Expanding the war?
Could the adventurist neo-con regime in Washington be poised for yet another aggressive military move in the oil-rich Middle East? Even though the current conflict--the drawnout and bloody struggle with an elusive but effective Iraqi resistance movement that refuses to accept the U.S. invasion and occupation of their country--has earned them worldwide condemnation and hatred, many signs point in the direction of more aggressions to come.
If so, it will not be the first time that U.S. imperialist strategists have tried to rescue a failing colonial adventure by widening the conflict--as they did in 1970 when, faced with fierce resistance from the Vietnamese, they launched a calamitous invasion of Cambodia.
The latest targets of administration hawks are the governments of Iran and Syria. On Feb. 16, after a hasty meeting of high govern ment officials, the two countries announced a common front against outside threats--clearly a reference to the Bush administration.
The trigger for this crisis appears to have been the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon, in an extremely powerful explosion. Speculation on exactly what happened and who was behind the blast is rife, but the U.S. immediately withdrew its ambassador to Syria in a move obviously meant to cast suspicion on that country. Syria's ambassador to Washington had already denied and denounced the killing of Hariri, calling it "a catastrophe for Syria."
However, like the kangaroo court in "Alice in Wonderland," the U.S. attitude was "sentence first, verdict afterwards." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while admitting that the U.S. has no evidence to accuse Syria formally, called the country a "big problem" in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 16.
Washington has for some time been trying to pressure Syria into allowing U.S. and Iraqi puppet troops to cross its border in "hot pursuit" of the Iraqi resistance. Syria has turned them down.
At the same time, Iran has charged that U.S. drone spy planes have been spotted many times reconnoitering in areas where Iran is constructing nuclear power plants, and said it will shoot down any unidentified planes that enter its territory. The U.S. is accusing Iran of developing nuclear weapons--a charge that the International Atomic Energy Agency refuses to support and that Iran denies.
The emergency meeting between the Syrian and Iranian leaders is a sure sign that they are trying to ward off an attack. Iran has been bracing for such an eventuality ever since President George W. Bush in 2002 announced it was part of an "axis of evil." In this year's State of the Union speech, in language reminiscent of the false reasons he gave for invading Iraq, Bush singled out both Syria and Iran, accusing them of "promoting terrorism" and seeking "weapons of mass destruction."
Since Jan. 1, over 100,000 new U.S. troops have been sent to the Middle East. They are part of a "rotation" that by the end of March will have seen some 230,000 U.S. soldiers, marines and reservists moved to the area, many of them on a forced second tour of duty.
The administration is desperate to subdue the growing resistance in Iraq. It has a tricky political situation on its hands, since the bloc which got the largest vote in the U.S.-organized elections is that of the Shias, who have always been close to Iran. And the Shia masses expect that a new Iraqi government will tell the U.S. troops to leave.
Whatever happens in the days and weeks to come, the need to get into the streets against this war will only grow stronger.
Deirdre Griswold, Workers World
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Article nr. 9787 sent on 19-feb-2005 02:32 ECT
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