In 2003, we went out to the streets in full force against the war on Iraq. Let’s be clear and honest with ourselves: nobody predicted the horrifying consequences of the war better than the socialist-left. Everything we said would happen if the United States invaded Iraq happened.
So where are we now? Why have the Paris attacks not been placed emphatically enough in the context of the Iraq war in a post-9/11 framework? Why is that context missing from the majority of shares on social media?
We can pray for Paris and Beirut for the next 50 years, but it won’t change anything if we don’t first acknowledge that the former was the colonial master of the latter, and that capitalism was the driving force behind colonialism, and is the major driving force behind war, poverty, occupation, racism, and inequality.
It’s not simply about whether we can mourn for all the places that were attacked, but about the structural relationships that exist between them.
The world forgot that the United Nations sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, including 576,000 children according to UNICEF. United States ambassador to the UN at the time, Madeleine Albright, was asked on 60 Minutes, “We have heard that half a million children have died. That’s more children that died than in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?”
Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”
That was genocide, plain and simple. The US then launched its invasion in which up to 600,000 more Iraqis were killed in the first four years alone.
ISIS is a product of the Iraq war, and the Iraq war was a war for oil and a war to realize the neoconservative vision of spreading “democracy” (free-market capitalism) through war to the oil-rich Middle East.
It was during this time that American officials were talking about imposing a Middle East Free Trade Area agreement that would turn the majority of Middle Easterners into a massive cheap-labour force for multinational corporations that would enjoy the “freedom” to do business without the labour-law restrictions that were won by workers here in North America and in Europe.
But somehow we’re too busy discussing religion and identity, Islam or not Islam, white, black, and brown.
There is a lot being said about the racism of the so-called West and the subjugation of black and brown lives. And although racism is an important element, we will never affect meaningful change without talking about the profit motive and the corporate greed that fuels war for oil, the plundering of resources, and the global economic structure sustained by international financial organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization and their structural-adjustment programs.
This is one of the basic lessons students learn in York’s political science program. What happened to the anti-capitalist, anti-war analysis? What happened to the anti-globalization movement? What happened to the slogan “a better world is possible”? While anti-austerity, left-wing movements are finally gaining ground in the fight for social justice such as Jeremy Corbyn, Kshama Sawant, Bernie Sanders, and even the Pope to a degree, generally, people seem to be lagging behind.
Those of us who were student activists became demoralized when the war ended up happening. As a result, we failed to pass on the knowledge to the new generation.
Students at my alma mater don’t know that on March 5, 2003, 200 anti-war student activists shut down York for the entire day by barricading all its entrances at 6 a.m. and caused long lineups of cars, which caused some drivers to get angry, but most drivers were cheering us on.
If we want to create real change–if we want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone in the world, we must revive the discourse on the global economic system we live in.
If we want to do more than pray for Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, Gaza, Kobane, and elsewhere, we have to talk about “big C” of Capitalism.
Only then can a better world be possible.
Hammam Farah, Contributor
