Donald Rumsfeld is gone. Bush has suffered a major electoral defeat. These events are not the result of an electorate going through a period of "mid-term blues" – it represents an important shift in public opinion in the US against the neo-con warmongers of the Bush regime and their disastrous war in Iraq.

The Bush administration has once again changed its language and supposedly its war aims. Over three years ago George Bush announced "mission accomplised" and declared victory in Iraq. Now he has compared their failure in Iraq to the massive defeat of US Imperialism in Vietnam. Their supposed goal of creating democracy has been replaced with establishing stability, of "staying the course". As an election strategy it failed to convince US voters that the war in Iraq was worth the death of 655,000 Iraqis and 3,000 US soldiers. In Iraq US Imperialism’s war strategy is in tatters.

Britain’s new army chief, General Richard Dannart provoked a major controversy when he told the Daily Mail (12 October 2006) that the military should "get ourselves out some time soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems". The General also attacked Tony Blair’s policies in Iraq as "naïve". His comments were significant in that they were an admission that the US and British occupation is directly responsible for the unfolding civil war and chaos in Iraq.   

Civil wars unlike conventional wars are not formally declared. But there can be little doubt left that Iraq is evolving towards a full-scale civil war. The conservative estimate of the UN says that 3,000 Iraqis are being killed every month, but the study by American and Iraqi health officials published in The Lancet says that the real figure is up to 15,000 a month! Patrick Cockburn reporting from Iraq wrote: "Baghdad has broken up into a dozen different hostile cities in each of which Sunni and Shia are killing or expelling each other. The city is like Beirut at the height of the Lebanese war. The wrong identity card, car number plate or even picture on a mobile phone is enough to get a driver dragged out of his car and killed. Militias are taking over. Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods that lived peaceably together for decades now exchange mortar fire every night", 14 October 2006.

Bush and his "sidekick" Blair have been toying with the idea of a phased withdrawal. It is based on the ludicrous proposition that the occupation forces and their political masters entrenched in the Green Zone can strengthen the Iraqi government over the next year or so and gradually hand over "control" of the country and security to them and an Iraqi military force. "Sovereignty" was supposed to have been handed over to interim premier lyad Allawi backed in 2004. Of course this was just propaganda. The Iraqi government can only pretend to be in power because of the US army. It is claimed that the Iraqi military and police number 265,000. The reality is that these forces obey the commands of the various political and militia leaders – not the Iraqi government.

Disintegration

With the current collection of aspiring capitalist "thieves", religious fundamentalists, and sectarian political forces from the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities in the ascendancy, it is impossible for a stable centralised federal government to exercise real political power in Iraq.

The main Shia political forces want to establish an autonomous (Shia) region by merging nine of Iraq’s 18 provinces. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that is in charge of the three Northern provinces, Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Dohuk, are in dispute with the federal government in Baghdad over oil resources. The KRG are attempting to assert their rights over the oil in the north and are refusing to share their oil revenues. Dier Shaways, head of the KRG finance committee, accused the federal government of adopting "a colonist approach in dealing with Kurdistan", and that "The regimes in Baghdad have so far used our oil wealth to buy bombs and the destroy the country with it."

Ethnic conflict

This is an important battle and increased Kurdish control of the north’s oil resources is being closely watched by Shia forces who may go down a similar path and take control of the southern oil-rich regions leaving the oil barren Sunni central region impoverished. It is these battles between the elite, the aspiring capitalist classes in the Kurdish, Shia and Sunni communities over the country’s oil wealth, political power and control of territory that will be the main driving force towards the disintegration of Iraq. The working class and poor of all ethnic backgrounds are spectators in these battles. However they are in the frontline of the sectarian conflict which is costing thousands of their lives.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq by imperialism is the root cause of the sectarian conflict. The US sponsored political process has enshrined these divisions in the make up and the functioning of the federal government. Each ministry is a bastion of an ethinically based political party or force, a source of jobs and money – legalised corruption! The government can’t implement any policies because of these deep divisions, and they can’t answer Bush’s call to deal with the militias, because nearly all of the main parties that make up the government have their own militias: the Kurds have the Peshmerga, the Shia the Mehdi Army and the Badr Brigade, the Sunni various militias that are engaged in sectarian attacks and in fighting the occupation forces. People look to these militias to defend them not the government or the police or army. In the midst of this chaos there is a crying need for the working class to have it’s own independent political forces and for a multi-ethnic defence force.

A united movement of the working class of Iraq could challenge the political elites by opposing their control of the country’s oil resources and instead counterpose a socialist programme for Iraq’s resources whereby wealth would be owned and controlled by the working class and used to eradicate poverty and rebuild the country. A multi-ethnic defence force could unite Shia, Sunni, Kurds and Turkmen to defend their communities from attack from the religious and ethnic cleansing of the militias. It could also be the basis for the development of a democratic resistance movement to the forces of imperialism and could organise workers in struggles around issues like jobs, housing, emergency food and medical provisions, electricity and water supplies. The development of a united working class movement in a struggle against the imperialist occupiers and the reactionary religious and sectarian political forces that dominate Iraqi society is the only way the working class have to prevent the nightmare of a full scale civil war.

