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Socialist Democracy November 2004

By Pelad

The situation which the United State imperialism find itself in Iraq today is just like that of sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether word he has called up by his spells, to use the description of the bourgeoisie by Marx and Engel in the Communist Manifesto. In pursuit of its imperialist agenda of oil profit and prestige, the US has plunged Iraq into a labyrinth of chaos and barbarism. On the basis of capitalism, the situation in Iraq appears to have reached cul de sac. The insurgency against the occupation armies is becoming intensified on a daily basis. According to CNN as at November 5, 1, 273 coalition armies that included 1, 128 Americans and 73 British had been killed while over 8000 wounded since the start of the war. The insurgents also unleash ceaseless attack on the officers of the US-puppet government, the Iraqi police and any other person or group that are perceived to be in support of the forces of occupation. November 1, a day before the last US election, the deputy governor of Baghdad was killed and a week earlier some 50 Iraqi recruits were killed in an ambush. The insurgents have also adopted the method of kidnapping foreign journalists and workers as hostages. There have been at least 130 cases of kidnapping out of which 30 of the hostages have been killed mostly by the barbaric method of beheading.

In the course of the attempt to repress the insurgency the US military machine has launched massive bombing raids on towns like Falluja, Najaf, Samara, Baghdad and Monsul leaving tens of thousands civilians dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. In Falluja for instance, fewer than 60,000 out of a population of 300,000 remain in the town. The killing of civilians and destruction of houses and infrastructures by the US military should not be seen as collateral damage but a product of the characteristic contempt of the US for lives and properties of the Iraqis. The US military in Iraq is one of the worst occupation forces in history. The torture of Iraqi prisoners, ruthless manner of reacting to protests and use of brute force by the US soldiers show that there is no fundamental difference from what obtains now and in the Saddam period.

The Bush regime is spending fortunes out of the taxpayer money on the fight against the insurgency. On the top of $215 billion it has spent so far to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is planning to send to the congress a fresh request of up to $75 billion early next year. It has diverted the resources meant for rebuilding of Iraq on security programme. The abandoning of the reconstruction of the shattered infrastructure viz. electricity, water, education, health care delivery etc. has made the living conditions of Iraqi masses to have gone from bad to worse. Moreover, while the tax payers in the US and Britain in particular are made to pay for the war; Bush, Blair and business partners make fortune from the contracts on the Iraqi oil and the so called Iraq's rebuilding exercise.

The case of the US and the British governments for the war in Iraq has collapsed like pack of cards. The recent report of the Iraq Survey Group, commissioned by the US itself to find the weapon of mass destruction WMD shows that there is no WMD in Iraq. Similarly, earlier, in the year the reports of the Bultler commission in Britain and a senate panel in the US had faulted the so-called intelligence reports that provided the basis for going to the war. According to them, Saddam did not possess WMD as alleged and he had no link with al-Qa'ida and September 11. Jay Rockefeller, a democrat and the Vice Chairman of the US senate panel was reported to have stated that: "Mistakes leading up to the war in Iraq rank among the most devastating losses and intelligence failures in the history of the nation"

The war has already created monstrous situation with the emergence of different contending forces, both religious and national, like the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, aiming at political powers. What appears to unite these forces is their common struggle against the occupation forces. This has potential of creating serious socio-political tension that could lead to a civil war situation. This is reinforced by the increase in the influence of right wing political Islam aimed at establishing a theocratic Islamic state.

The solution to the imminent dangers of Iraq slipping into greater anarchy including civil war and polarization along sectarian divide is not the continued stay of the troops. The presence of the occupation armies is in itself a major problem and in fact the essence of the insurgency. The troops must be withdrawn. The only way forward is the unity of the Iraqi working people across the religious and ethnic divide on a programme of struggle, solidarity and socialism.

Socialist Democracy November 2004