Like last August�s missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan, the timing of these attacks is closely linked to Clinton�s domestic problems. Today�s attack is part of an effort to prevent the outgoing US House of Representatives voting on impeachment in the hope that the new House, elected in November and beginning work in 1999, will agree a deal instead to accept a censure vote.

But these missile strikes are not only due to the US Republicans� exploitation of Clinton�s predicament over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. They also are an attempt by the US superpower to reassert its global muscle. The manner and timing of Clinton�s and Blair�s actions are a demonstration of imperialist arrogance, laced with hypocrisy.

The attack is not about Iraq�s failure to carry out UN resolutions. Israel, for example, has annexed territory, bombed neighbouring countries, still occupies southern Lebanon, has developed nuclear weapons and defied many UN resolutions, yet suffers no sanctions or bombing raids.

It has nothing to do with helping the Iraqi people. Thousands of Iraqi men, women and children, are already suffering from the devastating effects of sanctions and now risk more deaths and injuries. The landing of one of the first wave of missiles in the Iranian city of Khorramshahr shows that this is not a precision assault and, the longer the attacks go on, the more civilians will suffer.

But the UN�s sanctions are hitting Iraqi civilians every day. They are, in fact, a weapon of slow mass destruction. At the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, Iraq had a per capita income of just under $4,000 a year, by 1995 it had collapsed to $330, with 5,700 children dying every month. A further million children suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition and avoidable illnesses. Between 1990 and 1994 the infant mortality rate rose from 25 to 92 per 1000 births. In total it is estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have died as a result of these sanctions.

The propaganda and spin-doctoring offensive of Washington and London justifying this attack centres on the alleged Iraqi attempts to hide weapons of mass destruction. They totally ignore the fact that the US and Britain both have, and continue to modernise, far larger arsenals of �weapons of mass destruction�. Their propagandists are attempting to present this assault as something which is �regrettably� necessary to prevent war. But these do not even care for their own soldiers, something shown in their callous treatment of those suffering from �Gulf War Syndrome� as a result of the weapons and tactics which the Coalition itself used in the 1991 fighting.

The US and British governments say the attacks were in response to the alleged Iraqi blocking of the work of Unscom (the UN special commission) outlined in the report submitted by its chief inspector, Richard Butler, to the UN Security Council late on December 15. Yet they did not wait for the UN Security Council to discuss Butler�s report before launching their attack on December 16. The London Financial Times has today (December 17 1998) published material quoting unnamed Western diplomats who question whether the Butler report�s �conclusions had justified the military strike�. Actually Butler�s report showed that most of the confrontations between Unscom and the Iraqi authorities were focused on documents rather than weapons sites. One of the key conflicts was over Butler�s demand to be allowed to search regional offices of the ruling Baath party. There are many questions about the work of Unscom and the UN weapons inspectors working in Iraq, with reports that the current attack was prepared on the basis of Butler giving advance information to the US.

Even in the US, sections of the ruling class are deeply sceptical about the reasons for and outcome of this air bombardment. Naturally many of Clinton�s Republican opponents have challenged the reasons for the attack, coming as it did the day before the US House of Representatives was due to vote on Clinton�s impeachment. Trent Lott, US Senate majority leader, said �I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time ... Both the timing and the policy are subject to question�.

But other capitalist strategists correctly understand that this bombing offensive will not fundamentally improve the position of US imperialism in the area and, in the longer term, weaken its influence. The present silence of most Middle East governments is a sign of this. Even the most pro-imperialist Arab ruler, fearing popular opinion, is currently not prepared to rush to back Clinton.

A key change since the 1990/91 Gulf crisis and war is the breakdown of the US led Coalition. Today the divisions between the imperialist countries reflecting their differing national interests are evident in the distance with which the French government is keeping from the US and British attacks. French imperialism is not opposed in principle to military interventions. It has carried them out frequently in Africa. But it feels it can profit from the inevitable unpopularity which the US and Britain will now suffer in the Middle East. A similar calculation drives the policy of the Russian government, along with its discomfort at US military action so close to its borders and defence of its interests in Middle East and central Asia. The absence of any attempt by the US to gain other countries� prior approval for the raids shows both its relative isolation and is a reflection of governments starting to come under pressure from a growing world-wide anti-imperialist sentiment.

Clinton�s recent three day visit to Israel-Palestine led to some Palestinian illusions that the US government can be an �honest broker�. But the reality is that Clinton was acting in the interests of US imperialism in getting the Israeli government to make a few more concessions to strengthen Arafat. Now Clinton will be viewed in a different light and his visit seen as part of an attempt to gain prestige in Arab eyes before launching this attack.

Inevitably this imperialist assault will lead to a further radicalisation and upheavals within the Arab world. The hypocrisy of the raid�s timing and the US� selective enforcement of United Nations decisions, especially in comparison with Israel, will be widely seen throughout the world. Among Muslims, the sight of two Christian national leaders launching this attack on a Muslim nation on the eve of their own Christmas season of �peace and goodwill to all men� can lead to renewed support for fundamentalist religious movements, especially when previously neither the US or Britain did anything to prevent the assaults on the Muslims in Chechnya or now in Kosova,

Reflecting the mood in the Arab world today a leading Persian Gulf newspaper, the Al-Khaleej from Dubai, headlined �Wide American-British aggression against Iraq - Monicagate strikes again�.

Saddam Hussein�s regime is, without a doubt, one of the world�s most vicious dictatorships, relying on systematic repression, including the torture and murder of opponents. But Saddam originally built up his military-police machine on the strength of massive support from the US and European powers, who backed him against Khomeini�s Iran, at that time their main enemy in the region. When Saddam used chemical weapons to crush the Kurds in 1988 the west was silent, because he was still fighting Iran. Even after the Gulf War the Coalition did nothing to prevent the brutal suppression of the Shia uprising in southern Iraq out of fear of strengthening Iran.

Today the West is backing some opposition groups in Iraq. Recently the Clinton administration allocated $97 million to the Iraqi opposition. But this is not support for democratic rights in Iraq. The imperialists fear a movement of the Iraqi working masses, what they want is another regime they can co-operate with as they did with Saddam before 1990.

For all its fine words, the United Nations has, once again, shown its complete inability to act without the prior agreement of the major powers. When possible, the big powers use the United Nations label as a �democratic� cover for their actions; when they cannot they go ahead regardless. That has been the story from the time of the 1956 Suez invasion, the Vietnam war and now the assault on Iraq. When the big powers act on their own, the United Nations is exposed as an empty talking shop. Sometimes it is not even a talking shop. Last August, at a Security Council meeting two days after the US missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan, not a word was uttered by anyone concerning those attacks.

Fundamentally the UN�s whole structure is based upon deals between the governments of its member countries. This means that the UN is dominated by the most powerful states, today that means the major imperialist powers. These imperialist states will not give up their powers, something which is reflected even in the UN�s Statutes, with its General Assembly not having any role while the Security Council makes decisions, providing no �permanent member� uses a veto to defend its own interests.

It is utopian to think that the UN itself can provide any genuine alternative. Real change in the world, opposition to oppression and poverty, and resistance to the dictates of imperialism can only come from the movement of working people, led by the working class, which aims to overthrow capitalism and start to build a Socialist world.

This is the goal towards which the CWI is working, both in the countries where it has members and internationally.

Within hours of the US and British attack starting, CWI members in different countries were working to explain the issues involved and help mobilise protests.

Our demands are:

For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.

Committee for a Workers' International

CWI,
PO Box 3688,
London,
E9 5QX.
E/Mail: [email protected]
Tel: ++ 44 181 533 0201
Fax: ++ 44 181 985 0757