We take into account all major contradictions in the history and circumstances of any country under study. We follow the changes in the political situation, sort out the contradictions at every given period or stage and determine the principal and secondary contradictions.

It is important to grasp the principal contradiction at any given period because it is in the consideration of this that right and wrong is determined and the people are rallied and mobilized to uphold and fight for what is right, without losing sight of the secondary contradictions.

Those who view Iraq from the outside and take the moral and political stand for peace against the US war of aggression against Iraq are correct.

They see clearly that the avowed interest of the United States and its capitalist allies in the war to “liberate” Kuwait is actually the imposition of a pro-imperialist, pro-Zionist and anti-Arab security scheme and the imperialist control of the oil resources and economy in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East.

1. The Main Contradiction Involving the United States and Iraq

The brutal US-led aggression against Iraq pushes into the forefront the contradiction between the United States and Iraq as the main one without any doubt and pushes into a secondary position the issue or claim of Iraqi aggression against Kuwait.

The main objective of US aggression is not simply to reclaim Kuwait as a client state and restore to power the royal Al Sabah family but to aggrandize US security and oil interests, including the subjugation of Iraq and control of its oil resources.

The brutality of the US war of aggression against Iraq exceeds by far all the claims against the Saddam regime and contravenes even the original mandate from the UN Security Council. The United States uses the name of the United Nations and the specific resolutions regarding Kuwait in order to carry out the US imperialist agenda.

The US imperialist agenda is now fully exposed as the United States and its capitalist allies seek to destroy Iraq, wantonly killing the people and wrecking civil structures and facilities; and openly talk about the spoils they expect to take for themselves. The US objectives are to install a puppet regime in Iraq; rake up profits from oil resources, costs of the war, reconstruction and renewed military sales; and strengthen in the Middle East a system of regional security serving US and Zionist interests against the Palestinian and Arab people.

In the period before the Iraqi troops entered Kuwait, the US and other capitalist powers directly pressured Iraq to veer away from an anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab line and used the Al Sabah regime in Kuwait to put the economic squeeze on Iraq. Thus, Iraq was pushed to raise economic claims of equity against the royal regime and historical claim over Kuwait; and eventually sent troops to take over Kuwait.

With reference to Iraq, there are at least three major political terms: the Iraqi people, Iraq as a nation state and the current regime of Saddam. In whatever manner one may regard Saddam Hussein or his regime, one must recognize the Iraqi people and Iraq the nation-state as entities whose legitimate sovereign rights have been so barbarically violated by the United States and its allies.

Creatures of the Western mass media are carried away or confused by the propaganda against Saddam the leader or his regime. Since the onset of US war of aggression against Iraq, it has become strikingly clear that President Bush has a better claim than Saddam to being a Hitler. Not only is he at the head of an imperialist state and his rhetoric about a “new world order” starkly reminiscent of Hitler’s “new order” but the US “blitzkrieg” is destroying the lives of millions of Iraqi people directly and indirectly as well as Iraq as an independent nationstate.

2. The Contradiction Involving Kuwait

As the evil factor in the current main contradiction between the United States and Iraq, the US war of aggression has affected and transformed the issue of Kuwait. There is now basically a war between Iraq and the United States over Kuwait. If the United States wins the war, that it will certainly exercise far more control over Kuwait than ever before under the guise of recovering costs of the war and providing further protection.

Where before it could be asserted that Kuwait is a legitimate nation-state recognized in the United Nations and the Arab League, the US war of aggression serves to underscore the counter-assertion of Iraq that Kuwait is a British creation and an Anglo-American client and reinforces the historical claim over Kuwait as a part of Iraq.

The struggle of Iraq and the martyrdom of the Iraqi people in the current US war of aggression pay the price for the return of Kuwait to Iraq. This fact and line of thought will continue, whether the US war of aggression against Iraq will succeed or not

What was previously regarded in the UN Security Council as a case of unwarranted Iraqi aggression against Kuwait over questions involving borders; the Rumaila oilfield; mutual financial obligations; and overproduction and underpricing of oil has become a case of the United States seeking to impose control over Iraq and Kuwait and further entrenching US domination of the Gulf states and the Middle East under the pretext of liberating Kuwait.

3. Iraq’s Contradictions with Other Countries

3a. Iraq’s contradiction with Zionist Israel are a direct part of those between the United States and Iraq. As a matter of fact, the firm stand taken by Iraq against Zionist Israel in favor of the Palestinian and Arab peoples have motivated the US and other capitalist powers to take a hostile attitude towards Iraq before and during the Gulf crisis over the issue of Kuwait.

