U.S. occupation of Iraq leaves lasting poisons

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Disastrous pollution caused by the U.S.-led assault on Iraq has become another example of “blowback.” The disregard for the health of the Iraqi people shown by the U.S. military and the corporations parasitizing on it has been matched by a similar disregard for the health of U.S. personnel.

David Isenberg, author of “Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq,” noted in the Feb. 22 Huffington Post: “That is why this article in the Los Angeles Times earlier this week grabbed my attention. It described how numerous returning veterans have reported leukemia, lymphoma, congestive heart problems, neurological conditions, bronchitis, skin rashes and sleep disorders—all of which they attribute to burn pits on dozens of U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Isenberg continued: “Military leaders originally saw the pits as temporary, the simplest way to dispose of trash before troops quickly exited Iraq. But as the war continued, they burned because it saved money, according to subsequent lawsuits, allowing U.S. contractors to avoid having to install costly incinerators.

“It is KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root) which ran the pits. Last October a class action suit combining 22 lawsuits from 43 states was filed in US District Court in Maryland against KBR, Halliburton, and other military contractors for damages to health from open air burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to plaintiffs’ lawyers, KBR had been paid millions of dollars to safely dispose of waste on bases but negligently burned refuse in open pits, spewing toxins, including known carcinogens, into the air.

“What was KBR’s defense? Earlier this month it sought to challenge its liability for any ensuing problems. According to KBR’s press fact sheet on the suit, the Army, not KBR, decides if a burn pit or an incinerator will be used, where it will be built in relation to living and working facilities, and what it can burn. KBR insists it was and is still just ‘performing under the direction and control of military commanders in the field.’ In short, they were only following orders. Where have we heard that before?”

As ironic and outrageous as this abuse is, it is only one small example of the essential truth that inhumanity by U.S. forces cannot be limited to foreigners, that it will eventually rebound against Americans themselves. And it is an illustration of the fact that the logic of capitalism is deadly even to forces employed to defend it.

As the privatization of U.S. war proceeds, it rebounds more and more against U.S. soldiers. As in the SpanishAmerican war—the major U.S. military adventure in the age of the robber barons, to which the capitalist offensive known as “neoliberalism” wants to return us—the war profiteers were worse enemies of the U.S. soldiers than the opposing armed forces.

The nature of the system is that private profit always tends to prevail over any social interest. And in fact, today in the conditions of declining capitalism and neoliberal ideology, the capitalists have even less social concern than their forbearers in the age of unregulated capitalism. For them, there is no such thing as collective interests, only private interests—that is, the extreme individualism trumpeted by their deluded tools in the “tea parties” and the rabid protests against “Obama’s socialism.”

The environmental disaster inflicted by the U.S.-led assault on Iraq will be a long-lasting effect of massive ruin inflicted on the people of the country and a huge waste of American resources. Apparently, the only ones to profit from the trillion dollars and the more than 4000 lives expended in the U.S.-led invasion and occupation will be the U.S. corporations like KBR that got fat contacts for “reconstructing” the country and supporting the U.S. military and took the money and ran.

The invasion of Iraq was the most notable example so far of an attempt to roll back the colonial revolution and return toward outright colonialism. It has been a resounding failure that demonstrates this imperialist ambition is futile. However much third-world peoples may be disappointed by their neocolonial governments, they will never let themselves be exploited and humiliated again the way they were in the 19th century when they were surprised by imperialism.

Even lacking a leadership with a positive program in the interests of their own people, Iraqi resistance frustrated the schemes of U.S. big business and their political representatives. A dispatch in the Feb. 2 TomDispatch documented the step-by-step defeat of the plans of the would-be U.S. robbers.

For example: “In one dramatic episode, Bremer announced the pending transfer of the control of the southern port of Basra (which then handled 80% of the country’s oil exports) from a state-run enterprise to KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company Vice President Cheney had once headed. Anticipating that their own jobs would soon disappear in a sea of imported labor, the oil workers immediately struck. KBR quickly withdrew and Bremer abandoned the effort.”

