running out of reserves in the war for oil
WORKERS, JULY 2004 ISSUE
Despite the strong opposition in Britain to the Iraq war, it has been leaked that Blair is planning to send 3,000 more troops, as part of a Nato force. Blair hopes that this will be formally agreed at the Nato summit in Istanbul just before the handover to the newly appointed government in Iraq on 30 June. Coming after the announcement of 600 more troops earlier in the same week increasing numbers already there to 9,200, we must ask where will this all end? And more to the point, what can we do to stop it?
We are becoming a nation of mercenaries for the protection of US oil supplies. When Blair said, "The very reason we're taking the action we are is nothing to do with oil," the tortured syntax betrayed the lie. General Anthony Zinni, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the other hand, could use a simple, honest sentence: "Access to energy drives all US policy in the region."
Consider where the USA locates its 725 military bases around the world, and it is clear that General Zinni's observation also applies much further afield than Iraq or even the Middle East. Many of the bases are for control of oil and gas pipelines — in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Turkey, Egypt, Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and its six secret bases in Israel. The proposed Trans-Afghan oil and gas pipelines run south from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, to Pakistan's port of Gwadar.
Similarly, in Eastern Europe, the US Camps Bondsteel and Monteith in Kosovo are astride the proposed Trans-Balkan pipeline, running from Georgia through Bulgaria to Albania's port of Vlora. Camp Sarafovo is in Burgas, home to Bulgaria's biggest oil refinery, and the camp at Constanta dominates the centre of Romania's oil industry.
Slouching towards fascism
The US ruling class is moving relentlessly towards fascism, marked by a pattern of escalating aggression against any country it considers to be exerting independence. So Bush draws up his hit list and threatens 60 countries.
In the USA itself, corporatism, vast military spending, corruption, huge government debts, destruction of liberties and Goebbels-like propaganda all feed the drive to fascism. US democracy, always offering only a choice between evils, is now mocked, and only sustained and purposeful action by the American people can save what remains of it.
We cannot be smug, about the situation here, which is not so different, as the veteran commentator Anthony Sampson recently wrote: "Relentless pressure was exerted by a small group in No. 10 who were determined to execute their own prearranged policy for war, and to justify it to parliament and the media. That overriding power not only led to basic distortions of the truth, it represented a threat to the democratic process itself."
Who told us that disarmed, starved Iraq, not the USA, was the threat to peace in the Middle East? Who told us that attacking Iraq was the way to beat al-Qaeda? Blair's warmongering is directly harming Britain.
Torture
The US and British governments have illegally ordered their armed forces to occupy Iraq. These governments have also illegally authorised the use of torture. 75 complaints of deaths in custody, deaths through shootings and cases of alleged ill-treatment have been made against British forces.
The US state uses Guantanamo Bay as a camp for political prisoners, complete with torture, just like the British Empire used the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal from 1858 to 1945. Lord Justice Steyn rightly described it as a "monstrous failure of justice" where in the face of "utter lawlessness" the British government's approach, claiming to make representations behind the scenes, will not do.
When Iraq displayed five US POWs, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was quick to complain that this violated the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions, which the USA signed in 1955, prohibit torture and ill treatment of any detainees, whether POWs, unlawful combatants, security detainees or hostages. Torture or inhumane treatment of any POW is a war crime (Geneva III, article 130), just as it is of any civilian (Geneva IV, article 147).
The Convention against Torture, signed by the USA in 1994, says, "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency may be invoked as justification for torture".
International lawlessness
As Gerry Adams commented on another well-known instance of torture, in Northern Ireland: "To the victor, the spoils." Geneva means nothing to the US. Yet Rumsfeld's staff prepared a paper that advised President Bush he was not bound by the international laws banning the torture of prisoners. It said: "The prohibition against torture must be construed as inappropriate to interrogations undertaken pursuant to commander-in-chief authority."
The USA has illegally prevented the International Committee of the Red Cross access to Saddam Hussein: the Geneva Conventions specifically empower the ICRC to have unfettered, multiple access to POWs and all other detainees (Geneva III, articles 9 and 125).
Such gross and continuing violations of international law must be condemned by the British government. Failing that, we must bring them down or face the consequences of being allies and accomplices to war criminals. Senior diplomats and law lords have played their part: workers' organisations have yet to play theirs.