|
|
|
|
|
|
|
70% of Amerikans oppose sending troops to Iran,(1) but 42% would support I$rael in bombing Iran.(2) The u.$. public through long cowardly habit distinguishes between bombing a country and sending troops.
Three separate polls taken piece together the current Bush administration posture that a bombing is coming. The third poll that fits the pieces together is that 53% of Amerikans believe they will be in war with Iran five years from now.(3)
The Amerikan public is exhausted by the war in Iraq and that is the main reason that 70% oppose sending troops to Iran. Credit goes to the Iraqi people, because if they did not stop Uncle $am, it would just have to be someone else. Amerikans themselves are incapable at this time of seeing the global picture and why U.$. imperialism is so radically wrong.
As a result, the U.$. public is scattered into a variety of places on views of the intensification of war with Iran. The obvious path for the rulers is to bomb or approve I$raelis to bomb Iran and then slide into a ground war after the inevitable Iranian response to the bombing.
We should also report another poll done by the BBC that shows that even majorities of Amerikans and I$raelis do not support a bombing of Iran. The three countries with the most aggressive attitude according to polls are Iraq, I$rael and the United $tates when it comes to Iran.(4) This is in line with MIM's theory of the labor aristocracy. Usually the most aggressive countries in terms of opposing a Third World country are a neighbor, U.$. imperialism, English imperialism and I$raeli imperialism, followed by Australia and the EU.
MIM has no certain explanation why there is a wide divergence of the polls. Perhaps the petty-bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries is literally vacillating as it digests the news. We can always hope that the Amerikans link low gas prices to peace with Iran, because that is something we can expect the petty-bourgeoisie to be concerned about, not peace based on internationalist principle.
Before the end of August and the fall of gas prices, 43% of Amerikans wanted a more aggressive approach to Iran from the president and 12% a less aggressive one.(5) That 12% shows what MIM has to work with on a daily basis and vindicates its thesis on the class structure.
At the same time that Amerikans were thinking more aggression, when asked point-blank whether oil approaching $3 a gallon was worse or Iran getting nuclear weapons was worse, the public said $3 a gallon gas was the worst thing-- 45% to 33%.(6) So perhaps we are seeing some real economic vacillation by Amerikans.
In general, in the non-imperialist countries, there is no vacillation in the polls: the people oppose war on Iran and want the imperialists to stick to diplomacy. Only 11% of over 25000 people polled in 25 countries wanted to see an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.(4) This shows the extreme isolation of the imperialists globally, no matter how it may look inside the imperialist countries.
Comrade Oz of Au$tralia raises a point also brought up by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky does not believe that the united $tates is stupid enough to attack Iran. He has also said Iran would be crazy not to pursue nuclear weapons. This a common view among intellectual Liberals, that it's all a question of smarts.
MIM and comrade Oz disagree with Chomsky, that imperialism is not dumb enough to attack, because imperialism is imperialism and driven to war. We have to distinguish that view and staunch anti-war activism from threatening Iran on behalf of Bush.
A different organization writing in Farsi threatens the Iranian people on behalf of the u.$. imperialists. It quotes newspapers such as the New York Times discredited by their mouthpiece role in the Iraq War on the weapons of mass destruction question and repeats lies about Iran that only the State Department could love. The point of their activity is to make real to the Iranian people the threat of u.$. imperialism and why they should bow down and look forward to the changes that would result from bowing down.
When MIM says that imperialism goes to war, our objective is different than to transmit Bush's threats. There is no point in Iran's negotiating with Uncle $am, because he has already proved with Saddam Hussein that doing everything Uncle $am says does not prevent an invasion. Saddam Hussein gave up weapons of mass destruction just like Uncle $am said and allowed weapons inspections. Then the united $tates abused those weapons inspections to gather better intelligence on how to invade Iraq. Uncle $am even abused the UN to do that by infiltrating weapons inspections that were not supposed to be done by just Amerikan-paid agents.
Whether it is possible to pit the European Union against the united $tates is a much better question. MIM is not saying to Iran with its anti-war activism that it would be a good idea to bow down to Uncle $am because we take the threat of war so seriously. We take the threat of war very seriously, but this kind of bully that u.$. imperialism is cannot be pacified, as he proved in Iraq. Any concession given simply goes to making the next war better.
Others besides Chomsky say that Bush scares people to boost the price of oil and line the pockets of his friends. Then just before November elections, he drops the price of oil. This could be true and it also could be proof that yet again, there is another distracting factor in politics of war and peace, a distracting factor inherent to the imperialist system. The truth of oil speculation does not at all remove the danger of war or the damages to Maoism of spies using so-called Maoist organizations.
The most open path to imperialism right now is to slide into an Iran war. By the time it really gets going McCain may be president and institute the draft anyway. Then there will be enough troops to try to "clean up" the mess that the united $tates and I$rael are sliding into.
Those who have been second-guessing MIM since March this year have proved wrong time and time again. We were right that the pseudo-feminist events of that time aimed at the Mideast were for building a war. The I$raelis attacked Lebanon in the name of the Iran question and did not need a high Bush approval rating to do it. We cannot forget that I$raelis see Iran as numero uno and the united $tates is used to bipartisan support of I$rael.
Others have been second-guessing MIM on "who" questions. Rather than getting to the heart of the questions of imperialism and war, people are being diverted by cops and spies. Thanks to the head-spinning nature of spy agencies that often play both sides of a question, these activists worry if they say something about war on Iran they will be making U.$. bluffs more credible. This sort of activist cannot tell what the inherent logic of the struggle is and ends up vacillating. These intellectual sorts are making one of the worst petty-bourgeois errors, and they are just a reflection of the huge existence of a spy community duping people left and right and then causing all people to vacillate as a result.
Through it all, we have to ask ourselves if the imperialists have succeeded in knocking us off of our game. This comes on two fronts: 1) anti-Amerikkkanism; 2) party building internationally.
Notes:
1. Americans favor diplomacy on Iran: Reuters poll
Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:03am, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-09-28T110335Z_01_N27288539_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-POLITICS-POLL-IRAN.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-politicsNews-3
2. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193336392&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull; 63% of I$raelis at one point wanted to bomb Iran's "nuclear core": http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/12840
I$raelis view Iran as their greatest threat by far: http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13366
3. http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/12927
4. BBC poll reprinted here: http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=4065
5. Fox News cited here: http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13037
6. http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/11758