Re: Shock and Awe = Bush's Blitzkrieg

["George K Cunningham" <gkc@louisville.edu>]

Dave,

I am sure that if this were the early 1940s you would be saying:

"Once you understand the sheer falsity of Administration claims that
Japan and Germany 
present some kind of dire threat to the U.S., and once you appreciate
the 
huge and ultimately unforeseeable dangers that lie in unleashing this 
aggressive war, you have to start asking yourself why this
Administration 
would undertake such risks." 

I am glad that you are not responsible for the foreign policy of this
country.
 

George K. Cunningham
University of Louisville

>>> Newdem@aol.com 03/07/03 09:46AM >>>
Once you understand the sheer falsity of Administration claims that
Iraq 
presents some kind of dire threat to the U.S., and once you appreciate
the 
huge and ultimately unforeseeable dangers that lie in unleashing this 
aggressive war, you have to start asking yourself why this
Administration 
would undertake such risks. 

Here is my attempt to answer that question, taking into account 20th
century 
history and the current world situation. 

Dave Stratman
Editor, New Democracy
<A HREF="http://www.newdemocracyworld.org";>newdemocracyworld.org</A>
5 Burr Street
Boston, MA 02130
617-524-4073
*************
THE U.S. AS FOURTH REICH
By Dave Stratman
September 2, 2002
<A
HREF="http://newdemocracyworld.org/index.htm";>newdemocracyworld.org</A>
 

The U.S. is making itself an object of fear and hatred throughout the
world. 
Bush Administration spokesmen have promised the world "endless war"
against 
as many as sixty countries, have claimed for the U.S. the right to
launch 
pre-emptive war on any nation which the U.S. suspects may become a
threat in 
the future, and have reserved the right to first use of nuclear
weapons. The 
U.S. now seems about to launch a pre-emptive war against Iraq which is
likely 
to result in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, not to mention
substantial 
U.S. military casualties, a war for which the U.S. has support only
from U.S. 
Pekinese Tony Blair and Israel. 

Has the Bush regime become unhinged? Or do its extremely bellicose
policies 
serve some arcane strategic purpose which U.S. ruling circles believe
make 
them worth their enormous political and economic costs?

As ill-considered as these war-like policies may seem, in fact there
are 
powerful strategic reasons behind them.

The media are full of stories about Israel and Iraq and other arenas
where 
the overwhelming military might of the U.S. and its client state leads
many 
people to feel utterly powerless and hopeless about the possibility of

ordinary people changing the world. 

Missing from our front pages, or indeed anywhere in the mainstream
media, are 
stories about the rising levels of mass resistance to capitalism around
the 
globe: general strikes in Italy and Spain; labor unrest of historic 
proportions in China; South America in flames, with unrest in Brazil, 
insurrections and factory seizures in Argentina, strikes and riots in 
Uruguay, insurrections against privatization in Peru, mass
mobilizations in 
Venezuela; and a level of disillusionment with corporate thievery in
the U.S. 
not seen since the 1930s. Couple all these with growing danger of
financial 
collapse and global deflation, and the future of capitalism begins to
look 
shaky indeed. 

The war plans and rhetoric of the Bush administration are meant to
distract 
attention from capitalism's profound strategic weakness and focus
instead on 
its overwhelming military strength, with the result that, even as
capitalist 
economic and ideological power unravels, it appears to be insuperably
strong. 

But the bellicose policies of the U.S. have in addition more profound
goals 
than to serve as diversionary emblems of overwhelming military power.
This is 
what gets us to consideration of the U.S. as Fourth Reich.