Some facts about life in occupied Iraq:

- 655,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion in 2003.

- Eight million Iraqis live on less than $1 a day.

- 96% of Iraqis depend on food rations.

- Food rations have been cut by 25% so far in 2006.

- More than 500,000 residents of Baghdad only get water for a few hours a day, and electricity for two to six hours a day.

- Millions of Iraqis live in overcrowded housing. 250,000 families in Basra have no home and live with other families.

- According to the UN, 1,000 Iraqis flee their homes every day. 365,000 have been displaced in the last eight months, and 1.5 million are displaced throughout the country.

- 1.5 million Iraqis have fled the country due to the war.

- One in four children under five is chronically malnourished. 50% suffer from some form of malnourishment. One in eight children die before their fifth birthday – UNICEF.

- A survey by the Association of Psychologists of Iraq found that 92% of children have learning impediments due to the climate of fear and insecurity.

The results from the US Congressional and Gubernatorial elections indicate, in Bush’s own words, that the Republicans took a "thumping." In the House of Representatives (the lower house of Congress) the Democrats will have 234 seats to the Republicans’ 201, all 435 seats there were up for re-election.

In the, less democratic, Senate elections both parties have 49 seats but the two Independents have said they will vote with the Democrats.

In the elections for state governor, the Democrats took six governorships from the Republicans. In what was quite clearly an electoral nightmare for the Republicans, a huge tide of anti-Iraq war feeling swept the country and gave the Democrats their best electoral result for years. However, what does this really mean for US politics and what does it say about ordinary people’s views?

Democrats and ordinary people made this an electoral referendum on George Bush and on the Iraq war. Across the country, Republican candidates tried to distance themselves from the Bush and the neo-cons in order to try to hold onto their support. In all the opinion polls voters put Iraq at the top of the reasons for voting against the Republicans and a Reuters poll about what Congress should do once it gets into office (seats will not be taken until January 2007) showed 58% as saying Iraq should be the first order of business.

Corruption

Republicans were also damaged by the stench of corruption that surrounds them, for example the lobbying scandal that resulted in the conviction of Ohio Republican Congressman, Bob Ney.

Democrats don’t exactly smell of roses when it comes to corruption, but the disgust at corrupt Republicans making money while sending young US men and women off to die in Iraq and Afghanistan, encouraged people to vote to punish them.

Bush’s immediate response to the defeat was to make a "sacrifice" of Donald Rumsfeld, hoping this would ease the pressure on himself and the rest of the neo conservative cabal.

Rumsfeld resigned, in other words was pushed out, just one week after Bush claimed there was no pressure on him and that he had every confidence in him!

What has happened in the US does not mark the beginning of a resurgence of the Democratic Party. Rather, the Iraq quagmire plus economic pressures such as house prices, growing worries amongst working people about the effects of globalisation and the massive wastage of money on defence spending galvanised the “anybody-but-Bush” vote.

Most people who voted were voting against the White House rather than in favour of the alternative presented by the Democrats.

Democrat Keith Ellison was elected to the House of Representatives as the first ever Muslim member of Congress. Ellison, who ran on a populist-left platform, is openly calling for troops out of Iraq and a form of public healthcare. However, Ellison is part of a rare species now in the Democratic Party and voices such as his will more than likely be drowned out by those of the more “respectable” Democrat leadership such as Hilary Clinton.

Two parties of big business

Nonetheless the vote is a significant setback for the administration. A section of the US ruling class, including some among the military establishment, are openly concerned about where the foreign policy dictated by the neo-cons around Bush is leading and also about the attempts to increase the power of the Presidency.

A Democrat controlled House and Senate may be used to partially clip the powers of the Oval Office. There are likely to be probes on conduct in the White House, the handling of the anti-terror strategy and other issues including corruption in spending on Iraq.

Whatever proposals come from the Baker Committee on how to conduct an exit strategy from Iraq will likely be taken on board by Congress, but the truth is that the Democrats, no more than the Republicans, haven’t any idea about how to get themselves out of the mess that exists there.

The Democrats are the second party of US big business and offer no alternative for working people, young people, minorities and those opposed to the war. The anti-Bush mood meant people were more inclined to vote – but still the turnout was only marginally up on previous mid term elections.

In the last mid terms, in 2002, the turnout was 39.7%. With figures from a couple of states not yet in, the figure this time had gone up, but only to a little over 40%.

Young people in the US generally do not vote. More voted this time than before, but still only one in four voters under 30 bothered to go to the polls.

This shows how out of touch both main parties with their neo-liberal politics are with youth. It also points to a huge constituency that could be combined with working class votes to build support for a new mass workers’ party. Class struggle, while still on the whole at a low-level, is picking up.

Class issues were registered in the elections in the form of propositions for an increase in the minimum wage which were voted on in six states and which were all carried, most with more than a two to one majority.

The lesson of these elections must be that the fox (Republicans) and the wolf (Democrats) must be challenged through the building of a new party of the working class for real change to be made in US society.