The Surge, The
Purge, and the Path to
Ending the
Occupation of Iraq
Several things have become
evident about the situation in
Iraq as a result of the failed
siege by the Iraqi, U.S. and
the British military forces.
(The decision to attack Basra
was made jointly between the
U.S. and Iraqi governments,
according to Steven Hadley, the
president's national security
advisor.):
*There
is no military solution to
the crisis in Iraq. The
only way to truly support
the troops is to bring them
all home now.
Read the details below or
CLICK HERE
to send a
message to Congress
President Bush's much
heralded "surge" strategy has
not reduced violence or created
conditions that promote
political reconciliation.
While Bush, Cheney, General
Petraeus and John McCain
proclaim the surge to be a
great success, the facts on
the ground say something
else. Whatever reduction in
violence occurred had more
to do with the cease fire
ordered by the
anti-occupation cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr, the U.S.
paying off tribal leaders
and Sunni militias
("awakening councils") to
get them to stop attacking
U.S. troops, and the effect
of ethnic cleansing of major
areas of Iraq than it did
with the addition of a few
thousand more U.S. troops.
Iraq today is just as
divided as it was before the
surge was announced.
What has been billed as a
significant drop in the
level of violence may in
fact only have been a lull.
The Washington Post (4/2/08)
reports: "Attacks against
U.S. troops and Iraqi
security forces soared
across Baghdad in the last
week of March to the highest
levels since the deployment
of additional U.S. troops
here reached full strength
last June…." Recently an
order went out to all U.S.
personnel in the
fortress-like "Green Zone"
where the U.S. and Iraqi
government operations are
headquartered to remain
inside blast resistant
bunkers and to move about
only in armored vehicles.
U.S. government employees
there have taken to sleeping
on cots in their offices.
But President Bush insists
the surge is working.
The military assault on
Basra was an absolute and total
failure.
After five years and
billions of dollars spent
training and equipping the
Iraqi security forces, the
Iraqi, U.S. and British
governments were unable to
achieve any of the
objectives of the attack on
the Mehdi Army. The
militias loyal to Muqtada
al-Sadr faced down
government forces not only
in Basra but also in
Baghdad, and in Kut, Amarah,
Nasiriyah and Diwaniya,
capitols of four key
Southern provinces. Much of
Basra and Southern Iraq
remains controlled by the
forces loyal to al-Sadr.
A thousand or more Iraqi
soldiers and police shed
their uniforms, grabbed
their weapons, deserted
their posts rather than
fight the Mehdi Army (NYT,
4/4/08). Al-Maliki had to
be evacuated under fire from
the Basra palace command
post where he had vowed to
remain until victory was
achieved. His effort to
assert control and eliminate
his opposition turned into a
humiliating defeat that has
left him politically
weakened and vulnerable.
The
attack on Basra had little to do
with fighting criminals and
terrorists or reducing
"sectarian violence," and
everything to do with preventing
the Sadrists from scoring a
victory in next October's
provincial elections.
The fact is that since the
invasion, there has been a
struggle underway in Iraq
over which power blocs will
have control. This is a
conflict between different
factions of Iraq's ruling
elite - a conflict that
isn't defined by clear
sectarian and ethnic
identities. The U.S. has
sought to foster, fuel and
exploit those divisions in a
classic colonial
divide-and-rule strategy.
Iraq is a country in which
allegiance is to tribe and
clan as much as or more than
it is to religious sect and
ethnic group. Both Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki and
Muqtada al-Sadr are Shi'a.
Al-Maliki belongs to the
Dawa Party, which is allied
with the Supreme Islamic
Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its
militia, the Badr Corps.
(Both Dawa and SIIC are also
Shi'a.) Another player is
the al-Fadhila Party, a
split off from Sadr, which
has long dominated the oil
protection services in
Basra. It too is Shi'a.
All of these factions have
strong ties to Iran,
including al-Maliki (which
may explain why the first
foreign head of state to
visit Iraq after the
invasion was Bush's nemesis,
the president of Iran
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad).
The U.S. and al-Maliki's
ruling coalition had become
increasingly alarmed at the
prospect of the Sadrists
winning the popular vote in
the fall provincial
elections. The Sadrists are
nationalists who oppose the
occupation and also oppose
the soft partition of Iraq
favored by some of the
forces around al-Maliki.
Were they to win the
elections (which seems
likely), it would up end the
entire U.S. game plan and
Maliki would be out.
The
siege of Basra was inspired by
the conflict over who will
control Iraq's oil and thus the
political and economic destiny
of the country.
The vast majority of
discovered oil resources is
located in Southern Iraq, in
the area around Basra.
Whoever controls that region
will control access to and
the flow of oil - and the
wealth and power that
control bestows. The
Sadrists oppose allowing
foreign oil companies to get
control over Iraqi oil - one
of the primary objectives of
the invasion and
occupation. (On that point,
they are joined by 2/3 of
the Iraqi people who oppose
privatization of the
nation's oil.) The Sadrists
are an obstacle to passage
of the U.S.-inspired oil law
that would foster just such
foreign corporate control.
Another force that stands
between the U.S. and Iraqi
oil is the labor movement,
and in particular the
powerful Iraqi Federation of
Oil Unions. Despite all its
rhetoric about democracy and
freedom, the U.S. continued
to enforce a Saddam-era ban
on unions in the public
sector. (Iraq's oil
industry is state owned.)
The unions organized anyway,
without the protection of a
labor law. The al-Maliki
government continued that
ban and has harassed and
threatened unions and union
leaders, a number of whom
have been beaten, arrested,
kidnapped and assassinated
over the course of the last
five years. The oil workers
have pledged to block
privatization of Iraq's oil
resources and have conducted
short strikes to demonstrate
that determination.
