Last November George W Bush received a thumping rejection of his war on Iraq in the mid-term elections. In January he sent 21,500 more troops into battle. This is what democracy looks like.
This new policy – a “surge”, or “one last push” – enjoys support of just 36 per cent of Americans. Bush own approval rating is only 33 per cent, the third lowest in history. But Bush remains president and commander-in-chief. He even sacked his leading generals in Iraq – George Casey and John Abizaid – because they disagreed with the troop increase.
One last push
Four thousand marines will go to Anbar province to quell the Sunni-led resistance, but the majority will be directed to a third attempt to control the capital. Their mission will be to disarm the militias, which currently rule Baghdad. To do this, US generals have come up with a seven-point plan
1. Seal off districts
2. Move in and disarm the militia
3. Set up posts in districts
4. Put up checkpoints, restrict civilian movements, issue ID cards
5. Draw up census of inhabitants
6. Create jobs programme
7. Expand operation to neighbouring area
Up to now US forces have seized towns or districts and moved on. Resistance fighters simply reappeared once the occupiers had gone. The new plan is designed to prevent that.
It has two main flaws. First, there are insufficient troops to take control of Baghdad, a city of six million people. Second, it is relies on the Iraqi police and army leadind the fighting. But the police and army are totally unreliable.
In fact, the US will have to take the lead, and that means indiscriminate artillery fire into densely populated areas and the cutting off electricity and water supplies, which happened in the Battle for Haifa Street. For every insurgent killed, two more will be recruited.
The US is targeting Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. In January it claimed to have captured 16 commanders, including a “senior death squad leader” (though this has been denied). Six hundred Mahdi Army members await trial. But the US will not succeed.
The Mahdi Army is estimated to be 100,000 strong, with 60,000 adherents in Sadr City alone. Its soldiers will almost certainly hide their weapons and uniforms before the US soldiers get near them. But the Mahdi Army defends the Shia community from the US and sectarian Sunni killers, despite its reactionary imposition of sharia law, ensuring it has massive support.
Out of control
The surge is also destabilising the region. Within hours of Bush proclaiming that “we’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks”, US soldiers raided Iranian government offices in Irbil, confiscating computers and arresting officials. Further and more serious conflicts could arise, as Iraqi Shia look to Iran for military and financial support against the occupation.
Meanwhile, Turkey claiming that PKK guerillas had infiltrated a refugee camp in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and called on US troops to raid it. When they did, neither weapons nor explosives were found.
Turkey, a US ally, is keen to stop the oil city of Kirkuk voting to become part of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region later this year because it fears an economically viable Kurdish state on its border. Its Parliament even debated invading Iraq last month (Turkey massed 250,000 troops on the border in July). Given 30,000 people have perished in Turkey’s repressive war against the Kurds, this is no idle threat.
At the same time, the US is training and financing Fatah’s armed wing in an attempt to foment civil war in Palestine, and waging a war by proxy in Somalia (see pages 19 and 21). Unable to conquer the Middle East in the short term, Washington is stirring it up, so that imperialism can, at a later stage, assert its will.
Thieves fall out
All this has opened up serious divisions within the US/UK coalition. Margaret Beckett wants British soldiers to hand control of Basra to the Iraqi police in the spring, reduce troop numbers by 3,000 in the summer, and vacate the UK army base in Shaibah, south of Basra. This runs completely counter to the US surge. But British generals, not to mention Labour’s electoral base, are demanding it.
Bush has also lost control of the Congress and Senate. Even worse, senior – and until now pro-war – Republicans have defected. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted down Bush’s plan, and Edward Kennedy has drafted a bill requiring him to get Congress approval. Most damaging of all, Republican hawk John Warner is pushing the Senate to pass the most critical statement yet on the war.
One last push
It is vital that we seize on the warmongers’ difficulties. Beckett, Kennedy and Warner are not anti-imperialists. They merely want imperialism to achieve its ends by other means, not even, necessarily, less violent means. That is why, in the end, they will not inflict a damaging defeat on their armed forces.
The working class and oppressed people around the world, on the other hand, have a direct interest in the defeat of the US and British armies: so they cannot be redeployed in Afghanistan; so head off an attack on Iran, so everyone fighting neoliberalism – from Texas to Taiwan – is encouraged.
On 27 January, tens of thousands marched across the USA; on 24 February, a river of protesters will flow through London; in March, many other demos are planned. These mobilisations must form the basis for direct action to force the imperialists to immediately withdraw their troops.
Disrupt the supply of weapons and troops. Encourage rank and file soldiers to disobey illegal and immoral orders. Mount political strikes and student walkouts against the war. Turn the imperialist war into a class war to abolish the capitalist system that breeds conflict between nations.