Bush Moves to Double: U.S. Forces in Iraq

by Gerry Foley / June 2007 issue of Socialist Action newspaper

Even as the U.S. occupation of Iraq becomes more and more odious to both world public opinion and the Iraqi population, those who rule the United States seem more determined to strengthen their grip. An analysis of U.S. military deployments by the Hearst newspapers has indicated that the Bush administration is actually moving toward doubling the number of U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of this year.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on May 22: "The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there. The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

"Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000—a record-high number—by the end of the year."

The U.S. authorities have pointedly ignored the fact that a majority of the members of the Iraqi parliament signed a petition demanding that the occupiers set a timetable for leaving the country.

Among the few media that reported the event was the liberal on-line journal Alternet. A May 9 article reported: "On Tuesday [May 5], without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. One hundred forty four lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition."

It is ironic that about the same time the majority of Iraq’s parliament decided to demand that the U.S. set a time for leaving, the Democratic Party majority in the U.S. Congress abandoned its attempt to press Bush to accept a date for even a partial withdrawal from Iraq. A number of newspapers headlined the move as "Democrats Cave."

The most notable political shift in Iraq has been the evolution of the Shiite community toward hostility to the occupation. The U.S. has found its most important tactical allies in the Shiite religious leaders, who hoped the invasion and occupation would offer them an opportunity to take over the country, based on the majority the Shiites represent in the population.

Among the Shiite community leaders, the only major figure who has consistently opposed the occupation is Muqtada al-Sadr, who led two uprisings against the U.S. forces. His popularity has grown impressively, evidently as a result of his anti-imperialist stand, although he went underground when the U.S. launched its "surge."

In the May 21 issue of the on-line journal Counterpunch, Patrick Cockburn reported: "The US Army tried to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr, the widely revered Shia cleric, [in August 2004] after luring him to peace negotiations at a house in the holy city of Najaf, which it then attacked, according to a senior Iraqi government official.

"The revelation of this extraordinary plot, which would probably have provoked an uprising by outraged Shia if it had succeeded, has left a legacy of bitter distrust in the mind of Mr Sadr for which the US and its allies in Iraq may still be paying. ‘I believe that particular incident made Muqtada lose any confidence or trust in the [U.S.-led] coalition and made him really wild,’ the Iraqi National Security Adviser Dr Mowaffaq Rubai’e told me in an interview."

U.S. military and civilian spokespersons in fact made it clear that al-Sadr’s movement was the immediate target of the surge, although he did not initially call for armed resistance to it. He had the tactical problem that the indiscriminate slaughter of Shiite civilians by al-Qaeda-related guerrillas inclined the Shiite population to seize on any hope for security. As the al-Qaeda crowd bombings have continued, despite the "surge," al-Sadr has moved into a more and more openly confrontational stance.

Al-Sadr reappeared in Iraq in public on May 25, when he gave a sermon in the Shiite holy city of Kufa calling for the U.S. to get out of Iraq and for unity between Shiites and Sunnis against the imperialist occupier. The capitalist press has been speculating about why he chose this time to reemerge. But none of these commentators has considered that it might be because by now it has become clear that the U.S. forces cannot offer security to the Shiite populations.

It is notable that al-Sadr’s resurfacing was followed immediately by fighting between his Mahdi Army and the U.S. and British occupation forces.

Tales of Iranian "Intervention"

The latest imperialist manipulation is contained in the British Guardian of May 22. The reporter apparently was sucked in by a story by a U.S. official in Iraq that the Iranian government is backing an al-Qaeda-led campaign planned for this summer against the occupation forces. However, this notion runs as directly against the political realities in the region as the Bush administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda.

It is unrealistic to think that the Iranian government—based on the Shiite clergy in its own country and having multiple and long-standing links with the Shiite clergy in Iraq—would knit a military alliance with groups that every week are setting off bombs in Shiite crowds and have bombed Shiite holy places.

The Guardian story began: "‘Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it's a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces,’ a senior US official in Baghdad warned. ‘They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government].’"

This official also claimed that the al-Qaeda-Iranian campaign was timed to coincide with a vote in the U.S. Congress in order to tip the scales toward the legislators who favor disengagement. The story thus seemed to be a provocation against the favorite bugbears of the Bush administration.

But the provocation against Iran is much more serious than the one against the self-contradictory critics of Bush’s policy in U.S. ruling circles—who share his basic aims, whatever differences they may have about tactics. In the case of Iran, it would lead to dangerous escalation of the U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. In fact, the U.S. government spokespersons have offered less evidence of Iranian support for the armed resistance in Iraq than they did for the now exploded myth of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.

