View all posts filed under March, 2003

As the U.S. war against Iraq is prolonged, as Iraqi civilian and military resistance hardens, as guerrilla and militia attacks become more audacious, and the Anglo-American military casualties mount and supply lines become more tenuous the U.S. military-civilian command escalates the war from rapid ground-based offensive promoted by Rumsfeld to the sustained air campaign developed during the 1st Gulf War as the \’Powell Doctrine\’.

The election of Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva has raised great expectations on the center-left. For most leftist writers, his election heralded a new epoch of progressive changes which, while not revolutionary, defined the “end of neo-liberalism”.

Iraq has become an inferno. While billions of people throughout the world watch, millions of Iraqis crowd into destroyed shelters, markets, hospitals and schools, radiated by new weapons of mass destruction, roasted by napalm, vaporized by \’MOAB\’ - a 9.5 ton bomb; and hear the voice of death Rumsfeld declaring to journalists, \”However you tell it, we have destroyed Sadaam Hussein\”.

Perry Anderson has written a polemical critique of the arguments of the liberal sectors of the anti-war movement. His critique of their support of the United Nations and particularly the Security Council and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty are well-taken if one-sided.

The Pentagon announced that it had tested the biggest non-nuclear bomb in history., 9.5 tons in weight, in preparation for its use in Iraq.