“Along The Color Line”,
written by Manning Marable, PhD and distributed by www.BlackCommentator.com,
is a public educational and information service dedicated to
fostering political dialogue and discussion, inspired by the
great tradition for political event columns written by W. E.
B. Du Bois nearly a century ago. Several weeks ago, with much media fanfare, the James Baker-Lee
Hamilton Committee submitted to President George W. Bush its long-awaited,
bipartisan report on the U.S. war in Iraq. On balance, the report
provided Bush with a face-saving strategy for pulling out all U.S.
combat forces by the beginning of 2008. The Baker-Hamilton report
favors an increase of U.S. advisers being embedded inside Iraqi
troops, and direct negotiations with regional powers Iran and Syria.
Bush, however, almost immediately distanced himself from key
proposals in the Baker-Hamilton report. He now seems prepared to
flagrantly flaunt his contempt for the majority of American voters,
who purged both the Senate and House of their Republican majorities
last November. Why does Bush defy public opinion by pursuing this
unpopular war?
The answer lies not in America’s need to “combat
Islamic terrorism,” but in the economic necessity for the
United States to control international markets and valuable natural
resources, such as petroleum. Bush’s economic strategy is
that of “neoliberalism” – which advocates the
dismantling of the welfare state, the abolition of redistributive
social programs for the poor, and the elimination of governmental
regulations on corporations.
In a recent issue of the New York Times (December
5, 2006), Professor Thomas B. Edsall of Columbia University’s Graduate School
of Journalism astutely characterized this reactionary process of
neoliberal politics within the United States in these terms: “For
a quarter-century, the Republican temper – its reckless drive
to jettison the social safety net; its support of violence in law
enforcement and national defense; its advocacy of regressive taxation,
environmental hazard and probusiness deregulation; its ‘remoralizing’ of
the pursuit of wealth – has been judged by many voters as
essential to America’s position in the world, producing more
benefit than cost.”
One of the consequences of this reactionary
political and economic agenda, according to Edsall, was “the Reagan administration’s
arms race” during the 1980s, which “arguably drove
the Soviet Union into bankruptcy.” A second consequence,
Edsall argues, was America’s disastrous military invasion
of Iraq. “While inflicting destruction on the Iraqis,” Edsall
observes, “Bush multiplied America’s enemies and endangered
this nation’s military, economic health and international
stature. Courting risk without managing it, Bush repeatedly and
remorselessly failed to accurately evaluate the consequences of
his actions.”
What is significant about Edsall’s analysis is that he does not explain
away the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and current military occupation as a political “mistake” or
an “error of judgment.” Rather, he locates the rationale for the
so-called “war on terrorism” within the context of U.S. domestic,
neoliberal politics. “The embroilment in Iraq is not an aberration,” Edsall
observed. “It stems from core [Republican] party principles, equally
evident on the domestic front.”
The larger question of political economy, left unexplored by
Edsall and most analysts, is the connection between American militarism
abroad, neoliberalism, and trends in the global economy. As economists
Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff and others noted decades ago, the general
economic tendency of mature capitalism is toward stagnation. For
decades in the United States and western Europe, there has been
a steady decline in investment in the productive economy, leading
to a decline in industrial capacity and lower future growth.
Since the 1970s, U.S. corporations and financial institutions have
relied primarily on debt to expand domestic economic growth. By
1985, total U.S. debt – which
is comprised of the debt owed by all households, governments (federal, state
and local), and all financial and non-financial businesses, reached twice the
size of the annual U.S. gross domestic product. By 2005, the total U.S. debt
amounted to nearly “three and a half times the nation’s GDP, and
not far from the $44 trillion GDP for the entire world,” according to
Fred Magdoff.
As a result, mature U.S. corporations have been forced to export
products and investment abroad, to take advantage of lower wages,
weak or nonexistent environmental and safety standards, and so
forth, to obtain higher profit margins. Today about 18 percent
of total U.S. corporate profits come from direct overseas investment.
Partially to protect these growing investments, the United States
has pursued an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy across
the globe. As of 2006, the U.S. maintained military bases in fifty-nine
nations. The potential for deploying military forces in any part
of the world is essential for both political and economic hegemony.
Thus the current Iraq War is not essentially
a military blunder caused by a search for “weapons of mass destruction,” but
an imperialist effort to secure control of the world’s second
largest proven oil reserves; Bush also invaded Iraq because it
was the first military step of the Bush administration’s
neoconservatives (such as Paul Wolfwitz, now head of the World
Bank) to “remake the Middle East” by destroying the
governments of Iraq, Iran and Syria.
In 1976, at the age of 26, Manning Marable
began a syndicated public affairs series “Along The Color Line”, focusing
on political issues and public events that had special significance
to African Americans and to other people of color internationally.
For more than 25 years, the column was distributed regularly
free-of-charge to over 400 newspapers worldwide. Medical problems
forced the temporary halt to the distribution of “Along
The Color Line”. BC and Dr. Marable are
pleased to announce the return of the “Along The Color
Line” public affairs series, beginning in 2007. The series
is still absolutely without charge to all black-owned, black-oriented,
and independent/progressive publications and internet websites
for distribution worldwide. You are completely free to reproduce
any one column, or all of them, that you see published on BlackCommentator.com
so long as credit is given to Dr. Marable and www.BlackCommentator.com.
BC Editorial
Board member Manning Marable, PhD is one of America’s most
influential and widely read scholars. Since 1993, Dr. Marable
has been Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History
and African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York
City. For ten years, Dr. Marable was founding director of the
Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia
University, from 1993 to 2003. Dr. Marable is an author or editor
of over 20 books, including Living Black History (2006); The
Autobiography of Medgar Evers (2005); Freedom (2002); Black
Leadership (1998); Beyond Black and White (1995);
and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983).
His current project is a major biography of Malcolm X, entitled Malcolm
X: A Life of Reinvention, to be published by Viking Press
in 2009. Click
here to contact Dr. Marable. |