As dangerous as World War II was for world capitalism, war for and
against 
the Third Reich was meant to save the world system of elite rule. The
world 
was deep in Depression in the 1930s. Anti-capitalist sentiment was on
the 
rise and workers' movements were increasingly powerful. Germany was on
the 
verge of civil war when Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the German
elite 
on January 30, 1933 to crush the growing workers' movement, which he 
proceeded to do with concentration camps for 100,000 Communists and
militant 
workers. Japan was riven by strikes and anti-capitalist sentiment when
the 
military leadership invaded China in 1937 in a desperate drive for
natural 
resources and national unity. French capitalists were besieged by
factory 
occupations and welcomed the Nazi invaders. Industrial unionism and
sit-down 
strikes were sweeping the U.S. In the USSR Stalin was holding onto
power 
through ferocious repression, with executions or the gulag for millions
of 
workers, peasants, and Old Bolsheviks.

War gave the Nazi regime a national purpose and an external enemy to
justify 
Gestapo domination of German life; while Hitler and many of his closest

henchman died or were imprisoned after the war, the industrial elite
which 
had placed him in power prospered. War brought unity and national
purpose to 
a British society riven by class conflict. The French Vichy government

collaborated with the occupying Nazis to break French workers' unions.
U.S. 
corporations imposed a No-Strike Pledge on workers for the duration of
the 
war and consolidated corporate power in American life. The German
invasion 
came close to shattering Soviet power, but national resistance to the
Nazis 
in the end saved Stalin's rule and helped keep the USSR from internal 
collapse for another fifty years. 

Mobilization for war led these economies out of Depression. In the
U.S., 
FDR's New Deal programs had negligible effect. What saved the U.S.
economy 
was producing tanks and ships and planes for WWII. Mobilization for war
led 
Nazi Germany from massive unemployment to a labor shortage.

What does any of this have to do with the present day? I submit that
the U.S. 
has determined (whether with the connivance of its elite partners is
not 
clear) to serve a role similar to that of the Nazi regime in the 1930s
and 
'40s. The U.S. will play Fourth Reich to the other governments of the
world, 
in particular to those most likely to be threatened by mass
insurrections and 
revolutionary upheavals in the coming years: China, certain Western
European 
powers, and South American nations. 

The U.S. will go on the attack against many of the world's people - 
especially those who have the misfortune to be sitting on top of a lot
of oil 
- to insure elite control of world resources and, more importantly, to
police 
against revolutionary movements, all in the name of "fighting
terrorism." 
Ironically though it will be the excessive violence and lawlessness of
the 
U.S. approach that will be most useful to governing elites.

The growing anti-capitalist movement among the world's workers and
other 
people presents the world business elite with a deeply threatening
situation. 
The elites of each of the countries in which resistance is growing need
an 
external enemy against which they can lead their own people, either in
real 
battle or in moral indignation. They need to be able to say that the
problem 
in Italy or Spain or China is not Italian or Chinese leaders or the 
capitalist system: the problem is the Americans. 

The role of the U.S. will be to act as a stimulant and target of world
anger 
so that the burgeoning world anti-capitalist movement can be turned
into an 
anti-American movement, in which the working classes of China and Spain
and 
Italy and France and South America can be recruited into movements of 
national unity - Popular Fronts - against the Americans. In this way -
or so 
it is hoped - potentially revolutionary working class movements will be

transformed into nationalist movements under elite leadership.

Does this strategy seem far-fetched? In fact it is nothing new for the
U.S., 
but merely playing out on a world scale its strategy in the Middle
East. The 
U.S. has long used Israel as a lightening rod to deflect the class
anger of 
impoverished Arab workers away from their own rulers, thus keeping in
power 
shaky U.S. client regimes throughout the region. 

This is also the strategy the U.S. used in Iran to prevent the
revolution 
against the Shah from sweeping away capitalist control there and
sparking a 
prairie fire of democratic revolution in the Middle East. The U.S.
secretly 
colluded with the Ayatollah Khomeini, even as he attacked the U.S. as
the 
"Great Satan" and took over the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and held
Americans 
captive. The U.S. was perfectly willing to permit, even encourage, this
storm 
of anti-Americanism, since it deflected popular anger away from
capitalism 
and class rule itself and permitted the reactionary regime of the
mullahs to 
consolidate its grip on Iranian society.

