Workers Solidarity Movement

In Workers Solidarity, No 76 August 2003, we published an article under the title "Iraq war aftermath: slaughtering democracy" by Chekov Feeney. We received a reply to this from R. Knife, an (Iraqi) Kurd living in Ireland. Unfortunately it is to long too print in full in the printed version of the paper but you can read the full text below. We also print a response from Chekov. [WSM material on the Iraq War]

While most people understand the word democracy to mean that the people hold power, there is another meaning. According to the second meaning of the word, democracy means that the super-rich make all of the decisions while the people's job is to do what they're told, and to put a piece of paper in a box every few years. This 'democracy' is extremely hostile to any notions of popular involvement in politics. The US/UK war against Iraq, trumpeted as a war for 'democracy', illustrates what this 'democracy' means in practice.

In the extensive build-up to this war the United States had to enlist the logistical help of many countries to prepare for the invasion of Iraq. This in turn meant that anarchists and activists had the opportunity to display to their complicit leaders their opposition to this impending war. We have compiled a small selection here of the various actions that occurred thoughout the build up to the war.

The statement below was issued before the war by anarchist groups from all over the globe. This included organisations in Ireland (WSM), Britain, France, Sweden, Argentina, Lebanon, Belgium, Turkey, Portugal, South Africa, Germany, Canada, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, USA, Switzerland and Croatia.

As we go to press, at least 19 people are currently facing prosecution out of the October and March direct actions at Shannon airport. In addition 5 people are in the courts arising from the Catholic Worker/Ploughshares 'decommissioning' of a US military transport plane. Mary Kelly is facing charges for taking a hammer to the same plane on an earlier occasion, and Eoin Dubsky for spraypainting a warplane.

In the run up to St. Patrick's Day we had the sight of our ultimate gombeen, Bertie, presenting a bowl of shamrock to George W Bush and telling him it was fine to continue to re-fuel bombers in Shannon. Now in the war of super spin, Baghdad burns yet nobody dies. Over 205,000 people died in the last Gulf war.

The large demonstrations in Britain (300,000) Italy (1,000,000) and the US (200,000 DC, 150,000 San Francisco) against the war have got some media attention. Alongside these is a spreading wave of direct action. These protests are far, far smaller, in part because the mainstream anti-war movements have failed to promote (or even opposed) them. But they are significant because as the politicians continue to ignore the popular anti-war sentiments direct action is a way we can bypass them and start to bring this war to a halt.

One of the favourite arguments of the pro-war crowd in Ireland is that anyone who opposes the war is 'anti-American'. Leaving aside the fact that they are reducing the one billion population of the Americas to the 250 million resident in the US is there anything to this claim? The hundreds of thousands who have already demonstrated against the war in the US obviously don't think so. Anarchists in the US are part of the anti-war movements there. Below we reproduce the text of a leaflet produced by one anarchist group there for the January 18th anti-war demonstration in Washington DC.

Recent revelations in the Washington Post regarding Bush's eagerness to engage in war on Iraq only serve to prove what is morbidly obvious: War is always in their sights. Six days after the Trade Centre strikes in New York the Bush Administration had already initiated plans to take Iraq out. Is it just coincidence that Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world? One should not be shocked - such political behaviour is de rigeur in a system, in a society, that places the relentless quest for wealth and power above the lives of the inhabitants of the planet.

As war looms in the Gulf again we can be sure that, whatever the outcome, hundreds of thousands of lives will be destroyed by the conflict. A UN report leaked in December estimated that the war will cost the lives of half a million Iraqi civilians and create a million refugees as a result of both direct deaths and the deliberate distruction of infrastructure. Furthermore the unwilling soldiers of Saddam's conscript army face whole-scale butchery at the hands of the powerful US war machine.