As dirty war drags on
Figleaf on occupation of Iraq is in ‘chaos’
By Deirdre Griswold
Published Mar 30, 2005 10:00 AM
When will it finally sink into the heads of those in
Washington dazzled with dreams of ever wider empire that they
will have to scale down their global ambitions? Only, it
seems, when the revolt against them tears apart the social
fabric of their profit-driven system.
Look at the news from Iraq. The farce of building an “Iraqi
government” under conditions of atrocious U.S. military
occupation stumbles on, part tragedy, part comedy. Of course,
it is not an Iraqi government. It is a colonial imposition
ushered in through a weird election process in which most of
the candidates were anonymous. Even then, those “elected” know
the Iraqi people expect them to somehow get the U.S. troops
out, but Washington sees them as a figleaf for its continued
occupation. A big contradiction.
It is ludicrous to think that, after having destroyed every
semblance of normalcy in Iraq, the U.S. can just pull a new
government out of a hat. But the media here are going along
with this fiction and talking about the political process in
Iraq as though it actually was indigenous and democratic and
not manufactured to suit the interests of the occupiers.
As of this writing, the Iraqi “parliament” after two months
has been unable to set up a government or agree on a
constitution. It is bogged down in wrangling over posts—
especially the key post of oil minister. Press reports
describe its latest meeting, on March 29, as ending in
“chaos.”
As a reminder that this fruitless debate is being carried
out against the backdrop of a determined popular resistance to
U.S. occupation, the area of the Green Zone where the National
Assembly was meeting was hit by several mortar rounds shortly
before the session ended.
The political struggle is merely over which groupings will
get to siphon off a little of the country’s riches into their
own pockets. As long as the Pentagon is there and wielding the
real power, it is a foregone conclusion that the lion’s share
of Iraqoil revenues will go to enrich Halliburton and other
U.S. energy corporations, with their related financial
institutions, that are behind the aggressive global strategy
of the Bush administration.
Meanwhile, the resistance continues and is sinking the
morale of the U.S. troops. They don’t want to be there but
there are fewer and fewer new recruits to replace them. Young
workers are beginning to realize they have no stake in this
war and that getting killed or maimed while suppressing the
people of another country is not worth the inflated promises
of job training and benefits that even military recruiters are
beginning to doubt.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may want Congress to
allocate vast new sums of money for an even higher-tech army
of the future to fight the next war—something the legislators
are groaning about given the already huge budget deficits and
social cutbacks—but that won’t help the Pentagon get enough
soldiers right now to stabilize the occupations in both Iraq
and Afghanistan.
So, as has happened with every “dirty” colonial war in the
past, the U.S. government is using the most vicious and
diabolical—and illegal—methods to try to intimidate the
civilian population and sap their support for the
resistance.
Just like the French in Algeria, the British in Malaya and
Kenya, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Japanese in China and their
own predecessors at the time of the Vietnam and Korean wars,
the empire builders in Washington have given a thumbs up to
indiscriminate bombing of civilians, the use of torture, the
beating and killing of families in their own homes, and a
terror campaign against journalists who would tell the true
story of the war.
Reports continue to get out—very rarely in the corporate
media—of the horrible situation in Falluja when U.S. troops
bombarded and finally captured that city. People all over the
Arab world have seen the photos of fathers shot in their own
beds, bloated corpses in the streets, patients at the main
hospital lined up on the ground under the guns of U.S.
soldiers.
The Pentagon itself now admits that the deaths of 31 people
it had detained in Afghanistan and Iraq are confirmed or
suspected homicides. The International Red Cross has said that
the interrogation techniques used by the U.S. are “tantamount
to torture.”One Iraqi lieutenant colonel died in January 2004
of “blunt force injuries and asphyxia” after being lifted to
his feet by a baton held against his throat, according to a
U.S. Army official.
No one knows how many people have been seized and
disappeared into detention and interrogation centers, but it
is undoubtedly thousands. There are almost 600 at Guantanamo
alone, and the government admits having many more secret
facilities.
Many in the U.S. may have been brainwashed to see them as
“terrorists,” but to the people of the Middle East and much of
the rest of the world, they are heroes in the struggle against
foreign aggression, people who were tortured to death because
they refused to capitulate to those trying to take over their
countries.
With the deliberate attempt of U.S. soldiers to kill
Italian journalist Giuliana Sgre na in Iraq, the spotlight is
now on how dangerous it has become to report the truth.
But returning soldiers are beginning to bring that truth
home with them. And as the true face of capitalist
globalization is seen more clearly, here in the U.S. as well
as abroad, the resistance to it can only rise.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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