Imperialism & War

No victory

Socialist Review January 2012 - Judith Orr

The US exit from Iraq was a humiliation for the world's biggest superpower. Barack Obama wanted to fulfil his commitment to pull out of Iraq by 31 December 2011, but he also wanted to leave some troops in place. He didn't get his way. The Iraqi authorities refused to extend an agreement of immunity from prosecution for US troops beyond 2011 - so Obama had to pull them all out.

Obama once described Iraq as the "dumb war", yet in his speech to soldiers in the US marking the pull out he called it "an extraordinary achievement".
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West beats the drums for war

Socialist Worker November 2011 - Alys Zaerin

The rulers of the US, Britain, France and Israel last week teamed up to step up their rhetoric over a military assault on Iran.
US president Barack Obama used the G20 summit to outline intentions to “maintain the unprecedented international pressure” on the country.
A British ministry of defence spokesperson said plans are already in place to position navy ships and submarines with cruise missiles around the border.
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Libya: The West's new client?

Socialist Review - October 2011 - Simon Assaf

The uprising in Libya was inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. But the intervention of Nato forces changed the situation dramatically. Simon Assaf asks if Libya is now destined to become a client state of Western powers or whether its revolution could revive
The revolution itself appears to have stopped, becoming instead a Western-backed revolt. While in Egypt young revolutionaries are storming the Israeli embassy, in Libya Western leaders are greeted as heroes. French, US and British flags fly over the centre of Benghazi. In Cairo these flags are being torn down.
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The wrong future

ISJ – October 2011

“The future begins today,” declaimed Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, the day after the 11 September 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.1 This kind of hype seems very distant now. For all the genuine emotion present in the ceremonies marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11 at Ground Zero, the reaction of much of the Western policy elite was a big yawn. These remarks by Francis Fukuyama, America’s official philosopher of history, are representative:...more