Statement on War in Iraq

A war on Iraq led by the United States will have disastrous consequences for the people of Iraq, as well as for the United States itself. While we condemn the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, the Young Democratic Socialists unconditionally opposes US military action against Iraq.

War with Iraq will do nothing to improve the condition of the Iraqi people. Even if the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein is overthrown, there is no guarantee that what comes next will not be something worse -- or simply chaos. Hussein's regime is much stronger than the Taliban, and there is insufficient domestic opposition with a real base inside the country. A prolonged US occupation would probably be necessary to keep order if Hussein were to be deposed.

The situation for millions of Iraqis is already precarious. Hundreds of thousands have died from over a decade of US-sponsored sanctions. Under the "Oil for Food" program, Iraq has been able to acquire some necessary humanitarian supplies. But the U.S. continues to block the importation of hundreds of items, from ambulances to pencils, on the grounds that they could conceivably be used for military purposes. Attempts to blame the humanitarian catastrophe entirely on Saddam Hussein are a flimsy attempt to deny US responsibility -- in the words of United Nations representative Adnan Jarra, Iraq's food distribution programs are "second to none". Former UN Deputy Secretary-General Dennis Halliday, who managed the "Oil for Food" program, called US policy toward Iraq "genocidal", and former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq Hans von Sponeck has turned against the sanctions regime as well. Clearly, any principled move towards liberating the Iraqi people must begin first with a struggle against the misery imposed on those people by our own government.

The Bush administration has claimed that Hussein's unwillingness to allow UN weapons inspectors into Iraq necessitates an invasion to prevent him from developing "weapons of mass destruction". Weapons inspection teams were withdrawn from the country, in part because it was revealed that Iraq was justified in its claim that the United States was using them as a front for its spying operations. Iraq has expressed a willingness to allow in weapons inspectors. The US, similarly, has an obligation to aggressively pursue a diplomatic solution to this problem. Moreover, Scott Ritter, who headed the UN weapons inspection team until 1998, argues that Iraq poses no threat to its neighbors or to the US, and that the American case for war is "built on a framework of lies".

The United States could do a great deal more to rid the world of "weapons of mass destruction" by starting at home. The recent Russian-US treaty in March 2002 reduced the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads that the United States may possess to between 1,700 and 2,200. The United States has publicly declared stocks of the smallpox virus, as well as the world's second-largest stock of chemical weaponry.

The United States will state that Iraq has ignored UN resolutions. This is true -- but if it were a sufficient justification for invasion, the United States and Israel, among many others, would have been under military occupation long ago. Meanwhile, Iraq has begun to normalize relations with its neighbors. There has been no call from any government in the region for a US invasion or any other military action against Iraq-in fact, there has been explicit opposition to such a course. Worldwide, the Bush administration has experienced almost unprecedented isolation in its position on Iraq.

The claim that invading Iraq has anything to do with the security and well-being of either the American or Iraqi people lacks any credibility. In fact, by proposing a widely unpopular military intervention in Iraq, the United States risks profoundly destabilizing countries throughout the middle east, with terrible consequences both for those countries and for the United States. The only purpose that war in Iraq will serve is to further solidify the United States' hegemonic position, secure access to cheap oil for foreign corporations, and distract attention from the denial of civil liberties, corruption and staggering fiscal mismanagement which characterize Bush's domestic policy. Furthermore, the speed of Bush's transition from reassuring Muslims that the "War on Terrorism" was not a war on Muslims, to threatening a war with another Muslim country with no proven links to terror, can only undermine and damage relations with Muslim countries and domestic Muslim communities.

It is also grotesquely hypocritical for the US to speak of Saddam Hussein's violence against his own people even as President Bush continues to support one of the worst violations of human rights in the Middle East: Ariel Sharon's continued occupation and violence in Palestinian territories.

A war against Iraq is unlikely to be either quick or easy. There is little chance that we will see another Afghanistan, with domestic opposition doing most of the fighting (and dying) for the United States. The Iraqi regime is too strong, and the opposition groups too weak. Defense department officials speak of committing 250,000 troops to a three-directional invasion. The death toll, particularly among the vulnerable Iraqi victims of the sanctions, could easily dwarf the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan.

War in Iraq will be costly. With the economy already in recession, war has been used as an excuse to further the conservative economic agenda. Specifically at risk may be funding for higher education, new teachers, environmental protection, social welfare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, and minority job training programs. Increased military spending could also further unbalance the budget, continuing the abandonment of five years of fiscal responsibility.

The way to deal with the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein is not to commit troops --and certainly not unilaterally. A resumption of weapons inspections should be negotiated. Iraq should be allowed to overhaul its oil industry so that it can produce at full capacity, and the United States should relax its restrictions on needed humanitarian goods. It is through engagement with Iraqi society that change will come -- isolating Saddam Hussein only strengthens him. For the present, however, the first duty of American progressives is to speak and organize against this latest planned expansion of the 'War on Terrorism': a seemingly inevitable, unjustified and inhumane US war on the people of Iraq.

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