The
Iraqi Army and other security
forces are essentially militias
in government uniform operating
on behalf of al-Maliki and his
allies in opposition to Muqtada
al-Sadra's Mehdi Army, a militia
in street clothes.
If the real targets of the
attack on Basra were
criminal gangs, terrorist
cells and private militias,
the assault would not have
focused only on the Mehdi
Army. Al-Fadhila's militia
and other armed groups were
largely ignored and stayed
on the sidelines as the
Iraqi security forces,
backed by the U.S. and
British, went after the
Sadrists. This military
offensive sought to destroy
the Sadrist militia and thus
undermine Muqtada al-Sadr's
political capacity in
Southern Iraq. Their aim
was to pacify Southern Iraq
in advance of the elections,
to remove obstacles to the
privatization of the oil
industry and neutralize one
of the most powerful sources
of opposition to the
occupation.
The decision by the
U.S. and the British to employ
air power against civilian
neighborhoods to support the
government's forces constitutes
yet one more in a growing list
of war crimes that began with
the invasion itself - an
unprovoked act of aggression
based on lies, in defiance of
the international community
without a declaration of war by
Congress.
Basra is a city of 1.7
million people. The use of
missiles and bombs in
densely inhabited civilian
neighborhoods against
militias equipped only with
small arms could predictably
be expected to kill and maim
many non-combatants and
wreak much destruction - and
it did. Hundreds of
civilians were killed and
injured; residential
neighborhoods, markets and
businesses were destroyed.
In support of the assault,
the government cut off
electrical power, water and
sources of food and medicine
to the entire civilian
population. This was a
military assault on a city's
entire population.
Iran has emerged as the
winner, with its influence and
prestige actually greater today
than prior to the attack.
It was a general of the Quds
Force of Iran's
Revolutionary Guard who
negotiated the cease fire.
(Recall, the Bush
administration recently
labeled the Quds Force a
"terrorist" organization,
yet it was the Iranians who
helped deescalate the
conflict and negotiate the
truce.) The Bush
administration refuses to
deal with the Iranian
government and address its
concerns, but everyone else
in the region does.
The greatest obstacle
to reconciliation and stability
in Iraq is the occupation.
The presence of foreign
military forces on Iraqi
soil, in whatever numbers,
inflames the situation and
keeps the conflict going.
Joshua Holland and Raed
Jarrar observe (AlterNet,
3/29/08), "The real source
of conflict in Iraq - and
the reason political
reconciliation has been so
difficult - is a fundamental
disagreement over what the
future of Iraq will look
like." Short of complete
annihilation of the
opposition, there can be no
military remedy to this
conflict. It must be
resolved by what will
inevitably be a difficult,
messy protracted negotiation
that must take place between
Iraqis. The occupation
itself is a source of
conflict. It actually
prevents that process from
moving forward. So long as
foreign troops occupy Iraq,
one or another party will
have little incentive to
negotiate. So long as U.S.
troops are stationed in
Iraq, the process of
political reconciliation is
subverted. The future of
Iraq is a matter that can be
resolved only by the
Iraqis.
Instead of withdrawing, the
U.S. has adopted a
counter-insurgency warfare
strategy that is designed to
divide the population,
isolate and segregate it,
foster inter-group
rivalries, identify and
"neutralize" any sources of
opposition, bribe and buy
off leaders, and secure a
stranglehold over the
economic life of the
country. The U.S.
definition of "stability" in
Iraq is a government that is
beholden to it and willing
to do its bidding, and a
population that can offer no
effective resistance to that
domination. It wants to use
Iraq as a beachhead in the
Middle East from which it
can assert control over the
energy resources of the
entire region (and prevent
any other power - be that
Russia, China, India, or
Iran - from being able to
assert its influence).
The struggle to
compel withdrawal of all U.S.
forces and security contractors
from Iraq is part of the
struggle to reassert democratic
control over our own country,
government and economy.
U.S. military forces have
been ordered into battle on
behalf of powerful economic
and political interests that
control our economy. Our
sons and daughters are being
sacrificed to secure the
profits of oil corporations,
military contractors and
arms dealers - companies
like Exxon Mobil, Kellogg,
Brown & Root, and Blackwater.
Our nation is being driven
deeper into debt while our
economy falters, 47 million
lack health care, our
schools are underfunded,
tens of thousands remain
displaced from their Gulf
Coast homes, our
infrastructure is crumbling,
our manufacturing base is
being systematically shipped
overseas, real incomes for
most people are falling, and
the economic gulf between
the super-rich and the rest
of us is growing.
Funding the war is
killing our troops! We must
force Congress to cut off the
funding that enables the
slaughter and destruction to
continue.
81% of Americans say our
country is on the wrong
track (NYT, 4/4/08). The
first step to putting it on
the right track is to end
this nightmare by cutting
off all funding, except what
is required to rapidly bring
all our troops and security
contractors home, dismantle
our bases, care for our
veterans, and pay
reparations to Iraqis for
the damage and suffering our
government has inflicted.
This month Congress will
consider the
administration's request for
more money to continue the
occupation. Congress has
already approved almost $87
billion for 2008. President
Bush wants $102.5 billion
more. How many lives of
innocent Iraqis and U.S.
troops is Congress prepared
to waste? Every dollar
Congress gives the president
prolongs the killing and the
suffering.
There is no military
solution to the crisis in Iraq.
The only way to support the
troops is to remove them from
harm's way - to bring them all
home now! The only way to make
it possible for Iraqis to
reconcile is to end the
occupation now!
USLAW has set up
a toll-free number that connects
directly to the Congressional
switchboard.
CALL
1-866-261-4755
TODAY!
