Bush Plans to Escalate War as Slaughter in Iraq Continues

by Gerry Foley / January 2007 issue of Socialist Action Newspaper

President Bush’s expected announcement on Jan. 10 that he is sending over 21,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq was preceded by an omen of the future, a prolonged furious gun battle in central Baghdad not far from the “Green Zone—the fortress in which the U.S. occupation authorities and their client government are holed up. About three fourths of the U.S. reinforcements are to be deployed in Baghdad.

The New York Times reported Jan. 10 that Sunni insurgents linked to al-Qaida had taken over the neighborhood after the U.S. removed the commander of the Shiite Mahdi Army who had been operating in the area: “The arrest, the official said, created an opening for Sunni insurgents, and they began aggressively singling out Shiites who had relocated south from the neighborhood of Kadhimiya.

“On Saturday, 27 bodies were dumped in the Sheik Marouf neighborhood on Haifa Street. They were Shiites, four with their throats slit and the rest shot in the head, according to an Iraqi government official.”

Obviously in this case, the U.S. military operations had both led to an aggravation of the sectarian conflict and to drawing U.S. troops into intensive urban warfare. An article in the Los Angeles Times of Jan. 12 noted that the people in the Baghdad neighborhoods see the militias as their only reliable defenders and therefore see Bush’s plan to eliminate them as a “recipe for disaster.”

An analysis of Bush’s proclaimed “new strategy” in the Jan. 12 Christian Science Monitor noted: “A long and violent battle in Baghdad this week, which lasted 11 hours and occurred not far from the protected Green Zone, may be a sign of things to come. ‘It was the most intense combat I have ever seen,’ an Army Stryker Brigade officer, in Iraq on his third tour, told the Washington Post.”

The basic point of the article was that Bush’s strategy meant a campaign of house-to-house fighting in which the American forces operating on their own or “imbedded” in Iraqi Army units would inevitably suffer heavy casualties. And these losses would be on top of the over 3000 dead and 20,000 wounded that the U.S. forces have already suffered.

Furthermore, Bush’s “surge” calls for an escalation of spending, when it is already estimated that the costs of the Iraq war and occupation will be over $2 trillion, a vast outpouring of money that is more and more seen by U.S. public opinion as benefiting only the big U.S. corporations involved in “reconstructing” the country and in stealing its oil.

In this situation, it is not surprising that Bush’s proposal met with outspoken anger and even disbelief in the U.S. Congress. It had all the earmarks of a desperate gamble likely to lead to disaster. But Bush’s congressional critics, who are as tied to the interests of the big corporations as he is, are hardly likely to stay his hand.

The British Economist, one of the best informed and serious of the big business magazines, noted Jan. 12: “For the moment, the Democrats are considering only a symbolic non-binding vote of protest that would, in the words of Senator Joseph Biden, ‘demonstrate to the president he's on his own.’”

But Bush would only be “on his own” with regard to the blame. He could not pursue his escalation without at least acquiescence on the part of the U.S. capitalist political apparatus as a whole. The entire U.S. capitalist class has an enormous stake in the Iraq adventure and therefore it finds itself more and more in a dilemma that is wrenching and elicits more and more cries of pain but no serious movements to disengagement.

Bush is not shy in striking poses of intransigent self-sufficiency. He is increasing the number of U.S. troops at the same time that all his constrained allies are withdrawing or moving to withdraw their troops—even this country’s imperialist junior partner, Britain.

Public opinion polls done immediately after Bush’s announcement indicate that a clear majority of the U.S. population is opposed to increasing U.S. forces in Iraq. Moreover, for many months they have been showing that a large majority is opposed to Bush’s Iraq adventure.

Bush was not content even with upping the ante in Iraq. He chose to threaten Syria and Iran and take the risk of a vastly larger war. At the same time, U.S. forces struck consternation into the most reliable allies they have in Iraq, the Kurdish nationalists, by arresting Iranian diplomats in the Kurdish city of Irbil.

The Los Angeles Times reported Jan. 12: “The Kurdish president and the regional government released a statement calling for the release of the six [Iranians]. … ‘The U.S. action does not conform to the policy of attempting to spread security and stability throughout all of Iraq,’ the Kurdish statement said, adding that the raid was conducted without local approval.

“‘The people of the Kurdistan region protest against and reject this action, which violates our internal sovereignty,’ the statement said. ‘We do not accept that disputes with our neighboring countries should be brought onto our soil.’”

Three weeks before, U.S. forces arrested two Iranians in the compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the only Shiite organization able to rival the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, who is being increasingly designated by U.S. officials as the main obstacle to peace in Iraq.

U.S. experts claim that the premier, Nuri al-Maliki, is reluctant to take on the sectarian Shiite militias because he depends on the support of Sadrite deputies in parliament. So, there has been speculation for some time that the U.S. is trying to put together an alternative coalition, but the main pillar of it would have to be al-Hakim.

The U.S. administration seems determined to ride roughshod over all the players in the region, regardless of the risk. Both Syria and Iran have nationalist regimes that undoubtedly are not giving the U.S. occupation of Iraq their total support. Like all bourgeois nationalists they maneuver between imperialism and their own people. But there is no evidence that they are offering any substantial support to the Iraqi resistance. If they were, it would be obvious.

