|
“I demand the complete and unconditional withdrawal of our
troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and the other 126 nations
where we now quarter American troops. I demand that all who
are responsible for launching the unprovoked and illegal
wars be held accountable through prosecution for war crimes
and that the US government and its allies be assessed for
the damages it has wrought and compensate both the Iraqi and
Afghani people for the death and destruction this war has
inflicted upon their countries as well as the American
soldiers wounded in this conflict and the families of those
who have been killed.”
–
John A. Murphy
Any 12-year-old with a modem could have told you in 1998 that all the weapons of mass destruction provided to Saddam Hussein by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s had been destroyed or were accounted for. Any 12-year-old with a modem could have told you after 9/11, Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist attack on the twin towers. Any 12-year-old with a modem also could have told you the only possible relationship that could have existed between Saddam and Osama was enmity. The United States, Great Britain, and a few allies invaded Iraq simply in order to control its natural resources and its markets. Furthermore, impelled by Israeli interests here in the United States, the Bush administration, supported by the leaders of the Democratic Party who told the same lies, decided that an occupied Iraq was in the best interests of Israel 
Four-year-old Iraqi child experiences the shock and awe sponsored by the US government and its allies. Fortunately, most of the people in the United States now know what everyone else in the world has known for the past three years. The invasion of Iraq was based on lies; not misinformation, not poor intelligence, but lies! Neither the leaders of the Democratic Party nor the leaders of the Republican Party will tell you that. When it became clear this war was not about weapons of mass destruction, we were then told it was about regime change. If the people of this country were told that we planned to invade another country which had committed no act of aggression toward The United States and which was no immediate threat to us or our allies, the American people would have never sanctioned such an invasion. The leadership in the United States, whether Republicans in the White House or Democrats in the Congress, lied to us from day one, and many continue the lies even today. It was wrong to invade Iraq; it is wrong to remain there as an army of occupation. The United States and its allies should withdraw their armed forces immediately. These forces should not be just redeployed in order to stage another invasion, but permanently recalled and returned to the United States. Furthermore, all aerial bombardment of Iraq must end whether that bombardment is based in Iraq or elsewhere. All employees of US corporations must be immediately removed from the Iraqi national homeland. All mercenaries or so-called "contractors" must be immediately withdrawn. The United Nations should assess the damages caused to the nation of Iraq by the United States and its allies and the United States and its allies should be assessed that amount and required to pay to the citizens of Iraq the appropriate reparations. Since the invasion the United States and its allies have killed in excess of 1,196,514 innocent men, women and children in Iraq and seriously injured untold millions of others. Not one family in Iraq has remained uninjured by the scurrilous invasion. Iraqi children who witnessed the body parts of their friends and relatives strewn about their neighborhoods will remember the United States forever in their nightmares which now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists known only as “Americans”.
WOULD THE WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS IGNITE A CIVIL WAR BETWEEN SUNNIS AND SHIITES? No. That civil war is already under way - in large part because of the American presence. The longer the United States stays, the more it fuels Sunni hostility toward Shiite "collaborators." Were America not in Iraq, Sunni leaders could negotiate and participate without fear that they themselves would be branded traitors and collaborators by their constituents. Sunni leaders have said this in official public statements. The Iraqi government, which is currently dominated by Shiites, would lose its quisling stigma. Iraq's security forces, also primarily Shiite, would no longer be working on behalf of foreign infidels against fellow Iraqis, but would be able to function independently and recruit Sunnis to a truly national force. The mere announcement of an intended U.S. withdrawal would allow Sunnis to come to the table and participate in defining the new Iraq. BUT IF AMERICAN TROOPS AREN'T IN BAGHDAD, WHAT'S TO STOP THE SUNNIS FROM LAUNCHING AN ASSAULT AND SEIZING CONTROL OF THE CITY? Sunni forces could not mount such an assault. The preponderance of power now lies with the majority Shiites and the Kurds, and the Sunnis know this. Sunni fighters wield only small arms and explosives, not Saddam's tanks and helicopters, and are very weak compared with the cohesive, better armed, and numerically superior Shiite and Kurdish militias. Most important, Iraqi nationalism-not intramural rivalry-is the chief motivator for both Shiites and Sunnis. Most insurgency groups view themselves as waging a muqawama-a resistance-rather than a jihad. This is evident in their names and in their propaganda. For instance, the units commanded by the Association of Muslim Scholars are named after the 1920 revolt against the British. Others have names such as “Iraqi Islamic Army” and “Flame of Iraq”. They display the Iraqi flag rather than a flag of jihad. Insurgent attacks are meant primarily to punish those who have collaborated with the Americans and to deter future collaboration.