The threat against Iran implied in the U.S. military’s disinformation operation has been underscored by the concentration of American naval power in the Persian Gulf. Reuters reported May 23: "A large flotilla of U.S. warships sailed through the narrowest point in the Gulf in broad daylight on Wednesday to hold drills off Iran's coast in a major show of force that unnerved oil markets.

"U.S. Navy officials said Iran was not notified of plans to sail nine ships, including two aircraft carriers, through the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow channel in international waters off Iran's coast and a major artery for global oil shipments." One effect of the U.S. maneuvers was to raise the price of oil.

The Iranian regime has really maintained an uneasy tolerance for the U.S. occupation not only of Iraq but also of Afghanistan. Iran has long borders and historical ties with both countries, considerable resources, and a great military sophistication—as was shown by the success of the Iranian-supported Lebanese Hezbullah militia in its recent war with Israel. In a military confrontation with the United States, it has the ability to cut off all oil exports from the Persian Gulf, if it were prepared to accept the economic costs to itself.

An Iranian-U.S. summit was reported on May 27 to have reached "broad agreement" on Iraq, although both sides continue to make hostile noises. It is an indication that the uneasy standoff continues. But the fact that the United States continues to make threats to the Iranian regime, whose anti-imperialistic stance is basic to its political image both at home and in the region, is a sign that the confrontation could easily escalate.

Politics and economics

The Bush administration and U.S. big business have powerful reasons to maintain and reinforce the military intervention in the Iraq. One is political, since the U.S. has staked so much of the prestige and image of its power on the occupation of Iraq.

The political motive is very important. The U.S. rulers waged an all-out war in Vietnam for years to try to establish that they had the power to maintain the status quo in the world. They were defeated, but they have tried to make a comeback with the argument that a small high-tech military can achieve the same objective. But that claim is being refuted in Iraq at a very damaging political cost to those dependent on the threat of U.S. military power to defend their business interests.

But in the case of Iraq, the U.S. also has a huge economic stake. Iraq has enormous oil reserves, possibly the greatest in the world, and among the cheapest to pump out of the ground and the highest quality. If the U.S. oil companies were able to get control of Iraqi oil, it would be a gigantic plum for American big business.

It is symptomatic that the first "benchmark" that the U.S. is demanding that its client Iraqi government meet is the adoption of the proposed oil law. The law would privatize the petroleum industry and offer foreign oil companies, in the first place American ones, advantages that they do not enjoy in any other foreign oil fields.

The reporting on this issue in the mainsteam press suggests that the obstacle to the adoption of the law is conflicting sectional and communal interests. However, the major obstacles are more fundamental.

The on-line journal Alternet reported May 8: "Not long after President Bush declared ‘major combat operations in Iraq have ended,’ under a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner on the deck of the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, Paul Bremer, the new head of the American occupation, promulgated a series of laws designed, among other things, to kick-start the development of Iraqi oil."

"In addition to attempting to transfer management of existing oil facilities (well heads, refineries, pipelines, and shipping) to multinational corporations, he also set about creating an oil-policy framework, unique in the region, that would allow the major companies to develop the country's proven reserves and even to begin drilling new wells.

"All these plans were, however, quickly frustrated, both by the growing Sunni insurgency and by civil resistance. Iraq's oil workers quickly unionized—even though Bremer extended Saddam's prohibition on unions in state-owned companies—and effectively resisted the transfer of management duties to foreign companies.

"In one noteworthy moment, the oil workers actually refused to take orders from Bechtel officials in the oil hub of Basra, thus preserving their own jobs as well as the right of the Iraqi state-owned Southern Oil Company to continue to control the operation in that region. Bechtel's management contract was subsequently voided."

Moreover, the U.S. plans ran into an obstacle inherent in the "free market system"—that is, there is little honor among thieves: "Working under cost-plus agreements that guaranteed a fixed profit rate no matter how much an operation ultimately cost, they [the American oil companies] preferred instead to install expensive new proprietary equipment.

"Then, in the absence of any outside oversight, they ran up huge expenses and frequently failed to complete their contracts, leaving the oil facilities they were servicing in states of disrepair or partial repair—and equipped with technology that local technicians could not service."

The combined effect of Iraqi resistance and the narrow-minded self-interest of the U.S. corporations has been that Iraqi oil production still remains below the poor results of the country’s petroleum industry under Saddam Hussein, even when it was crippled by imperialist sanctions.

However, the U.S. bosses apparently cannot give up their golden dream of an oil bonanza, any more than some Spanish conquistadors could stop following the vision of El Dorado, the "golden city" of the Indians, until it led them to lose themselves in a great desert.