In Lebanon, they were able to build up the Hezbollah militia, which succeeded in standing up to the Israeli army. Arrogant U.S. threats to these regimes could tip them over toward active support for the resistance, and if that happened the war in Iraq would escalate to an entirely new scale. If it led to a war with Iran, the size of the conflict would simply go off the scale.

On the “PBS News Hour,” Jan. 11, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a leader in the U.S. foreign policy establishment and veteran Cold War hawk, expressed serious fears of a confrontation with Iran. He also described the Iraq war and occupation as a “colonial war.”

And it is quite clear that Bush’s strategies are those of a colonial power relying on direct, brute force, rather than the manipulation of neocolonialist allies. Zbrzezinski said that they were out of sync with the times. That is true, of course. They are an attempt to roll the times back. But that effort is now being buried again by history.

Execution of Saddam

The execution of Saddam Hussein was a dramatic illustration of the dilemma of the U.S. in Iraq. One aspect was underscored by Haaretz, the most intelligent of the Israeli dailies. The paper reported that the deputy Israeli minister of defense, Ephraim Sneh, had expressed worry that the former Iraqi dictator’s disappearance would lead in Iraq to increasing the influence of Iran, which the Zionists consider their most dangerous enemy.

Another dilemma of the U.S. is indicated by the speed with which Hussein was executed for what, however atrocious, was a relatively minor incident in the history of his regime. The capitalist big press celebrated his death by claiming that he had killed up to a million, or even more if he is blamed for the Iran-Iraq war, in which an estimated million and a half people died.

But he was sentenced to death and executed for killing 148 men and teenage boys in the predominately Shiite village of Dujail in 1982 in reprisal for an attempt to assassinate him that took place in the locality. Reportedly, the other charges against him will continue to be investigated by courts, but Saddam’s execution is obviously going to mute any such proceedings.

In its Dec. 31 issue, the Los Angeles Times published an article that noted the disappointment of those who suffered at the hands of Saddam in the quick end to his prosecution: “Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker, had urged the government to delay executing Hussein and top members of his regime at least until the conclusion of the Anfal trial [a program aimed at decimating the Kurdish community]. He wanted them to identify those responsible for the chemical weapons unleashed on Kurdish villagers, including the foreign companies and countries that supplied the parts to make them.

“‘A lot of secrets will go to the grave with Saddam and his group,’ he predicted. ‘If these trials continue without those people, what is the use?’”

In their rush to dispose of Saddam, the U.S. authorities and their Iraqi allies could not even wait until the end of the most important Islamic holiday, Eid al Adha, when executions are considered inappropriate in Muslim countries. The timing drew widespread condemnation in the Muslim world even among those who considered the ex-dictator deserved his fate, much less those who saw him as a fighter for the Arab and Muslim cause. It will undoubtedly increase the political problems of the U.S. in Iraq.

What Saddam’s speedy execution did for the U.S. rulers, under whose aegis Saddam was tried and condemned, is that it enabled them to avoid any public discussion of their responsibility for the establishment of the dictator’s rule and their encouragement of his war against Iran and even, initially, his attack on Kuwait. The imperialists evaded the question of who supplied the weapons for his atrocities, such as the use of poison gas against the Iranians and against the Kurds.

Saddam himself seems to have hoped that ultimately the U.S. rulers could take him back as a means of solving their dilemma in Iraq. If he thought that, he misjudged them again. At this stage, they are not making deals with any politicians who base themselves on an appeal to Arab nationalism. The U.S. capitalist regime launched its adventure in Iraq with the aim of imposing its complete domination on the Near East.

A Palestinian was quoted in the Dec. 31 issue of Haaretz as saying that by executing Saddam, the U.S. wanted to show their Arab stooges what will happen to them if they get out of line: “‘The Americans wanted to tell all Arab leaders who are their servants that they are like Saddam, nothing but a sheep slaughtered on Eid,’ said Abu Mohammad Salama at a Gaza mosque.” The Muslim holiday is marked by the sacrifice of sheep.

In the wake of the ugly scene at Saddam’s execution, U.S. and British officials have been trying to blame the event on the Iraqi Shiite government. But given the total dominance of the occupation forces, there can be no doubt that they could have stopped it, if they really wanted to. They must have considered that it served their interests.

Iraq chaos deepens

Now the Bush administration is supposedly engaged in rethinking its strategy. But it is doing so in a context in which it has become generally recognized that the effects of the U.S. policies have been disastrous. Polls show that less than one in four Americans approve of the way the U.S. government has handled the war and occupation. High military officers have warned that the U.S. armed forces in Iraq are on the verge of “breaking.”

Iraq itself continues to sink deeper and deeper into bloody chaos. The website of the Arab TV channel Al Jazeera reported Dec. 14 that a poll by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies showed that 95 percent of the Iraqi population think that the country is worse off than it was before the U.S.-led occupation. A previous poll show that a majority of Shiites and almost all Sunnis approve of attacks on occupation forces.