WOULDN'T A U.S. WITHDRAWAL EMBOLDEN THE INSURGENCY? No. If the occupation were to end, so, too, would the insurgency. After all, what the resistance movement has been resisting is the occupation. Who would the insurgents fight if the enemy left? The Sunni Arab fighters and the clerics who support them are fighting for one reason: intiqaam-revenge. Revenge for the destruction of their homes, for the shame they felt when Americans forced them to the ground and stepped on them, for the killing of their friends and relatives by U.S. soldiers either in combat or during raids. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FOREIGN JIHADI ELEMENT OF THE RESISTANCE? WOULDN'T IT BE EMPOWERED BY A U.S. WITHDRAWAL? No, the foreign jihadi element-commanded by the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi-is numerically insignificant; the bulk of the resistance has no connection to al-Qaeda or its offshoots. (Zarqawi and his followers have benefited greatly from U.S. propaganda blaming him for all attacks in Iraq, because he is now seen by Arabs around the world as more powerful than he is; we have been his best recruiting tool.) It is true that the Sunni resistance welcomed the foreign fighters (and to some extent still do), because they were far more willing to die than indigenous Iraqis were. But what Zarqawi wants fundamentally conflicts with what Iraqi Sunnis want: Zarqawi seeks re-establishment of the Muslim caliphate and a Manichean confrontation with infidels around the world, to last until Judgment Day; the mainstream Iraqi resistance just wants the Americans out. If U.S. forces were to leave, the foreigners in Zarqawi's movement would find little support-and perhaps significant animosity-among Iraqi Sunnis, who want wealth and power, not jihad until death. They have already lost much of their support: many Iraqis have begun turning on them. In the heavily Shia Sadr City foreign jihadis had burning tires placed around their necks. The foreigners have not managed to establish themselves decisively in any large cities. Even at the height of their power in Fallujah they could control only one neighborhood, the Julan, and they were hated by the city's resistance council. Today foreign fighters hide in small villages and are used opportunistically by the nationalist resistance. When the Americans depart and Sunnis join the Iraqi government, some of the foreign jihadis in Iraq may try to continue the struggle-but they will have committed enemies in both Baghdad and the Shiite south, and the entire Sunni triangle will be against them. They will have nowhere to hide. Nor can they merely take their battle to the West. The jihadis need a failed state like Iraq in which to operate. When they leave Iraq, they will be hounded by Arab and Western security agencies.
WHAT ABOUT THE KURDS? WON'T THEY SECEDE IF THE UNITED STATES LEAVES? No, because that would invite a Turkish invasion. Turkey would never invade Kurdistan as long as it remains part of an Iraqi Federation but if it were to seek independence, which it certainly deserves, the Kurds understand that the results would be disastrous.
WOULD IRAN EFFECTIVELY TAKE OVER IRAQ? No. Iraqis are fiercely nationalist - even the country's Shiites resent Iranian meddling. (It is true that some Iraqi Shiites view Iran as an ally, because many of their leaders found safe haven there when exiled by Saddam - but thousands of other Iraqi Shiites experienced years of misery as prisoners of war in Iran.) Even in southeastern towns near the border there is hostility toward Iran.
WHAT ABOUT THE GOAL OF CREATING A SECULAR DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ THAT RESPECTS THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND NON-MUSLIMS? Give it up. It's not going to happen. Apart from the Kurds, who revel in their secularism, Iraqis overwhelmingly seek a Muslim state. Although Iraq may have been officially secular during the 1970s and 1980s, Saddam encouraged Islamism during the 1990s, and the difficulties of the past decades have strengthened the resurgence of Islam. In the absence of any other social institutions, the mosques and the clergy assumed the dominant role in Iraq following the invasion. Even Baathist resistance leaders have returned to Islam to atone for their sins under Saddam. Most Shiites, too, follow one cleric or another. Ayatollah al-Sistani-supposedly a moderate-wants Islam to be the source of law. The invasion of Iraq has led to a theocracy, which can only grow more hostile to America as long as U.S. soldiers are present. Does Iraqi history offer any lessons? The British occupation of Iraq, in the first half of the twentieth century, may be instructive. The British faced several uprisings and coups. The Iraqi government, then as now, was unable to suppress the rebels on its own and relied on the occupying military. In 1958, when the government the British helped install finally fell, those who had collaborated with them could find no popular support; some, including the former Prime Minister Nuri Said, were murdered and mutilated. Said had once been a respected figure, but he became tainted by his collaboration with the British. That year, when revolutionary officers overthrew the government, Said disguised himself as a woman and tried to escape. He was discovered, shot in the head, and buried. The next day a mob dug up his corpse and dragged it through the street-an act that would be repeated so often in Iraq that it earned its own word: sahil. With the British-sponsored government gone, both Sunni and Shiite Arabs embraced the Iraqi identity. The Kurds still resent the British perfidy that made them part of Iraq. WHAT CAN THE UNITED STATES DO TO REPAIR IRAQ? There is no panacea. Iraq is a destroyed and divided country. Iranians and Saudis worry that it might be impossible to keep Iraq from disintegrating. But they agree that the best hope of avoiding this scenario is if the United States leaves; perhaps then Iraqi nationalism will keep at least the Arabs united. The sooner America withdraws and begins to make financial reparations and allows Iraqis to assume control of their own country, the better the chances that Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari won't face sahil. It may be decades before Iraq recovers from the current maelstrom. By then its borders may be different, its vaunted secularism a distant relic. But a continued U.S. occupation can only get in the way. 
“Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest
and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who
inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the
Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their
power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon
one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more
than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to
war. The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles. The master class
has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and all to lose-especially their
lives.
-Presidential
Candidate
Eugene Debs: 16 June 1918:
The speech was later used against Debs to make the case that
he had violated Woodrow Wilson's Espionage Act. The
judge sentenced Debs to ten years in prison.
Thank you, John Murphy "The Corporate-Free Candidate" |
