ON THE night of January 16/17 George Bush unleashed his strike force — of unprecedented power — in an attack on Iraq. The most formidable, violent and sophisticated air attack in history is under way, and, at the moment of writing, appears to be achieving its objectives without great difficulty. This will come as a surprise only to those who have either believed the campaign whipped up in the imperialist media around the theme of the "new Hitler" with "the fourth most powerful army in the world", or those among the Arab masses who have been taken in by Saddam's rhetoric.
ALL the debates and conjectures that preceded the outbreak of the war can now be resolved. First of these was the debate on its real objectives. Whatever attitude one may have on the question of Kuwait, there can no longer be the slightest doubt that the real aim of the impressive concentration of American forces in the Gulf region goes beyond the "liberation" of the Emirate. This objective could have been achieved through a sustained blockade, without bloodshed, as some of the American establishment — fearing the negative effects of military action on imperialist interests in the Arab and Muslim countries — wished.
But this was not the objective of Bush and his acolytes. This self-appointed world cop unilaterally despatched forces to the region that went well beyond what was needed to defend this other Texas that is the Saudi Arabian kingdom, or the needs of the embargo decreed by the Great Powers united in the United Nations Security Council. Since the start, Washington's real aim, as we have explained many times, has been the destruction of Iraqi military potential.
Bush plainly stated this, in an official letter addressed to Saddam Hussein during the Baker-Aziz meeting on January 9 in Geneva. This letter does not say: "leave Kuwait or we will dislodge you by force", but in substance "get out unconditionally, otherwise your military establishment will be destroyed." Given the point that things had reached, the Iraqi dictator had, furthermore, every reason to believe that, even if he withdrew, the French promises that this would carry no risk would turn out to be at best only the fond wishes of Paris.
American officials and experts were repeatedly stating that, even if Iraq decided to withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait, Saddam's Iraq would be subjected to sanctions, a continuing embargo and other forms of harassment aimed at making him pay the price for the invasion of Kuwait and strangling his military potential.
The definition of the objectives of the first phase of operation Desert Storm is eloquent. It is not the Iraqi troops stationed in Kuwait who have been attacked, nor is the assault restricted to missiles and other Iraqi military means that could be used to directly support the troops.
The Cruise missiles and the formidable air fleet used in this phase have targeted Iraqi objectives which have a military potential in the broad sense of the term. That is to say, not just existing forces, but everything that might permit Iraq to rebuild its military power in the future, such as the nuclear, chemical and armaments industries.
That phase of military action that generally takes place when it has become clear that the enemy will fight to the end, was here the very first one, that is, a lightning, massive night time strike by the American forces. That is to say a deliberate aggression against Iraq as such, going far beyond the question of Kuwait or the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The destruction of Iraqi potential by the United States and allied forces aims at eliminating a regional power capable of standing up to American plans in the area, threatening Washington's Arab financial backers and protégés, influencing the oil market and breaking the strategic superiority of the Zionist over the Arab forces, which has existed for more than four decades.
These have been the real aims of American imperialism in the Gulf crisis since the start. Those like the social democrats, who have pretended to believe in the "international legality" of the American action, and have defended this idea against the pacifist inclinations of public opinion, have ultimately played the game of the American big brother. The French imperialist government is not winning over anybody in the Arab world by "limiting" its participation to an attack on Kuwait. The Soviet bureaucracy, for its part, has hit the lowest level of cynicism during this crisis. After being well paid for its collusion with Washington in the UN, it has taken the opportunity to try to brutally subdue Lithuania.
What is taking place in the Gulf is the first big battle of the "new world order" so dear to the heart of George Bush. It will not be the last. The present Arab generation will have to draw the same lessons from this as did the generation of 1967, which saw at one and the same time the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese and the humiliating defeat of the Arab regimes by Israel.
Rotten bourgeois dictatorships are incapable of a victorious resistance to imperialism. The latter's technological superiority can only be overcome by a prolonged popular revolutionary mobilization supported by the world anti-imperialist and anti-militarist movements.
Such support is more than ever needed for the masses of the region. For them to be able to get rid of all the tyrannies that oppress them it is first of all, and above all, necessary to win the immediate withdrawal of all the forces involved in this criminal imperialist aggression.