The murderous civil conflict that is wracking the country strengthens the U.S. occupation in one respect, in that the leaders of the divided communities are impelled to seek U.S. support against the threats they perceive. Moreover, it serves the U.S. government as an argument that it has to continue the occupation to prevent a full-scale civil war.

But on the other hand, since the U.S. dominates the country militarily, it is seen by both Iraqi and world public opinion, including in the United States, as responsible for the chaos—either that it is incapable of stopping the sectarian slaughter or that it is manipulating it.

Along with the Iraqi government, the Iraqi army and police forces built up by the occupation have been presented as a hope for an eventual “Iraqi solution” to the conflicts in Iraq. But the U.S. rulers and their press are continually complaining that these forces have been infiltrated by the Shiite militias, and in fact are functioning as Shiite militias in government uniforms.

On the basis of such charges, the British forces occupying Basra in the Shiite south have actually staged military operations against units of the police to which they have charged with maintaining order. The latest was an attack on the Jamiat police station, the headquarters of the “serious crimes unit” of the southern city, in which the building was destroyed and “seven gunmen,” presumably, police, were killed.

The British Independent noted in a Dec. 26 article, published shortly after the attack: “The raid also highlighted the parlous state of the increasingly beleaguered Iraqi police force.

Despite the British Ministry of Defence's insistence that Britain's exit strategy from Iraq relies upon building a strong Iraqi police and army, senior officers have begun in recent months to admit that there is a “small rotten core” within the Basra police. This comes as no surprise to locals, who have long claimed that the force is heavily infiltrated by insurgents and is responsible for the vast majority of murders in Iraq's second city.”

Moreover, the U.S. press has begun to take notice of the level of corruption in the Iraqi security forces. An article in the Dec. 10 New York Times, for example, looked at the flow of the U.S.-provided arms from the Iraqi army and police into the black market: “… Three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops and bazaars here …

Glock and Walther 9-millimeter pistols, and pristine, unused Kalashnikovs from post-Soviet Eastern European countries. These are three of the principal types of the 370,000 weapons purchased by the United States for Iraq’s security forces, a program that was criticized by a special inspector general this fall for, among other things, failing to properly account for the arms.

“‘Every type of gun that the Americans give comes to the market,’ said Brig. Hassan Nouri, chief of the political investigations bureau for the Sulaimaniya district. ‘They go from the U.S. Army to the Iraqi Army to the smugglers. I have captured many of these guns that the terrorists bought.’”

U.S. military chiefs have said that they are encouraged that Iraqis continue to enlist in the security forces, despite the high toll that resistance fighters have inflicted on them. But some reporters have been perceptive enough to note that the reason young Iraqis take this gamble is that there are no other jobs. They are compelled by economic pressure to join up. But if money is their motive, obviously many are going to be inclined to sell the equipment the U.S. gives them, to say nothing of being disinclined to fight if they can avoid it. In this situation the soldiers and police most motivated to fight the Sunni resistance are those linked to the Shiite militias.

In a situation in which it is now generally recognized that U.S. policies in Iraq have been disastrous, the leadership of the American ruling class is looking for ways to avoid losing its entire stake. That was the essential message of the Baker-Hamilton Report, which was a highly touted attempt to work out new tactics.

The report recommended at least gradually moving U.S. troops out of direct confrontation with the resistance, at the same time as it called for the total privatization of the Iraqi oil industry—a measure that would give the imperialist oil trusts (primarily the American ones) advantages beyond what they enjoy in other producing countries.

To compensate for reduced U.S. military operations, the report called for greatly increasingly the number of American trainers assigned to the Iraqi security forces. This in fact provoked a furious response in Iraq even from Jalal Talabani, probably the strongest ally of the United States among the major Iraqi political leaders.

The website of the Arab TV station Al Jazeera quoted the Iraqi president Dec. 10 as saying that the Baker-Hamilton Report “asks that they put foreign officers in every unit, which is a violation of Iraq's sovereignty. … What will remain of our sovereignty?" Talabani went on to note: “The prime minister cannot move 10 soldiers from one place to another [without U.S. authorization].”

The Baker-Hamilton report fits with other thinking in U.S. ruling circles, represented among others by Rep. John Murtha, which calls for what is really a redeployment of U.S. troops rather than an end to U.S. military dominance of Iraq. But it appears that Bush is rejecting even such tactical adjustments and looking toward sending additional U.S. troops in a stepped-up effort to crush the resistance outright.

U.S. deaths now exceed 3000. December was the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in a long time, with over 100 deaths.

The basic reason for Bush’s stubbornness is that the stake of U.S. capitalism in the conquest of Iraq is enormous and the abandonment of its adventure there would be a historic defeat not only for the United States against Arab nationalism but against its capitalist competitors, to which it has long been losing ground.

In the face of Bush’s die-hard imperialist adventurism, it is essential that the U.S. antiwar movement revitalize and reinforce its protests against this ruinous war. There is a still more urgent need now for all humanitarians, all defenders of democratic rights and peaceful international relations, to demand that the U.S. withdraw completely from Iraq and not simply re-deploy its troops and resort to other means of dominating the country and trampling on the rights and aspirations of its people.