3b. Iraq’s current contradictions with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been conditioned by their close affinity with Kuwaiti royal interests and their subservience to US and other imperialist forces; and those with the Egyptian and Syrian regimes have been conditioned by the economic and financial needs of these two regimes and by previous political differences over the issue of Zionist Israel and Palestine.

The Egyptian regime has long been ensnared in the Camp David accords; and is constantly in want of US economic and military assistance. Deprived of Soviet assistance, the Syrian regime has become attracted to assistance from the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates. But the people of Egypt and Syria, as in the rest of the Arab world, are supportive of Iraq and the Iraqi people against US imperialism and Israeli Zionism

3c. In promoting the Iran-Iraq war, Western officialdom and mass media celebrated the Saddam regime as a secular modernizing and democratizing one against the so-called fundamentalist Khomeini regime. In the course and aftermath of the war, however, Iraq has built a military and industrial capability that has not fallen into line with US security and economic interests. Thus, the Saddam regime has become the bête noir of Western propaganda.

Iraq’s contradiction with Iran has come down from the level of war since the peace settlement of 1988. Despite the painful costs of the Iran-Iraq war, when the US and other capitalist powers sided with Iraq, the people of Iraq as well as increasing sections of the Iranian government are now unequivocally supporting Iraq in the struggle against the Great Satan in Washington.

They are consistently opposing US imperialism and cannot but sympathize with a neighboring people and country being mercilessly destroyed by the Great Satan. They can see that a defeat of Iraq by the United States would bring the imperialist monster to their doorsteps, although the prevailing Iranian authorities consider a weakened but undefeated Iraq as a much lessened danger to them.

4. Contradictions within Iraq

Within Iraq, there are social and political (including ethnic) contradictions. These are now muted by the US war of aggression. Patriotic and religious (Shiite, Sunnite, Christian and otherwise) sentiments prevail in Iraq against the US war of aggression.

US and British airplanes, missiles and bombs are literally muffling the internal contradictions in Iraq and are indiscriminately killing both Kurds and non-Kurds at a rate higher than the Saddam regime has been accused of killing Kurds who seek national self-determination and whom the regime in turn accuses of seeking to dismember a UN member-state such as Iraq.

Kurds who support the Iraqi government as well as those who do not cannot but condemn the US war of aggression which is unjustly massacring people of whatever political, ethnic or religious affiliation and ruining their means of life on a wide scale.

In a given period such as the current one in Iraq, in which the main contradiction is one between the United States and Iraq, all other contradictions pertaining to Iraq fall into a secondary position and are drastically affected.

Even while we use Iraq as a focal point of reference, the US war of aggression against Iraq is a major imperialist action against the Palestinian and Arab people and against other peoples in the world who oppose imperialist and neocolonial domination.

The United States presumes itself to be the chief maker and policeman of a “new world order.” This presumption must be denounced and resisted because it runs against the national sovereignty and well-being of the peoples of the world and against the cause of world peace.

The United States must not be allowed to pass itself off as the champion of freedom; and camouflage its imperialist agenda. The resistance of Iraq and the Iraqi people against US imperialism is a signal event. It comes at a time when it seems that the United States can have its way without effective resistance; and put under its unchallenged sway the South and the East through neocolonial economic and financial manipulation and high-tech military blackmail and aggression

Iraq and the Iraqi people are playing the heroic role of daring to fight and win against US imperialism; and to inflict serious wounds on it even as this monster cannot as yet be defeated. Their anti-imperialist resistance will inspire the countries and peoples now under imperialist and neocolonial domination and under exploitation in the glut of raw material products, the deterioration of the terms of trade, misdirected resources, superprofit-taking and the crushing debt burden.

Constructive Proposal

There can be a broad antiwar and anti-imperialist movement focusing on the main contradiction between the United States and Iraq and at the same time allowing the different views of participants on various secondary issues.

Those outside of Iraq who advocate peace and wish to stop the war can truly take the moral and political high ground by adopting the following line of thought and action:

  1. Condemn the US-led war of aggression against Iraq and expose the imperialist security and oil interests behind the war; and support Iraq and the Iraqi people in their anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist struggle.
  2. Demand the implementation of all UN resolutions regarding the Middle East in their chronological order (giving priority to the just cause of the Palestinian people) and encourage all the states and peoples in the Middle East to settle differences in an equitable manner and to ward off the hegemony of the United States and other capitalist powers taking advantage of such differences; and
  3. Oppose the misuse of the United Nations by the imperialist powers and the presumption of the United States that it is the chief maker and policeman of a “new world order”, in which the United States is unopposed in its drive to control countries and peoples through economic and financial neocolonial manipulation and through high-tech military suppression against recalcitrants.