A dangerous delusion is being widely promoted-- that Bush has been slowed down in his war drive against Iraq.

Bush, and the US, are right on track to mount a major assault in January, following a steady build up of world-wide political support (especially in Europe through NATO) and a steady build-up of US arms and military bases surrounding Iraq.

The foundation for Iraq’s take-over by the US was first laid in sanctions and the devastating bombing of the 1991 Gulf War. The overthrow of the government of Iraq became official US policy in 1998, authorized by Act of Congress and endorsed by President Clinton. In early spring, 2002, the Bush administration made public its intent to invade Iraq, setting the clock ticking on the final stage of the regime-change strategy. This fall, the US began an escalated bombing campaign to systematically destroy Iraq’s air defenses, in preparation for invasion.

Noam Chomsky, among many others, applauds us for being ahead of the Vietnam War's pace of activism, where he says it took five or six years, and the bombing of North Vietnam, to form a real movement. Whereas today, he says even before the war has started, we are in the streets.

But this isn’t a war that hasn’t yet started. This is a twelve-year brutal war, that is still being ignored, in its substance, by the "progressive" leadership in the US.

There has developed a consensus about the correct way to organize the anti-war movement, which is to suppress the harsh realities of US war on Iraq. I could not find mention of sanctions or US bombings on the United for Peace web site, as I cruised about wanting to learn why I should oppose this war. The site is about activism, and focuses no attention on Iraq or the crimes committed against it by the United States.

The anti-war movement ignores Iraq and the rights of its people, even as it pretends to take up its cause. It's rare to see a protest sign with the word "Iraq" in the message. It is rare to see a sign: Stop Bombing Iraq. Which is too bad, because this sign is especially effective, since so few people know the US is now (and has been) bombing Iraq - it often causes people to stop and ask questions.

The popular call to "give inspections a chance" reveals ignorance, at best. Weapons inspections have been a cruel farce on the people of Iraq, equivalent to a poker game where the US deals itself five aces every hand. According to the US-imposed rules of the game, Iraq can never get out from under sanctions for Iraq can never prove that it does not possess "weapons of mass destruction"; the trap was laid by the US within the rules of the United Nations from the beginning. Iraq has NO way to force the UN to recognize its sovereign rights -- its letters challenging bombing and sanctions, and condemning the US misuse of weapons inspections for spying and for plotting against the Iraqi government, always go unanswered.

At worst, the slogan "give inspections a chance" intentionally legitimizes an inversion of the principles of disarmament, whereby the UN strengthens US military dominance over the Middle East. The weapons that threaten the people of the Middle East are in the hands of, and are used by, the US and Israel.

Those who most need to be inspected go scot free, able to do their dirty work, out in the open.

We cannot confer credibility on the process of UN weapons inspections, while UN sanctions continue killing the people of Iraq, while the US bombs Iraq’s defenses. The US has made perfectly clear its intentions, not to be bound by the conclusions of UN weapons inspections. Scott Ritter, the top bulldog US weapons inspector from 1991-98, explains how the US ruined weapons inspections in 1998, not Saddam Hussein. US behavior has not improved since 1998-- in fact, most people would say the US under Bush is even more determined to subvert the UN for its own purposes than Clinton was in 1998.

The fundamental reasons why we must oppose US war lie not in the future, which is unknowable, but in the present and in the past, on a documented record that proves the US deliberately destroyed Iraq in 1990, 1991 and in all subsequent years, murdering over a million Iraqis in the process. As Madeline Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, assured her American television audience, it’s been worth the price to keep Saddam Hussein contained in his box -- "worth the price," Albright declares, about the deaths of more children in Iraq than were killed in the two atom bombs dropped on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Easy for the US to conclude the price is worth it -- it isn’t the US that’s paid the price, it’s the parents of the dead children of Iraq.

Under eight years of Clinton, the American people were taught to accept sanctioning and bombing Iraq as an acceptable, even a normal state of affairs. Racist actions and attitudes towards Arabs and Muslims are widely tolerated, even encouraged in the US. By law, the US government now singles out young men of Arab descent for special scrutiny and punitive procedures.

A bleak reality stares us in the face. If the Bush administration wants to invade Iraq in January, it will do so; Congress will not stop it, and neither will European leaders nor the Security Council of the UN. We in the US, without any real political power at this moment, cannot stop what has already been put into motion.

To effect change in the US, we have to take power away from those who rule politics now, from the ruling class political interests who support imperialism -- those who want US economic power to rule the world, defended by the threat of overwhelming force. From the Republicans and Democrats who patriotically join together to approve a $395 billion dollar "defense" budget. Who patriotically join together to authorize Bush’s pre-emptive takeover of Iraq. Who agree that the US should threaten to use nuclear weapons to deter "weapons of mass destruction." Who approve the build up of US military bases throughout the world.

When the obstacles to progress are huge, it does not help to believe they are small. We can’t oppose genocidal US imperial rule by our shopping habits, or by voting Democrat or for Ralph Nader. I personally do not believe we can challenge US imperial rule under the banner of patriotism. Obviously others feel differently.

Whether or not Bush orders the invasion of Iraq in January, the war against the Iraqi people is not going away, just as the US is not dismantling its military bases. Just as the US Congress is not withdrawing its financial support for Israel. These problems will persist until a new kind of politics emerges in the US that is eager to mount a principled challenge to US imperialism.

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Contact the Campaign to End Sanctions at EndSanctions@cs.com

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