In the first two years of the occupation, more than 200 acts of sabotage were registered against the Iraqi oil pipelines and facilities. By 2007, there were 600 acts of sabotage. The U.S. oil companies found that instead of a happy hunting ground, Iraq had become a minefield for them. And so they have largely walked away and ceded the territory to other oil companies, mostly state owned, including, notably, Chinese. In 2007 the U.S. managed to pressure the Maliki government to endorse an oil law favorable to U.S. interests, but it has been stalled in parliament every since.

TomDispatch noted: “This stalemate continued unabated through the Obama administration’s first year in office, as illustrated by a continuing conflict around the pipeline that carries oil from Iraq to Turkey, a source of about 20% of the country’s oil revenues. During the Bremer administration [the original occupation government], the U.S. had ended the Saddamera tradition of allowing local tribes to siphon off a proportion of the oil passing through their territory. The insurgents, viewing this as an act of American theft, undertook systematic sabotage of the pipeline, and—despite ferocious U.S. military offensives—it remained closed for all but a few days throughout the next five years.

“The pipeline was re-opened in the fall of 2009, when the Iraqi government restored the Saddam-era custom in exchange for an end to sabotage. This has been only partially successful. Shipments have been interrupted by further pipeline attacks, evidently mounted by insurgents who believe oil revenues are illegitimately funding the continuing U.S. occupation. The fragility of the pipeline’s service, even today, is one small sign of ongoing resistance that could be an obstacle to any significant increase in oil production until the U.S. military presence is ended.”

To this day, attacks on the pipelines are continuing, and insurgents pledge to pursue them until the U.S. forces are entirely out of Iraq. There have been 26 attacks on pipelines since September 2009.

Furthermore, the U.S. has been no more successful (Above) U.S. soldiers survey rubble from truck bomb in Kirkuk, June 21, 2009.

in using its military domination of Iraq to establish a secure material and political base in the Middle East. In an article in the Feb. 22 Huffington Post, Michael Brenner, a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, wrote: “The primary features of what Iraq is becoming are marked out by recent developments. Three stand out. The Maliki government used the military police to force the demission of elected officials in Ninevah province who were political opponents of the current regime. That is one.

“The shadowy Accountability and Justice Commission that vets candidates for the upcoming elections has succeeded in removing from the lists leading Sunni figures along with a potpourri of secularists and dissident Shi’a. That is two.

“The mastermind of this operation has been Ahmed Chalabi, erstwhile paladin of the neo-conservative schemers who instigated the entire tragic affair [that is, the invasion of Iraq]. That is three.

“Chalabi has had intimate ties with Iranian leaders, especially in the powerful security services, from the outset. He always was Tehran’s man insofar as he placed his largest bets for gaining personal power on his Iranian co-conspirators. His key role in passing to them information that compromised American secret codes back in 2005 led to his being blacklisted by American officers in Baghdad—for awhile. Nonetheless, he has remained a powerful behind-the-scenes figure. Now, General Odierno pronounces himself shocked by the discovery that Chalabi and his protégé, Mr. Lami, are the sharp edge of mounting Iranian influence in Iraqi politics.”

The U.S. government used the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whom it helped to power, as a weapon against the Iranian anti-imperialist revolution. The irony is that in overthrowing Hussein, it installed a Shi’ite religious coalition in government in Iraq that is moving closer and closer to Iran. Of course, the Iranian regime is not anti-imperialist in the fundamental sense, since it remains basically capitalist, but it is the product of an anti-imperialist revolution.

This is the vast undercurrent in the Middle East that the U.S. hoped to reverse by its occupation of Iraq and which it has manifestly failed to do. It continues to well up in many ways, however, distorted and deflected. It will eventually overwhelm the imperialists and their allies. But the question is how much ruin the imperialists will inflict on the region in the process, and how much they will drain and poison the people of the countries on which they are based.

In the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Iraqi people have suffered terrible losses, but Americans have also suffered needlessly and been more effectively robbed by the big corporations that were the principal beneficiaries of the operation, even if their gains are proving short lived. The Iraqis are defending themselves as well as they can. Americans need to defend themselves also by demanding an immediate and complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and measures against the corporations that supported and benefited from this adventure. n

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12 Socialist Action march 2010 The only ones to profit from the 4000 lives expended in the U.S.-led invasion will be the corporations like KBR that got fat contracts for ‘reconstructing’ the country.