Playing the role of the Fourth Reich will have an added benefit for the
U.S. 
elite. As Fourth Reich-like policies bring the U.S. under attack from 
terrorists and lead to real war, they will be used to justify tighter
and 
tighter government control of the U.S. population. Constitutional
protections 
will prove as flimsy as the prisoners' huts at Guantanamo.

The U.S. strategy amounts to a very serious gamble with enormous
stakes. 
While it is intended to intimidate people and make them feel powerless,
it 
does so at the cost of calling into question the ability of capitalism
to 
offer them a secure future. In other words, embarking on endless war
will 
intensify the strategic erosion of capitalist ideological control while

strengthening the capitalist state. While making war will immediately 
strengthen the hand of the rulers, over time it will undermine their 
position. 

It is worth recalling here the complicated history of WWII and of
nations 
which succumbed to German or Japanese invasion. While people were
initially 
stunned into defeated silence by invasion and occupation, over time
they 
organized Resistance movements which rose up not only against their
foreign 
occupiers but also against their own business and aristocratic classes
which 
had collaborated with the enemy. As the German occupiers were routed in

France, Italy, and Greece, sweeping social revolutions were only
narrowly 
prevented when Communist parties obedient to Stalin succeeded in
disarming 
triumphant Resistance forces. Communist-led partisan forces under Tito
in 
Yugoslavia refused Stalin's order, defeated Nazi occupiers and native
Fascist 
forces alike, and took power. The Chinese Communist Party likewise
refused 
Stalin's orders to desist; after waging civil war from 1946 to 1949,
Mao's 
forces defeated Chinese Nationalist armies and seized state power. 

Even peoples who had not suffered occupation emerged from the war with

greatly raised expectations of what their societies should be like, 
expectations which threatened their rulers. British voters swept
Churchill 
and the Tories from power at war's end and established a welfare state.

Workers in the U.S., which had suffered none of the ravages of war that

European countries had endured, in 1946 embarked on the greatest strike
wave 
in our history. It took the Taft-Hartley Act, the declaration of the
Cold 
War, and a ferocious anti-Communist campaign to bring labor under
control. 
(Communists in the labor movement were particularly vulnerable to
attack 
since they had vigorously supported the No Strike Pledge during the war
and 
had led the attack on rank-and-file militants who resisted it.) 

Will elite strategy lead to another world war? Given the embattled
situation 
of world capital and the trajectory of history in the last fifty years,
a war 
involving, say, China and perhaps India or some other Asian powers vs.
the 
U.S. or some mix of European powers, may be more possible than we would
like 
to think. Capitalism is running out of options. The future depends
largely on 
how threatened governing elites feel and to what lengths they believe
they 
must go to protect their rule. One can imagine, for example, a Chinese

Communist government threatened by domestic upheaval attacking Taiwan
in a 
desperate bid for national unity, realizing that this will bring war
with the 
U.S. The consequences of such possible developments are unforeseeable.

As the air waves ring with threats by U.S. officials against Iraq, it
is 
sobering to reflect that the Bush regime has staked its entire
credibility on 
more terrorist acts occurring; indeed Administration policies in Israel
and 
Afghanistan and Iraq seem calculated to stir up more attacks on
Americans. 
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft have promised us some new terrorist
outrage. 
Let us hope that this Administration does not decide to furnish us with
the 
terrorist catastrophe that it has promised.

Will the elite strategy succeed? Only time will tell, but the facade of

Bush's post-September 11 power-grab seems to be cracking, as more and
more 
Americans connect the dots between the "war on terrorism," attacks on 
Constitutional rights, Wall Street thievery, and government promises of

endless war. No one likes to admit that entities as powerful as the
U.S. 
government and Corporate America are not our friends but our enemies,
but 
many people are coming to this conclusion and are finding their voices.
What 
seems undeniably true is that the world has entered a new and dangerous

period of war and revolution in which the fate of humanity hangs in the

balance. 
****

------------------------------------------------
Direct list questions to listmom@interversity.net