Iraq occupation falters as Bush’s lies are exposed

By Gerry Foley

The U.S. occupation of Iraq and political support for it continue to suffer losses. Despite claims by U.S. officials that attacks on the occupation forces have decreased since the capture of Saddam, the number of soldiers being killed by the resistance is increasing—averaging one and a half a day. Forty U.S. soldiers were killed in December and 45 in January.

Moreover, an increasing number of Iraqis are being killed in attacks aimed at all those considered to be collaborating with the occupation, in particular Iraqi policemen. Well over 300 Iraqi policemen have lost their lives. On Feb. 10, at least 50 people were killed in a suicide bombing of the police station in Iskanariya, a town 25 miles south of Baghdad. Most of the victims reportedly were standing in a line to sign up as police recruits.

A similar suicide bombing took place the following day in Baghdad. About 47 Iraqis who were lined up to join the Iraqi army were killed. On Feb. 14 rebels briefly took control of the insurgent stronghold of Faluja, killing 23 policemen.

In the Feb. 1 issue of the British Independent, correspondent Patrick Cockburn noted: “U.S. generals claim that the number of guerrilla attacks is down compared to November. But there may be a very simple reason for this: troops in the field say they no longer bother to log attacks unless they suffer casualties, because there are so many of them.”

The morale of U.S. forces is sinking, not only because of the continuing jeopardy in which they find themselves but because of the evident hostility of the great majority of the population. Seven percent of service deaths in Iraq are suicides, the British Sunday paper, The Observer, pointed out Jan. 25.

The article, by Peter Beaumont, continued: “According to Captain Jennifer Berg, the chairman of psychiatric services at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, whose staff see U.S. Marines returning from Iraq, military psychiatrists have been warned to expect the disorder [post-traumatic stress] to occur in 20 percent of the servicemen and women in Iraq.”

Berg went on to say: “…what we are now seeing are conditions of chronic stress which the troops are experiencing every day. It is a combination of danger, boredom and sleep deprivation, and the knowledge that they are a long way from home. In addition people are no longer sure when or what the end will be. No one knows when they will be going home. They are also working in an environment where the people they came to help are very hostile.”

Beaumont noted that the signs of psychological stress among U.S. troops are particularly striking: “What is also unusual about the rate in Iraq, in comparison with Vietnam, Korea, and the Second World War, is that everyone serving in the all-volunteer forces has already been screened for their psychological suitability. They have also been briefed on combat stress and trained to counter any suicidal feelings, following a rash of military suicides which embarrassed the Pentagon in the late Nineties.”

The decline in the morale of U.S. troops serving in Iraq must represent a new stage in the disillusionment of the young people to whom the American rulers have given the dirty job of being the enforcers of their imperial ambitions. That is very ominous, not only for the occupation of Iraq but for the clout of the U.S. ruling class in general.

Mass demonstrations for democracy

Politically, the situation of the U.S. occupation continues to become more precarious. The occupation authorities got a serious warning in January when the most influential Shiite cleric, Ali al-Sistani, called a 100,000-strong demonstration demanding direct election of an Iraqi government in opposition to the occupiers’ plan for a more labyrinthine method.

The cleric backed off a few days later, saying that he would wait for the decision of a UN team to decide whether immediate direct elections were feasible. But the protest he organized indicated how uncertain his tolerance is of U.S. dominance of the country.

In general, the Shiites had good reason to welcome the end of the Saddam Hussein regime, which was guilty of discrimination and atrocious crimes against them. But there is active hostility to the U.S. occupation already among a minority of the Shiites.

If the more influential clerics tipped over into supporting organizing efforts against the U.S. rulers, the challenge to the occupation forces, now concentrated among the Sunni minority, would be greatly increased.

The Shiite community represents two thirds of the population of Iraq. Of course, the Shiites, the traditional underdogs of Iraqi society, are not all followers of religious figures. Most of the Iraqi Communist Party, the only mass CP in the Middle East, belonged to the Shiite community.

The resurfaced Communist Party is also divided. One CP leader is in the U.S.-backed governing council. But there is a wing of the party that actively opposes the U.S. occupation.

Moreover, Shiites, like other Iraqis, are suffering from the collapse of their country’s economy under the blows of the imperialists. On Jan. 9-12, there were mass riots in the predominantly Shiite city of Kut in southern Iraq in protest against the lack of jobs and economic hardships blamed on the occupation authorities.

Kurds want independence

Collaboration with the U.S. occupation is stronger among the Kurds, who make up 15 to 25 percent of the population of Iraq. Like the Shiites, they were victims of atrocities by the Saddam Hussein regime. But unlike them, they have little Iraqi identity and no Arab nationalist feelings.

As an oppressed non-Arab people, the Kurds have been ready to make alliances with outside powers that they thought might aid them against their traditional Arab enemies. But they do share one aspiration with both the Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites. They want to rule themselves. Their dream is not to be a component of a U.S.-dominated Iraqi state.

