Workers’ Support For Oil Wars Fading — Capitalist Carnage in Iraq

The growing carnage in Iraq — 8,868 workers slaughtered in 2013 (Washington Post, 1/12) — is the result of the U.S. invasion that has left the country in ruins. This is typical of all wars under capitalism. In the current era, U.S. imperialism has become the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. In Iraq it has killed and displaced millions since 1991. They are the victims not of “sectarian violence,” but of the inter-imperialist rivalry for control over energy resources.
Because of insufficient cash for costly occupations and a shortage of GI boots on the ground, U.S. rulers have had to modify their strategy for controlling oil-rich Iraq. After pursuing failed military occupations from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, the Pentagon would find it politically difficult to send troops to overturn al Qaeda’s capture of Fallujah. Instead, they are fostering infighting and a potential civil war among Iraqi locals, even as they plan for larger wars worldwide.
With the demise of the Soviet Union and its huge military, U.S. rulers thought they could invade smaller countries unhindered. But the Afghanistan and Iraq quagmires have shown they cannot control the world’s oil and gas resources with the one percent of the U.S. population that now enlists in their military. And they cannot raise the additional troops needed unless they somehow win over the war-weary U.S. working class to support their profit-driven bloodbaths.
This is the central problem for the U.S. ruling class: a lack of support from the domestic population. That’s why National War College professor Michael Mazarr warns, “In the future, the United States is likely to rely less on power projection and more on domestic preparedness” (Foreign Affairs Journal, Council on Foreign Relations).
U.S. Capitalism: Murder, Inc.
But this raises another problem for the capitalists. Their racist, imperialist system is not only murdering millions in wars worldwide and leaving billions destitute, from Bangladesh to the Middle East and beyond. It is also destroying the livelihoods of tens of millions of working-class families within the United States. Massive, long-term unemployment, poverty-level wages, unaffordable health care, millions losing their homes to bankers’ foreclosures — all of these are crises endemic to capitalism. They fall even more heavily on black, Latino and Asian workers, since the capitalists use racism to produce the super-profits they need to survive.
But this heightened exploitation also has consequences for the bosses. Class struggle is escalating throughout the world. Mass anger is on the rise in a working class ripe for rebellion. Tens of thousands are already fighting back in Cambodia, Palestine-Israel, Greece, Spain, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. But the fightback cannot win unless it aims to eliminate capitalism, the root of workers’ problems.
The Progressive Labor Party must give leadership to organize a communist revolution and eliminate the bosses and their brutal system. Only a society run by and for the working class can end the destructiveness of capitalism. Our Party is planting its roots in a score of countries to organize that revolution.
Using al Qaeda in Fallujah
Iraq is emerging once again as a focal point for U.S. rulers. Consider their deceitful response to al Qaeda’s recent take-over of Fallujah, a city that U.S. imperialists brutally stormed twice in 2004. Then they killed thousands of working-class Iraqis, many of them civilians, along with hundreds of working-class GIs to “secure” Anbar Province, the country’s largest. Today, however, President Barack Obama is vowing not to send in the Marines. “It’s their fight,” says Secretary of State John Kerry.
Don’t believe him. U.S. bosses remain locked into Iraq’s petroleum-soaked politics. In fact, “How the Fall of Fallujah Could Be Good for the U.S.” was published last week (1/10/14) on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank funded largely by ExxonMobil.
The article calls the terrorist triumph in Fallujah “a bright spot of opportunity” that will frighten shaky allies into embracing the U.S. war machine, which is “accelerating…foreign military sales deliveries and…looking to provide an additional shipment of Hellfire missiles” and “more surveillance drones [for the Iraqi government],” according to White House spokesman Jay Carney (BBC, 1/6).
The CFR hopes that anti-al Qaeda sentiment will inspire unity among Iraqi, U.S., Afghan and Saudi rulers, and deter hostile Iran and Russia:

For the first time since 2011, when U.S. troops left Iraq, Washington has leverage with recalcitrant leaders like [Iraq’s] Maliki....This spreading war makes U.S. coercive diplomacy critical not just to dealing with Iraq, but also to pressuring Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia (which is contracting with Iraq to sell arms) to cooperate. With increasingly desperate partners in Baghdad and Kabul, Washington now has its chance.

Oil, the Crucial Factor
The deadly Iraq intrigue involves ExxonMobil up to its elbows. The company’s vast and growing operations in the country are aimed at controlling Iraqi oil sources of which rival Chinese bosses need more every day. Exxon is also seeking to destabilize the troublesome Nuri al-Maliki regime. In particular, the company is undermining the Baghdad regime by cutting oil-pumping deals with Iraq’s self-governing Kurdish bosses in the north. The plan is to ship Kurdish crude through Turkey, which war secretary Chuck Hagel is courting as an ally in future global wars.
“ExxonMobil has spudded [begun drilling — Ed.] at the Pirmam block in Erbil province and has erected a rig in preparation for drilling at the al-Qush block in Ninewa province, breaking ground for the first time in the super major’s six-block deal with the autonomous Kurdistan region” (Iraq Oil Report, 1/10/14).
“A Kurdish export deal may be just the tip of a broader wedge that could split Iraq in two” (Oil Price, 1/5/14). The Obama administration is working hand-in-glove with arch-imperialist Exxon in weakening Maliki. Vice President Joseph Biden has become a salesman for Exxon (just as Obama is shilling for Boeing, see page 4):

In a phone call with the Kurdish Regional Government’s President, Masoud Barzani...U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden also addressed the issue, encouraging the regional leader to find a common way forward on oil exports [through Turkey] and revenue sharing. An agreement also stands to benefit oil firms that have bet on Iraqi Kurdistan, despite drawing the ire of Baghdad. Major oil companies led by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. have followed wildcatters like London-listed Genel Energy PLC into the region.

It’s not just Kurdistan that makes Exxon and Maliki enemies. Exxon has a majority stake in Iraq’s largest southern oil field, West Qurna 1 — the main prize of the Bush wars and Clinton sanctions that killed millions. But in Exxon’s eyes, the terms at West Qurna are too favorable to Baghdad. Unlike the Kurdish production-sharing agreement, under which Exxon owns much of the oil it pumps, the West Qurna deal is strictly a service contract. Baghdad’s would-be billionaires pay Exxon less than $2 per barrel to extract oil that Iraq’s bosses are then free to sell. For two years Exxon has been threatening to pull out of southern Iraq, where its technological expertise is indispensable to the Maliki gang’s profits, unless it gets a piece of the pie. Maliki “needs a real air force to fight the Qaeda occupiers” (CFR). The U.S. will arm him only if he toes the Exxon line on oil ownership.
Inter-Imperialist Rivalry vs. Communist Revolution
The worldwide fight over energy resources has intensified inter-imperialist rivalries. In opposition to the U.S. rulers’ maneuvers, great swaths of the former Soviet Union have morphed into an anti-U.S., Russian-led armed coalition under Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, China’s economic rise puts it on a military collision course with the U.S. from the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea.
These rivalries spell death for the world’s workers, who have no stake in any side of the inter-imperialist fight. PLP says there is only one side for workers in the class war. It’s the side that produces all the wealth that the bosses steal from our labor. Our side is the working class. And our answer to imperialist war is a communist revolution that destroys capitalism and puts workers in power.