COMMENTARY
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Militant leftists oppose the Iraqi occupation out of a fundamental opposition to American imperialism. We oppose the capitalist system out of a conviction that it needs to be replaced by a socialist system that will do better by the mass of humanity and its pressing needs and to let the human potential flower. In the normal course of events we place the monetary cost of imperialist wars as a secondary factor in our opposition. Nor do we make the argument, acting as de facto advisors to the imperialist state, that such wars are merely a matter of mistaken policy and that the resources used for war could be better spent on relieving the vast problems of human misery. Hell, we know that and will take the appropriate action when we take power. However a little news item from the Congressional Budget Office has to make any working person take notice. The analysts at that agency have published, at the request of Congress, various estimates about the final costs of the American occupation of Iraq. And it isn’t pretty. Under the most conservative scenario the expected real costs of the war will be at least one trillion dollars. Now we all know that this estimate may be off by a hundred billion here or there and that one trillion dollars does not go as far as it use to but in anyone’s book that is a lot of money. So now we have the spectacle, in addition to the massive causalities and long term occupation that may have to be fought by our grandchildren, a debt that will take generations to pay off. All under the premise of getting rid of one rogue tin pot dictator, Saddam Hussein, and bringing ‘democracy’ to Iraq. Some neo-cons may say that is cheap at the price but just to be contentious I would say that this is not cost effective. No one, least of all a militant leftist, will cry over the demise of Saddam and his ilk, that is for sure but if one needs an additional argument for getting rid of the irrational capitalist system and its political agents here it is. In the meantime the task of the day is still the Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal from Iraq.
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