatic strength but as evidence of military weakness.

            They will now celebrate their election victory by putting Falluja to the torch. Wolfowitz was furious last spring when the outcry among both Sunnis and Shias obliged the marine corps to abandon its siege; this time he will insist on military victory in Falluja regardless of the political cost across Iraq from civilian casualties. The administration remained sensitive enough to the potential domestic cost of another major offensive in Iraq to delay it until after the presidential polling day, but it will not give a second thought to the adverse impact on public opinion in Britain of escalating civilian casualties.

            The unpopularity at home and abroad of his ally's reliance on overwhelming firepower will make it even more essential for Blair to obtain something in return for his support. The first test will be whether it is possible for him to engage the Bush administration in a serious effort to secure peace for the troubled peoples of Israel and Palestine. There has been some imaginative speculation that Bush might be more courageous in putting pressure on the government of Israel now that he does not face re-election.

            The problem with such hopes is that they rest on the theory that the Bush administration has been indulgent to Ariel Sharon for reasons of electoral calculation. This is to underestimate the extent to which Bush identifies with Sharon's conviction that terrorism requires a military and not a political solution, and the religious faith with which the southern born-again Christians, of which he is one, believe in the right of Israel to its biblical borders.

            It is notable that all the comment this week from the Bush camp on prospects for the Middle East has built on the failing health of Yasser Arafat, as if he alone had been the obstacle to peace. But it is a delusion to imagine that a peace agreement can be established by the simple strategy of finding a more pliable successor to sign up to it. There will be no lasting peace or viable Palestine unless Israel withdraws from its settlements on the West Bank. Far from pressuring Sharon for such a concession, there is no evidence that Bush even supports dismantling the settlements, or that he could get agreement to it from the neoconservatives in his administration, who regard Likud as the nearest thing they have to a sister party.

            The paradox may be beyond Bush, but the best way he could make progress in his war on terror would be by winning peace in the Middle East. When Osama bin Laden launched his attack on the twin towers he intended it as a demonstration of his malign belief that the only relationship acceptable between the west and Islam was one of violent confrontation. As George Soros has argued, the Bush administration walked into a trap by responding in a way that accepted the terms of the relationship set down by its enemy.

            Now the world is fated to four more years of confrontation, which will widen rather than narrow the gulf between the west and the east. It is ironic, given that terrorism played such a central role in the election, but Osama bin Laden must be as gratified as Dick Cheney that George Bush is back.

Brussels, November 5 (Radio Havana Cuba)

In related news, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's call for Europe to wake up to the reality of George Bush's re-election as US President gained a frosty reception in Brussels Friday. In a newspaper interview Friday, Blair accused fellow European Union leaders of being in a "state of denial" over the second Bush term and urged them to forge closer trans-Atlantic relations, particularly over the rebuilding of Iraq. But French President Jacques Chirac countered that the EU needed to reinforce its own unity in a world which he said was increasingly divided.

            While Blair claimed to have detected a readiness among his European colleagues to rebuild bridges with Washington, Chirac pointedly stressed the need to develop EU cohesion in a world that is more multi-polar than ever. Some observers said that the French president's comments will keep the heat up on a simmering row over Iraq, following the staunch opposition of European countries including France and Germany to last year's conflict. It had been thought likely that a Kerry victory in the November 2 US poll might have cleared the way for Paris and Berlin to take a more active role in Iraq, possibly even sending peacekeeping troops. But this seems a remote prospect following Bush's re-election.

            On Thursday, Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi criticised states which took a "spectator" role in the reconstruction of his country, and confirmed that his remarks were directed at France or Germany. Chirac left the EU summit in Brussels early Friday, missing an address by Allawi to the gathered European leaders - but he denied this was intended as a snub. Speaking after private talks with Allawi, Blair made little attempt to hide his exasperation at continued criticism of the Iraq war and its aftermath in Europe where, he said, some people don't want to come to terms with "a new reality".