Bush Backlash
It is well known that George Bush’s visit to the UK was planned by Tony Blair last September in anticipation of the ‘Baghdad bounce’: a surge in public support for the war on Iraq after Bush and Blair had successfully ‘liberated’ Iraq and installed democracy. The problem is that the ‘Baghdad bounce’ looks to be turning into a ‘Baghdad boomerang’ as the after-effects of the war on Iraq hit Bush and Blair at home and abroad.
This is why approximately 300,000 people turned out for the national ‘Stop Bush’ demonstration in London on the Thursday of Bush’s visit. Opponents of the anti-war movement ridicule these demonstrations but the simple fact is that their size, and regularity, indicate that they are the product of a number of Bush’s policies which have stoked opposition amongst people who wouldn’t normally demonstrate or consider themselves political activists.
Many people were outraged at Bush’s rejection of the very modest proposals on climate control contained in the Kyoto treaty. They see how the US sponsored ‘Iraq Survey Group’ has failed to find any ‘weapons of mass destruction’. They know that the first buildings that the US forces went to protect after the invasion of Iraq were not hospitals, schools or museums, but the Iraqi oil ministry. More recently both BBC and Channel 4 have shown footage of the armed raids which US and UK soldiers are carrying out on the homes of Iraqi people under the name ‘Operation Iron Hammer’. The older generation are reminded of US actions in Vietnamese villages during the Vietnam War.
Interestingly this is not, as is commonly portrayed, the concern only of liberal middle class people. In the recent Guardian poll it was found that a majority of people surveyed in the DE category of social class (manual workers and the unemployed) were against Bush’s visit.
Many families of soldiers sent to Iraq are also speaking out against the war now. The families of US personnel in Iraq have set up a web site www.bringthemhomenow.org where they can share their anger with the war and their anguish at the danger their loved ones are being put in.
On the same day as the demonstration in London, tragic bomb attacks were carried out in Turkey, mainly targeted at the British consulate. The attacks showed the futility of state led attempts to prosecute a ‘war on terror’. Turkey is a highly repressive state: it has detention without trial and thousands of ‘terrorist’ suspects in prison. And still the bombings happened.
Invading Iraq has stoked, not dampened, hatred of the US and Britain. The Bush policy, if it is not opposed, will create a cycle of terror and violence for years to come. The September 11th attacks did not lack a background or context as is commonly claimed. They actually represented what the CIA recognised as ‘blowback’ from years of US compliance and support for repressive regimes and policies across the Middle East that has created immense anger amongst many people there.
Philosopher Slavoj Zizek aptly summed up the potential disaster contained in Bush’s policy, “On 11 September, the USA was given the opportunity to realise what kind of world it was part of. It might have taken this opportunity – but it did not; instead it opted to reassert its traditional ideological commitments. What we are getting is the forceful reassertion of the exceptional role of the USA as a global policeman, as if what causes resentment against the USA is not it’s excess of power, but its lack of it”.
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