Bush, Democrats back protracted war in Iraq

[IndianaGreen]

Bush, Democrats back protracted war in Iraq

Statement of the WSWS Editorial Board
1 December 2005

With a substantial majority of the population supporting a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, the Bush administration and its Democratic allies have joined forces in an attempt to intimidate the American people into accepting a protracted and bloody colonial war.

<snip>

The great advantage that the administration still enjoys is the support for the war from its ostensible opposition—the Democratic Party. The basic unity of the Democrats and Republicans in support of the US occupation reflects the broad pro-war consensus within the financial oligarchy, whose essential interests are defended by both parties.

Those in the political establishment and the top ranks of the US financial and corporate world understood from the outset that the purpose of the war was not to counter a terrorist threat, much less promote “democracy,” but rather to utilize overwhelming American military power to impose US hegemony over a region that contains much of the world’s oil resources. The predominant sections of this ruling elite still see the vast profits and strategic advantages over America’s economic rivals that such control would yield as worth the price being paid in blood—both American and Iraqi—as well as the $6 billion in monthly war spending.

This is what underlies the bipartisan alliance between the Democrats and Bush in support of continuing what is, in the most profound sense, a criminal war. It also accounts for the indifference of both parties to the antiwar sentiments of the majority of the American people.

This alliance found its most noxious expression in the column written by Lieberman for the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages, the most consistent voice of the Republican right. Lieberman claimed that “real progress” is being made in Iraq as a result of the US occupation and that the US neo-colonial operation is somehow giving the Iraqi people a “modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/bush-d01.shtml

[bahrbearian]

1. I don't know what to make of this .. is it the ONION

may they both go ,, where ever they think there is PEACE.

[jaysunb]

2. It may be distasteful, but I think

there may be more than a bit of truth here....