Workers' Liberty

Editorial, Workers' Liberty 30, April 2003

Regime change? We say it's not Bush's job but - are workers in the Middle East ready to build an alternative?

If any regime deserved to have war waged against it, it was Saddam Hussein's. Nevertheless, war by the United States and whatever allies it can pull behind it will not advance the cause of democracy and freedom in Iraq. It did not in 1991, and there is no reason to believe it will now. Last time we were quite lucky, in terms of the spread of the war, the involvement of Israel and so on. It seems possible that Ariel Sharon in Israel will use war this time as a cover to carry out the mass deportation of Palestinians they euphemistically call "transfer". In the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan, the whole region is more unstable than it was in 1990/91: Islamists did well in the Pakistan election, and moderate Islamists won the elections in Turkey. Against signs of renewed opposition in Iran, with student protests, there has been repression. Who knows what war on Iraq will detonate?