Iraq Veterans against the War - A Testimony

On March 14th, Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal took the stand alongside the members of Iraq Veterans Against the War and other concerned parties. Arnove discusses the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and argues that the best way to support the troops is to bring them home.

He makes five brief points:

First, Afghanistan and Iraq were both meant to have a “demonstration effect,” signaling to other states that the U.S. government

• has the right (which on a limited basis it may extend to allies, such as Israel) to engage in “preemptive strikes” against any country it chooses;
  
• will defer to the United Nations and other international bodies only when it suits its ends, and will dismiss them as “irrelevant” otherwise; and
  
• will allow no challenge to the “credibility” of U.S. imperialism.

Second, the invasions were intended to give the United States greater control over the Middle East and Central and Western Asia, home to the vast majority of the world’s oil reserves, home to most of the world’s natural gas reserves, and also home to vital pipelines and shipping routes for energy. In the words of former Bush speechwriter David Frum, “An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein—and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans.” The United States interest in Middle Eastern and Asian energy is not primarily motivated by consumption needs, but by the geopolitical advantages that flow from controlling this oil and natural gas. U.S. policy planners understand that the main power centers that could emerge as peer rivals to the United States in the future and that could threaten its status as the world’s sole superpower — namely India and China, and the combined economies of the European Union — all are more reliant on energy imports from the Middle East than is the United States. Regional hegemony, therefore, gives the United States tremendous leverage and influence vis-à-vis competing economic and political powers that are dependent on these energy resources. As oil gets more expensive to extract, and as exploration is forced to seek out more dangerous geographic and political terrain for new oil fields, control over these energy resources and trade routes has grown even more important to U.S. imperial strategy.

Third, the plan for a quick and easy victory and regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq was meant to establish client states in two strategically located countries that would provide the United States with important bases for military personnel and equipment and also bases for the projection of U.S. power, particularly to isolate or engineer regime change in nearby Iran and Syria. These regional bases of power were also intended to enhance the ability of the United States to project power globally. That is, Washington hoped to use regional hegemony to preserve — and expand — its global hegemony and to enhance its ability to intervene economically and politically, in the affairs of any country around the world where the U.S. might have interests, no matter what the location, using U.S. military might to bully countries into compliance. Of course, this has backfired. Instead of being in a stronger position, the United States is in a weaker one — regionally and internationally. And now that Iran has emerged as a stronger regional player as a result of U.S. actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the stakes have become even higher, and we see greater threats of an attack, particularly an aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities also intended to facilitate regime change in that country. Meanwhile, Venezuela and Russia have also started to develop energy relationships with Iran and other countries and to develop new trade relations and energy supply routes that threaten U.S. control and domination of energy markets. Keep in mind that Venezuela is one of the leading suppliers of oil for import to the United States and Russia has the world’s largest natural gas reserves.

Fourth, both occupations were linked to a set of economic objectives that extended far beyond the question of the huge subsidies and profits created for political allies and the national security-military industrial complex to the much bigger prize of imposing a neoliberal model throughout all of the Middle East and Western and Central Asia that would give the United States privileged access to these markets and open them to much greater foreign ownership and control, with lower tax rates, less money diverted to social needs of the population, and fewer protections for workers and the poor.

Fifth, the Bush administration thought that, by its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, it could bury once and for all the so-called Vietnam syndrome, eliminating the public’s reluctance to see Washington intervene militarily in the affairs of other countries and undermining international opposition to U.S. unilateralism. Having thus staked U.S. credibility on the line, Washington planners concluded that any defeat would lead not just to a failure to achieve key war aims, but a profound setback for vital military, political, and economic interests. That’s why they are holding on so tenaciously to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, seeking to salvage some other outcome, no mater what the human cost.

Read further here.