Weapons of mass
destruction: now they tell us
Under the UN Charter, states have to find a legal pretext before they
going to war. The pretext that the governments of America and Britain,
acting on behalf of their capitalist class, found for going to war
against Iraq last year was that the Iraqi state possessed “weapons of
mass destruction” that were an immediate threat to America and
Britain’s allies and military bases in the Middle East.
It has now turned out that this was a bad choice of pretext as recent
official reports in both countries are admitting that the intelligence
reports about this were wrong: Iraq did not possess such weapons. We
hold no brief for the “intelligence” services but it does seem a little
unfair to blame them for telling their political masters what they
wanted to hear.
So where does this leave matters? It’s common knowledge that the
real reason America and Britain went to war was oil – to acquire and
secure a reliable source of this key fuel to meet the growing demands
of capitalist industry in the West. Under the Saddam regime Iraq was
not a reliable source and, in any event, its production and the renewal
of its equipment was limited by UN sanctions. In addition, America
wanted to add to its military bases in the area, to protect Caspian as
well as Middle East oil sources. A useful spin-off, though not the
cause of the war, was that America could show to other states, such as
France, Germany, Russia and China that unlike Britain were not prepared
to fall in line, that it was the top dog in the world.
No doubt if Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction this would
have been a good capitalist reason for going to war, but only because
these weapons would have been held by a state which represented a
threat to the security of oil supplies. That weapons of mass
destruction in the Middle East as such were not the issue can be seen
from the fact that no preventive strikes have been planned, or even
dreamed of, against the one state in the region known to possess them –
Israel – but then Israel is no threat to oil supplies. On the contrary:
it was allowed to come into existence and has been propped up by the US
precisely to counter such threats from potentially anti-US Arab regimes.
The same goes for the “nasty dictator” argument. Certainly, Saddam was
nasty enough, but there are plenty of other nasty regimes in the area,
the worst being America’s main ally there, Saudi Arabia, which is still
a mediaeval despotism.
Once the war started the outcome was in no doubt: a walk-over for
America and Britain. The Saddam regime was overthrown and a friendly
puppet regime installed in its place. Saddam himself was eventually
captured and a big show trial is planned (at an American military
base). The verdict is in no doubt, though the new puppet regime may
well shy away from killing him – lest it set a precedent for them
should their turn to be overthrown come. This is “victors’ justice” as,
technically, Bush and Blair could also be charged with war crimes for
going to war without a proper legal basis as well as for murdering and
torturing Iraqi prisoners of war. But that’s not going to happen, of
course.
The lesson of all this is that wars are fought today over economic
matters such as sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and
investment outlets, and strategic points to protect these. Since
competition over these is built into capitalism, so is war. But, in
order to get popular support for a war, governments have to come up,
these days, with plausible “humanitarian” and “democratic” reasons. The
homage paid by vice to virtue. Socialists say: don’t be taken in by
such propaganda. As long as capitalism lasts there will be wars,
threats of war and preparations for war as well as government lies
about the reasons for going to war.
Wars and preparations for war mean destruction and waste in a world
that is capable of providing enough to provide every man, woman and
child on the planet with decent food, clothing, housing, health care,
education and all the other amenities of life. But this is not going to
happen within the framework of capitalism, with its class ownership and
production for profit. It is only going to be possible within the
framework of world socialism, where the Earth’s resources will have
become the common heritage of all humanity, to be used, under
democratic control, to provide for the needs of all.
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