From time to time, the U.S. rulers have given some minimal aid to Kurds who were fighting against their oppression. But Washington has shown that it is totally opposed to their achieving their goal of an independent Kurdish state, which would upset the present borders in the Middle East and in particular alienate Turkey, the major ally of the U.S. and Israel in the region.

The modern Turkish state is based on genocide against the Kurds, who continue to predominate over a large stretch of its territory, as well as to be clustered in the poorer neighborhoods of its major cities.

The underlying aspiration of the Kurdish people, however, is to have an independent Kurdish homeland. And that will eventually bring them into conflict with the U.S. and its occupation forces in Iraq.

Correspondent Patrick Cockburn reported in the Feb. 1 Independent: “The only Iraqi community that has wholeheartedly co-operated with the coalition is the Kurds. But they want de facto control of a large slice of Iraq. On Wednesday, Kurds in the oil-city of Kirkuk were signing a petition, some pricking their fingers to write in their own blood, demanding full Kurdish independence.

However, the Jan. 31 suicide bombing of celebrations of the Muslim holiday of Eid el-Adha at the headquarters of the two major Kurdish nationalist parties in the city of Irbil must certainly have widened the divide between the Kurds and the Arab Iraqi resistance. Over a hundred people were killed, including important leaders, and also children.

Because of the holiday and the Middle Eastern customs of hospitality, the guests were not searched. The bombers must have expected that, so that in carrying out their mission they violated the most sacred obligations of local custom.

This atrocity seems destined to go down in the long Kurdish memory along with Saddam Hussein’s gassing of Halabja. The attack had the ruthlessness of the Islamist groups. In Palestine, the desperation of the Palestinian people has provided support for such actions. In Iraq, the effect is apt to be different.

Of course, it is not clear what the relationship of the Islamist groups is to the rest of the resistance. So far, the resistance remains on the basic level of guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops, which may be carried out by groups with no political or organizational ties. Other than hatred of brutal foreign occupiers, it has no political profile or perspectives. But is widespread and apparently growing.

The U.S. occupation authorities claim that no more than 5000 people are involved in the resistance, but they have already jailed more than 10,000 people.

Moreover, these jailings have been very arbitrary. Relatives of the prisoners are finding it virtually impossible to find out what they are charged with or how long the occupation forces intend to hold them, or even where they are being held.

In turn, this arbitrariness increases resentments, which swell the resistance. Also, commonly, when U.S. troops are hit by a guerrilla attack, they fire indiscriminately in all directions, killing innocent people.

In the Feb. 1 Independent, Cockburn reported one such incident, at Khaldiyah, 40 miles outside Baghdad: “U.S. retaliatory fire, very random after such ambushes, killed two Iraqis, a taxi driver hit in the face by a bullet and Hadi Abd Shehab, Khalidyah’s director of agriculture, hit as he stood by his office window.”

Weapons of mass deception

The continuing military and political attrition of the U.S. occupation is being accompanied by a discrediting of the pretexts for launching the war.

Until recently, the Bush and Blair administrations were trying to minimize the importance of the fact that after nearly a year of occupation of Iraq, their forces have been unable to find any evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or even active programs to produce them. But their stonewalling is now beginning to crumble.

In Britain, Blair was put in office by an election victory much more convincing than Bush’s in 2000 and he long enjoyed a very high popularity rating, unlike his transatlantic partner. However, a poll reported by a Feb. 7 Reuters dispatch shows that 54 percent of the British public now think that Blair lied to justify the attack on Iraq, and 51 percent think that he should resign.

For long months, the response of the Bush administration to the failure to demonstrate the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was to keep claiming that they would eventually be found or even that it did not matter if they were found because Saddam was so evil.

But most recently, even the Bush cabinet seems to be coming apart, as The New York Times noted in its Feb. 7 issue: “… in recent days, it has been obvious in Washington that something has also gone awry in a White House that prides itself on never wavering from its message, especially when the subject is Iraq. At moments, Mr. Bush and his national security team—badgered for explanations about whether the country would have gone to war if it knew then what it knows now—have sounded as if these days, it is every warrior for himself.”

Colin Powell, Bush’s secretary of state, was even quoted as saying that if he had had the evidence about Saddam’s capabilities that has since come to light, he would have not recommended the attack. Yet Powell was the one who made the U.S. case for war before the UN and world public opinion. Powell was quickly reined in, but the impact of his statement could not be erased.

In general, the Bush administration’s defense of its war is becoming vaguer and vaguer as it visibly stumbles over the credibility gap between Vice President Cheney’s declaration on Aug. 26 that ”simply stated there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction” and other equally unequivocal statements by top governmental spokespersons then and since and the facts that have now become undeniable.

Pushed into a corner, Bush has finally had to appoint an allegedly independent commission to examine the “intelligence” used to justify the assault on Iraq. But it is unlikely that it can extricate him from his predicament. In fact, it is becoming more and more likely that the Iraq adventure will prove to be a disaster for U.S. imperialism rather than the basis for a new rise of American power.

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