Reply #18: Bush, Democrats back protracted war in Iraq

[IndianaGreen]

Two articles from WSWS that may shed light on why "our" representatives in Congress behave the way the do:

Bush, Democrats back protracted war in Iraq

Statement of the WSWS Editorial Board
1 December 2005

The great advantage that the administration still enjoys is the support for the war from its ostensible opposition—the Democratic Party. The basic unity of the Democrats and Republicans in support of the US occupation reflects the broad pro-war consensus within the financial oligarchy, whose essential interests are defended by both parties.

Those in the political establishment and the top ranks of the US financial and corporate world understood from the outset that the purpose of the war was not to counter a terrorist threat, much less promote “democracy,” but rather to utilize overwhelming American military power to impose US hegemony over a region that contains much of the world’s oil resources. The predominant sections of this ruling elite still see the vast profits and strategic advantages over America’s economic rivals that such control would yield as worth the price being paid in blood—both American and Iraqi—as well as the $6 billion in monthly war spending.

This is what underlies the bipartisan alliance between the Democrats and Bush in support of continuing what is, in the most profound sense, a criminal war. It also accounts for the indifference of both parties to the antiwar sentiments of the majority of the American people.

This alliance found its most noxious expression in the column written by Lieberman for the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages, the most consistent voice of the Republican right. Lieberman claimed that “real progress” is being made in Iraq as a result of the US occupation and that the US neo-colonial operation is somehow giving the Iraqi people a “modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/bush-d01.shtml

US press echoes consensus in ruling elite to continue slaughter in Iraq

By Patrick Martin
3 December 2005

The American ruling elite is inextricably committed to military victory in Iraq. That is the only conclusion to be drawn from the response of the major media to Bush’s November 30 war speech.

The most prominent editorial voices of corporate America, from the ultra-right Wall Street Journal to the New York Times, the leading voice of upper-class liberalism, despite disputes over tactics and methods, agree that there is no alternative to using whatever level of violence is required for the United States to remain in control of the oil-rich Mideast country.

The December 1 editorial in the Wall Street Journal was typically unrestrained in its celebration of the war, hailing Bush’s speech as a rededication of the administration to “complete victory” and a repudiation of the growing public disaffection with the war. “Our reading of history is that the American people will accept casualties in a war, even heavy casualties, as long as they think their leaders have a strategy to win,” the Journal declared, thus announcing its approval in advance of the increased bloodletting which continued occupation will produce.

The tragic human implications of the Journal’s glib endorsement of “heavy casualties” to secure US control over the region’s oil resources were driven home on Friday, when the government announced that at least 10 Marines had been killed by a single explosion in Fallujah. Meanwhile, the US military is preparing to slaughter hundreds more Iraqis in a new offensive in Ramadi.

The Journal praised the performance of Iraqi troops in Tal Afar, when mainly Shiite forces rampaged through the predominately Sunni city near the Syrian border. It called for strengthening the interior ministry, although that agency is now believed responsible for some of the worst atrocities, including the underground torture chamber in Baghdad uncovered last week when it was raided by US troops.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/iraq-d03.shtml