Millions reject war and occupation

Bush & Blair’s Iraq disaster

Millions reject war and occupation

GEORGE BUSH’S Iraq policy received a massive thumbs down from disgruntled US voters in last week’s elections.

In March 2003 when the US president sent troops to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein he thought it would be a quick and easy victory for the world’s superpower. Eighteen months earlier US-led troops had swiftly ended Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Tony Blair too was eager to get on board the US ‘regime-change’ bandwagon.

Three years and nine months on, both Western powers are bogged down in an unwinnable war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 3,000 US and UK troops.

And now in Afghanistan the level of violence has dramatically escalated and the ousted Taliban are making a comeback.

In Iraq, sectarian bloodshed, failed reconstruction, profiteering and corruption has reduced Bush’s ‘war on terror’ to an abject failure. This was the big message sent to the White House by US voters in the congressional elections. US Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was made the fall guy for the Iraq debacle as former president, George Bush senior, brought in some of his ‘old pals’ to help his son out of this mess.

But short of an humiliating pull-out, Bush and Blair have run out of political options. So desperate are they to extricate themselves that they are even proposing to talk to Syria and Iran (the latter belonging to the Bush-dubbed “axis of evil” countries).

Bush and Blair thought that with all their firepower they could impose their corporate agenda on the Middle East and indeed throughout the world. Instead they have brought death and destruction, economic ruin and instability. Working-class people throughout the world must unite to end this capitalist nightmare and fight for a socialist world free from war, terror and poverty.