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For the past month, the big-business press coverage of Iraq has
been featuring alleged progress by the U.S. forces and their Iraq
client government in suppressing insurgent forces. The big events
according to these accounts are the Iraqi army successes in gaining
control of Mosul from Sunni insurgents and in occupying Sadr City in
Baghdad, which has been a stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army.
However, both of these "success" stories have flip sides. For
example, New York Times correspondent Andrew E. Kramer wrote in the
June 1 issue of his paper: "The crucial lesson, in fact, over the
past month appears to be that all sides—the Iraqi military as well as
various insurgent groups—prefer, at the moment, not to fight. Rather,
as in Basra and Sadr City, the huge Shiite enclave in Baghdad, the
Iraqi military appears to have allowed many insurgents to slip out of
Mosul, after scores of negotiations with militias and their
leaders."
The indication is that the insurgents have not been defeated but are
rather regrouping and waiting for new political opportunities. It seems
a reasonable assumption that the resistance could not maintain the old
rhythm indefinitely or grow in a linear way because the fragmented
insurgent organizations individually and collectively have not been
able to create a general political alternative.
Moreover, the Iraqi government itself is a can of worms for the
occupiers. The violently anti-Western current led by Moqtada al-Sadr
has a strong foothold in it.
Al-Sadr negotiated a truce with the Iraqi government that allowed its
army to enter his bailiwick. This agreement has been presented by the
big-business press as a victory for the Baghdad government.
But a report in the May 31 Washington Post noted that if it was a
victory, it was an ambiguous one: "'Most soldiers here [in Sadr
City] are from southern parts of Iraq, and half of them are affiliated
with the Sadr trend,' said Salah Sabieh, an Iraqi soldier who was
watching the protests [called by al-Sadr against the U.S. proposed security
pact]. On the windshield of his military truck was a picture of Sadr.
'He is the leader. We can't remove his picture. We are all Shiites,' he
said. 'Moqtada Sadr represents all Iraq.'"
The apparently best organized component of the resistance, al-Qaeda,
has had a counterproductive strategy of targeting the Shiite population
in general, provoking hostility among elements that have been involved
in the insurgency. Al-Qaeda seems to have suffered setbacks and created
divisions among the insurgents. But despite its spectacular strikes, it
has always been a small part of the resistance, and it is unlikely that
its fate will be decisive for the opposition to the U.S. occupation.
In the case of al-Sadr and his Mahdi army, it seems that this leader is
trying to build a political mass movement against the U.S. occupation
that could offer a continuing and possibly growing basis for the
opposition to the U.S. occupation on multiple levels.
The big-business press reported that "tens of thousands of
Shiites" responded to al-Sadr's calls for demonstrations against
the so-called security pact that the U.S. wants to negotiate with the
Iraqi government. (Obviously,
the demonstrations were huge, but none of the big-business press wanted
to give any concrete estimation of their size.)
Not only al-Sadr and his lieutenants but his main rival among the
Shiites, the al-Dawa party, and even the Ayatollah al-Sistani, a
conservative cleric who has been the main ally of the occupation, have
denounced the U.S. proposals as an attempt to impose a perpetual
protectorate on Iraq.
The New York Times reported May 31: "American and Iraqi
negotiators are far apart on a number of issues, said Mr. Adeeb and
another senior lawmaker close to Mr. Maliki, Haider al-Abadi, in
interviews on Friday.
"The Americans want to continue to have 'a free hand' to arrest
Iraqis and carry out military operations, and they want authority for
more than 50 long-term military bases, Mr. Adeeb said. He said that he
doubted that a security pact along the lines sought by the Americans
would pass in the Iraqi Parliament.
"Mr. Abadi, another senior member of Dawa, said Americans were
insisting on keeping control of Iraqi airspace and retaining legal
immunity for American troops, contractors and private security
guards."
Of course, the Baghdad government is a client of the United States, and
Iraqi bourgeois politicians are far from immune to its pressures and
its enticements. But they have to take account of the mass hatred of
the U.S. occupation and overlordship. The New York Times article cited
above noted that Iraqi politicians were loath to endorse the U.S. plans
before upcoming provincial and local elections. In fact, any Iraqi
political force allied with the U.S. is likely to prove permeable to
the sea of anti-imperialist feeling in which it is submerged.
Worst of all for U.S. imperialism, the resistance to the U.S.
occupation has already achieved its essential objective. It has
demonstrated that the U.S. cannot subdue the country militarily and
that the U.S. rulers can neither afford nor justify the expense.
Bush's Iraqi adventure is already a political disaster, and the
chickens are coming home to roost. His poll ratings are the lowest for
any American president in living memory. And the collapse of his
adventure is illustrated by a scathing editorial in the May 26 New York
Times opposing Bush's veto of a new GI bill. It must be a landmark in
the history of U.S. big-business journalism to see such a denunciation
of the political leader of U.S. capitalism by its most
prestigious newspaper:
"Having saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war,
having squandered soldiers' lives and failed them in so many ways, the
commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better
futures out of uniform. He does this on the ground that the bill is too
generous and may discourage re-enlistment, further weakening the
military he has done so much to break.
"So lavish with other people's sacrifices, so reckless in pouring
the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq, Mr. Bush remains as
cheap as ever when it comes to helping people at home."
Thus, it seems that thoughtful representatives of the American ruling
class have pronounced their final sentence on the U.S. conquest of
Iraq, one that no momentary or apparent success of the occupation
forces or U.S. political intrigues can erase or even obscure.
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